This is one of my favorite gospel songs sung by one of the best, but under-appreciated gospel singers I’ve ever heard, Tata Vega. I first heard her on a Cinemax special with Andrae Crouch. This is my theme song for now…

Buy the CD from Amazon, if you like it.

I hope this spreads like wild-fire. This is a much more touching re-make of We Are the World than the celebrity edition.

via @Trent_Armstrong

The people who know me best know I’m going through one of the most difficult times in my life. People who believed in me hoped and prayed I would get to this point as soon as I could … the point where I stopped trying to conquer life the way that makes sense to me. My take on taking on the world made lots of sense to me and led to some degree of professional and financial success, but it left me ultimately hopeless and empty.

In just a little bit more than a week, I’ve turned my eyes back upon Jesus and recaptured that joy unspeakable and full of glory that I’ve been missing for the last several years.

Tonight I was watching the Olympic opening on NBC and I read a tweet from someone I was following that said, “Praying for the Cfni recording tonite! It’s gonna rock!”

Somehow, some way I was following someone who tweeted about CFNI. I went to CFNI and not many people know what it is. Don’t get me started about how going to CFNI was not the greatest of experiences for me, but I loved it for the music. Each year they record a new praise and worship album and it’s always very influential in terms of the music you start to hear in churches around the world.

So I clicked on the person who tweeted that. It’s a woman named Kari Jobe and she just happens to be a worship pastor at a church five minutes from my house. That isn’t enough to move me because I’ve been sick of worship music for the last eight years. I clicked through to her Web site and then through to her YouTube page and OMG!!! She writes songs about God and our love relationship with Him that are not cliché and redundant.

The first thing I watched was this video …

Then I watched this one …

And then this one …

Do I need to tell you? I’m going to Gateway Church on Sunday. He who the Son has set free is free … indeed! I also bought her album.

UPDATE: I think I take back the FAIL. This is the extended version and it is MUCH better than the version they showed on NBC before the Olympics opening. The use of autotune is still a FAIL but I liked the rest of it including the rapping.

I woke up this morning to find I could inexplicably sing heavy metal. It was quite unexpected … especially given the fact that I haven’t enjoyed heavy metal music since I was 12. I pinged Max Murphy on iChat and made him listen. He asked me to record it so he could use it for an alarm clock noise.

So here it is in two versions:

Wakey, Wakey Neal Song v2
Wakey, Wakey Neal Song v1

The most interesting part of this bit of frivolity is that it too more time to make the album art than it took to record the songs in Garage Band. Feel free to make fun!

Last night Geoff Smith did a show on USTREAM.TV. I think this was the fourth one, and every time, it’s such a fantastic experience. The first time was a total accident.

Geoff tweeted that he was going live on ustream while he worked in his studio. Cali tweeted we were going to watch, and she invited twitter friends to join us. Geoff started taking requests and about 40 people had an unforgettable private concert.

That accident inspired Cali’s Streaming Christmas Party and at least two other Geoff performances that were equally as exciting.

The first couple of times, Cali did a lot of twittering throughout the show to encourage more people to join us. It felt like people were missing out on a great time. Last night about 20 people I follow on twitter were doing the same kind of promotion.

Geoff’s live shows are pretty difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t clicked through to watch. He plays piano and guitar while singing and taking requests via chat. One guy who didn’t know Geoff showed up last night and couldn’t stop talking about how amazing Geoff is.

For the Big Trip, I have to sell my piano. It’s a digital baby baby grand (really short). It’s beautiful, but since it’s digital, it doesn’t have much resell value. Rather than selling it, I think it would be awesome if we could get it to Geoff to use for Ustreaming shows, but I don’t know how we could get it to him.

The legs come off and it’s about half the size of a baby grand, but it’s also extremely heavy. Have any ideas for getting it from Dallas to Geoff in Nashville? We have about a 3-week deadline before our lease ends.

Tonight American Idol started with a worship song. I was a little blown away and a lot impressed because Simon doesn’t seem friendly to Gospel. When AI contestants have sung gospel songs in the past, Simon called it, “indulgent.”

I posted my surprise on Twitter. @KevinPorter asked if I thought there was something wrong with that. I dropped the nugget that I used to be a Praise and Worship leader. Some Twitter people were surprised and I realized that I never posted the YouTube video of me singing Southern Gospel on Christian TV here. Here ya go! (I’m the one on the left.)

FYI, a Praise & Worship leader, for those outside the club, is a lead singer/music director at a charismatic/non-denominational church.

There is probably something consistent about how the tech community leans libertarian and is idealistic about open source. Technology at its core is about idealism. It’s about breakthrough and quality of life improvements. What could be more idealistic than open source?

As a loyal devotee to the Cult of Mac, I can’t say I embrace open source in reality…only theoretically. Apple is what you get with intense closed control, but I still have a huge place in my idealistic heart for open source so I wrote this song parody called, Imagine, The Open-Source Edition.

Here’s the link to download my silliness in MP3 format.  

And here are the lyrics:

Imagine no rights management
It’s easy if you try
No monopolistic business practices
For what you buy at Fry’s
Imagine all the coders
Coding for common good.

Imagine there’s no Balmer
It isn’t hard to do
No market war with Google 
Or bidding for Yahoo!
Imagine all the users
Searching their own way 

You may say that I’m a dreamer
There are others out here too
If all the code was opened
Not owned by a powerful few 

Imagine no proprietary systems 
I wonder if you can
No need for holographic security stickers
No barcodes in need of scans
Imagine all the coders
Sharing all the code  

You may say that I’m a dreamer
There are others out here too
If all the code was opened
Not owned by a powerful few.