Video
Summary
Due to various circumstances, I haven’t gotten as much done (as quickly) as I might have liked in the last little bit. I’m helping a close friend get content ready for his own ministry website, which has taken up a good bit of my time. I also moved into a new role at work, which had somewhat of a learning curve, and was very busy when sent on a business trip for two weeks. There were other things too, but you get the idea.
Nonetheless, this release brings some new content for many of the lessons in the Winter series from our Sunday School class at Central Baptist, relating to discerning the voice of God.
Timestamps
00:0000:00 - Intro
01:0301:03 - It’s been a while…
02:2002:20 - Helping my roommate get his content ready for his ministry launch
04:4404:44 - New content this cycle
22:0522:05 - Upcoming work
23:3023:30 - Excuse for lateness number 1: Microphone debugging
25:4425:44 - Excuse for lateness number 2: Getting accustomed to new responsibilities at work
27:2427:24 - Excuse for lateness number 3: I was very busy when away on a business trip for two weeks
29:0629:06 - Excuse for lateness number 4: I spent some time “investing in the future”
31:1031:10 - Outro
Content
It’s been a while…
Even though last time I said I’d try to keep up the production pace, well… it’s not that this release brings nothing, but it is less than I’d anticipated, and later than anticipated too.
I’ll go over a brief summary of some of the reasons for that at the end of this update. That way people who aren’t interested in hearing the details won’t have to (you can just stop watching when that part starts).
Helping my roommate get his content ready for his ministry launch
Partway through this cycle I started helping my roommate get all his written content ready for the launching of his own online ministry. There’s a lot more of it than I’d realized! Which is a very good thing, to be clear.
I’m helping organize it all, and add additional headers for better section linkability, and things like that. I hadn’t really anticipated the degree of time this is requiring of me, but it will very much be worth it in the end, once all his stuff goes up. It’s just that in the meantime, a good bit of my time is going here, rather than my own content.
New content this cycle
That said, I still got a number of new things up in this cycle. I have several more things that are decidedly close to being done too, but I decided I’d procrastinated too long already on a progress update, as I kept moving the goalposts forward. So these others can wait until next time. The list for this time:
- Under the wider lesson of Does the Voice Call You to Trust God?
- Under the wider lesson of Does the Voice Align with God’s Character?
- Under the wider lesson of Does the Voice Honor God?
- Under the wider lesson of Does the Voice Lead You to Be More Like Jesus?
Upcoming work
- I’ll be trying to mostly focus on finishing helping my roommate with his content for the next little bit. The sooner I can can finish helping with that, the sooner I can stop having to split my focus. This may take a while though, so I think it may be a few weeks until I get another update of my own up, since I’ll be tied up with this.
- Aside from that, I’m going to try to at least finish the other things I am close on. I might be able to get these things up sooner than other new content.
Excuse for lateness number 1: Microphone debugging
The volume level for recordings has been ending up really quiet (when recording through the wireless microphone I’ve been using – the Rode Wireless Go II), and I haven’t been happy with the audio quality when I run the quiet audio through audio normalization (even though I did just that for several past videos).
I spent time trying to figure out how to get louder audio when recording, and also figure out why my gain settings were not seeming to be respected when recording. One YouTube video claims that to have adjustable gain with this wireless Rode system, one needs to use an audio cable (3.5mm jack) not USB-C to connect the receiver into a computer, for whatever reason. I have things on order to test this out, and am hopeful, but as of now, still no dice.
Excuse for lateness number 2: Getting accustomed to new responsibilities at work
In my day job as a software engineer, I’m formally shifting into project management, helping our primary PM with her large set of responsibilities. My focus is going to be mostly on the technical requirements side of that set of responsibilities. It’s more or less a promotion, and in accordance with that, I’ll be getting more responsibility and pressure in some ways (e.g., the number of people whom I am helping sequence work for has tripled from ~6 to ~18). On top of that, this first little bit has had somewhat of a learning curve, as expected for new duties.
Up until this shift in responsibilities, I had been leading an Agile software development subteam as a team lead. Now I am more or less moving into doing requirements refinement and work sequencing full time (in addition to leading my subteam just as I always have). Due to only having so much time in a workday, I’m more or less stepping back from coding myself now. (I’d already been less than full-time coding for some time, instead shouldering other responsibilities in the division of labor. This is just going the complete distance and severing any expectations for me there, instead formally tasking me for more of the PM workload).
