Karis is here!

Little Karis MaKayla Kopp has arrived!

Here are her stats you all wanna know...

Born: 7:22am - 11/27/07
Weighs in: 5lbs. 14 oz.
Stretched Out: 20"

Hair: Dark.
Eyes: Yes.
Hands: Yes.
Feet: Yes.
Legs: Yes.
Fingers: 10.
Toes: 10.
Ears: Work.
Voice: Check.

Mom is great. Baby is gorgeous. All is well! Beth did a great job, and she is doing great.

Here are a few pics we put up in a flash!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13847&l=7d4a5&id=512988036

I'll update this story later with more details and such...maybe even a video or two of the beauty queen. :)

Video Update:

red hill

A friend of mine recently started as the Pastor of a church in North Carolina. He wanted a classic look for a logo redesign that displayed what his church was about at a quick glance. The red hill was initially referring to the clay that is prevalent in the area, but we know better. At Red Hill Baptist, it is Calvary.

Here is what I sent him.

I'm not sure which direction they are headed on the design yet. Any thoughts from you?

braintrust

I finished off a logo design for a friend a few weeks ago, and I wanted to let you in on the process. Here tis.

This is how it all began...

And then there were four...

And, we ended up with one.

fb

so true.

Cartoon by Dave Walker.

little news

The secret is out.

I am going to be a Dad! A little Kopp is in the cooker. Bambino should be ready to come out in December.

Awesome stuff. Really awesome stuff.

For the Gospel Resources

Been helping out a friend on some new logos for For the Gospel Ministries...

any thoughts?

Christmas Present

Top Ten Signs You May Not Be Reading Your Bible Enough

10. The preacher announces the sermon is from Galatians and you check the table of contents.
9. You think Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob may have had a few hit songs during the '60s.
8. You open to the gospel of Luke and a World War II savings bond falls out.
7. Your favorite Old Testament patriarch is Hercules.
6. A small family of woodchucks has taken up residence in the Psalms.
5. You become frustrated because Charlton Heston isn't listed in either the concordance or the table of contents!
4. Catching the kids reading the Song of Solomon, you demand, 'Who gave you that stuff?!'
3. You think the Minor Prophets worked in the quarries.
2. You keep falling for it every time when your pastor tells you to turn to First Condominiums (and Second Hesitations).
1. The kids keep asking you too many questions about your usual bedtime story called, Jonah the Shepherd-Boy and His Ark of Many Colors.

HT: WOTM Radio

Which makes me really excited about one of my Christmas presents that I have to wait till Saturday to open...

ESV Journaling Bible

(Original, Black)

funny spoof of it...ESV "To Do" Bible

happy christmas

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
MARK 10:45

armor of god man

I'm preaching through a series on spiritual warfare on Wednesday nights in our CrossTraining Meetings. Here's a little mashup I made for a handout. Obviously, we are working through the armor of God.

Wikipedia is a pastor's good friend.

Warmth

The wood burning stove will be put to good use this year...and I can't wait. One load down...lots more to go.

Vacation

I-40 Leaves on fire.

We're not really sure how this happened.

Beth is actually touching this fish.

Sky on fire at Sullivan's Island.

The spot where we got engaged.

Hype be gone.

The Portland Studios T-Shirt Store is up and running.

I have been quoted in saying of this store, "If you build it, I will come."

Go there now. Buy a shirt.

what this blog is about

...at least that's what snapshirts tells me.

Old Design - Circa VBS.05

Welcome to the next post in the Old Design Series. My assignment for this project was to make the building look like a jungle. As Jungle as possible. Fun stuff. Very fun stuff, actually. To see a couple of panoramas of the stage and lobby, click here. Today, we take a look back at what happens when you try to mimic something without proper starting materials, and everything goes horribly wrong from there.

Okay. I admit, the illustrations shouldn't have been given a second look, but it matched with the rest of our stuff. Come on, it came on the VBS CD. . . so, yup, I used it.

Basically, here is the skinny. I saw a coloring/texturing technique that I really liked. The Thompson Brothers have done it on a couple of their recent pieces, and I thought, "Hey, we can spend hours painting huge murals, or I can color this guy and print it out on a bunch 11x17s. Then just cut and tape. No problem. Here is the style that I was going for. Now, here are the illustrations (Photo Group & Canoe Trip) I had to work with. Nice, huh. Things aren't starting out well.

