Dan Kingsley .com

This is just a short message really. Sorry I havn’t posted much recently, I have just got back to York after being at Spring Harvest for the last few days over Easter. I had such an amazing time, got challenged a lot, worshiped God, and come back with a ton of notes from all the talks and seminars which I will need to work my way through. So I will hopefully have another update at some point outlining some of the things I got from the week.

The following video was shown during one of the seminars, and I thought I would share it with you… enjoy!

Next year, I am doing an Internship with a charity called Christians Against Poverty (CAP). I am very excited about this. All interns are given a target of raising £2000 either before or during their internship, so I thought I would take this opportunity to ‘throw’ myself off a cliff and climb down it… abseil! I will be doing the abseil in Bristol on the 6th June!

I don’t really expect to raise all £2000 in one go – yet that would be amazing if I do, but getting about half of that would be great, so PLEASE sponsor me generously

CAP is an amazing charity (www.capuk.org) – “Christians Against Poverty is a national debt counselling charity working through a network of centres based in local churches. CAP offers hope and a solution to anyone in debt through its unique, in-depth service.” CAP aims to show God’s love in action by providing sustainable poverty relief through debt counselling, advice and practical help. Check out the website if you want to know more – but they really are great!

I’m not going to take any credit for this whatso ever. I just found the following article on a blog by a guy from America called Bob Hamp. He works for Gateway Church in Texas. His blog can be found at http://www.bobhamp.com/ which I really recommend you visit – even though he has only just started it recently. Below is the article:

Thinking Differently.  Thinking Different.  Thinking Differently

It seems like a small difference, but these phrases reflect much more than simply good or bad grammar.  The difference between the two is the difference between freedom and bondage.

An adjective (different) describes a person place or thing.  An adverb (differently) describes an action. To think different, implies a change in the content of our thoughts.  The action would be described this way.

“Don’t think this…think that”…“don’t wear this outfit…wear that one”

The implication is to change the content, information, or data in your mind.  A woman’s perogative, right?

To think differently implies a change in the way we think.  The action would be desribed this way.

“Open the eyes of my heart that I might see the power you have extended to me, in Your Son, Jesus”

Now, using the adverb instead of the adjective,  we are not trying to change the thoughts in our mind, rather, we are making an overall change in the way that thoughts get in, and what we do with them once they are in.  Hmmmm.

Certain kinds of thoughts can only enter in through certain ways of thinking. You cannot apprehend falling in love through objective reason and logical deduction.  You might be able to describe things that happen when you fall in love through those cognitive processes; but to actually experience it…well, cognition is simply not the channel upon which love is broadcast.  The irony is, that one who logically deducts the concepts of love may consider himself to know love.

Paul says that spiritual things are spiritually understood.  This means that the kinds of  things God is broadcasting may not be fully apprehended by observation, reason and deduction.  The irony is, that one who logically deducts things about God and theology may consider himself to know the things of God.

Jesus invites us to think differently when He says “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”  The word repent, literally means “to think differently…”.  Sadly we often hear this as Jesus admonishment to think different.  We hear this as if He wants us to change the content of our minds.  ”Stop stealing, start praying, stop cursing, start giving”.  Exchange the bad content for good content.  Change the Knowledge of Evil for the Knowledge of Good.   If we think different, the best we can hope for is that, once again, we can try harder.

If we think differently, it is as if we change the lenses over our eyes, and the filters over our ears.  If we see things differently, it is almost impossible to do things the same.  Hear Jesus words differently:

“Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand”…”Change the way you take in reality, because the realm of God, has come among men…”

Think differently. He is near.

I just thought I would post a quick update to let you know what is going on in my life regarding Uni work! I have just finished my last term of lectures, and am currently on my Easter ‘Holiday’. I say holiday… actually its just 5 weeks in which I need to revise for my 5 exams (which are all in the first week back after Easter, the week starting the 27th April) and also carry on working on my project (www.elec.dankingsley.com).

I am staying in York for most of the holiday since I seem to revise better in the library at uni, but I have a nice break over the Easter weekend since I am going to Spring Harvest (a Christian conference held every Easter for those of you who don’t know what it is).

So yep, its a very work based holiday

So, today, Google has launched its Google Maps Street View in 25 cities across the UK.

If you don’t even know what Street View is, watch the following YouTube video:

Use Street View to:
	View street level photographs
	Take virtual walks; pan, rotate and zoom through cities around the world
	Find shops, restaurants, parks, hotels and more

Google has launched Street View in the following 25 cities in the UK:

Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, Swansea, York.

It allows you to view 360 degree images of most of the city! Quite exciting really… great for having a look around somewhere before you go!

For example, the following is the street view at the University of York, have a look around!

For more information, check out the BBC article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7952317.stm

I have been working on the back end of my website for the last couple of days in the few spare minutes that I have had. I have added a couple of cool little features.

1. I have added my status update – imported from Facebook and Twitter. My status is normally the same in both of the these places (as explained in my previous post), and so I thought it made sense to have this imported alongside my blog for those of you who don’t have Facebook or use Twitter!

