Portfolio Update 01.25.10

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Portfolio Update 01.15.10

Okay, this is just going to be a regular feature on the blog. I have a love of photography and now have a more than decent camera, so I'll be posting these probably once or twice a week between normal posts.

I apologize for the tiny thumbnails, most of these look better in full view.

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Pickwell's Guitar from practice last week.

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Not a stream, but one of the paths in the battlefields after the snow melted.

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The kit I use to practice on is a mix between a Taye Go Kit, and a Traps set.

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To date this is my favorite photo I have taken with the new camera. This was taken this past week At Lifepoint Church after we had finished our practice, but before our final run through.

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From the last snow storm we got last week.

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One of the first shots I took with the new camera, one of the Japanese Maples in front of my parent's house.

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This one was actually done with my old camera right before it died.

Retun of Fudi the photogeek.

Okay, I got a new camera for Christmas, and thought I'd share some of the fruits of my new (errrr old) labor of love with you.

Freeware fav's

This is a geek-ish post, mainly for windows users: (Sorry MACies as i don't have one i don't know what freeware is out there for one), there are several great programs that I use on a regular basis that are completely free, (Some are freeware others are open source) included are a short description of said program.

Google earth: as something of a writer, when I'm looking for some exotic location... or just want to mess around I load up google earth. It's fun to mess around with and more than a little creepy when you think about some of the implications.... though while I'm on the subject of Google, let me add Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calender, Google Reader, and Picassa.


paint.net do not mistake this awesome program for mspaint (which and let's be honest about this, sucks), Paint.net is a fairly robust program that loads incredibly fast for quick photo touching up I've not yet found a better program in the freescape.

gimp - I honestly couldn't talk about paint.net without mentioning gimp, aka THE open source photoshop replacement program, I also don't use it that often, but it's still considered the best image manipulation program that comes without a price tag. Now I've had issues with the UI for gimp, but apparently there is a solution provided.

Launchy - now this one I know has a mac equivalent called quicksilver this is a very nice program launcher, (type based) for me I hit alt + space and then start to type the name of a program and then can launch it. I know it sounds like a long way to do things, but I abhor a messy desktop, and for me it's much faster to do this then to navigate through the start menu.

Dropbox This one is also cross platform, and one I'm working on getting more members of our creative arts team using. It's a free (for 2 gigs worth of space) file synchronizing service. As an added benefit you can share folders with other users, I team up with our main vj to ensure that our Lyrics are current for each week's worship set.

Winamp The original mp3 player... okay so perhaps it wasn't THE original mp3 player, but it might as well have been. I've been a winamp user since the early versions, long before all the improvements that have followed in version 5.x (What i'm currently using), that have made it in my opinion MUCH more usable then itunes, It takes a few seconds to set up, but once you do, the library feature is great! and makes managing my massive song collection, a breeze.


google Voice: okay technically this one is still in Beta, with invitation only, as someone who's gotten his invitation let me say simply, this rocks. Along with it I'll add Google Wave, especially if I can get more people to use it..


If you have any Favorite free programs? Share them here!
Logmeinfree I love logmeinfree, it's a web app that allows me to control another pc via the internet. Its come in very handy.

Darkroom When I just want to write creatively or am working on some major writing project I use Darkroom. It doesn't have any fancy formatting tools of a robust office program (For that try Open Office, it's a simple full screen text editor that darkens out (IE runs in full screen mode) everything else so that you can focus on your writing.

Foxit Reader My much preferred pdf reader over Adobe Acrobat reader, in general it loads and runs 2-3 times faster...

VLC Probably the best media player out there. It's constantly being tweaked and upgraded and it seem to play EVERYTHING.


TOK Box Video conferencing (And vid-mailing for that matter) made simple and easy, this is an awesome tool that should get a lot more street cred than it is!

Get Creative!

I think part of the fun of being one of the cre8vs for Lifepoint is the incredible amount of truly random stuff I get to sift through when trying to find or pass along a nugget for my team.

CLICK ME


Okay it's goofy I admit, but it's still good advice.

Now that the cat's out of the bag.....

Special thanks to this year's prank team, Cassandra, Dave, Lee, Debbie, Tony, Chris, Avery, Will, Clark,
and to those who offered support and/or encouragement but couldn't join us for the actual event, Willie, Sheldon, Brandie, Brian, Anne, Tom, David, and everyone else who had a hand in this little event to show our Staff that we're with them, Heart and Soul!


Video to follow when I get some time to edit it.

We love our Staff!

Lifepoint Staff Prank 2009 INtro Video from Matthew Furukawa on Vimeo.

Direct Link

So last night a group of our Volunteer Force got together to celebrate our amazing staff....

And despite someone *COUGH COUGH decding to make a bigger mess out of it than I had planned I hope the staff enjoys it when they return to the office.... at which point they'll probably ask me for my key and resignation... oh well.

We love you guys! Heart and Soul!

A bit later AFTER they've all seen it I'll put up some of the making of the prank.

Slight Edge Nugget #1

I'm catching up on some of my reading, and one of the books I'm in at the moment is The Slight Edge, phenomenal book that I highly recommend, wanted to share something I just read out of it.