I grabbed textures from the best free texture source on the net--Mayang's Textures. And went to work. I popped all my textures and my illustrations into Photoshop and started to color. I listed the process for any designers who would like to know...at the end of the article.

Here is the result. There is nothing like stretching what you've got to make it work to save time and money. Hah.

The Canoe Trip
Using to the best advantage some big leaves, patterned cloth, rock textures, and watery bubbles, this piece somehow ended up with a psychedelically billed toucan sitting in a tree above a neon orange animal. Notice how I grabbed the color from the tiger like animal to color our friend, Mr. Goldfish.

The Photo Group
Borrowing from the file name that the creators left me on the CD of artwork, I dub this piece, The Photo Group. Aptly named, because as you can see two characters getting their picture taken by a woman in some sort of a robe coverall suit. Unbeknownst to all the humans in the picture, that is a dangerous cheetah and poisonous viper. Nothing like teaching our kids to be careful around deadly animals in the Jungle by patting wild felines on the head and smiling. Further, I don't believe that the smock-wearing-picture-taking lady is aware of the monkey's plan to knock her in the cabosh with that coconut of justice. You never know what will happen in the jungle, folks.

Don't miss the photo of this poster in action, completing our jungle lobby. So cool.

The Process
1. Found the textures that would work with my image. I looked at what needed textures, and I started hunting for stuff that would work.

2. Dragged the textures onto my open illustrations in photoshop. Thus creating separate layers for each different texture.

3. I put the illustration layer on top with multiply turned on.

4. I popped a brown paper bag texture across the whole back.

5. After I had the textures in general position, I started chopping. I did this by selecting with a magic wand the area in the illustration layer that I wanted to isolate, then selecting the inverse, and hitting delete. To get the colors the way I wanted, I would select that isolated area again, create a new layer and fill with a color.

6. I kept isolating with the magic wand, deleting and coloring till I got the finished product.

7. Every once in a while, one of the areas ran into another. I grabbed my paintbrush tool, and zoomed in. I hunted for the gap that was causing the problem and closed it up with the paintbrush. Then I selected what I wanted and continued isolating, deleting and coloring.

8. Fine.

What Would Steve Jobs Do?

engadget recently asked, What would Steve Jobs Do. Here are the results...

FIRST PLACE - Adam K's Apple Tablet

RUNNER UP - omni96's iPod shuffle video

HONORABLE MENTION - Shane P's faux Engadget steveynote coverage (which probably has fewer typos than ours will).

MacBooks and iBooks
William W's MacBook

Andrew's MacBook

Jonas's MacBook

Federico F's MacBaby

Tablets
Austin's iPad

Stuart's iPad

Wayne's MacBook Tablet

Stuart C's MacBook Tablet

soundboy64's MacBook DSP

Garret G's Touchscreen iBook

Shawn B's PowerBook touch

Sam D iTablet

iPods
yazdgerd's iPod hi-fi, Mac mini dock, and iPod video

Joe B iPod yocto

Grant K's iPod DS

Wizard's take on the shuffle

Aaron's iWedge

iPhones
Matt's iPod talk

Nick C's iPhone

Mac minis
Maxwell A's Mac mini HD

Andrew T's macTendo

Jason's iGame

Peripherals
Andrew M's Ultran Mouse

Andrew F HiFi

Hochi's iWrist

Dan A's PodStudio


John P's BoxedLunch Pro

Gabriel gamXploiter

CK's iCube shuffle

Donald's iMac nano

Wes's OiPPC

Jason A's Mac & Cheese

Stevyn L's MacBook nano

Tim R's iRobot

Original Article

Old Design - Circa Summer 2003

Recently, I ran across some old archives with some interesting stuff from my not so distant. Some stuff goes back to high school, but most is college goof-offings. This post will be the first in a running series of my old design stuff.

Funny, yes. Most of this I actually showed to people. Wow.

All of this design was done in the summer of 2003. I had access to a pretty decent G4 with photoshop, illustrator, indesign and an infamous collection of fonts. Almost all was done for Northland Camp where I worked on Program Staff for the summer of 2003. They called me Trailblazer back then.

Enjoy.

The Pioneer Village T-Shirt
that never got printed.

