zanedegraffenried.com

Mexico City

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00 -0500

Sorry

I feel that I must start this entry off with an apology: I stink at blogging and honestly I don’t foresee myself improving in the future. I am about to blog about stuff that happened over a month ago but I have cool pictures so it all balances out right? Thanks for forgiving me, now to the real meat of this entry.

Mexico City

The Schroeder family, a missionary family here in Mexico invited us to take a vacation with them to their missions house in Mexico City. We left December 27th and planned to stay around a week, give or take a day.

What we did

Being missionaries in a foreign country is very cool in the respect that you get to understand and live in a culture other than your own. The challenge is that too often your so busy being missionaries, you can easily miss out on the “cool stuff” of that culture. This was a cool opportunity to just take a break from “working” and explore Mexico’s Museum, Palaces, Plazas, and Aztec Ruins. It was relaxing to be able to not worry about being late or ill-prepared for Prayer Meetings, Bible Studies, Awana Clubs, Church, etc.

It was also an awesome opportunity to get to know the Schroeder Family better. Being that Natalie, Morgan, Vanessa and I are all so close in age we became instant friends. The Schroeder family also has a little girl Ceci(8) whom they adopted from Mexico City. She is such a testament of how much adopting can change a child’s future, she speaks english and spanish fluently and is a light into any room which she steps. As the Schroeders showed us the ins and outs of the subway system we were able to explore the city from what I think is more a Mexicans point view than a traditional “gringo” tourist.

Favorite Memories

Visiting the Aztec Ruins
Seeing one of Frida Kahlo’s original paintings
Touring the previous Presidential Palace.
Riding the Subway all over the city
Eating 30 Al Pastor Tacos in one Sitting

Credits

Lad DeGraffenried (AKA: Dad)

If you would like to see more of Lad’s photos you can visit: http://mosaicministry.net/photos.php

Subscribe to Lad DeGraffenried’s Twitter feed

Christmas Wallpaper

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:19 -0500

Design

I was designing a Christmas card for my family and this is the top part of it. I designed it fairly large and thought, hey why not make that into a wallpaper? So, I hope you can use this wallpaper for the few days before Christmas comes upon us. Have a great Christmas and if I don’t see you before the new year, Happy New Year!

So, you don’t like my design huh? Take a look at my friends wallpaper he released it today, maybe you will like his better.

Credits

Star Background: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1005288
Shack Photo: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1148784

Download

1900px by 1200px (For those of you fortunate to have some nice screen real estate)
1600px by 1000px (Nice, you have a bigger screen than i do!)
1280px by 800px (Do you own a macbook? Then this one is for you)

PS: Quick Note

I know I have been slacking off on this blog, I am gonna try to be less lame next year.

reCAPTCHA

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:03 -0500

Slapped With Spam [Geek Warning!]

I recently signed on to my blog to see that I had been spammed over 300 times on my most recent blog post. I looked back in the archive of the comments and found that all the comment appeared to be coming from the same source about every three minutes for the last two days straight. I shut the website down temporarily stopping the comment spamming party and began sifting through various spam stopping options. reCAPTCHA instantly caught my eye.

A Little reCAPTCHA History [Geek Warning!]

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Check out our paper in Science about it (or read more below).

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You’ve probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from “bots,” or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that’s not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into “reading” books.

Source: What is reCAPTCHA

En Fin [Geek Warning!]

I had seen reCAPTCHA’s before but I never knew the idea behind their movement until I had a need to be free of spam. I thought that it was pretty cool that were able to take something monotonous and make it into something that could be used for the digitization of books. Now on this website not only can you comment without yucky spammers you can also help digitize books one word at a time. Luckily Alistair Kearney had made a beautiful symphony extension that was easy to install and get working. So scroll down to start digitizing books and making comments all at once.

After reading this article it sounded a little like a commercial. I am in no way affiliated with reCAPTCHA. I just simply thought what they were doing for the internet was cool.

Light Up The World [Video]

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:00 -0500

Desperation Conference

When I was in the US of A I had the opportunity to attend a Desperation Conference with my youth group in Colorado. The theme of the conference was Light Up The World, meaning that we as the youth of the next generation are to fill the earth with God’s light. It was a life changing experience for me and even months after the conference I still can feel the impacts of it on my life. On the right is the music video for Light Up The World, off the brand new album Light Up The World [iTunes Link]. I hope you enjoy this video/song song as much as I have.

Link-Love

Prayer Walking / Busing?

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:15 -0500

I had an idea over the summer for an outreach here in México. Most likely you have heard of prayer walking, if not my buddy Wikipedia would like to fill you in.

“A prayer walk is an activity that consists in walking and praying at the same time. It’s done not for the physical benefit but for the spiritual exercise, either publicly functioning also as a demonstration or rally (to let other people know the group is praying), or quietly in sight of the subject. For instance, a person or group may be praying for a town or city, and walk the streets of the city while praying, either out loud, or in silence.”