And I'm paraphrasing a bit, but the point remains:

Making the right decisions, doing the right actions is easy to do. It's also easy not to do; It's the waking up at 5:30 to exercise, or hit snooze and go back to sleep (Guilty), it's the pack a healthy lunch, or hit a fast food joint at noon (Erp, guilty again), it's taking 15 minutes to sit down with a good book (besides THE Good Book), or switching on the news for a quick update.

Little things! No big deal right? you won't see a difference for doing, or not doing anything I just mentioned....

Today.

Probably not tomorrow either, let's not kid ourselves the obese kid who's parent are suing McDonalds for him being overweight didn't eat a single Big Mac and gain 200 pounds, it was little decisions daily about food intake and exercise that compounded over time to bring us to the end result that we now look at today. Just like that, those decisions we make daily compound over time to deliver the life that WE have created for ourselves.

We can make the slight edge work for us or IT WILL work against us.

So there it is, one little nugget out of... well I have no idea how many more, I'm only 5 chapters in and lost count of the amount of places I've highlights, or that have made me set the book down for a bit to think about what I just read.



The Slight Edge is written by Jeff Olsen and published by SUCCESS BOOKS.

Lifepoint Gives Back!

Josh has got the video on his blog (Yay videographer team!) and I also took some stills in the morning before we rolled out.

Cathedrals....

Before I begin, I wanted to say Congrat to Pastor Daniel and Tammie for the arrival of their daughter Faith. (Just in case you're not on twitter and somehow missed the news).

Having said that, let me begin...

This post is based off one of the talks at the Leadership convention I was at over the weekend, but this is something that stuck with me and reminded me so much about Lifepoint that I had to post it.

Most people I know who tour Europe always mention two things to me. 1) The castles and 2) The cathedrals... which if you read the topic of this post is what I'm going to be talking about.

These monolithic? neolithic? Ginormous structures were massive houses of worship, built in a time where drafting software didn't exist and heavy equipment was defined as a hammer that weighed more than 10 pounds....



Notre Dame I don't think anyone would argue with me if I were to say it's a architectural and artistic marvel... They began construction in 1163, the cathedral was completed in 1345 so that's a 182 year period, during which time life expectancy was 30 years at best, or over 7 generations of time, the people who began work on the cathedral did so knowing they would never see the completion, but that they were building something that would outlast them.

And yes there were several cathedrals that went up under in under 50 years, but even so that's beyond life expectancy for any one generation.

And the craftsmanship. There were artist who worked on the structures doing carvings and other touches, in places where people would never see the work their response when asked? God would see it. And they did this work and in some places it's there for all to see, and in others only God would be able to see their work. They dedicated their lives to build these structures and NO ONE knows their names, they were there to do something great.

People dedicated their lives to the work because they had a vision of greatness, and in their case it was building a location that honored God to worship him.

As I sit here and type this I don't know where you, the reader is in your life. I don't know if you're a member of an awesome church that's mission is to reach people far from God, or if you don't even know what this whole Christian thing is about and you look at people like me as if we're mad, my hope today is that you would understand this, when people grab hold of a dream, a vision that's bigger than they are, and when they're willing to sacrifice to see the vision through, then they can accomplish great things.

If you're a lifepointer and someone pointed you to this blog post I want to tell you a few things, that before the doors open on Sunday morning and people come pouring in, there's a team who shows up before the sun (though NOT before the Son) arrives and they go about the business of unloading tons of gear off of 3 trailers to build an environment that helps people to focus in on the Word of God that pastor is going to bring.
That during the service there's a small army of people working making sure that there's as little to distract someone as possible, they might be holding a baby, it might be pushing a sound knob, it might be teaching a 5 year-old.
That after the service and you've gone home, or more likely out to lunch (be honest!) that there's another group who'll spend over an hour restoring the school back to how it was before we began (And in some cases even better), including reloading those same three trailers.
That during the week the staff and at least a platoon's worth of volunteers are working behind the scenes to prepare for the next week,
That pastor is on his knees in desperate prayer to God his heart breaking for the lost that we KNOW is going to be walking into church, possible for the first time, possibly for the only time, and that we have one chance to reach them. That's a burden of a senior pastor and one that I'll never be able to fully comprehend. (Sorry off on a tangent).

For the most part, if you just come and go and show up to lifepoint you'll be blessed, you'll hear the Word of God preached straight from the Bible, you'll hear worship music that amplifies and glorifies our amazing God.

And you'll be just like a tourist walking through a cathedral amazed at the beauty of it all, and never know any of the stories behind the stories.

But if you get your hands on the net, if you decide to get out of the seat and join us in the field, you'll find your life on an amazing ride with other people, who like those who came before are willing to pour out their lives for a cause a purpose that's bigger then we are. You'll be putting your lives into creating something that's much more amazing than a giant building, it's seeing life change and we get to see results in our lifetime.

And should we go on for another seven generations, another 182 years, I doubt seriously that people will know our name.

But if they know the name of Jesus, if they enter a relationship with their Creator, and Savior, than like the amazing artisan ship of centuries past, our lives would have been poured out into something that truly does last.

God Bless
Matt Furukawa June 8, 2009