The Teen Camp Team Shirts.
Go Blue? I really like the powerpuff girls font on the “trailblazers” shirt. Nothing says go like a techno font and a vector mountain.

The Sports Camp Team Shirts.
Yes that is a turtle with a rocket strapped to his back. I know it’s hard to see due to the eye-straining yellow. Forgive me...by the way, they chose the one with the beakers. So bland. Hah.

The Northland Camp Disc Golf Logo.
This was emblazoned on all the camps disc golf discs. ?? Anyhow, there was a PDGA course that snaked through campus. Imagine that bad boy spinning toward your waiting forehead. The wobbly little half moons on either side of the disc are a little unnerving. The disc seems to be emitting mental energy of some sort. And yes, the font is from Mickey Mouse.

Trader’s Trap
I can’t really remember what this was about, but I think it had something to do with numbers and a trap? Hmm... Do you like the nice text warp ripple effect? I thought it matched the hat nicely. Hat courtesy of the Las Vegas Font Collection from House Industries.

The Western Pacific Express Team Shirt.
Been to the Wilds and never seen this shirt, you say? Yes. That’s because nothing was ever done with it. Another designer left in the mud. I don’t know if I would have bought it anyway though.

...and last but, not least.

The Program Staff Survival Guide Cover.
Amazingly enough, these guys did absolutely nothing with safety or survival. Isn’t it great to manipulate with design? I’m pretty sure I was going through a dirty grimy design stage at the time.

on free trials

I was all excited last night, because for the game for our CrossTraining meeting this week, we were going to play Family Feud. I had it all planned out. I found a great party version on the internet. Players buzz in using the two shift keys and someone types in the answer. It has a spelling fixer like google, and great graphics. It is really easy to use and pretty exciting for a big group. I tried it out, tested it from every angle on my computer in my office, like a good ole youth pastor. (Don't wanna be caught looking like an idiot in front of my teens, I thought.) Excited. My setup was this...I grabbed our laptop downloaded it onto that, and hooked it up to a PC-to-TV converter which displayed the picture on a 27" screen. I attached an extra keyboard and mouse, so the teens wouldn't destroy our new laptop, and we were ready to go. Family Feud. Yehaw.

The teens started getting there. I thought to myself, "Family Feud. Cool."

We started the game off girls vs. guys. The first round went great. "Name countries that begin with the letter B. "Bosnia, Britain, Bolivia, Bahamas - X" everybody was really getting into it.

The guys won the first round, but that doesn't really matter. What happened next was appalling.

About 5 minutes into the second round, the girls are answering thier question. They give an answer, Beth starts typing, and the screen goes black. Bwoo-fizzle. Then up pops on the screen this message, "Your Free Trial has Expired."

A groan falls from the startled crowd, followed by laughter. Great, just great. Amazing. Come to find out, the free trial lasts only about 20 minutes, which is nowhere written or publicized by the company I downloaded it from. I'm thinking, I've used free trials before...30 day trial, 15 day trial, 2 day trial. Nope 20 minutes, if that. Nice.

With some quick thinking in front of a crowd of people (which is always a fun thing, you gotta try it) and a lot of help from my wife and youth staff, we popped out an extreme version of Pictionate. Everybody loved it, and now they have something to look forward in a couple of weeks, the FULL purchased version of Family Feud.

Moral of story: My mistake was this: I just didn't goof off long enough testing the game. Play the game long enough for the free trial to expire, so that you can learn that you need to buy it in order to play it for any reasonable amount of time.

How to Use Keynote to Make a DVD

As a summary, here are the basics. I made a DVD from a Keynote file mixed over an audio track which I added to other movie menus made in Keynote to make a coalescing DVD. Basically, I'll be telling you how to make DVD movies from Keynote.

Here is the finished product.

What you need
Here is my setup. I have a dual-processor 1.4Ghz G4 with 512mb RAM (I need more. hah.) The software I use is Keynote 2, Soundtrack, Audacity, and Photoshop.

Step 1: Record Audio and Mix with Music
This was easy. I wrote a script. Recorded my Senior Pastor reading it, then clipped it together with some warm music. I did this in Soundtrack with a voice track and a music track. Save this file with the seperate tracks. You will use it later. More on Soundtrack in a bit. While you are patching this, get pretty familiar with the tempo and movement of the voice-over. It really helps if you can feel how the words are said as you edit the video portion. Get that finalized, then head on over to Keynote.