Excuse for lateness number 3: I was very busy when away on a business trip for two weeks
Soon after I got my new set of PM-related responsibilities, I drove 10 hours up to Ohio to participate in two weeks of meetings with our project’s customers. This sucked up a lot of time, because:
- I made the drive (~10 hours one-way) both there and back on weekend days. I’ll get the time back later as travel comp time, but it still kind of nuked two weekends in this cycle specifically. This put a damper on ministry stuff since weekends are usually when I have the most free time and therefore tend to get the most ministry stuff done.
- Also, the weekend in between the two traveling weekends – the one when I was up in Ohio – I was visiting with a friend who lives in Columbus most of Saturday, so didn’t get much work done that weekend either.
- I was tired after every workday on this trip since we had days of ~7 hour meetings for two weeks straight.
- I also pulled a lot more overtime than I normally do (probably over 15 hours across the two weeks) to try and get more written down when it was all fresh in my mind.
Excuse for lateness number 4: I spent some time “investing in the future”
I spent a good bit of time on what I would term “investing in the future.” I installed keycaps and such on my custom mechanical keyboard that came in the mail, and worked on the AutoHotkey script to do keyboard remapping, so I can start touch typing full time, which should help boost content production speeds.
I also spent a lot of time considering my teleprompter and video processing workflows to see if I could possibly further automate content production. I have some good ideas now, but more programming/software development work will be needed to get there, unfortunately. This may be what I focus on next, after I help my roommate launch his ministry website. I think it will be necessary before I can start consistently putting out videos with the throughput, quality, and functionality I wish to have all at the same time.
There were some other matters too, but those were a couple of the bigger things in this area.
Video/audio transcript
0:00 - hey guys right now I’m going to be making the ministry progress summary through April 17 2023.
0:06 - so due to some various circumstances I haven’t gotten as much done uh or as quickly as I might have liked in the
0:13 - last little bit so I just as a quick overview I have been helping a close friend so my roommate get content ready
0:20 - for his own Ministry website and this has ended up taking more of my time than I thought it might so I have been
0:25 - focusing on helping him a little bit more than doing all of my own things I also moved into a new role at work which
0:32 - kind of had a learning curve a bit with the new duties and responsibilities and then I was very very busy when I got
0:38 - sent on a business trip for two weeks here in the middle of this cycle and so there are some other things as well but
0:44 - you kind of get the idea I had other things pulling my attention here nonetheless this release brings some new
0:49 - content for many of the lessons in the winter series from the Sunday school class we’ve had at Central Baptist here
0:55 - in Warner Robins and that studies main topic has been relating to Discerning the voice of God
1:01 - so these are some of the higher level topics that we’re going to be going over here and so just as an initial
1:07 - introduction here as I said it’s been a it’s been a while here coming on uh more than a month at least so maybe seven
1:14 - weeks something like that um and so I had kind of said in the last progress summary that I was going to try
1:19 - to keep up the production Pace because the last release I think it was something like 15 pages that I had go up
1:26 - um you know so quite a large collection of new content there but just
1:32 - because of some of the circumstances that I mentioned on this last cycle I haven’t quite been able to match that
1:37 - pace that I had there for several weeks and so it’s not that this release doesn’t bring anything at all you’ll see
1:42 - I think there’s maybe six pages or something like that that I’ve added it’s just not quite as much as I had last
1:48 - time and it also came a bit later than I would have liked here um and so I’ll go into a bit more depth
1:53 - towards the end of this update into some of the factors that cause things to be a bit delayed here but for people who
2:00 - aren’t interested you can just kind of stop watching the video or stop reading the summary update here when we get to
2:06 - the bit that kind of goes in details there because I know maybe not everyone’s interested in hearing about some of the other things going on in my
2:14 - life that may have slowed down some of the release but uh until then we’ll just be talking about uh the things relating
2:20 - to this release itself so as kind of mentioned here and this is kind of an important point because I can
2:26 - help build people’s expectations a bit here I have been helping my roommate go through the written content that he will
2:33 - be hosting on uh Bible teaching website of his own once he watches so part of
2:39 - the reason why this has taken more time than I thought it might is because there’s a lot more content than I’d realized there was so I hadn’t actually
2:45 - read through much of my friends content until this point and this is a very good thing actually that there’s so much
2:51 - available because it means that once he goes live there’ll be a lot of good content that I can link to in reference
