Here and Now

Obviously not mine :) We went to see The Hobbit  last night.  We caught it in 3D - 48 fps, for those who care about such things. It was stunning - I never care about 3D, but I highly recommend seeing it in this format. It was only $6.25 each for the matinee, no upcharge for 3D (Tinseltown in Erie) so we were pretty satisfied with that - same price as seeing it in 2D...  And, yeah, everything is super clear and bright and...well, don't you want that in a film? I know it doesn't LOOK like other movies.  Who cares? It's not other movies. It's something new. New technology. And it really works.* But that's not the point, here. I went in kind of skeptical not of the technology (which, obviously, I'm ready to embrace) but of the story. How do you take a 300ish page children's book and make it THREE movies? Really? But...well, Jackson did a great job. First of all, young Bilbo is Watson from BBC's Sherlock  - which I didn't pay attention to going

I don't care who really said this, this is true. And since it's not JUST a picture...it's worth some extra words... :)

Merry Christmas! Let Linus tell you what today is really all about:

Just found this and couldn't resist :)

From Morguefile So... this is what the future of publishing looks like. Well, one of many futures...: To Be or Not To Be A guy posts a kickstarter to try to raise $20k to publish his book on Hamlet* and raises (with 3 days to go) nearly $400k!  Are you kidding me? Really? That's awesome on so many levels. Oh, he has to deliver now. And the stretch goals are pretty cool, too (they better be, when you top your goal by- what is that - 1000% or something...). But there are a thousand other books sitting on kickstarter that won't get funded. Why this one? Who knows. In some ways, kickstarter can democratize the publishing business. Backers can decide AHEAD of publishing whether or not something will be, as this, a "bestseller" or a no go. And no warehouses full of books that didn't sell**. Authors and publishers and distributors know from the getgo how many, how much, and where to - well, with the initial run. I guess there could be subsequent printings. And

Nothing to see here at the moment, but yesterday's message is posted at  Let God Speak...Here And Now...

...yesterday :) I posted the weekend's sermon yesterday. I created the site a week or two ago, but got the first message posted yesterday. I cleaned it up in a more or less "as preached" version - with a couple links (video clip and scripture passages). Not sure what else I'll do with links - depends on how much (if any) time I have to devote to upkeep. Anyway, the link is on the side: Let God Speak...Here And Now (pretty original, huh?) Also, link  Here  it's just beattysermons.blogspot.com Should be easy enough for even me to remember... :) And, the audio for sermons at Otterbein church is located  Here Newest content is at the bottom of the page (not sure how to do that otherwise, I don't update the page). She's usually a couple days into the week before she gets the newest message audio on the page, please be patient.

We don't have the trees for it, and I wouldn't want to broach the subject with the board of trustees here at the church, but every once in a while my girls - for like no reason at all - say, "Daddy, can we have a treehouse?" "Um, no. We don't have the right trees for it." And that ends it, usually, but sometimes they say, "But if DID have the trees for it, could you build one?" "Well, I could. " I'm such a hedger... But, well, I could. I wouldn't want to...but, yeah, I probably have the requisite skills... Then the brains start working. "And it could have a deck. And lights. And two stories..." And off they go... And it becomes clear that what they have in mind for a treehouse is something like this: Just found online.... And, okay, I admit I couldn't do THAT. I mean, I could do SOME of that...but that's a HOUSE...on a tree. Not what I had in mind, of course. I remember treehouses when I was a