Step 2: Use Keynote to make a DVD
I made the video part completely in Keynote. Leave it to Apple to create a powerpoint beater that you can make DVDs out of...out of the box. Amazing. I set my slide size as 640x480. (Best for iDVD.) For my music track, I popped in my finished audio voice over file I just compiled. That is sortof a reference point for now. After the export, it will have to be tweaked. I then created the movie with a rough placement of the timings to the audio file. Using all automatic slide transitions and automatic time-delayed, etc motions, I put together various slides and effects. This takes the majority of the time. You have to keep playing with it to get the feel of the movie that you like. The audio only starts at the beginning no matter what slide you are on...there is no "timeline" per se; so that creates a little difficulty. It is simply solved by always playing from your first slide. Or by figuring out where the slide changes occur with what time in your audio. When I had it all worked out nicely, I exported the movie out of Keynote as a quicktime Self-playing movie with 0 second slide lengths and 0 second transitions...this leaves the setting you had in all your slides the same.

Step 3: Sync up the Sound
After I had the Audio and the Video Tracks finalized, I took them both over to Soundtrack. Soundtrack is great. If you are going to be doing any semi-serious work at all, you ought to just go buy Final Cut Express. Soundtrack comes with it. Soundtrack basically allows you to work with a video file and an audio track to sync them up. Everytime Keynote exports my videos it speeds and slows down certain sections. So, there is always some tweaking that has to be done. It is simply easier to tweak the audio. So, I added some pauses in the speaking here and there to make it sync up. With a couple of split tracks here and there on my audio, I got it matched up pretty well. I then saved both tracks as a quicktime, and the major part was done.

Step 4: Make DVD menus
All I have for DVD work is iDVD, so my options were limited with stock menus. But. iDVD just lets you use any quicktime movie as your background, if you so choose. So, I headed back over to Keynote...using a 640x480 slide size, animated a couple of logos for a loopable movie, and exported them to quicktime using the same settings as before. I popped those into iDVD as my background movies, and voila...custom backgrounds.

Step 5: Put it all together and burn
Thats it. Compile your DVD from your source files. Add the DVD menus, add the background music, and burn. All in all, start to finish, this DVD took me in the neighborhood of 18-20 hours to complete. Not too bad. My main goal was that people could use them as a tool to get others excited about our church. I pray the Lord blesses our efforts.

Promo Video + Campaign

Next week is our annual Friend's Day Service for the community. Here is the ad campaign we came up with to promote it.

+

a DVD that included sermon excerpts from our speaker, an about our church video, and contact information/directions. Pretty exciting stuff.

Take a minute to view the video if you have a chance...then click here to see how I made it. Enjoy.

Edit Alert: I decided to make a seperate post with my instructions. Click Here to go there.

New Website Launched

Finally.

I got the guts enough to dive into some CMS on my church's website. Wow. Yehaw. But I must say, my work was very slim in comparison to what my friend Eric did to get the backend set up. The calendar works great, the content is very dynamic, and its all setup for people in the church to work with. Nice.

Without further ado. . . .

http://www.orbc4u.org

Check it out. While you are there, take a minute to watch the little informative movie we made to introduce people to our ministry.

The content is managed by Joomla. It is an open source system that runs pretty well once you get the hang of it. I've enjoyed experimenting with the organization and setup of it. To try it out, go here.

Any comments, likes, dislikes? Content is being added as we go, so it will get fuller and fuller as we grow into the new system.

Its about time

I just clocked myself an all time not-blogged-for-a-long-time record. Ouch. I am not missing, or otherwise gone. I'm here quietly wishing for enough time to post something of excitement.

To micah: I apologize for my blog absence. But I say to you, act fast or you will be breaking my record. Seems to me your last post was hmmm...December 24th. Touche, my boy, touche.

Anywho.

Here's what you can look forward to in the next couple of days...

...book reviews, lots of em.
(Humility - Mahaney, The Grace and Truth Paradox - Alcorn, God is the Gospel - Piper, Brothers We are Not Professionals - Piper, The Discipline of Grace - Bridges, Reaching out to Unchurched Students - McKey, and more)

...A new promo video DVD for Oak Ridge Baptist Church
We just sent to the duplicator a new promo DVD for the church. I went for fresh, but warm and inviting. I'll post in later this week.

