Little Drummer Boy

Have you ever heard of the song “Little Drummer Boy?” I think we all have. This is one of the most interesting Christmas songs I know of.

I found a video that is equally as interesting:

Personally, I love the arrangement, I actually don’t like the arrangement, and this performance is way overdone. God would have been just as happy without drummers coming out of the ceiling.

Here are the lyrics to the song (with out all the pa-rum-pum-pum-pums):

Come, they told me
A new born King to see
Our finest gifts we bring
To set before the King

So, to honor Him
When we come

Little baby,
I am a poor boy too
I have no gift to bring
That’s fit to give a King

Shall I play for you, on my drum?

Mary nodded
The ox and lamb kept time
I played my drum for Him
I played my best for Him

Then He smiled at me
Me and my drum

As a musician, I always want to serve God with my musical talents, so this song is very special to me. Here is my interpretation of the lyrics:

“Come, they told me a new born King to see. Our finest gifts we bring to set before the King”
So they’re going to visit Jesus to give him their best gifts.

“So, to honor Him, when we come”
Here’s where the story starts.

“Little baby, I am a poor boy too. I have no gift to bring that’s fit to give a King.”
Jesus, I’m poor too. I have nothing to give you that would even compare to your greatness and majesty…

“Shall I play for you, on my drum?”
…except maybe this.

“Mary nodded. The ox and lamb kept time. I play my drum for Him. I play my best for Him”
Mary said he was allowed to play. When he played, the ox and lamb kept the beat.

Ok, that’s questionable.

Anyway, the little drummer boy played his drum for Him. He played his best.

“Then He smiled at me – me and my drum.”
Jesus smiled at the child who so humbly came with nothing to bring except his talent.

To top everything off, I’ve included my favorite arrangement of the song. Although done by a hardcore band called August Burns Red, this song seems to have an anointing on it.

Keep Christ in Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all.

Qik or treat

Update: It wasn’t working out too well so I stopped doing it. It’s still a great concept though. Maybe with motion sensors and an alarm to notify me arrivals would improve the idea?

Technology has created a new kind of generation – the kind that does almost everything from the comfort of their computer (if the computer is in a comfortable spot, that is). “What does that have to do with Halloween?” you might ask. Well, whenever Halloween comes around, I have to sit in my dining room, not doing much of anything really, and wait for each individual trick-or-treater to come up to my house for his share of the loot. How can I get anything done?

I can’t.

So…

This year I’m watching all of the neighborhood’s trick-or-treaters on my computer. How? Qik Video Pro.

My dad has an iPhone 3G, so I downloaded the app Qik Video Pro for him so he could take videos. It’s a great feature that should have been included with the iPhone from the start, but whatever. It wasn’t. I thought it was great that he could record video, but only today did I make use of the live streaming feature included. I set up my account at Qik.com and started streaming.

How amazing?

3 great ways to keep you warm in the bathroom

‘Tis the season of cold nights, hoodies, and extra layers of blankets, so for the next few weeks I will posting about some ideas to keep you warm in your house without putting the heat on. This week we will be warming up the bathroom.

If you have a carpeted bathroom floor and / or toilet seat, then you’re almost covered (no pun intended). However, if you don’t, then this first idea is for you.

Bathroom Warmer #1

Don’t you hate sitting on cold toilet seats? I know I do. The first way to warm yourself up is to cover your toilet seat with toilet paper; one layer should be enough.

Bathroom Warmer #2

The second way to warm  yourself up is to cover the ground with bathmats or bathrobes. It’s almost like carpeting the floor except the carpet is movable and storable.

Bathroom Warmer #3

This one may go without saying, but whenever you take a shower, don’t turn the fan on. This will keep the room nice and humid, which will not only warm up the bathroom, but will slightly humidify the area(s) outside it.

 

Back to the Mac – Apple Special Event

Today Apple announced a ton of new things – most of which were about the Mac. And for once, I wasn’t all that impressed.

Here’s a list of the things they announced:

MacBook Air
Mac OS X Lion (10.7)
FaceTime for Mac
iLife ’11
Mac App Store

MacBook Air

Wow, that’s thin…

Too thin. How can something so small be so fast?

Well, The 11-inch model is lacking.

To bash on the 11-inch MB Air… only a 1.4 GHz processor? Only 2 GB or 4 GB of RAM? And Only 64 GB or 128 GB of storage?

My Vista has a 3.06 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM and it’s already going somewhat slow. Now imagine a 1.4 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM.

Do you see the new shape of it? I don’t like it.

Hey, is there an ethernet port on this thing? No?
What about a disk drive? Guess not.

Let’s ask Apple about it:

So, how do I connect my MacBook Air to the internet via an ethernet cable?

You can purchase our $30 ethernet adapter to plug into one of your USB ports.

But I’m already using both of them: one for your $80 SuperDrive (to put disks into) and the other for a notebook cooler.

Well, stinks to be you!

Mac OS X Lion (10.7)

The magic of iPad? I don’t think so!

So what you added the iPad’s 4.0 springboard to Mac OS X?

FaceTime for Mac

This is a good feature. As you can see from the picture, you can now talk to people using FaceTime on your iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and Mac with OS X 10.6.4 or higher.

iLife ’11

Not too much here, but they added a few features to iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand. Nothing major.