2:57 - and point people to and things like that but when I kind of signed up and volunteered for this uh there’s just a
3:03 - lot more than I thought there was and so what I’m doing in this what my role is is I’m kind of helping him organize
3:08 - everything and add headers for better linkability of the sections on the pages uh and kind of stuff like that so it’s
3:15 - not like I’m rewriting anything that he has it’s kind of just getting it ready to be put up in website format and uh
3:22 - more referenceable and things like that and so like I said I just kind of hadn’t anticipated the degree of time this is
3:28 - requiring of me but I do think it will be worth it in the end once all of his content goes up
3:34 - um and so the main upshot of this is uh because I’ve been helping him with this in the
3:39 - meantime kind of since a lot of my time is going here uh helping him with his stuff get his stuff ready for the
3:46 - website um I’m spending more time on that in some ways than I am on my own stuff and so this would be temporary this isn’t
3:51 - going to be the case forever I just kind of until we finish this push to get his site launched as well
3:57 - um I may be thinking a good bit of my time although not like 100 of it just you know a sizable chunk of it into
4:03 - helping him with his content so that’s been a main focus of mine uh this started not at the very beginning of the
4:08 - cycle maybe a couple weeks in when I started helping him with this and of course I got very busy in other things as well but it has kind of been a
4:15 - primary focus and I’m actually pretty excited about it too I think a lot of the content that he has is a very good
4:20 - uh you know well written and it will be useful covering different topics than some of the things that I’ve done so I’m
4:26 - looking forward to being able to have this as another website that I can recommend alongside my own of course and
4:31 - ichthys and a couple of the other Ministries that I follow as a good opportunity so that’s why I feel like it’s a very worthwhile cause and it’s
4:38 - worth me spending my time here to try to make his release go as smoothly as possible so this has been one area where
4:45 - I’ve been spending my time uh the last little bit and then of course we have the new content on my own website uh
4:51 - unique to this cycle so I still got a number of new things up in this cycle I have several more that are actually
4:57 - really close to being done but I kind of decided that I’d already procrastinated long enough on making this update you
5:03 - know because I’ve had stuff more or less ready for a couple weeks now I just kept trying to finish just that one more
5:08 - thing and kind of decided because I kept moving the goal posts here that I just needed to do a release here
5:14 - um get some of the things that I’ve written pushed out to the world and things like that so the things that I’m close on but haven’t quite finished
5:20 - those can wait until next time uh when I have the opportunity to do another release when I’ve had a few more days to
5:27 - maybe edit some of the things that I’m close on and get them more polished and ready to go but I do have a number of
5:32 - things that are pretty close as well so you know I’ve done the main writing for several other topics but just didn’t
5:37 - quite get to them before I drew the Line in the Sand here and decided that it was time for me to make this progress update
5:43 - because it had been long enough already of course so uh here’s the list of
5:48 - things that we’re going to be going to uh through this time so as I mentioned many of the lessons in that series about
5:54 - uh Discerning the voice of God I’ve added some discussion pages to all of the of the lesson Pages here so on this
6:01 - one on this lesson was going over uh does the voice call you to trust God so this is one of the mechanisms by which
6:08 - we can determine if a voice is is of God or is not of God is if it calls us to
6:14 - trust him if it calls us to exercise Faith so this particular study was not new this time this was new last time
6:21 - this one was already there but I wrote several a new to this particular release
6:27 - and the first one here is talking about drawing inspiration from the faith of others and so this is because one of the
6:34 - passages that uh our workbook went through was the Hebrews 11 passage that
6:39 - talks about the heroes of the faith and these great believers who have gone before us whose examples serve as a
6:45 - witness to us as examples of Faith Like We ought to have as Christians and so I
6:52 - ain’t talking about those people uh kind of a natural point that comes up is well what about people who we can draw
6:58 - inspiration from in our own lives and so that’s what this page is about I kind of talks a little bit about the dangers in
7:03 - comparison so you know obviously there’s a form of comparison between us as
7:09 - Believers you know even including other things in life as well but specifically for us spiritually that kind of is is
7:15 - not constructive uh in the way that we would want but this kind of isn’t that this is just being inspired by people in
7:22 - our Lives who kind of shine brightly for Christ and light a fire be beneath us as well and so Bible teachers older Mentor
7:29 - figures in our lives uh people who are just very red hot spiritually all of these people can serve kind of as
7:35 - motivators for us as we have witnesses in our own time and place and culture who we see running a good Christian race
