We spent Sunday doing what Sundays where meant for: church at Southside, worship (with a few fantastic Hillsong and Passion songs, including God of This City … wonderful), yummy lunch at Moe’s, shopping in the LOOP and tons of lounging around watching the Indiana Jones quad-logy (isn’t that what a four part trilogy is called?).The Last Crusade is definitely my favorite and I am still afraid of/completely loathe the Temple of Doom.

This pretty much sums up my feelings about the new 20-inch Cinema Displays that Full Sail purchased for our department.Just like Lloyd Dobler, I would stand out in the rain for love … sure in this case it is for all 1,764,000 of those beautiful Apple-crafted pixels, but I think it still wholly applies.

As much as I would like the iPhone to have a better CCD, some kind of flash or even a way to focus the lens (gah!), it still has been one of the most convenient cameras to have around.Where normally I wouldn’t be able to take some of the spur of the moment shots I like without looking like a big camera tot’ing nerd, I’ve always got my iPhone with me and now, thanks to ...

Like every other Apple-loving kid out there, I have been absolutely adoring the fantastic playlists created by the iTunes 8 “Genius” feature. Try as I may to out-smart it with my own custom playlists, the iTunes magic music algorithms continue to put out some amazing mixes.And with all this musical goodness at my fingertips, I feel it is unfair to not share it with others … hence, I have been sending my favorite mixes to ...

I am a little late to the game on this, but recently I was creating an iPhone screen optimized version of a site for my personal usage and thought I would share some of my findings.

The InitialThough Apple recommends through the expansive information in its iPhone Developer Connection to implement CSS3 conditional statements to effectively achieve alternate style-sheets for personal computers and for the iPhone, I wasn’t satisfied with the resulting functionality. Yes, it did ...

or maybe an even better question: Should I customize my form elements like Apple? Let me explain.The DilemmaUp until recently, I haven’t really worked too directly with the <form> elements, but when finding that I needed to add more screen sizes for the Desktop section of my page on this site (as well as wanting to expand on the demonstrations I offered in my GWD classes), I decided to implementing drop-down listings, using ...

More of a self-reminder than anything else, here are two recent Apple MacBook issues and their respective solutions:Josh VanTassel’s MacBookIssue: When attempting to boot up, after the initial gray screen, a black screen with the message “Error : non-system disk. Press any key to reboot.” appears and will not go away without a force-reboot.Resolution: Resetting the PRAM or SMC did nothing. After several attempts to start up from a backup Tiger CD failed, I ...

IF : Foggy (uploaded by DRA Studio)It is currently 7:00 am the following day, and I am still hyped up on the rush that is iPhone 3G. My class ran for close to the entire 8 hours, so we (Jodie and I) didn’t get to the Apple Store at Millenia until around 6:30pm. Luckily, Courtney was holding spots for us.Four or so hours later, we had Chris the Apple Genius help us purchase and set up ...

Me in a Dash (uploaded by DRA Studio)( listening to The Polyphonic Spree )While enjoying an amazingly relaxing and fun-filled day with visiting family today (love you guys!), I realized it has been a while since I used my sketch blog to write about anything in-depth. About life … about tech … really, about anything at all. Hopefully, you have been enjoying the more frequent sketches I have been posting (how about those 365, eh?), ...

Day 2007-12-10 (uploaded by DRA Studio)This is Day #4 of the sketches. I think I got some cleaner lines and a bit tighter of a feel … using a ball-point red pen for the sketching and a Marvy Uchida – Le Plume pen for the inking (one of my favorites for this kind of work).Each panel is about something I saw yesterday, so check out the Flickr page for the notes on each. Fun stuff, ...

Day 2007-12-9 (uploaded by DRA Studio)Here’s to Day #3 of 365 Days of Sketches. Its got a couple of devils … so maybe that’s why all the other sadness is happening. Death by a candy-cane … wallowing in beer … and love torn apart. Hmm. Interesting. Your thoughts? Btw, just picked up some new pen nibs and brushes from Michaels yesterday. I am still in search of a local place to buy 2mm blue pencil leads ...