Mac App Store

This is an awesome feature! It’s unknown right now which Macs it will be available for, but I know I’ll be able to use it (I have Snow Leopard 10.6.4).

What do you guys think of all this new stuff?

Leave a comment letting me know.

Pumpkin

Last week I went pumpkin picking! I got a 19.2 pound pumpkin which gave me a good workout on the way back to the car

It’s heavier than it looks. Here’s a pic:

We also went through a corn maze at the farm, but I guess I’m past the “corn maze stage” because I was bored of it after 5 minutes. I feel bad that I wasted my parents money

Here’s a photo of my pumpkin from last year:

Should I make my new pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern?

Leave a comment letting me know.

 

Indescribable

Inspired by yesterday’s video during Spiritual Emphasis Week, I decided to look up pictures of all of those crazy amazing things in space, and I want to share a few pictures with you.

For my outside readers (if I have any), every year my school has a Spiritual Emphasis Week, where the whole secondary of our school gathers in the church’s sanctuary and basically has chapel all week. And no, it’s not boring – far from it, actually. Almost every year God pours out His Spirit on our school, and by the time the week is over, almost everybody is changed, a little or a lot, for the better. It’s awesome.

This year’s theme is “The Glory of God,” and the whole idea is that we just want to catch a glimpse of His Glory. Ha, if we saw all of His Glory at once, we’d die from being so overwhelmed by His awesomeness. Anyway, they showed part of a video (to be continued) about all the galaxies and stars in space, all of which were created by God. He holds the universe in the palm of his hand. Look at the following pictures and see how small we are.

Note: I don’t know what most of these are called!

First off, look where we are. This is the Milky Way.

Can you see the Sun?

Wow…

Whoa…

Amazing…

Sweet…

Awesome…

The next one is called the Sombrero Galaxy. WOW!

AWESOME!

And, saving the best for last, my favorite one: Andromeda.

It doesn’t get more beautiful than this.

We’re so tiny! How awesome is it that GOD Almighty, the one who named and created every galaxy, every star, every solar system, every planet, every animal, every tree, and every human, would want a personal and intimate relationship with us?

My brain hurts.

Secretariat

Today I saw the movie Secretariat. Although it comes to theatres October 8, I was able to watch the “sneak preview” today at some movie theater. I loved it.

For once, Disney did NOT ruin something! Nearly everything in the movie was perfectly accurate, unlike all the other productions they make which are filled with stretched truth and exaggerations. Actually, they probably couldn’t exaggerate Secretariat’s story – it’s just too supernatural.

Here’s an excerpt of an article I found from The Elijah List:

…In 1973 Secretariat rose out of obscurity to become recognized as one of the greatest racing horses in history… Because of Secretariat’s prior history, no one thought he had much of a chance at the Kentucky Derby… Yet, to the surprise of everyone, Secretariat ran the first quarter-mile of this prestigious race in slightly more than twenty-five seconds, setting a new world-record pace… Suddenly a media frenzy began to flourish around this beautiful red horse…

…the Preakness, the second race in the coveted Triple Crown, approached… Secretariat’s performance at the Preakness was even more brilliant than his victory at the Kentucky Derby. Secretariat was in last position out of the starting gate but still did something unprecedented in this historic race: He sprinted full-bore around the first bend, and by the time he turned onto the back side, he was racing to the lead… Veteran racing experts were awestruck, declaring, “Horses don’t do what he did here today. They just don’t do that!” … [Now] all that stood between Secretariat and the Triple Crown was the Belmont Stakes…

…Secretariat totally intimidated his competition approaching the starting gate; a supernatural atmosphere appeared to surround him… The Belmont was the longest of the three races… [and] a horse named Sham gave Secretariat a formidable challenge… The first six furlongs were run in a staggering seventy seconds, with Sham incredibly keeping abreast of Secretariat. However, the pace proved more than Sham could sustain, and the challenger injured himself in the last race he would ever run… Secretariat maintained the same record-setting pace; he did not merely want to win—he intended to run the greatest race ever…

…many observers and journalists felt jockey Ron Turcotte was foolish to continue to push Secretariat at this tempo and risk collapse and the loss of the Triple Crown victory. But the jockey had little to do with it: Secretariat was running at his own pleasure…Turcotte later commented that… he simply held on and enjoyed the ride…

…Secretariat had a secret, which was only discovered at his death. During an autopsy, medical examiners found that Secretariat had a perfectly healthy heart that was almost two-and-a-half times larger than an average horse’s heart. Secretariat’s heart weighed a staggering twenty-two pounds, whereas an average horse’s heart weighs about eight-and-a-half pounds.

Secretariat had been given a supernatural heart. Almighty God, the Creator, had given this horse a special endowment and greater capacity than any other race-horse in recorded history.

When I asked the Lord why He gave Secretariat such a large heart, He replied quickly and concisely: “Because it pleased Me to do so.” No matter what veterinarians’ conjecture or animal-biologists’ suppositions might attest, God had simply decided to create a great champion.

Awesome story! And it’s all true! Disney did an amazing job of keeping the facts straight – they had no need to stretch the truth this time. I mean, all I can say is that it was just awesome; I don’t even know what else to say. I highly recommend seeing this movie. 5/5!