Tech Tips for Catholics

Last year or so, I attended the Media & Faith Conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.  The conference featured several well known freelance authors and journalists, a television news anchor, independent video producers, podcasters, bloggers, and students and faculty from surrounding Christian colleges.

These are the only pictures that half turned out from this fun-filled event! I had boughten a cheep B&W throw-away-camera at a gas station on the way there, because I realized that I had forgotten our digital at home : (

I really enjoyed this conference and getting to meet so many new friends. It was also really cool hangin’ out with all the SQPN people!  There were many non-SQPN speakers that were also excellent. Sherry Kennedy Brownrigg and Michael Kreidler were of my favorites.  I also got to hang out with my cousin Ross, who is a graduate of Steubie U, and spent some time in Prayer & Adoration too!

Me & Fr. Roderick Vonhögen of SQPN.com

George Leite of the Catholic Rockers Podcast, Dr. Paul Camarata of The SaintCast, Myself of The Perseverance Podcast, and Fr. Bill Kessler of TechnoPriest.

Me with Jennifer & Greg Willits of the Rosary Army Podcast. If I would have known they were smiling so nicely, I wouldn’t have thrown two thumbs up (which were cropped out of the picture)! Hints why my smile is such a weird looking one : )

Some friends I met from Lancaster, PA!

I finally got around to posting some of the talks from this conference onto the world wide web.  Here is the opening talk by Fr. Roderick.  You can view this talk in its entirety here.

There used to be some of the other talks on uStream, however they have since been taken down, which is kind of sad. I did some searching on YouTube, but the only video that I was able to find was this video by Susan Bailey.

Here is the list of talks that were taken down from uStream: The closing talk with Rosary Army and the open-forum with a pannel from SQPN. “Web 2.0: Challenges and Opportunities” presented by Eugene Gan, David Schaefer, Ruth Lang, Wally Metts. “To Liturgy…and Beyond: Boldly Bringing Catholic Music to the People” presented by Susan Bailey and George Leite. Friday Evening Opening Talk by Fr. Roderick Verhogen.

If anyone has this footage posted somewhere else online, let me know!  I’d love to link to it.

This Saturday (June 27, 2009) is the second annual Catholic New Media Celebration! This year the celebration is being held in San Antonia, Texas.

In case you missed last night’s San Antonio radio interviews about the Catholic New Media Celebration Click Here.

So whether you are attending or not, here are some great sites to follow the festivities, speakers, musicians, and anything else going on at CNMC 2009:

SQPN.com will be the headquarters for streaming video, live tweets, and a place to virtually hang out during the celebration.

TweetGrid.com is a great way to follow multiple #hashtags during an event such as #cnmc09.  If you post any pictures with the according #hashtag via TwitPic, TweetPhoto, yFrog, or the such, a thumbnail of the image will appear within TweetGrid.  Pretty cool!

HashTags.org is a great way to see stats on a particular #hashtag.  Though it does not post all tweets relating to a particular #hashtag, it is a neat way to find other people who are tweeting about specific hash-tags.

Of course there is TweetDeck and other sites that may also be useful to follow live events — What are you using?  Let us know.

You gotta check out the great new series by Busted Halo! It is called “The Princess, The Priest and the War for the Perfect Wedding” and it features Dr. Christine Whelan, author of the Pure Sex, Pure Love column and Father Eric Andrews, a Paulist priest with more than 15 years of wedding experience.

They do such a good job of sharing the faith, and in a lighthearted way.

Some of the topics include:
Why Can’t We Get Married On The Beach?
“The Jerky Priest!”
What Does a Celibate Priest Know About Sex?
How Can We Keep Our Wedding Simple?
Why Can’t We Get Married To The Beatles?
& More!

From over-the-top registries to destination weddings, the American wedding industrial complex is a $161 billion consumer bonanza. But a wedding is more than just a party: It’s the beginning of a life-long marriage, an important sacrament in the Catholic Church. Brides want everything to be to their specifications — and priests bristle at being treated like hired help. Friends and family ask about color themes for the reception, and the priest plies pre-Cana compatibility quizzes. It’s a cultural war, and engaged couples are on the front lines.

What happens when the princess planning her “one perfect day” clashes with the priest who would rather preside over a dozen funerals than one wedding?

Find out in the new BustedHalo.com series, “The Princess, The Priest and the War for the Perfect Wedding.”

If you have a question for the Princes or the Priest, e-mail them and who knows, you might start the next battle.

On March 31st, 2009, Mevio plans to discontinue the sale & support of the recording software known as CastBlaster (which was created by Mike Versteeg, creator of other popular programs like VidBlaster, WinPodder, and Mscan Meteo).  But not to worry, Mike and his company, CombiTech, have been working on a new program called StudioRack.  StudioRack has recently been made available to the public as a free trial download.

If you are using a hardware mixer, StudioRack does everything CastBlaster does and more!

There are currently three editions:  StudioRack Trial (everything enabled but the Load Profile command), StudioRack Audio (does not include the AV Client), and StudioRack Pro (all features enabled).