...CD reviews (I'm branching out a bit with some new content)
Got a new free CD to review and some others that I enjoy.

...Ad campaign for a Friend's Day coming up at our church

...a couple of thoughts God has been working me over on recently

...early designs that failed (we are talking early stuff here)
A delve into my early design years. I combed my computer a little while ago and found some strange things. What was I thinking?

my cute wife.

brannon-drawn

brannon mcallister drew this portrait of me.

wow. Thanks, brannon.

Pie & Thanks Design

Our church hosts an Annual Neighborhood Thanksgiving Pie and Praise Fellowship the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving Day. I designed up a little campaign for it. The flyers will be 4-per 8.5"x11" and they will be cut diagonally. Hopefully, it will get more of a look than a normal church flyer.

We are excited about the oppurtunity to share the season with those in the neighborhoods around our church building.

If you would like to print some off for yourself. Here is the PDF file.

I work in IE, again.

Internet Explorer viewers--Oh, the sufferance you've born on my account. As I read an article on the woes of designing for IE, I thought to myself, "Hmm, I wonder what my site looks like in that thang." So, I checked. Bad idea. Ruined my day, in fact. Much to my aghastment, I found a despicable looking sight of sites. Columns out of whack, sidebar clinging to the bottom of the body copy and links off in an unapproachable area to the left. "Blag," I said.

The problem is relatively fixed. Well, at least it's not as bad as it was before.

Sorry, 70% of my viewers. You never told me. This whole time, you've probably been stewing. And I had no idea.

By the way, the site looks like I want it to in Firefox.

;) Halloween

Feed Me.

If you are interested . . . I've worked up two quick news feeds for this site. You can subscribe either to the main blog or just to the linked up along the way section.

[ linked up ]

[ main blog ]

I'll be posting much more frequently a running commentary on the links I run across on the web in the LINKED UP bar, but I'll write often enough on the main blog as well.

Feel free to syndicate if you'd like--In Firefox you can simply right-click on the link of your choice and choose add live bookmark. You can also use your normal news reader. Or, my favorite, set up a google account and use http://www.google.com/ig as your home page. You can add the link as a little custom live content box. That's what I've got going on on my machines. It works wonderfully.

1.5 Weeks

Last 1.5 weeks:

. . . renovated our Crosstraining Teen Room

. . . celebrated 25 years of Oak Ridge Baptist Church history

. . . shot, directed, edited and presented a 20 minute documentary on that history.

. . . went to Farm Fest

. . . took a Systematic Theology Test

. . . slept little

New Website Launched

Here's where I've been recently.

http://teens.orbc4u.org

Okay, so it vaguely resembles this site. The design saved me time, because I've already worked through a lot of CSS things that I liked here. The name for this blog, yup, it was the name I came up with for our youth group. The philosophy, well, its a slightly modified philosophy I wrote for my youth minstry. Although I must say, God was working CrossTraining over on me long before I came to Oak Ridge Baptist, so yes, the teens and I are in this journey together.

I used Moveable Type 3.2 (which I love, by the way...so easy and powerful) for the interface, because I wanted something that both Beth and I could post through. I tried to make it look a little different than a blog blog, but that is a definate work in progress. So, there it is, anywho.

But, the website explains my deliquency in regularly scheduled posting lately. --- Eh ----Hah. I fooled you. . . you thought for a second there that I was one of those cool people that post all the time on thier blogs. Nah na nanan na. I fooled you. Hah. I'm just a not-very-often-posting mediocre blogger.

Stranger and friend alike, let me know what you think, kay? I'm anxious to hear.

Party Time!!

Woo! I am officially the 100th BJU blogger to be added to Tom Mount's running list of graduates and students.

What an honor.

Head on over and check his blog out. It is always a good read.

Shameless invite

Enter to win a ESV Bible and a free book of your choice.

You've been invited to enter the draw.

Takes a minute and an email. No more no less.

Each winner will be able to select one Bible and one book from a selection of available options. The selection of Bibles includes the Compact TruGrip ESV Bible (available in four styles) OR ESV Bible, Compact TruTone Edition (Cranberry, Filigree Design, Red Letter).

The selection of books includes titles written by R.C. Sproul, C.J. Mahaney, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Horton and others. Some of these books are autographed, others are not. The complete list will provided to winners at the close of the giveaway. The first winner whose name is drawn will have first selection of available books.