2. Music Currently Playing. I started using last.fm ages ago, but I have recently (last week) installed a couple of plug-ins to allow the music that I play in iTunes and Spotify to be added to my profile at last.fm. This creates a list of music I have recently listened to. I therefore also thought it made sense to have this displayed on my blog. I will automatically update every 2minutes. I had to do a bit of editing of the code for this last.fm plug-in to enable it to display exactly as I wanted on my site. For example I needed to add a small amount of code to check if last.fm knew the album, and if not, then not to display the it.

3. I also added a random photo generator to display six random photos from my collection.

So, since I mentioned this on twitter yesterday, I have had a couple of messages asking me how! I even had a phone call…

So I thought I would summarise it for you. I originally got this from a website called Internet Duck Tape which I found via a quick google search for ‘Facebook status to Twitter’. So how to do it!

Well, Facebook produces an RSS feed from your status updates, so first off you need to get this. Go to:

http://www.new.facebook.com/minifeed.php?filter=11

and scroll down on the right hand side. It will say “Subscribe to these stories” and then under that an RSS link to “my status”. That is the RSS feed you need. If you are using Firefox (which you should be) then right click on this and click “copy link location”.

OK that is step one completed. Now, go to:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/dankingsley/facebook_status

Here you can paste the RSS feed from which you have just copied. By using this, it will remove your name from your status since you won’t want this when adding to Twitter. Paste into the box where it says “Enter your Facebook RSS URL” and then click on “Run Pipe”. Next you need to get hold of this rss feed. Do this by right clicking on “Get as RSS” just below and again clicking “copy link location”.

Right, now for the final step. Go to http://www.twitterfeed.com and log in using an open id. I just used my google account. Once logged in click on “Create New Feed”. Follow the instructions, but basically enter your twitter username and password, then paste in the rss feed link you just copied from the pipes website, select how often you want it to update and if you want a prefix – eg I have added (Facebook Update) in front of mine so that people know it is my Facebook status. Then click create! Everything is now done!

So that probably looks quite complicated for what actually happens… but its really not. To summarise:

1. Go to Facebook.

2. Copy your RSS status feed.

3. Go to Pipes.

4. Paste in RSS feed.

5. Run the pipe.

6. Copy the new RSS feed.

7. Go to Twitterfeed and log in.

8. Click on “Create new feed”.

9. Fill in details.

10. Update your Facebook status!

Hi, so I decided that it was about time that I did a little bit of video editing… I took the opportunity to edit the video recorded from the drama at the Easter Event which the CU at uni put on. I didn’t want the video to be anything too fancy, plus I didn’t really have the time either.

I made sure the audio was as good as it could be – mainly cos that is what annoys me most! I managed to use the original tracks and synced up the audio from Mary’s monologue rather than using the recorded audio for the backing music – which I think sounds OK.

The video itself, we recorded 2 versions of. One of the main drama and then the second of just Mary. This is why I decided to add Mary in the corner. I think it works well and allows you to see both her and the drama. I then also added the words from the PowerPoint along the bottom etc. The video editing could be a lot better but in total I didn’t spend longer that 3/4 hours doing it so was quite pleased with what I managed.

So, you probably haven’t heard, but Facebook announced this morning that they are making some more changes to the homepage. They have spent a long time working on “Facebook Pages” – what companies or people use on Facebook to advertise etc, but I’m sure most of you aren’t that interested about that…

The thing you may be interested in, is the Facebook homepage. Below is a screen shot of what it is going to look like:

Facebook will be making these changes by the middle of next week I believe, so I just thought I’d give you some warning really.

To summarise what they are actually doing though:

1. I think the main feature, is that they are replacing the ‘news feed’ with the ‘live feed’. I believe this is a great feature, it is keeping Facebook up to date, instead of reading about things your friends did  yesterday you can read about what your friends have just done!

2. They are adding the section on the left to allow you to filter exactly what is shown in the feed. They currently already had these options along the top, but they just weren’t that obvious, now you can’t miss them! If you have added your friends to groups, then you will be able to filter it out so that you can only see a select group of friends – in theory very useful. But i bet that the average user won’t use half of these features!

3. The publisher isn’t really that big a deal at all, it is probably making things simpler since they already use ‘the publisher’ at the top of everyone’s profile.

So the updates aren’t anything major, but hopefully useful.

So if you haven’t already heard about this, you seriously need to look into it. Spotify has recently officially launched in the UK (about 2 weeks ago – 10th February 2009) so you no longer need to have an invite to use the free version. All you need to do is head over to https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/ create an account and download the software. It really is that simple.

OK so what actually is it. The video I have embedded above should give you a simple idea. But to summarise, it is a small program that you download, which then allows you to listen to near enough any music! Their library is huge, and growing on a daily basis by about 10,000 tracks per day. You can’t download the music, but you are able to create play-lists and just search for whatever you want to listen to. This is great if you’re just sitting at home and want to listen to some music.

Whats the catch…? Well, it works in a similar way to how a radio station would work, apart from you choose the music to listen to. They play advertisements which gives them some income – but they currently only play 15 seconds worth of ads every 30 minutes, which to be honest is no problem whatsoever – that’s like 30 seconds of ads to listen to a whole album!

If you really love the service, but don’t want the ads, they are offering a premium service for £9.99 a month which has no ads – but when you put it like that I don’t mind listening to a few ads to save myself £120 a year!

Seriously check out this service! Download, and enjoy.