PeterAnglea.com

If the title of this post threw you off guard a little bit . . . then it accomplished its purpose. It is a little bit misleading. Yes, Facebook is still blocked on campus. No, I’m not upset about it. In fact, it’s a good thing. I don’t want to check Facebook. I’m way too busy at school and I would get distracted easily. The last thing I need to be doing is to be wasting my precious free time facebooking. Most of my Facebook friends are here at school, too, so going online to write to them (as opposed to email) seems a bit pointless. As a side note, using the Facebook at School application is also forbidden (not to mention unethical in my way of thinking).

I have, however, found a work-around for keeping my off-campus friends up to date on my present status. I set this up over Christmas break and as I suspected, it works.

First, I set up an account with Twitter (twitter.com - which is also blocked on campus) over the break. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a social website which is basically a glorified Facebook Status Message. You’ll notice that I have my Twitter status posted in the right column of this site.

Next, I added the Twitter IM bot to my Google Talk buddy list. Now I can update my Twitter status via Instant Messenger. I simply type my status to the bot, and presto - it’s updated on Twitter.

The last step was to add a Facebook application to my profile which syncs my Facebook Status with Twitter. There are multiple apps that can do this. The one I use is called TwitterSync. This app checks my Twitter status every couple of minutes and updates my Facebook status accordingly.

Now I have a way to keep friends up to date via two methods - Twitter and Facebook. If you use one or the other, feel free to track me. What’s nice is that it’s effortless. A quick click on my buddy list and about 10 seconds to type a status is all it takes.

I hope that answers some questions. No, I’m not facebooking from campus. Yes, I’m updating my status. And how.

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• Posted in College, Technology

This past week marked the first birthday of my site, PeterAnglea.com (I know because I had to renew my hosting fees). Here’s a rundown of some of the things that went on in my neck of the web this year.

• 47 posts and 87 comments.
• 1,385 spam comments.
• thousands more link spam.
• 1 site design revision

Other notable accomplishments/projects hosted here were:

• My first WordPress plugin, wpSermons. This is a plugin intended for use in church websites that use WordPress to manage their content. It allows users to easily add mp3 sermons to their website at any time for all to listen to and download. Since its launch in May of ‘07 it has been downloaded about 500 times and is being used on multiple church websites here in America and around the world (and even some non-church websites that found the audio uploader to be just what they were looking for). In fact, I saw one person who make his own audio plugin based off of mine. I thought that was cool.
• BJU Online March Madness Bracket Content. I had about 20-25 people join in on a March Madness bracket contest for BJ students/faculty/staff. Everyone paid an entrance fee and the money went entirely to the BJU Bible Conference offering which helped to pay for the completion of the parking garage as well as the new entrance to front campus. Participants logged into the site to set up their brackets and view their progress as the contest progressed.
• BJU Coffee Tycoon. This is probably my best programming achievement to date. I’ll let the site speak for itself, but here’s a little info. Between 80-100 different students (about 50 at the most at one time) were playing this game where the object to sell more coffee on BJU campus than your competitors. The game is played in real-time during the course of the semester. You choose a location on campus to be and start selling coffee. Campus events dictate which spot on campus is more popular at any given time. It’s a strategy game where you must determine what to sell, how much to sell it for, and where to sell it at while at the same time keeping an eye on your competition and using your profits wisely to outfit your coffee stand with “enhancements” that attract more people to buy from you. It was a lot of fun and I’ve talked to several people that told me they spent a few hours strategizing with their friends as to how best to play the game. They were very competitive to say the least! The best part is that it’s not time consuming as you might expect. If you’re a BJU student, try it out next semester. It will continue to run in future semesters as long as people like playing it.

All in all, not a bad year for PeterAnglea.com. I hope you enjoy reading this site as much as I enjoy putting stuff on it.

• 2 Comments »
• Posted in PeterAnglea.com, Technology

Recently, my friend (and President of Mission Prayer Band here at BJU), Josh Michalek, asked me to design a poster for the upcoming Student Body Prayer Rally. The theme is “Are You Thirsty?” taken from Isaiah 55:1.

Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.

(ESV)

They just had them printed today, and now the posters are hung all over campus. Click the thumbnail here to see a larger version. I created this poster with The GIMP in Ubuntu Linux. The font-face is Mg Open Cosmetica.

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• Posted in College, My Life, Technology

I recently came across a very nifty-looking screensaver from PixelBreaker. It’s called PolarClock. You can see a picture of it by clicking the thumbnail here. If you care to use it, here’s some instructions (for Windows users).

• Go to the site and click the link for the Windows ZIP file under the Download section.
• Extract the contents of the zipped folder
• Run (double-click) the .exe file included in the package. Wait a few seconds.
• This should install the screensaver with all the rest of your screensavers. You can adjust the settings however you please.

It’s cool, but I probably spend too much time looking at it while it’s running (which isn’t exactly the whole point of a screensaver). Enjoy!

• 3 Comments »
• Posted in Technology

If you are currently enrolled as a full-time college student and have a blog, I seriously recommend that you take a look at this. From CollegeScholarships.org:

Do you maintain a weblog and attend college? Would you like $10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs? If so, read on.

We’re giving away $10,000 this year to a college student who blogs. The Blogging Scholarship is awarded annually.

You can get more information about this scholarship here. I am soooo in on this!

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• Posted in College, Technology