MFW

Be Unreasonable

Michael — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:27:29 +0000

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

This is one of my favorite quotes. If you mistake Shaw’s meaning, you might think that it gives one license to be a jerk… to trample people and insist on getting your own way. Not so. Rather, Shaw is pointing out that in order to make progress — for the good of everyone — you have to think differently than the crowd. You must be discontent with the status quo, and you must take steps to change it.

Such a position requires reflection, planning, and a winsome approach to selling your ideas. It requires that you champion a new cause and that takes courage in the face of opposition from those who don’t want the boat rocked. As Seth Godin points out in his book Free Prize Inside, ideas are plentiful, but champions — those who can bring an idea to life — are few.

George Bernard Shaw

What Awaits Us?

Michael — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:28:48 +0000

Take a look at this beautiful resort.

And reflect on this passage from I Corinthians 2:

“THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD,
AND WHICH HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN,
ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.”

Coming Soon – Website Progress Meter

Michael — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:57:03 +0000

Here’s a product I’d like to see. Perhaps you’ll be the one to build it.

The ubiquitous “Coming Soon” web page is boring. It has no stickiness. It doesn’t say in a compelling voice, “Come back next week to see something exciting!” What is says is, “We didn’t have time to do anything interesting with this website yet.”

How about this as an alternative…
When you put up your site, you link your new (unfinished) home page to a service site like:
* CoolProgress.com
* ProgressDraw.com
* WaitingPretty.com
* CoolWait.com
(all are available at the moment)

Within that library, there are beautiful custom pages in a variety of categories that can show construction underway:
* House
* Office Building
* Ship, Boat
* Car, Truck, Motorcycle
* Engine, Plane
* Sweater, Russian stacking doll
(ideas are endless)

Here’s the angle. Instead of just a pretty picture, you link to this service with a certain series selected AND a percentage complete (0, 25, 50, 75, 99). When visitors come to your site, they see a gradually progressing version of your website as it gets “built” by the artist who drew the pictures. Not only is it a beautiful drawing, but the gradual revelation of the design says, “Come back soon and see what this will become!”.

The point is that something IS happening — your website is not just sitting there.

If I created this service, I would contact talent through eLance, Odesk and Craigslist to do the artwork. Then I would charge customers a small premium to rent the service for their website. Perhaps a free version that supports subtle ads would work too, but even a modest fee of $5 per month would mount up if you got a fraction of the tens of thousands of new websites launched each year.

Dumber ideas have made money. I think the secret sauce will be the beauty (real talent in the artwork) and a low price so that it can spread rapidly.

Do Something Else

Michael — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:16:11 +0000

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” – Leonardo da Vinci

Jesus

Michael — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:48:39 +0000

Philippians 2, after describing the humility and sacrifice of the Christ, continues with these words:

“For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

We do not exalt Jesus to the place of Lord. His is already there. In worship, we “confess” — agree and acknowledge — his place as Lord over us and return thanks for our position as his children.

Jesus, comfort to the sorrowful
Jesus, companion to the lonely
Jesus, guide to the wanderer
Jesus, champion to the oppressed
Jesus, light for darkened eyes
Jesus, strength to the weak
Jesus, rock for the storm-tossed
Jesus, feast for the hungry
Jesus, joy of the dancer
Jesus, glory of the saved

Lord Jesus, there is nothing we need that you are not.
Draw us near to where you are.
Amen

Online Sound Machine

Michael — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 21:38:22 +0000

Traveling without your sound machine that helps you sleep? No problem if you’re online. Open Ambient Mixer and relax…

Shoelace Solution

Michael — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:38:33 +0000

I have a solution to the difficulty young children have tying their shoes: Make the strings from the cords of in-ear headphones. All you have to do is pick them up and they produce knots!

Anxiety

Michael — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:03:24 +0000

Our circumstances can be legitimately scary. But anxiety does not have to be the result.
When I am anxious, I find that I have slipped into an “exception” mode with God — that I am believing a lie about his essential nature.

Don’t get me wrong… the great liar does not consider me important enough to shout at. No, these suggestions creep in almost as a whisper — as an exception to the character of God revealed in scripture. See if you recognize one of them…

“Sure, God is powerful. Any idiot can see that by looking around. But is he really controlling everything?”

What’s the implication here? That God is generally in charge, but in my case… he blinked. He looked away for a moment, perhaps distracted by a quasar he was working on, and he didn’t see the open manhole in my way. Later, he says, “Oh, my bad little one.” Anxiety springs from thoughts of being overlooked, forgotten.

“Of course God is loving. The cross shouts this to all mankind. But can he really love me?”

Again the attack is made on the basis of an exception. This time the exception is me. Somehow I am special, peculiar — an outlier that the shed blood of Jesus cannot quite reach. Anxiety comes from being unloveable.

“God is wise, of course, but the world is very complex. He is doing the best he can.”

This is an anthropomorphism – assigning to God the attributes of man (e.g. limited capacity). The world is an ant farm and God simply cannot keep up. The result, I worry, is that some of the ants experience less-than-optimal outcomes. I would be much better off if God was my small group leader.

Absurd when considered logically, these flaws in the attributes of God somehow lodge themselves in my gut when I am facing hard days. The answer, as always, is faith. I must reject the lies of the enemy and embrace the perfection of my Lord. If he is flawed in any way, he is not the God he claims to be. Thus the fault lies not in him, but in my beliefs about him.

When all our efforts to control life get stripped away and we hit the wall, we are reminded that our only hope is in the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable character of God.

“The name of the LORD is a strong tower; The righteous runs into it and is safe.” Prov. 18:10

“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” Deuteronomy 32:4

Worry

Michael — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 20:16:32 +0000

Worry is the imagination gone wrong. It’s the opposite of what you should be doing with your incredible mind. Envision a bright future – something to look forward to. If you do that, your chances of being happy are much improved.

Remember the words of Mark Twain: “I’ve seen a heap of trouble in my day, and most of it never came to pass.”

Words

Michael — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 20:15:10 +0000

We use words to convey our ideas to the world around us. Don’t waste them by blathering on about nothing. Marshal words effectively to have power. Learn just one new word a week all your life – and you will have a brilliant vocabulary.

That said, never talk down to people or intentionally talk over their head. If the person you’re talking to didn’t understand you, you’ve wasted your time and theirs. That’s not communication — just audio output.