7:43 - giving a good witness and they can kind of inspire us to do the same so that was one page of under this subtopic of does
7:50 - the voice call you to trust God a couple others as well the one talking about uh the promises of
7:55 - God and kind of the mechanics of how we don’t get everything we ask for as Christians you know kind of despite this
8:01 - verse in John 14 verse 13 that says whatever you ask in my name that I will do
8:07 - um well that whatever there is kind of contingent Upon Us asking for things that are in the will of God and so
8:14 - um sometimes people might kind of get the wrong idea about this they feel like what I’m asking for seems to be a good
8:19 - thing so why isn’t God answering me and so we spend some time on this page talking about how we need to keep in
8:25 - mind that the promises of God are certain but usually it’s not very specific individual things in our lives
8:31 - it’s more things like he will never leave us nor forsake us he promises us eternal life if we believe in his son
8:38 - and what he did for us on the cross and things like that rather than I don’t know promising us a promotion or health
8:45 - and wealth and prosperity and things like that some of the things even that people think are promises of God or
8:50 - teach our promises of God that may not actually be in the Bible if we use the Bible as our measuring stick and so
8:56 - that’s this page and then finally the last one under this lesson here I was talking about Cain and Abel and so again
9:03 - we were in Hebrews 11 in our workbook this particular week and uh Abel comes
9:08 - up as an example of someone exercising Godly Faith he’s in this Heroes of the faith section in Hebrews chapter 11 and
9:15 - so uh the question that we set out to answer here on this page was why was Abel’s sacrifice praised by God you know
9:22 - and Abel is praised for his faith where whereas Cain gave a sacrifice to a sacrifice of grain yet Cain is condemned
9:29 - by God and His sacrifices and accepted and so while it can’t just be that God likes uh you know livestock offerings
9:35 - better than grain you know God’s not biased in that way so what is the reasoning behind this because it wasn’t just after Cain killed Abel that God was
9:43 - displeased with Cain it was actually before that and so this page kind of highlights some of the reasoning as to
9:48 - why that might be so perhaps the differences in heart States between the brothers and also talk some about the
9:54 - symbolism of blood sacrifice and what Abel’s blood sacrifice in this context might have meant about him accepting the
10:01 - need for a sacrifice for a substitute acknowledging that he couldn’t provide that on his own that his own words were
10:08 - insufficient and so it’s kind of an acknowledgment it’s an inference In this passage but it makes a great deal of
10:13 - sense and helps kind of explain why Abel is praised for his faith um and so that’s the third one that was
10:20 - on this particular uh section in the series on Discerning the voice of God and so that was uh what three things
10:27 - that we had here and then we had others as well so this was the first one of those three things linked here in the
10:33 - slides uh next uh talking about does the voice align with God’s character and so
10:38 - we’d already done some stuff in the last release talking about some of the difficulties in interpreting some
10:43 - specifics in the passage here in Exodus chapter 34 which is where our workbook
10:49 - had us but the new one this week is talking about um reflecting kind of upon God’s love as
10:56 - it’s expressed in these verses early on in Exodus 34 so I’m going to go ahead and read this it says the Lord the Lord
11:02 - a god merciful and gracious slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love
11:09 - for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin and so that in
11:15 - verse 6 and the beginning part of verse 7 just shows the graciousness and compassion of God and you have to
11:20 - understand in context and that’s kind of what this page is talking about uh this page in the new release is that God is
11:27 - saying this to Moses right after the Israelites had bowed down and worshiped their Idol of the golden calf when Moses
11:34 - was up on Mount Sinai and Aaron made this Idol and and they were kind of turning back to Egypt positionally in
11:40 - their hearts we have a couple cross-references for that I think there’s one in like Nehemiah here and one in numbers as well
11:46 - um so that the people were ungrateful towards God they weren’t uh you know thanking him for his deliverance from
11:51 - their enemies but they were made making an idol and not having that faith that they did and right after saying that God
11:58 - still talks about his faithfulness and his love um of course he also talks about his Justice in the next verse but this
12:05 - specifically reflecting upon God’s love and his Mercy even in the context of this generation of Israelites who were
12:13 - condemned to wander the Wilderness due to not accepting uh what God would have so God didn’t take them immediately into
12:19 - the promised land so even this generation who had seen such great signs from the hand of God even when they
12:25 - turned away and worshiped an idol effectively spitting in God’s face he didn’t cast them off from himself and
12:31 - that shows the grace and compassion that God has for us and so that’s what this page is reflecting upon reflecting upon