Day 2007-12-8 (uploaded by DRA Studio)Day #2 of my 365 Daily Sketches. Lots of good stuff here. Freckles, beef steak, capes, apples and just enough jewels to make you crazy.

dotMac Galaxy (uploaded by DRA Studio)Another Photoshop goodie for you kids. Sound off if you are enjoying these or want to see them in any other sizes. :D

So, I’ve got my new 160 GB hard-drive, directions on how to swap it out on my MacBook, a nice tutorial on using Disk Utility to create a bootable backup (or I might end up using SuperDuper), and if everything goes well, my copy of Leopard tonight. Looks I am all set to get this cat unleashed! I am so stoked.Besides the biggies (TimeMachine, Spaces, and Quicklook), the other magical updates I am looking ...

I am in the process of updating the Illustrative site and I found some old copy that I never implemented … kinda sad and still fun:Wet iPod fundOn the early Friday morning of April 7th, 2006, my dearly loved and cherished iPod Nano (4 GB, 1st Generation) was lost forever in the mirky abyss of laundry detergent and foamy suds.Though it struggled for life and fought to maintain consciousness, its fate was sealed with 3 ...

I bought my newest set of Apple iPod Earphones last night … I feel a bit more comfortable with life now. It’s a bit like Jerry Fletcher, needing my next copy of Catcher in the Rye, but really I do love my Apple earphones.And sadly, the only reason I had to purchase a new set is because last week the night I brought home my new pair that Apple replaced free for me, my ...

IF – Juggle (uploaded by DRA Studio)Here is my entry for this week’s Illustration Friday theme, “juggle”. My current trick is juggling my three awesome jobs … Full Sail, Apple and Illustrative – all with my two little hands.Oh, and why am I in my underpants? Who knows. Isn’t just like life for you to be at your best, but still everyone only sees the embarrassing stuff?

iPod Love Bag (uploaded by DRA Studio)If you’re like me, you have fallen in love again with iPods … especially the new touch. How simply wonderful, though direct downloads could prove to be pretty dangerous for impulse music lovers.Here is one of the shots of the iPod pattern I painted on Courtney’s old Fossil purse. Click thru for more.

Digging the Bounce (uploaded by DRA Studio)How is it that I did not know about the amazing Message “Bounce” feature of Apple’s Mail? It’s straight up awesome! Thanks Mac Specialist Nina. :DIf you’re like me and don’t know what all the bouncing is about … here is the quick rundown: Instead of just filtering or deleting your junk mail, you can “bounce” it back to the sender. To them, it will look like they got ...

For this past week at camp, I created a custom Apple Keynote theme called Dark Aurora. The biggest goal behind it was to make something dark and simple, yet still engaging. It should be perfect for some of your upcoming worship-related events, were limited projector color/contrast is a problem.

You can download the iWork ‘06 version here (if anyone happens to need compatibility with iWork ‘05, just let me know).

Sticker System (uploaded by DRA Studio)If you have been as depressed as I have by the lack of quality themes to make good use of your ShapeShifter license, the wait is over. I just heard about the canum theme over at MacThemes and it is one heck of a solid download! And if you are looking for a great complimentary icon set (besides the excellent one done by Jonas Rask), I would recommend David ...

Yesterday I fixed an iBook for Brittany Kopp:ProblemSeconds after startup (before the ‘chime’) a Kernel Panic would occur, forcing Brittany to restart the machine.

Yesterday I fixed an iTunes issue for Lucie Bazin:ProblemLucie had added several CDs of music to her iTunes but after she restarted, none of them were showing up in the Library. Also, she originally put music on her 2nd Gen iPod nano with a PC and now that she was trying to synchronize with her Mac, it wasn’t showing up when connected.

Mac Help (uploaded by DRA Studio)I just realized today that I frequently forget the specific details and diagnosis steps I take when helping others with their Apple hardware and software woes. I guess after the issue is resolved, I just sub-consciously push all the particulars aside and move forward with life. This especially happens when the repair ends up being a typical simple solution. But today I also realized that I have, in the past, ...

Note: This is the second version of this post. Why, you might ask? Let's just say that staying up late, typing in a comfy cozy bed and feeling drowsy while waiting to talk to a friend on iChat aren't the best combination for blogging. At some point while typing in my sleep, I managed to lose the first version. Oh well.

So Christmas morning was most wonderful this year. Not only did we get to enjoy ...