Rapture?

No One Knows the Day or Hour

36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. 37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour[b] your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. 44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. —Matthew 24:36-44 (NKJV)

And then God was all like:

20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. Deuteronomy 18:20-22 (NKJV)

Be good to each other. You never know when it’s time to move on. Until then, enjoy these photos.
Via Brett Terpstra and Walton Jones, with text from Bible Gateway.

Rapture?

No One Knows the Day or Hour

36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. 37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour[b] your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. 44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. —Matthew 24:36-44 (NKJV)

And then God was all like:

20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. Deuteronomy 18:20-22 (NKJV)

these photos

Via Brett Terpstra and Walton Jones, with text from Bible Gateway.

iPad: My review one year late

Using an iPad (first generation) for a few weeks now improved the way I work.
Taking notes
Taking notes helps me stay focused and engaged during a meeting or conversation. If you saw me in a meeting, it was a safe bet a notebook or legal pad (yellow paper please) wasn’t far from my side. The physical act of writing with a pen or pencil is one of my simple pleasures, yet as a prolific notetaker, the problem I found with collecting mounds of handwritten yellow pages is the lack of an easy way to search them. Proper filing makes pages easier to find (sometimes), but without a meticulous and impractical concordance I know of no way to search those files beyond simple topics. Using the iPad, I can tag my digital notes and search them with ease.
Not only can I take notes at work and church, but the combination of my iPad and iPhone constitue a digital filing cabinet I always have with me. I have used notebook computers exclusively for nearly a decade and an iPhone for about three years now, but the iPad has taken mobile computing to a whole new level for me.

Creating new content

Lots of people–naysayers and devoted iPad users alike–say the iPad is only for consumption and unsuitable for creation.
I disagree.
I’m no artist, but the tools on the market appear to be amazing. Adobe Ideas, Sketchbook Pro, and Brushes are three that come to mind and the number of high-quality photo editing apps is virtually overwhelming.
Words are my craft, and there is no shortage of tools to help writers. I’m juggling several apps right now until I find a home. IA Writer is my favorite so far for creating narrative content (this article for example). I haven’t settled on a favorite app for taking notes, but I’ve narrowed the field. Nebulous Notes is great and I’ve used PlainText and Elements. The new player on the field is OmniOutliner for iPad from the software ninjas at The Omni Group, and it looks perfect for taking notes.
Like any writer/geek these days, I use Scrivener on my Mac and and look forward to paying for final release of the beta version running on my Windows netbook. Sharing files between Mac OS X and Windows is seamless, but there are no plans to bring Scrivener to the iPad. A wise developer decision, but I’m still flailing about until I can find a pleasing way (for me) to edit writing contained in Scrivener projects while I’m on the go.

About that consumption

I disagreed with those who believe the iPad is only good for consumption, but I don’t disagree that the device is a terrific tool for digesting everything the Internet has to offer (unless it runs in Adobe Flash, which is fine with me). This is another area where my workflow has transformed.
The iPad is as close to perfect as anything I’ve seen for plowing through RSS feeds and other news sources online. I’ve been using Reeder on the iPhone for a long time, but more for triage than actual reading. I have to admit that I’m getting older, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and the larger screen makes reading easier and following up on the Web a pleasure when necessary. Videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and Netflix run like a technicolor dream (unless you’re into black & white recordings, and those work fine too).

iPad: My review one year late

Using an iPad (first generation) for a few weeks now improved the way I work.

Taking notes

Taking notes helps me stay focused and engaged during a meeting or conversation. If you saw me in a meeting, it was a safe bet a notebook or legal pad (yellow paper please) wasn’t far from my side. The physical act of writing with a pen or pencil is one of my simple pleasures, yet as a prolific notetaker, the problem I found with collecting mounds of handwritten yellow pages is the lack of an easy way to search them. Proper filing makes pages easier to find (sometimes), but without a meticulous and impractical concordance I know of no way to search those files beyond simple topics.

Using the iPad, I can tag my digital notes and search them with ease. Not only can I take notes at work and church, but the combination of my iPad and iPhone constitue a digital filing cabinet I always have with me. I have used notebook computers exclusively for nearly a decade and an iPhone for about three years now, but the iPad has taken mobile computing to a whole new level for me.

Creating new content

Lots of people–naysayers and devoted iPad users alike–say the iPad is only for consumption and unsuitable for creation.

I disagree.

I’m no artist, but the tools on the market appear to be amazing. Adobe Ideas, Sketchbook Pro, and Brushes are three that come to mind and the number of high-quality photo editing apps is virtually overwhelming.