12:38 - God’s love for us even when we sin against him in such a blatant flagrant way so that was this page also in Exodus
12:45 - 34 just like the other things from this week’s lesson about examining the uh
12:51 - does the voice align with God’s character so this is just kind of filling in uh some some thoughts I had
12:56 - on some of the additional lessons in this series that we had uh in the winter here from our workbook study so the next
13:02 - one uh The Wider page was does the voice honor God and so the this passage was
13:08 - from John chapter 17 which is Jesus’s prayer towards the end of The Upper Room
13:14 - discourse which had begun in John Chapter 13 so span several chapters here
13:19 - but in John chapter 17 Jesus prays for us as Believers um and so on a page I have planned here
13:27 - uh relating to this idea of kenosis which John 17 5 has I’m talking about
13:33 - Jesus going back to be glorified after his Ascension we have this cross-reference from Philippians but didn’t quite finish that page I started
13:39 - um but that’ll be one of the ones coming in the future but the actual page that I did this release was kind of relating to
13:46 - the people that uh God has said to give Jesus and so in John chapter 17 verse 2
13:51 - we have all of those you have given him so this is the hymn here being Jesus and
13:59 - the person giving is God the father and so who are these people that Jesus was given and also comes up in verse six uh
14:05 - you gave them to me and they have kept your word who are these people that the father gave Jesus and what does that
14:10 - mean exactly and so this page pretty heavily hits on Calvinism predestination
14:16 - and Free Will and so this is a passage that some Calvinists use as a proof text
14:21 - for so-called double predestination this idea that God arbitrarily chooses some
14:26 - people to irresistibly call to himself uh while just not choosing to
14:31 - irresistibly call other people and so we examine some of the specifics of that
14:37 - idea of double predestination uh kind of defining what Calvinism and predestination in their system of belief
14:43 - is and then of course I am not a calvinist I believe in human Free Will and I talk some about uh basically talk
14:49 - about what believing in Free Will is not so believing in Free Will doesn’t mean that we believe that we save ourselves
14:55 - as Christians or that somehow the power of the Cross is made I don’t know like
15:01 - needs to be supplemented by our own works or any nonsense like that um so I talked some about what it is not
15:07 - um and then we kind of examine uh this idea of well all this means in John 17
15:13 - is that God gives the people to Christ uh to kind of pray for and protect in
15:19 - this way those are the people who God foreknew as believing in Christ and so God’s foreknowledge is a very critical
15:25 - part of understanding what this passage means and then after that we kind of shift into discussion here of the
15:31 - difference between so-called isagisis versus exegesis so these are actually prepositions in Greek ice is a
15:38 - preposition and X is a preposition in Greek and Ice meaning into an X meaning out of and so when you apply that to
15:45 - biblical interpretation we want to be taking things out of the text of the Bible not reading in our own
15:51 - presuppositions and that’s kind of difference here between isagisis and exegesis is that we don’t want to be
15:57 - reading in our own presuppositions and assumptions into passages and then using the passages to kind of circularly prove
16:04 - our own position and why that’s relevant here in this passage in John chapter 17 is because actually uh double
16:11 - predestination along calvinist lines actually textually works in this passage the text doesn’t disprove it the text
16:17 - also doesn’t disprove the interpretation that I take regarding the uh that the
16:23 - people who God the Father gave Jesus are the ones who God foreknew as believing in him that works just as well textually
16:29 - so this passage actually cannot be used as a proof text for either interpretation because both of them work
16:35 - textually in this specific place and so I kind of talk about how it’s important for us to choose our arguments well and
16:41 - so we need to be careful when we pick passages that we say support our position to pick passages that have to
16:47 - support our position like it’s logically necessary that our position be the true one as opposed to Alternative positions
16:53 - that might work equally well in any given passage so this is kind of getting off into some of the more technical bits
16:59 - of hermeneutics but interesting stuff and I argue down here that the verse that actually lets us take kind of a
17:05 - stand against double predestination is Romans chapter 8 verse 29 that talks about how Those whom God foreknew are
17:13 - the ones that he predestines and so it just doesn’t make a lot of sense for God to talk about foreknowledge in this
17:18 - progression of of foreknowledge and then predestination and then calling justifying glorifying uh this is Romans
17:25 - chapter 8 verses 29 to 30. it doesn’t make a lot of sense for foreknowledge to be in there if God predestines people
17:33 - because then why would he foreknow the people who he he was the one predestining right as if their Free Will
17:38 - has nothing to do with it so anyway I’m not going to get too down in the weeds here but this was what this page on