New Phone Service - trying out Lingo

I now pay only $22.09 a month for my land phone service.

That's a pretty exciting thing. Not only that, but I also get online voicemail, every phone feature imaginable (when will I use Caller ID Block?), and free unlimited long distance. . . National, Mexico, Canada and Europe. Nice.

I chose Lingo, because they had a free month trial, and they got great reviews from various review sites. But they also give you $25 for being referred by someone. Basically, I got 2 free months for signing up. Not bad at all.

If you are interested in joining, you can get $25 off your month's bill, and I can get $25 off my bill. Not bad at all. I'll gladly be your referal referer. Email me or comment on this post.

Happy Birthday, Love!

Happy 43rd Birthday, Babe! You are my best friend and my favorite!

Side note: Beth got The Funniest Birthday Card ever from a friend today-o. Hilarious. Still chuckling. Check it out.

linked up along the way

Just a little heads up to something new that popped up around here today . . .

I've added a linked up along the way section to my sidebar. Alot of great reads, exciting news and nifty stuff pops into my news reader, and I thought I'd share some of it with you. The sidebar is powered by feedburner.com republishing an RSS feed of my del.icio.us list. It took a little CSS finagaling to get it to match the rest of the site, but I think I'm okay now.

While I'm on the subject of del.icio.us, let me just say how much I enjoy the ease of use and ability to simply bookmark, categorize and keep on browsing. Hop over there and start linking.

The links in general will fall into the categories of: Godfocused reading, cool news, Apple stuff, to be thought about, and things I think are worth a click.

Hope you enjoy.

what I been up to...design-wise

Tomato Dodgeball

Tomato Dodgeball makes the church backyard smell funny if you don't clean it up really well. It only stinks for about 2 days though.

Only @ Yuck Night 2005...

...slip and slide down raspberry jello and whipped cream

...eat chili out of a diaper

...have a "right hand, banana pudding" twister command

Dr. Bob Supports Changing Pi -- proven false!

Click here. Now knowing it was a joke, I find the story even funnier. Hah.

"Pi is merely an artifact of Euclidean geometry."

-Dr. Bob Jones III

Dr. Bob appeared before Congress in May in support of a bill to change the value of pi to 3.

Read the whole story here.

I cannot comment, because as the article states, I do not "actually use pi."

Poor Q. Pined

Who would win a fight between a dog and a porcupine?

A friend of mine has the documentation and the answer.

That makes me think. . .

Who would win in a fight between a moose and a bear? Because, I know the bear has those claws, but the moose, he's got that great set of antlers. . . he could swoop right on down and smack you silly. . .

gratuitous invite

enter to win.

It costs 3 seconds and an email address. Don't worry, no junk mail follows.

ambigram it

addicting.

Look closely. Now turn your head upside-down. See. Ooh. jonkopp...upside-down and rightside-up!

Click here to create your own.

Ambigrams are words or phrases that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single vantage point, most commonly right-side-up and upside-down.

Ambigram.Matic - make your own right away! Some words are more apropos to ambigramming than others, but its all good fun. Enjoy.

My New Favorite Party Game - Farkel

Has anyone played the dice game FARKEL?

Beth and I went over to a family in our church's house last night, and we had a blast playing the crazy intense game. We played 4 games of it. It is fast paced...you can build up points around the board...use other players points...and even work some strategy. Okay, so I really just think its fun to say, "farkel."

Read on for the official rules and regulations.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

. . : : FARKEL RULES AND REGULATIONS : : . .

ITEMS NEEDED:
6 dice, Pen and Paper

START
All players roll one die, high die goes first. (Winner of previous game goes first otherwise)

POINT VALUES FOR DICE
1=100
5=50

3 ones = 1000
3 twos = 200
3 threes = 300
3 fours = 400
3 fives = 500
3 sixes = 600

3 pairs = 1500
2 triplets = 2500 (example: 3 3 3 6 6 6 )
straight = 1500 (example: 1 2 3 4 5 6 )

4 of a kind = 1000
5 of a kind = 2000
6 of a kind = 3000

GAME PLAY
You must have 500 ponts to open. Roll all six dice. Hold the dice that are worth points (keep only the dice you want to keep, but you must keep at least one die worth points to continue rolling). Roll the remaining dice. Continue this until your roll results in no die worth any points ("FARKEL") or you decide not to roll further. If you score with all six dice then you get to roll all six dice again, adding the score of the previous roll to the new roll.

