Well, the last three months have been very busy in my life with everything from client work to my girlfriend and my anniversary (3 years). And some new technology has come into my life in the last week. I am in my Portfolio class this quarter, and as far as I can tell, should be graduating in December from the Illinois Institute of Art in Schaumburg. I have a big job opportunity on the horizon, and am loving freelance more than ever.

So on July 17th, Nicole and I celebrated our three year anniversary (of dating), and went to Lake Geneva the following weekend for a day at the beach, away from life, responsibilities, and all stress. It was really nice, and we had a ball. I want to go back as soon as possible, because the hometown atmosphere reminded me of home.

Of course, we have been working heavily on programming, including the Christian Life Church website, among other things. My coding has been pretty non-stop for the last three or four weeks, on all things from my portfolio to random, nonsensical applications and expressions of genius. Fun stuff, all in all.

And technology-wise, I refreshed my mobile line this week. I got a new phone on Tuesday (enV2 from LG), which is a nice little phone with a full QWERTY keyboard for text messaging, and today I purchased a new laptop and iPod touch (32 gb). The new laptop is the long awaited (for me, anyway) MacBook Air. I am actually typing on it right now. It is really a nice little portable computer, and is unbelievably lightweight. I bought the 64gb SSD (flash memory) version, and lemme just say that it is weird hearing nothing move inside this li’l machine. lol

I want to try and blog more, so we’ll see. Oh, if you haven’t see Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, go to Hulu and watch it! lol Later!

Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.” Matthew 24:4-7

The death toll is now estimated at 12,000, and is likely to rise, from the earthquake that struck China. This on top of the cyclone that hit Burma/Myanmar and killed between 100,000 and 200,000. That is between 1 and 2 out of every 60,000 people in the world that died within the last week due to these two natural disasters. You can see the statistics from the last four years in my post yesterday. These events are getting closer together and more violent each time. What kind of hurricane season do we have ahead of ourselves this year? How many big earthquakes are going to hit this year?

Have mentioned how extremely busy I have been lately? Yeah, crazy! lol I have been killing tons of code for Joe Martin for the last few weeks, which has been great fun and great work, but it has been trying to keep me from blogging as much as I want to, among other things.

Have you noticed how much I have been blogging as of late? Yeah? I have been making a point of doing so every couple of days or so, and once I have a few more tumble types set up for my tumblelog, a lot more content will be flowing through here, including: quotes, verses, music/movie reviews, random philosophical snippets, and more. But is more content what makes a site? I am a follower of Daring Fireball , thanks to a teacher of mine, Jeremy Schulz . Daring Fireball, if you are unfamiliar, is primarily a link blog/feed, with the interjected thoughts of John Gruber with each link. John is an avid Apple fan, and tech/web junkie, and thus I am in the target audience of a lot of the posts. John posts multiple times a day, and every week-ish, he has a full article that is his own thoughts on whatever. Is this a good site? Yes, but it is not original content.

From the Gates of Hell has always been original content oriented, with the occasional link or quote. Does all this tumblelog stuff signal a shift in direction? At this point: simply, hell no! It means more frequent, smaller posts between the longer, more eloquent articles. That is why I wish to have reviews and other things as part of this new tumblelog. I read a lot of books, listen to a lot of music, and watch a lot of movies. This leads to me having a lot to say, and now I have an environment perfect for that. I’ll be around, y’all! Love you!

Okay, so some of the bigger typographical changes are starting to be instituted throughout the site now. All body copy has been switched over to Helvetica Neue, from Trebuchet, though all headlines are remaining Georgia. Also, I have mostly switched the article output to the new style, but a few more things will be changed soon. A few more bigger changes are coming within the next week, so expect those soon, and you will be seeing more of me around here soon. Later, y’all!

Well, a year older, and back to work. I have been doing tons of freelance client work within the last few weeks, and have thus been very busy. For the weekend, I went back home to spend time with my family for my birthday. It was a great time, and I got to really spend time with Jason’s new girlfriend. Fun weekend.

I love seeing the comments coming through on this site. This is why I need to post more regularly, and keep the ideological posts coming. I notice that people like to comment and argue against my views, and I encourage it. I like a good argument. But, let me give y’all a work of advise. I respond to those that want to debate and argue, but if people start insulting me, I will not get into it. The reason is simple: I like intellectual arguments, and insults are not intellectual. Furthermore, I cannot expect for an argument/debate to go anywhere if a person stoops to insults. So for those wanting to debate me, let’s go, but keep the insults out of the debate. You can just go and insult me on Facebook or on your own blog.

“22 years old? Wow, where has the time gone? Serious, I lost the time. Anyone have a watch?”

Yeah, that’s what I posted on my Facebook status today. Does anyone read my Facebook statuses? They can be rather entertaining, if I do say so myself. The other day I posted a lot of penguin related stuff. Anyone?

Silly people. lol Gosh, it’s my birthday, everyone! It’s a non-important, in-between birthday, though. Last you was my 21st, which meant that if I wasn’t a Christian, I could have gone out and forgotten it was my birthday by drinking everyone under the table. But I didn’t do that. Three years before that was my 18th, which meant that I could officially by cigarettes for myself and my friends, but I don’t smoke, never will, and will never support other people doing so. And two years before that I could get my license, but I didn’t get that until I out of high school.

However, 22 is a nothing birthday. It is just another tick-mark on my walking stick with some odd stories about penguins destroying the world in between. I mean, I do have a twin, so it is two’s 22’s, but that would only be really cool if it was our golden birthday, but we were born on the 25th, so it isn’t cool. My next important birthday is in three years, which is my quarter of a century mark, and my golden birthday. Until then, I choose not to age. Yup. No more b-days. :P

Okay, all! Last night showed me that I need to make a few changes around this site, and start using some more of the power stuff in Ministry(Starter). One thing you will now notice on the Blog/Theology and Home pages is shorter entry lengths. This was very easy to implement, and now three articles are displayed on the Home page, and twenty on the Blog/Theology pages.

I will be implementing some other things which will be relatively easy, and a few things that will be larger. A new layout is coming, but it will be version 4.5, not 5. I am simply updating the currently layout to more flexibly support what I want to accomplish with this blog. More will be coming over the following days and weeks.

Update

(Finally) [S]tyled the comment forms, and made some visual changes for the comments.

What is going on in America is becoming more and more clear to me, and I am feeling it quite heavily at my school. What is it that I speak of, you ask? The removal of Christ from our schools, government, and everything else. But, Jay, doesn’t the Bill of Rights declare separation of church and state? Isn’t the Constitution written to make sure that no religion is endorsed? No and yes. Follow me, and realize what I have realized. Stop now if you don’t want to find some major facts out about our nation and it’s faith-based foundation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

We all know this line. But what does it mean? Self-evident means that the truth coming after is absolute, and validates itself. It is not in question. Pretty big statement for men to make.

“[T]hat all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (emphasis added)

Did you catch that? It was pretty big. This is, of course, from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Did the Declaration make these rights and freedoms for the men under it? No, it simply insures that these “certain unalienable Rights” that are “endowed by [our] Creator” are preserved under this new government.

There is a quote on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial that reads, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” This is actually paraphrased from the original quote, which reads:

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?” (Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII , 1794)

We are getting dangerously close to that question in today’s America. People think that they have the freedom from religion (I’ve heard it time and time again, including in a few comments here), and that this is their right under the constitution of this nation. Is that true? I’ve heard it cited time and time again that the First Amendment declares separation of church and state. Does it? Let’s look:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[...]”

This means that the government cannot establishing religion (the “Establishment Clause”) or prohibit free exercise (the “Free Exercise Clause”). Where does it say separation? It doesn’t, but it implies a separation of state and church. The difference is that the state cannot influence the church, prohibit the freedoms of the church, etc. Now I am not saying that the church can, therefore, influence the state, however, the state was founded under God.

The men that created the government, and these documents, founded our very nation under the God of the Bible, and under that ensured that each person under the government had the freedoms that God gave us. Now if that meant that Muslims would practice their faith here in America, fine. The founding fathers had no quarrel with that, so long as Christians had equal freedom.

What is happening today? The idea of a “moment of silence” has been basically banished from our school system and our businesses because of it’s religious nature, some states have tried to remove the name of God from the Pledge of Allegiance, people are hardly allowed to pray in schools today (especially the teachers), and these rights that were for everyone are starting to be removed from some. You see, we (people of faith) are not allowed to have a “moment of silence”, yet the homosexual community is allowed to have a whole “Day of Silence” in the name of their humanistic “religion”, and we cannot contest that. Evolution is allowed to be taught as absolute fact in the schools today, but Creation science and Intelligent Design (which I do not back) is not allowed to be mentioned in the curriculum. We are being told to shut up, and allow a state endorsed religion of humanism and atheism to be told.

When Jefferson pondered the security of our liberties when the Authority of God is removed, I believe he was right. Without the firm foundation of the Authority and Absolute Truth of the Most High, we are left in a relative pit of something other than truth and morality. Today, in a nation “under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all ,” Christianity is quickly becoming outlawed with the same laws that were put into place to protect us and the people using it against us. I will not be silent, will you?

When I thought that life was getting crazy, more freelance has come my way. Believe me, I am certainly not complaining, because more freelance means more money, but it does mean that my blogging has suffered due to my workload.

So what is coming from James Finley and 3onesix? Well, I am working on a brand new version of the popular iPhone Bible application from 3onesix. This new version is finally bringing Notes, and features a really great highlighting setup. No launch time has been determined as of yet.

Also, my personal freelance portfolio site is finally moving in the right direction and has a name (which anyone that knows me knows how important names are to me). The name is one Crimson Splash . A pre-launch site is being made to hold the eyes of people until I get the whole site done. This will be my first site that will be made completely in Flash, or at least the first that the world will see (quite a few have been made for classes.)

As for Ministry(Starter)? It is almost here. We have been making fixes to any bug we can find, adding small (but powerful) new functionality here and there, and getting all the core functionality done for the entire application. Needless to say, we are extremely busy with it.

I will try to get around here more to post updates, and certainly to announce anything big with my new Bible app, portfolio, and M(S). Have a nice day everyone!

So I have surprisingly got into interface design over the course of the last year. Sure, I was designing interfaces for small CMS stuff, and for websites before that, but I have found that I have a knack for designing web application interfaces. This is of course thanks to the Ministry(Starter) project that I am heading all the design for. I cannot wait to show off more of the interface and tools over the next couple months and discuss all the stuff that went into it all. There are so many little UI widgets, subtle graphical accents, and CSS tweaks that make for a great user experience! Up until the end of last year, only Tom and I have been able to actually use it, and even then it was just for testing and not actual websites. Now we have three or four sites running it, and are running it for our own websites (including this one). As a blogger, it is everything that I want and need. I will be hopefully posting more extensive interface design articles soon here and on 3onesix.com.