17:43 - talking about of this idea of people being given to Jesus in the prayer that comes up in John chapter 17 which was
17:50 - the text of our lesson this week and then finally uh just one more to go uh
17:55 - last week in the study so this was the very last lesson in this study uh talking about Discerning the voice of
18:01 - God and this week’s lesson was talking about uh asking the question of if the voice leads us to be more like Jesus so
18:08 - talking about the transformation uh that we have as Christians uh putting off the
18:13 - old band and putting on the new man uh so to speak or the old self and the new self uh you know because our old selves
18:20 - were crucified to the cross with Christ we are positionally dead to sin we are no longer slaves to sin and talking
18:26 - about the transformation that ought to happen in our lives as Christians based upon that noon of life we have after we
18:32 - believe after we become members of the family of God so the passage this week from the lesson was in Colossians
18:39 - chapter 3 Colossians chapter 3 verse 1 starts out talking about thinking on things above uh so you know there’s that
18:46 - cross-reference to Philippians I have another thing in work on that one of the other things I didn’t finish this time but the specific thing
18:54 - um that I am going over this time is not uh that particular thing but it is this
19:00 - idea on seeking the things above um as opposed to things of the world so lots
19:05 - of comparison but more just focusing on this passage here um so this page uh the one that I wrote
19:11 - this cycle mostly talking about the kind of critical importance to keeping our
19:16 - Focus where it needs to be as Christians so keeping our focus on the Eternal and the spiritual versus the physical and
19:22 - the ephemeral uh the things of this world that are passing away and so that’s what the first couple verses of
19:29 - Colossians chapter 3 talk about seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God so
19:36 - um I talk here about a cross-reference in Luke chapter 10 uh where Martha is uh
19:43 - kind of bustling about getting things ready for Jesus and Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him speak
19:49 - and Martha kind of gets frustrated and says Lord tell Mary to help me can’t you see that I’m doing all this work and
19:55 - Jesus tells her that Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken away from her and so this can be kind of
20:01 - a hard passage especially for those of us who tend to feel that we are quote unquote the responsible sort
20:06 - um we kind of sympathize with Martha here you know we we want to be industrious and work hard for the Lord
20:11 - but we need to kind of keep our priorities straight and so what is truly more important than sitting at the feet
20:17 - of Jesus and listening to him right there is nothing more important for us in the world because spiritual matters are so much more important and uh
20:23 - building off that talk about this passage in Matthew chapter six pretty famous passage in The Sermon on the Mount uh talking about how
20:31 - um you know life is more than food and clothing and uh God is more than capable of providing for our needs if we just
20:37 - put first the kingdom of heaven um so tomorrow we’ll worry about it self-sufficient
20:42 - for the day is its own trouble and so why should we worry about tomorrow if
20:48 - when we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness God will give all the rest unto us without us having to lift a
20:54 - finger so God will always provide for our needs uh note our needs not necessarily our wants if we just trust
21:00 - him and we give the Reigns over to him rather than our own desires and so that’s what this page is talking about
21:06 - uh we need to just make sure that we keep our Focus where it needs to be our kind of our eyes turn towards heaven as
21:12 - it were rather than getting bogged down in worldly matters because keeping that spiritual perspective is so important
21:17 - for us that was uh this discussion under this topic here uh the last one in this
21:23 - particular series and uh even saying that I don’t think I’m quite done I have several other topics in work here uh
21:30 - just going back other things that I was interested in from the passages that we covered in some of these lessons will
21:36 - probably be expanding out a bit more on some things but this was kind of a good collection as you see across several of
21:42 - the weeks in this study are picking out things that I got interested in based on the text that the workbook used for the
21:49 - specific um are the specific lessons in the weeks and just elaborating a bit more on
21:54 - things that I found interesting so that was all of the new content here uh from this particular release cycle like I
22:01 - said I have several more things in work that I just haven’t quite finished yet but those will come uh probably next
22:06 - release so as to things that I will be trying to do moving forward in the
22:11 - future um I had mentioned already uh me helping my roommate with all of his content and
22:16 - that’s probably going to be my my focus in fact I may switch on to it more or less full time for a while here until we
22:22 - finish that until his site goes up um because that way I won’t have to keep splitting my focus over time I’ll be
22:28 - able to kind of get that done and then turn my focus back to my own content 100 so that’s going to kind of be my plank