Words are my craft, and there is no shortage of tools to help writers. I’m juggling several apps right now until I find a home. IA Writer is my favorite so far for creating narrative content (this article for example). I haven’t settled on a favorite app for taking notes, but I’ve narrowed the field. Nebulous Notes is great and I’ve used PlainText and Elements. The new player on the field is OmniOutliner for iPad from the software ninjas at The Omni Group, and it looks perfect for taking notes.

Like any writer/geek these days, I use Scrivener on my Mac and and look forward to paying for final release of the beta version running on my Windows netbook. Sharing files between Mac OS X and Windows is seamless, but there are no plans to bring Scrivener to the iPad. A wise developer decision, but I’m still flailing about until I can find a pleasing way (for me) to edit writing contained in Scrivener projects while I’m on the go.

About that consumption

I disagreed with those who believe the iPad is only good for consumption, but I don’t disagree that the device is a terrific tool for digesting everything the Internet has to offer (unless it runs in Adobe Flash, which is fine with me). This is another area where my workflow has transformed.

The iPad is as close to perfect as anything I’ve seen for plowing through RSS feeds and other news sources online. I’ve been using Reeder on the iPhone for a long time, but more for triage than actual reading. I have to admit that I’m getting older, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and the larger screen makes reading easier and following up on the Web a pleasure when necessary. Videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and Netflix run like a technicolor dream (unless you’re into black & white recordings, and those work fine too).

Here we go again

Everyone in the room sighed and rolled their eyes skyward. “He’s written about this so many times. Too many times.”
I like Macs, but recently added a Windows-based netbook to my lineup of writing tools. Here is an update of the software I use all the time. I’ll be brief.

Mac

Windows

iOS

Everywhere

…and I mean everywhere.

  • 1Password for managing logins and passwords. Priceless.

This isn’t comprehensive, but it covers the bases. I could go on–go ahead, ask anyone–but I won’t. You’re welcome.

Bureaucracy is choking education

Bureaucracy is strangling public education as politicians continue to proclaim their concern for students while discussing numbers, not people.
Students are not numbers by default. Grownups turn them into numbers.

How many will be accepted? What is the attendance rate? How many graduated? How many met state guidelines? Who didn’t make the cut?

It’s easy to tally numbers such as test scores, enrollment, and the percentage of students of a certain ethnicity or income level. Measuring the level of content mastery for each individual student is not so simple. Students are young human beings and cannot be measured on a scale of 1 to 100. They can’t be stacked up like cordwood so journalists and politicians can compare one stack of kids to another.
Elementary and middle school students in Georgia are required to take the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT). Bureaucrats and newspaper editors accept this test score as the measure of student achievement, but it will never be an accurate measure because the test is designed for students to fail. If too many students in a control group answer a question correctly, that question is thrown out. How could it be a good question if everyone knows the answer?
Student achievement is built on shaky ground to begin with because the curricular guidelines that set the baseline for student education–typically set at the state level–shift about every five years. The changes are usually punctuated with the noble goal of increasing rigor. The changes come just about when teachers are comfortable enough with the old curriculum being replaced to help students learn at a profound level.
Elementary teachers and students are expected to wrestle with concepts of algebra recently reserved for high school. Students who may still struggle with spatial physical mathematical concepts are expected to master theoretical concepts like algebraic variables before they reach the sixth grade.
Most “real jobs” like the ones we want all of our college graduates to get have some sort of annual evaluation. Should an employee’s future depend on a single multiple-choice test or an objective review of your performance, achievement, and growth during the year? Forget about imaginary college grads. What about you? Are you ready to take that test? Be sure not to mark outside the bubble and please try not to make a mistake. If you correct an answer we must assume you’re cheating.You have 90 minutes to answer 100 questions.
Fail to meet the standard and you’re fired. Go!

Let teachers teach

State and federal legislators need to stop piling on new rules for teachers. Just as most folks shouldn’t tell their surgeon where to make the first cut, politicians shouldn’t presume they understand the business of education enough to continue cutting funding for public education. If they don’t step aside and let teachers teach, I fear our children are doomed.
For legislators to lead the U.S. back to the head of the class, they must have the courage to get out of the way, to empower school administrators with the authority to terminate bad teachers, and to reallocate resources to help good teachers do their job.

No Child Left Behind

A steady stream of analysis (and nonsense) has been written about the federal No Child Left Behind Act since the bill was introduced in Congress in 2001. Let’s just get this piece out of the way.

  • Pro — NCLB exposed some ugly realities about the disregard many educators had for some groups of students including minorities and students with special needs.
  • Con — The perverse rise of accountability despite evidence that measures adopted to measure performance are inadequate indicators of student success and miss the boat when it comes to gauging a student’s potential.

I would rather not get any deeper into NCLB without hip waders. Let me know if you want me to elaborate.