Basically, my idea would be to go prayer ~~walking~~ busing, instead of walking around a certain neighborhood or area I would hop on a bus route and pray as the bus went through different areas of the city. This way it allows me to see other parts of the city that I wouldn’t otherwise see and it gives me the opportunity for a little old fashion adventure.

If I can get a couple people from my church and school to come with me I would like to try and ride one entire bus route per month. I will continue to update ya’ll (ooo, I can say ya’ll like I am from Texas on my blog and no one can make fun of me haha!) as I take the next steps to hopefully making this a small ministry.

If you would pray for me as I take this challenge on that would be awesome, thanks everyone.

Tears of Saints [Video]

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:54 -0500

A Call

Sometimes life as missionary can be hard, but when you watch a video like this you really see how blessed you are. This short video really impacted me. Tell me what you think in the comments.

Quotes

“The Gospel is only good news if it gets there in time” - Carl F.H. Henry

“Go, send or disobey” - John Piper

“Having seen all this you can choose to look the other way, but you can never say ‘I did not know’” - William Wilberforce

Senior Year

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:22 -0500

For My Friend or For Me?

A few days ago, I woke up to a still small voice telling me to read Proverbs 2, to a friend. I opened up my Bible and let my dreary eyes read verses 1 through 22 of Proverbs 2. I later called my friend and read them Proverbs 2, they were impacted deeply. It seemed that what this chapter of Proverbs had to say was exactly what my friend needed to hear. What I was more surprised by was that I also needed to hear this chapter. As I spoke the words through the phone to my friend I found myself close to tears because I had been looking for something in the Bible and this was it.

I start my Senior year of High-School in six days, while that may seem irrelevant I see every moment that something begins as a time of reflection. As I start this next academic-year I find myself reflecting on how can I grow as a young man of God? When this chapter showed up it was like an answer. I just thought maybe if I wrote this article and one person read it maybe this chapter would mean something to them too.

My Challenge to You

I challenge you, as you read Proverbs 2 that you would: Read it with an open heart and an open mind; Ask yourself how does this relate to me?; Not just read the words but meditate on each phrase; and that you would just take a minute and reflect.

Proverbs 2

1 Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you; collect my counsels and guard them with your life.

2 Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom; set your heart on a life of Understanding.

3 That’s right—if you make Insight your priority, and won’t take no for an answer,

4 Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold, like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,

5 Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours; you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

6 And here’s why: God gives out Wisdom free, is plainspoken in Knowledge and Understanding.

7 He’s a rich mine of Common Sense for those who live well, a personal bodyguard to the candid and sincere.

8 He keeps his eye on all who live honestly, and pays special attention to his loyally committed ones.

9 So now you can pick out what’s true and fair, find all the good trails!

10 Lady Wisdom will be your close friend, and Brother Knowledge your pleasant companion.

11 Good Sense will scout ahead for danger, Insight will keep an eye out for you.

12 They’ll keep you from making wrong turns, or following the bad directions

13 Of those who are lost themselves and can’t tell a trail from a tumbleweed,

14 These losers who make a game of evil and throw parties to celebrate perversity,

15 Traveling paths that go nowhere, wandering in a maze of detours and dead ends.

16 Wise friends will rescue you from the Temptress— that smooth-talking Seductress

17 Who’s faithless to the husband she married years ago, never gave a second thought to her promises before God.

18 Her whole way of life is doomed; every step she takes brings her closer to hell.

19 No one who joins her company ever comes back, ever sets foot on the path to real living.

20 So—join the company of good men and women, keep your feet on the tried and true paths.

21 It’s the men who walk straight who will settle this land, the women with integrity who will last here.

22 The corrupt will lose their lives; the dishonest will be gone for good. Don’t Assume You Know It All

Welcome

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:05 -0500

Welcome

Welcome to zanedegraffenried.com, this is my blog where I talk about whatever random thought pops into my head, that can range from school, design, missionary life, or as this blog calls it, general. If I end up going all geeky on you I will try to issue a warning so that if you don’t have to die of boredom from reading one sentence. I know there is not a whole lot on the site right now, so just take a chill pill and wait until I get enough courage to let you read my sub-par writing.

In the meantime

In the meantime you can catch up with my family on mosaicministry.net. I just updated the website today so there should be some juicy updates to chew on if you visit there.

Geekness [GEEK WARNING!]

This new website will hopefully grow up to be valid html5 and css3 but right now its just xhtml and css. I also hope to implement some javascript and custom php on top of the already awesome CMS, Symphony.

As far as the design this is just the basic “wireframe”, yes there are colors and I have adapted the design a little but at this point much of the stuff under the hood is still stock. Throughout the next year I hope to adapt and mature the design to a point where I really like it.

Thanks

Thanks for visiting my blog and please excuse the clutter in the meantime. Thanks - Zane