22:35 - and try to focus on that for the next several weeks unfortunately that means that it may take me a while to get another of these
22:41 - updates out uh if I’m helping him with his content more than I’m doing my own it may take me a while to kind of get
22:47 - enough up that I’m ready to release again although like I said because I have several things that are already pretty close except for some editing and
22:53 - polishing I may be able to get another release out in the not so distant future just maybe a smaller release with some
22:59 - of the stuff that I’ve already been close on that I just need to clean up a bit so that’s the plan for the short
23:04 - term in the future um there is some other stuff that I need to do more workflow-wise and I’ll get to
23:10 - that in uh probably like the last of the slides upcoming so this is the point in the video where I’ve gone over all of
23:17 - this stuff in this release now and so uh you don’t have to keep listening unless you’re interested in hearing about some of the reasons why this one ended up
23:23 - coming out a bit later than I’d intended uh you know like what seven eight weeks rather than just a couple maybe uh just
23:29 - because some other stuff came up and that’s what I’m going to be talking about now so uh my first excuse here was
23:36 - that I’ve kind of had some issues with uh microphones when I’m doing this recording so I’m actually recording with
23:41 - a headset microphone right now I have a boom mic on a headset that I have and so this isn’t the microphone that I’ve been
23:47 - using more recently uh which is called the rode Wireless go to so this is a wireless microphone system and you know
23:53 - it’s very highly reviewed on the internet I have no problems with it when it works except when I connect it to my computer via USBC it actually doesn’t
24:01 - let me adjust the gain setting for the microphone and in practice what this has meant is that my my audio volume is just
24:08 - really low when I’ve been recording with this plugged into my computer and so when it’s plugged into the GoPro it
24:13 - works okay but I’m not actually recording these with GoPro so um plugging it into the computer it
24:19 - wasn’t letting me adjust my gain settings or actually more properly I was adjusting my gain settings on the
24:24 - wireless recorder but then it just wasn’t going into the computer it wasn’t respecting it basically and I couldn’t
24:29 - set my volume levels if I was recording in zoom and things like that I just wasn’t letting me adjust the gain and
24:35 - because this was making my audio really quiet um I tried to clean it up in post by normalizing it which means you you just
24:42 - kind of make the audio louder you like it can either increase or decrease the audio volume levels but it just was kind
24:48 - of uh normalization isn’t supposed to be really destructive in terms of audio processing I just wasn’t happy with the
24:54 - quality I was getting out of that so I wanted to actually fix this and so I did a bunch of research and I found a YouTube video that says that to get
25:00 - adjustable gain in this way you actually have to buy kind of like an adapter um like a 3.5 mm meter jack adapter and
25:07 - then plug the receiver part of the wireless go system into your computer using the 3.5 millimeter adapter and
25:14 - then maybe another adapter on top of that to turn that into a USB I I got both of those that’s what the video
25:20 - recommended so I have some things on order that will hopefully let me use this and the reason why I want to use
25:25 - this is because it kind of has a really discreet lapel mic so the headset that I’m wearing right now I mean I don’t
25:30 - have my webcam on but you know it’s this big bulky gaming headset looking thing and you know if I’m recording videos
25:35 - where I’m recording a shot of my face with the webcam I just kind of want the discrete lapel mic I think it looks
25:40 - better but I was having problems getting the volume to work with that and so I did research there it tied me up for a
25:46 - while um second excuse here um I was getting accustomed to new responsibilities at work so uh many
25:53 - people probably won’t be that interested in this but um I am a software engineer I work for the Air Force and so I
25:58 - actually have been shifting more into project management responsibilities on our team helping our primary PM with her
26:05 - large set of responsible abilities and so I have started doing uh more things
26:10 - on the technical requirements side you know I’m kind of helping split her load in that way and it’s kind of more or
26:16 - less a promotion but in line with that I’ve gotten some more responsibility and some pressure in some ways and one of
26:23 - that one of those ways is just that previously I kind of been a team lead already and so I’d already been doing
26:28 - this for a team of maybe five or six people and now I’m kind of doing it for everyone on our project which is more like 18 and so obviously it’s not that
26:35 - my workload has tripled per se but you know different scope a different set of responsibilities and I just there’s a
26:41 - bit of a learning curve as one would expect with new duties at work and so up until this time like I said I’d already
26:48 - been a leading and agile software development sub team so our project has three teams actually uh working in
26:54 - parallel with each other and I was the team lead for one of those and now I’m kind of helping do project management stuff for the entire project and so uh
27:01 - because of that uh you know I haven’t had as much time uh you know I had more pressure at work and I’ve had a bit of a
27:08 - shift in responsibility it’s kind of taken more out of me as I acclimate myself to the new things that I have to
27:14 - do and um it’s also just you know in many ways I think this will be useful in the
27:19 - long term because I’m pretty interested in the stuff I’m doing now but I know this change at work has sucked some time and attention away from me um so that
27:26 - was another change and then of course pretty soon after I got this new set of responsibilities I got sent uh for a uh
27:33 - on a business trip you know in the Air Force we call it TDY I think temporary Duty Yonder is what the acronym stands
27:39 - for I I got assigned to go to a different Air Force Base uh to work on our project with our customers and so
27:45 - because of that I was away from home for two weeks I was in a hotel for two weeks and so because of that I was working on
27:51 - this business trip and I worked pretty hard on the business trip you know I was we had long days of meetings uh you know
27:57 - with our customers and uh you know seven hour seven hour meetings two two weeks straight more or less and then I also
28:03 - pulled a lot of overtime when I was on this trip just because it made sense you know I had everything fresh in my mind and if I didn’t do it I wouldn’t get it
28:09 - written down and documented as well so maybe 15 to 20 hours overtime over the two weeks I was up there and then and I
28:15 - also uh drove up so this was in Ohio was where I went and so that’s about 10 hours away from where I am in Georgia
28:22 - and so because of that you know I sacrificed a weekend day on either the weekends uh kind of uh book ending my
28:29 - trip there I sacrificed a weekend day to drive that and I’ll get the time back as a travel comp time but you know I
28:36 - haven’t taken that yet and so and then the weekend in the middle I was actually visiting a friend who lives in Columbus and so I didn’t get a lot done that
28:41 - weekend either and so because I tend to get a lot of ministry stuff done on weekends because it’s when I have you
28:47 - know less responsibilities you know like of my daily variety you know like going to work and working out and things like
28:54 - that well because I had to give up weekend days here I actually kind of inhibited me more than you might think
29:00 - on the ministry output front because I lost like three weekends in a row basically uh to this you know on top of
29:05 - the extra duties at work and stuff like that um and then finally a last thing is kind
29:11 - of what I was alluding to as I was wrapping up uh the closing part of the the actual video I kind of spent some
29:18 - time on some things that might help improve some of the content moving down the line so workflow related things and
29:24 - so I’m going to call this investing in the future uh kind of a hobby project of mine I finally got the custom mechanical
29:31 - keyboard that came completely split hand uh people who are really into mechanical keyboards can probably geek out over it
29:38 - but most people probably won’t think it’s that interesting but long story short I’m hoping to actually start
29:43 - transitioning to fully touch typing I am a pretty fast hunt and Peck typist on QWERTY like above 50 words per minute
29:49 - which is pretty fast for hunting and pecking but I’m above 70 touch typing and so it’d be best for me to switch to
29:55 - that it will help uh me in the kind of content production Department I’ll be able to go faster for that I also spend
30:01 - a lot of time considering kind of my workflows for the teleprompter which I haven’t really used that much yet
30:07 - because I need to set up some software to kind of split things more into a teleprompter ready format so I’m going
30:13 - to be writing more on the software development front here in my python preprocessor application to kind of
30:20 - break out the content that I am currently recording on these slides into just a sentence or two at a time over a
30:27 - larger number of slides so that I can run through it on the teleprompter more seamlessly so that and how I’m going to
30:33 - process these videos how I can automate more of the process so that I’ll be able to kind of increase my throughput while
30:39 - maintaining the the quality and the functionality that I want and so maybe not very interesting stuff but what I
30:46 - would call like I said investing in the future hoping that in the long term some of the legwork that I’m doing here up
30:52 - front uh in the beginning will kind of pay off to yield a higher quality with a
30:58 - higher throughput than I would otherwise have so these were my excuses you know four of them there I don’t know uh
31:04 - people are interested in that but these were some of the reasons some of the other things I was doing uh this cycle instead of writing more Ministry content
31:10 - although like I said I had a number of things go up so uh that’s what I have done now through April 17th and so we’ll
31:18 - see exactly when I get the next one of these up it might be several weeks it might be a little bit longer than that like I said gonna be helping my roommate
31:24 - for the next little bit uh but I may get around to actually polishing some of the stuff I have close so uh thanks for
31:31 - listening and I hope this has been helpful in giving people an idea of what I’ve been up to for the last little bit