Here we go again

      <p>
        Everyone in the room sighed and rolled their eyes skyward. “He’s written about this so many times. Too many times.”
      </p>
      <p>
        I like Macs, but recently added a Windows-based netbook to my lineup of writing tools. Here is an update of the software I use all the time. I’ll be brief.
      </p>
      <h2 id="mac">
        <ul>
          <li>
            <a href="http://adium.im/">Adium X</a> for instant messaging
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html">Adobe InDesign</a> for page layout
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/mail-ical-address-book.html">Apple Mail</a> for work email
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://nothirst.com/moneywell/">MoneyWell</a> for personal finance
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://netnewswireapp.com/mac/">NetNewsWire</a> for managing & reading newsfeeds (but I’m looking into <a href="http://reederapp.com/">Reeder</a>)
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://brettterpstra.com/project/nvalt/">nvALT</a> for <em>entering</em> text
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/">OmniFocus</a> for project management
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html">Scrivener</a> for writing projects
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/">Sparrow</a> for home email
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://macromates.com/">Textmate</a> for <em>editing</em> text
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id409789998?mt=12">Twitter for Mac</a> for Twitter (duh)
          </li>
        </ul>
        <h2 id="windows">
          <ul>
            <li>
              <a href="http://www.resoph.com/">ResophNotes</a> for entering text
            </li>
            <li>
              <a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/">Scrivener</a> again
            </li>
            <li>
              <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/">Google Chrome</a>
            </li>
          </ul>
          <h2 id="ios">
            <ul>
              <li>
                Text Editor O’the Day (either <a href="http://www.secondgearsoftware.com/elements/">Elements</a>, <a href="http://nebulousapps.net/notes.html">Nebulous Notes</a>, <a href="http://notesy-app.com/">Notesy</a>, or <a href="http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/plaintext">PlainText</a>)
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://belugapods.com/">Beluga</a> for private family instant messaging
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://calvetica.com/">Calvetica</a> for my iPhone calendar
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://camerapl.us/">Camera+</a> for photos
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://www.dueapp.com/">Due</a> for quick timers and reminders
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://nothirst.com/moneywell/iphone/">MoneyWell</a> for iPhone
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://vemedio.com/products/instacast">Instacast</a> for managing and listening to podcasts
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://instagr.am/">Instagram</a> for social photography
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="instapaper.com/">Instapaper</a> for reading
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/ipod.html">iPod</a> for listening to music
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://reederapp.com/">Reeder</a> for reading newsfeeds
              </li>
              <li>
                <a href="http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/">Tweetbot</a> for Twitter on iPhone and the <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id333903271?at=11l78o">official Twitter client</a> for iPad
              </li>
            </ul>
            <h2 id="everywhere">
              <p>
                …and I mean <em>everywhere.</em>
              </p>
              <ul>
                <li>
                  <a href="http://agilebits.com/onepassword">1Password</a> for managing logins and passwords. Priceless.
                </li>
              </ul>
              <p>
                This isn’t comprehensive, but it covers the bases. I could go on–go ahead, ask anyone–but I won’t. You’re welcome.
              </p>

Everyone gets 24 hours

We all have plans, goals, things to do, and many of us whine the same shallow complaint.

“But… But… I just don’t have time.”

Let’s look at that clock again. All clocks dutifully report the same 24 hours of time in each day. It doesn’t matter if the timepiece is on your wrist, my iPhone, or hanging on someone’s wall.
Join me on a little guilt trip down Tick Tock Lane. I promise not to steal much of your time.

  • Albert Einstein had 24 hours in a day. He was a professor of physics at Princeton University who published more than 300 scientific papers, more than 150 non-scientific articles, and revolutionized physics when he discovered the theory of general relativity.
  • Inventor Thomas Edison had 24 hours in a day. Among the 1,093 patents he held were inventions including the light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera.
  • Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had 24 hours in a day. He wrote more than 600 known musical compositions for symphony, piano, opera, chamber music, and chorus before he died just before turning 36.
  • Author Stephen King has 24 hours in a day. He has written at least 49 books that have been purchased by more than 350 million fans. He continues to write every day.
  • Actor/director/producer Robert DeNiro has 24 hours in a day. He has acted in more than 60 films and helped to produce more than 30 films. He has been nominated for an Academy Award six times and won twice. He also established the Tribecca Film Festival, owns a hotel and a several restaurants.

These are just a few people from vastly different fields and eras who had the same amount of time as you and me. The list could be virtually endless.
Seriously, consider the schedule of the president of the United States. Think about all of the prolific actors/writers/composers you love. What if they stayed on the couch eating the last of the potato chips and whining about not having enough time instead of getting up and catching their dreams?
How do you use your 24 hours?

