I brought my car in for an oil change this morning and, after blocking the usual upsell attempts (No, I’m not interested in adding $300 in unnecessary services, even if they’re ‘highly recommended’), I was thinking a bit about cars and car culture during my drive down to the office.

Now, I’ve never been much of a car guy — twin cam, dual overhead, shift on the fly combustible edison, vin diesel car-speak has never really spoken to me.  However, being a Southern Californian for going on five years now, it’s virtually impossible to ignore the car culture here.  Maybe it’s because we spend so much time in our cars, or perhaps it’s their unnaturally long car-lives (for real, on the East Coast, cars don’t live forever the way they do out here), but folks out here have a strong attachment to their automobiles.

Read the rest of this entry »


My friend Dave Ingland, who I met at the first Idea Camp back in February in Irvine, California, just wrote a great piece about The Idea Camp.  Since the next Idea Camp is coming up soon — August 28-29, 2009 in Washington, DC — I’d like to share a few of my thoughts as well.

Here’s a quick summary of the ethos behind the Idea Camp (you can read more here):

Read the rest of this entry »

The good folks of Adah Design have released a free handset font, Oh Mercy! Nice work from some nice people.

You can find several great logo/pictogram-ready fonts over at Fontfabric. My personal favorites are Val and Mod.  I appreciate the ability to reverse the A, M, V & W characters.

Check some of the designer’s applications below:

Read the rest of this entry »

My postmodern side should be more comfortable with this paradox, but I still struggle with the ways in which the blogosphere (and the rest of the internets) can be such a beneficial and frustrating place, all at the same time. 

Finding My Tribe

For someone like me who works in vocational church ministry, the blogosphere can be a very life-giving place. Church work can be isolating and discouraging.  Over the last couple of years, connecting with like-minded friends and colleagues from around the country has carried me through tough times.

Friends from The Idea Camp tribe (#ideacampers are the best!) regularly encourage, inspire and challenge me. The ethos of collaboration and innovation, especially from within the IC tribe, have been reason enough for me to remain active in the Twitterverse.

Static Prevails

But, then, there’s the flipside…

Read the rest of this entry »