You cannot combine scores from different rolls to make a larger roll score. For example, if a 5 is thrown in the first roll and removed from the active dice as a score of 50, and then 2 more 5's are rolled in the next turn, the player can't make this a triple and score 500. The score at this point would be 150. Triples and straights must be rolled in one roll.

When a player is finished with their turn, the next player has the option of using the previous players points by rolling however many dice were not used by the previous player. If a 1 or a 5 is rolled, the player can use the previous players points and continue thier turn until they "farkel" or decide to stop. Example: Player One scores 1850 points and decides to stop without rolling 3 remaining dice. Player Two then has the option of resetting the score and simply rolling all six dice like normal or rolling those 3 remaining dice for the 1850 points plus whatever the dice score. If a farkel is rolled, that players turn is over. If points are scored, Player Two uses the Player Ones points (1850 pts) plus whatever they roll and may continue rolling or stop and keep thier score. The next player may use however many dice Player Two did not use, and the score continues to grow until someone "farkels" or starts thier turn over.

PLAY EXAMPLE
1st roll: 6 2 3 1 1 5 You could keep either of the 1's the 5, all three of these, or any combination of these.
Keeping 1 1, Rolling four dice, Current score = 200

2nd roll: 3 3 3 4, You would keep all the 3's (300 pts), Current score 500 (200 from 1st roll + 300 from 2nd roll) If this is your first turn or you are not on the "board" yet, you will probably want to stop here. You must have 500 points to get on the "board". You could roll the last die, but if you fail to roll a 1 or 5 then you "Farkel" and lose all the points and your turn.

WINNING
The goal is to get to 10,000 points. Once a player reaches 10,000 points or higher all other players have one turn to beat the high score. Highest score after final turn wins. (No, the player that reached 10,000 first does not get another turn if someone beats them.)

Rules adapted from the following sites: San Diego Surfing | Family Games | Board Game Geek

How to Read More Effectively

I came across this article the other day posted on eucatastrophe.

How to Read Less More, and Twice as Fast

As I write this, looming over my shoulder is my office bookshelf chocked full of books. Sitting on the shelves are quite a few titles that I either haven't started or am merely part-way through. For most of them, though, I have at least gotten through them over the last few years. But, to my shame, among the ones I have read, it is quite a task, if a plausible one, to recall all the things I wanted to remember about the book.

I say, if you read a book, you ought to be able to remember what your read. At least the good stuff.

In the article, Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason addresses this problem. He institutes a plan for mastering books that are worth it. His plan is a preview skim followed by skimming on top of deeper skimming on top of word-for-word reading to accomplish book mastery. I happen to like the sounds of book mastery. If I could accomplish book mastery over some of the daunting titles in my library, I would be a happy man.

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. CHINESE PROVERB

Hope it is helpful.

UWOSO

unidentified working-on-sewer object

Umm, this was in my front yard.

How to Become an Early Riser

I read two articles the other day that I wanted to pass on. Because I am always looking for ways to better myself for Christ's sake, these ideas intrigued me. There is nothing more upsetting to me than wasting time, and if I'm wasting time feeding my flesh under the guise of "needed rest," I need to make some changes.

How to Become an Early Riser

How to Become an Early Riser - Part II

I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired (hee…hee…get it?) of sleeping in too much. I’m not sleeping in exorbitantly, but, I feel like I’m missing something. I often get plenty of sleep, but more often than not, I start to drag around midday.

My diagnosis is that I am sleeping too much.

Here is what I’ve got to go on. The days that I get up and get going I am more energetic, more creative, and more productive. The days I lay in bed playing silly mind games with myself about how much I’ve earned these next 15 minutes of slumber, I live in groggy bland world. So, I have enrolled myself in Steve Pavlina’s School of Sleeping Less. . . minus removing the refined sugars and animal products from my diet as he suggests. That's just not for me. But, what have I got to lose? I get 8 hours of sleep, I feel tired during the day. I try this, I get 6 hours of sleep, maybe I feel tired, maybe I don’t.

That’s a risk I’m willing to take. 30 days of less sleep, here I come.

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
Aristotle

What do you think about what Steve says? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts…