The Great Drought

Not only in Nairobi but on my blog it seems.

Ok, there's not really a drought in Nairobi, but it's been really HOT. Like 32 celsius hot... for weeks and there's not a lot of relief until sundown.

But this place has been seriously neglected and I am still sorry. Don't let this generate your opinions of me on such topics as parenting, pet ownership, stewardship or any other position of responsibility. I really am a responsible person... serious!

(This is where I would launch into a rant about how bad my internet has been for months but I just don't feel like complaining)

Instead, I'll give you a little snippet of what's happening right now.

VLOGS
I have about 4 to be edited.
Lately I've been working on quite a few projects at once and since I am not the type of person who prioritizes well, I've been plugging through all the urgent stuff more so than the important stuff. Still working on that. But know, there are vlogs coming. (One takes place at a Kenyan Wedding!)

PROJECTS
I am almost done a video project for By Grace Children's Home located in Ngong. (South west of Nairobi)
I filmed the whole thing in one day. I had some help from teachers at the school in wrangling in the actors but that day I took on the roles of director, sound engineer, director of photography, script writer and now editor. Let's just say that next time I will be asking for help. This project was a lot of fun to work on and I will be putting it on my youtube channel once it's done.

Baptism testimonial videos are one thing that I'm going to be taking initiative in creating at Nairobi Chapel this year and I will be filming my first one early next week. I have a meeting with the lady sharing her story and then it's film time. It should take a few sessions to edit but needs to be done by the end of next week. I'm excited about it but a little intimidated by the time frame because of other things going on.

Streeters! I've done streeters in the past with my good friend and former Youth Pastor. A streeter is basically taking a camera into the street and asking people questions. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to do this with Chapel and I spent two days with the help of a friend just getting outside and talking to people. I love these kinds of projects. It gives you the opportunity to pick the brains of people you wouldn't normally have the opportunity to talk to, people from all kinds of social and economical backgrounds. We took the better part of a week condensing an hour and a half of footage into 3 minutes, created some subtitles, found some music and stuck on the Chapel logos and voila! An impactful video that we are showing at church this Sunday. I would love to upload this one but we had to assure hesitant participants that this video would not be published.

In the future I might have the opportunity to work on a video for a new organization that rescues young prostitute girls (under 12 years old) from slums to be housed, fed, educated, counseled and mentored. It's really heavy stuff but I'm hoping that God opens the door for me to have the opportunity to share what is going on in the lives of these girls, and how He is able to take someone even as broken as these and make them whole.


MORE
There is more stuff outside of video projects that I'm in the middle of. One big thing is MOVING!!
More on that soon...

I should Not Be Surprised

But that still doesn't mean that this kind of thing is not frustrating.

My computer battery is about to die and I don't have long to post this.
So why don't I just charge it?
Well, because the cord or adapter or something is broken.
I've tried different outlets, I've tried jiggling it... nothing.
So once this battery dies my computer will be useless until I can find another cord.
And hopefully, not an expensive one.

So this means no laptop for a bit.
It also means no vlogs for a bit.
And no video work in general for a bit.

Frustrating?... yes.
Am I surprised?... no.

I am no stranger to hiccups in ministry. This stuff always happens cause there's always someone working against you. The good thing is that God is for me and with Him on my side, a little power cord isn't going to damage my purpose for being here. I don't need a computer to join God in His work.
well... eventually I will need it, but I'm alright for now.

Fun Stuff

Thinking of texting me?
Or not sure why I haven't replied to your email yet?

Go here (or click on 'Toys' above)

I've fixed the widgets in the toys page to reflect my current location.
You can now see time/date, weather, location and a currency converter there.

So don't expect me to respond to a text you send at 8pm... because it's 3am here and I'll probably be sleeping.
Oh and just so you know... the future is great!

39 Bluescreens of Death on the Wall, 39 Bluescreens of Death...

This is where I rant about my recent computer problems... enjoy.

Even though my machine is the butt of many over used jokes such as,
-"Is that a laptop or a desktop?"
-"I could charge my car with that power cord"
-"is that one computer or two?"
and the uncreative, "why is your laptop so big?"

I'm not phased.
I know my laptop is big.. I have eyes too.
But there is good reason. Place your laptop next to mine and the first thing you'll see is the size but it's only because it's a 17" monster with 2 cooling fans, an excellent sound system with built in subwoofer, 6 USB ports, hdmi, firewire and every other port you might need when you do the kind of work that I do.
It's a powerhouse and I love it.

so... yes it's big, but it's exactly what I was looking for.

Unfortunately even the most amazing laptops are not immune to the *clears throat* garbage operating system known as windows vista.
If you are a vista runner and think it's great and have never had problems... excellent.
I hope it continues that way for you.
As for me, apart from the irritating constant requests for administration confirmation on simple tasks like moving files around and downloading things, Vista wasn't giving me too many hassles for about a year.

Until, it started sabotaging me with faulty driver updates which lead to too many hours of backtracking and then the first blue screen. The first turned into 5 and then 5 turned into 39 and #39 was the straw that broke my Toshiba's back.

I'll refrain from telling you about my experience with the geek squad. I'll just say it was like babysitting, only I was paying the kids that I was watching.

Long story short, I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea.
I'm now back up and running, faster and smoother than ever.
My giant laptop is doing giant tasks with ease and apart from the occasional screen flicker (from not having a display driver that is fully compatible - apparently it doesn't exist yet) I'm pleased.

I edited my first video the day after my software was loaded and I've never edited with such ease before.
It's gonna be good.. it's gonna be really good.

I can't wait to start doing larger projects because now I can just work.. and not constantly have crashing to worry about.
I can't wait to get a camera dusty and start telling the amazing stories of people in Kenya.
I'm glad that all of this vista corruption happened now.
As inconvenient as it was, the timing was actually great.