Managers vs Leaders

Lead from where you are

Fancy titles and expensive business cards don’t make you a leader and you don’t have to be anyone’s boss to be their leader. Everyone has the capacity for leadership and anyone can be a leader regardless of their role.
Constant use has muddled the meaning of the word leadership. True leaders are overlooked because they often are not the ones in charge even when they should be. Leaders are not glory hounds.
Leadership is similar to respect. Leadership isn’t bestowed on a person when they get a title, a nice parking spot, and a fancy nameplate on the door. Just because someone is the CEO, the superintendent, the chairman, the Grand Poobah, it doesn’t mean they know how to lead.

What is a leader?

Good managers are not necessarily leaders, though leaders are usually good managers. Author Seth Godin says managers want the same thing today as they got yesterday, only faster and cheaper. More widgets. Higher yield. Increasing the bottom line.
Some managers are little more than taskmasters who are good at cracking the whip and keeping the worker bees in line. Leaders provide support and resources to help people reach their goals. Where managers might ask, “What else can you do for me?” leaders ask, “What else can I do for you?”
Managers dole out task lists, fret over process and details, and micromanage every step of a job. Leaders understand everyone is different and appreciate the diverse talents each individual brings to a project. A leader asks you to set a goal and steps out of the way, then provides the support and resources you need to reach the goal in your own way.
To summarize, managers are rigid where leaders are flexible. Managers are by the book. Leaders understand it’s OK to bend the rules sometimes and even to break them if necessary.
Leaders have a different way of assessing their environment, their project, the task at hand. A leader seeks ways to help everyone on the team achieve at higher levels. Leaders look for new ways to reach beyond their goals.
Leaders don’t ask for permission, they ask for forgiveness. That doesn’t mean they are looking for creative ways to get into trouble, but that they constantly strive to overcome the status quo and find greatness in others as well as themselves.
If you dread it when The Boss visits, then you probably work for a bad manager (or worse); however, if your boss’s visits provoke honest discussion helping you find new ways of thinking–you feel better after they leave–then she is probably a leader.

Leaders don’t care about titles

It’s worth ending where we began. Fancy titles and expensive business cards don’t make you a leader and you don’t have to be anyone’s boss to be their leader. Everyone has the capacity for leadership and anyone can be a leader regardless of their role.

Finding Focus

This blog needs focus.
When I discovered the World Wide Web in the early 1990s (AppleLink! eWorld!), the virtual frontier was free for the taking and I claimed a chunk just because I could. I published a website where I could prattle on about whatever was on my mind by publishing a website just because I could. I moved on to to begin publishing a blog—oscillating between Blogger and WordPress—just because I could.
Just because you can do something doesn’t make it worth doing. I have taken the Internet for granted for too many years and squandered too many opportunities.
I’m not getting any younger. I’ve started to wear reading glasses to see more clearly and probably need to visit a good eye doc soon to help me keep my sight in focus. I also realize it’s time for me to give something valuable back to the Internet that has given me so much.
I enjoy a wide range of topics, but few really excite me. You may think they seem unrelated at first, but stick with me a minute and let me show you how they sync up.

  • Leadership
  • Productivity
  • Public education
  • Software and technology that helps me write and be productive (especially Mac software)
  • Writing, and writing about writing (metawriting)

I’ll refine my definitions of these different areas in a series of future posts.
This doesn’t mean I’m going to publish a bunch of tips or lists telling you how to be a more productive writer. If you see me trying to do that please whack me in the head. Everyone is different and there is no magic bullet. Let me repeat that.
There is no magic bullet.
The sooner you realize that, the sooner you will understand the direction I am taking this blog. I believe the title Carrying Stones still fits my vision for the site so I’m keeping it. I will also continue to maintain two sites that reflect different interests.

  • This site, Carrying Stones, will continue to publish my original writing and longer reflections about relevant topics.
  • Terrazzo (formerly Stuff I Read) will be my version of a linked list, a collection items that catch my attention online. Some of the links may be geeky, silly, and maybe even a little offensive, but in some way entertaining to me.
  • I’m also kicking around on Twitter as ELBeavers.

This blog is going to be a learning process for both of us—author and reader—because I so do not have this stuff figured out.
The content I read and podcasts I listen to cover a lot of ground. The list below isn’t comprehensive, but gives you a little insight about some of the people who influence my work (and who those close to me are forced to hear about:

One more person, Brett Terpstra (@ttscoff), isn’t as much of an influence as he is an inspiring totem of productive geekery. I stand in slack-jawed awe of this guy who accomplishes more in a couple of days than I ever do in a couple of months. He writes about his work and shares most of it at his website. He is the lead developer of Notational Velocity variant nvALT.