Note: StudioRack is currently only compatible with Windows.

So PodCasters, give it a try and see what you think.  Post any comments here.  And since StudioRack is in the first stages of public beta, feel free to post any suggestions to the Think Tank on the StudioRack Forums.

Also, make sure you check out Mike’s podcast.

Below are some related links to this topic:

• Editing and Creating Shortcuts in Audacity
• Is your RSS feed valid?
• Shrink the Volume Control Panel in XP

Dr. Paul Camarata did an awesome job on this SQPN iPhone Commercial Spoof!  I saw this a while back, but forgot all about it!  If you don’t know Dr. Camarata, then you need to check out The SaintCast and then check out this picture of Dr. Paul and me.

Visit SQPN and Disciples with Microphones for all the great Catholic Christian podcasts you can get on your iPod or iPhone.

Like many things in life, sometimes less is more.

Step1: Open the Volume Control Panel.  You can do this a couple different ways: double-click the volume icon in the system tray, right-click the volume icon and click on “Open Volume Control,” or you can get there by going through the Control Panel > Sound and Audio Devices.

Step 2: Once the Volume Control Panel is open, simply hit “Ctrl+S”.

To switch it back just hit “Ctrl+S” again.

“Is there a way to subscribe to Podcasts that are not in the iTunes store?”  I just received a call from a good friend from our Church and he was asking if and how to do this.  I used to think that you had to use Juice (a.k.a. iPodder) or some other pod-catching software, if your favorite Podcasts were not listed in the iTunes store.  However, I later found out that there is a feature in iTunes that allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds*.

This feature has actually existed ever since iTunes added podcast support, but people rarely know about it.

Step 1: Open iTunes and go up to Advanced > Subscribe in the menu bar.

Step 2: When the podcast dialog box pops up simply copy and past the podcast feed url and click “Ok”.

* You can listen and subscribe to any Podcast feed inside iTunes as long as it is a valid RSS feed with media enclosures.

My dilemma: Okay, so it is 3am and I should be sleeping, but my iPod Shuffle (1st gen) decided to crash while I was at work today. I have just wasted about three hours searching Apple’s forums and troubleshooting pages, along with several other online forums. All I get is other people with the same problem and no real answers.

What crazy things is it doing? (Here are just some of the symptoms of my non-working iPod Shuffle)

1. Neither my computer nor my iTunes recognizes my iPod when it is plugged into any USB port.
2. When I turn it on all I get is a solid green light and nothing happens (won’t play, won’t skip forward/backward & won’t even let me check the battery life as long as it is on.
3. When I plug it back into the USB port it still charges perfectly fine.

So, what have I tried so far? Well, I tried installing a little tool called the HP Drive Key Boot Utility, but it doesn’t recognize my iPod, so this does me no good. Then I tried the iPod Reset Utility, but had the same problem of it not being able to recognize the iPod, so this does me no good. And then, even though I knew it wouldn’t work, I tried Apple’s Fabulous Five Rs advice (Reset, Retry, Restart, Reinstall & Restore).

And, where does this leave me? I could pay to have it serviced as Apple suggests on their website, however this would probably cost more than if I were to buy a brand new 2nd gen. I may just have to suffer not listening to my favorite Podcasts until I can afford a new listening device ― or until I can somehow fix this one.

If you happen to come across something that might fix this, I would greatly appreciate comments. But, if you are having the same problem don’t waste your time posting a comment to say that you are having the same problem.

Good Night : )

While I was on my journey back to the Catholic faith, after leaving it for a non-Denominational church, I stumbled upon a radio show called “Catholic Answers Live” (this was quite a few years ago).  I don’t think this was by accident.  God has a funny way of getting our attention ― sometimes in subtle ways, while other times like a brick over the head.

Catholic Answers has since grown, with their gigantic forums community, making back-issues of This Rock magazine available online, and podcasting the shows weekly.  But one of my favorite features is the ability to search the entire audio archive from 1998 to the present!  Search the archive by title, topic, description, guest, or show ID.  Very cool!

Disclaimer: Apologetics is not about winning arguments.  It is about knowing and respectfully sharing the truth with others.  I recommend a book called “How Not to Share Your Faith” by Mark Brumley.  When it comes to sharing the faith, we need to first be living it.  We must have a relationship with the Lord and a desire to do God’s will.  In the book, Mark explains that the most important qualities of an effective apologist include: prayer, study, dialogue, clarity, faith, hope, and charity. Buy the book here.

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FeedValidator.org is a great tool to see if your syndicated feed (RSS 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and Atom feeds) ia validated.

Simply enter the address of your feed and click Validate. If the validator finds any problems in your feed, it will give you messages for each type of problem and highlight where the problem first occurs in your feed. If you’re unsure what a message means, click the “help” link next to the message for a fuller explanation.

The important thing is that your Feed comes back as Valid.  There will most likely be listed recommendations, but the main thing is that it is valid.  It is up to you if you want to make the suggested improvements to your feed.  Probably a good idea, but not always necessary.

You can find out more information about Feed Validator on the About page of their website.