I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. ~Jesus

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Derek Close - The Beta Sessions


Just want to give a quick update for my friend Derek Close. He has a new release out right now called The Beta Sessions. Derek Close was formerly the bassist in the Washington-based Grunge band My Cat Puddinhead. He has physical copies of his new album available or you can get it as a digital download.

Derek's Music



Friday, February 21, 2014

A Proclamation...

"Let us not glide through this world and then slip quietly out of it
without having blown the trumpet loud and long for our Blessed
Redeemer. At the very least, let us see to it that when the Devil
gets news of our departure from the battlefield, he throws a
thanksgiving party in hell."
-C.T. Studd

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Great Testimony About Abortion

Several years ago I shared my testimony with a friend, and she commented that it sounded like a "Chick Tract". At the time, I was unfamiliar with your publications, but I have recently acquired a lot of the "This Was Your Life" tracts for distribution around my hometown.

Before I was a Christian, my husband pressured me to have an abortion that I didn't want. I knew it was taking the life of my baby, but my husband's threats to leave me if I went through with the pregnancy, scared me into a decision I immediately came to regret. As I lay in the recovery room following the abortion, I tried to will myself to die. The guilt was so overwhelming, I felt that the only way to pay the price for my baby's life was to die myself.
I spent the next three years constantly thinking about suicide. The only thing that kept me from actually going through with it, was the strong conviction that I would go to Hell for what I had done, and that thought terrified me. My life was a nightmare. I worked at a medical lab that received the "products of conception" from abortions performed at several local hospitals. I couldn't escape the reality of what I had done. I daily saw the mutilated bodies of babies, victims of their mother's choice. It was horrifying!

I searched in the New Age Movement for answers to my grief. They promised peace, joy, and contentment, but they didn't offer the one thing I needed: relief from the guilt I carried so heavily. But I knew that I had crossed a boundary and put myself at odds with the God of the universe, and His wrath was going to descend upon me at my death.

Then one night I had a dream that changed my life. In my dream, I died and found myself standing in a long line of people outside the gates of Heaven. There was a man sitting at a high desk with a book open in front of him. He began to read an alphabetical list of various sins and told everyone who had committed each of these sins, to step out of the line. Since abortion begins with "A", it was the first sin he read. NO! I said. "There's been a mistake! The abortion wasn't my fault....My husband made me do it. It's his fault, not mine! I was in a panic as I pleaded with the attendant nearest me. He calmly looked at me and said, "The abortion was your sin. Your husband had his own role in that event, and he will be held accountable, but the abortion, itself, was yours." I prepared to argue, again, when suddenly I realized that no one had put a gun to my head, bound and gagged me, and literally forced the abortion on me. Although it was under protest, I was the one who ultimately consented to the procedure. I could have said no, and faced the consequences, but I didn't, so the abortion was truly my sin, and not directly my husband's fault. As I acknowledged my guilt, I stepped out of line. I asked the attendant where I needed to go, and he pointed away to the left, and then I noticed for the first time, in the distance, a lake of fire.

I woke up screaming, in a cold sweat. As I lay in bed, shaking from the realization that I truly deserved to spend eternity in the lake of fire, a new resolve came over me. I was no longer afraid to die and face Hell, because I knew for the first time that it was the only place I deserved, so I made up my mind to take my life and willingly accept the punishment I had been shown. But God had other plans.

A few days after the dream, I ended up at a Christian concert(of all things!), and there someone shared with me that I didn't need to take my own life to atone for my baby's death. That two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ bore the punishment I deserved as He died a painful, horrifying death on the cross to pay for my sin. The price had already been paid, would I accept His death on my behalf? I said, "yes" to Jesus at that moment, and was flooded with God's grace and forgiveness. I cried for joy as I received the relief I had been searching for, and discovered the wonder of salvation. I was instantly released from the guilt and pain I had carried for so long. What a Savior!

Anyway, that was over ten years ago, and I am still amazed at that amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. Those who are forgiven much, love much, and all I have to do to renew my love for Christ, is to remember how great a love He has for me, that He gave Himself up willingly for my sin. I would love to reach other women burdened by the guilt of abortion, with the forgiveness they can find at the cross.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Great Commission - Free Tracts

http://www.fellowshiptractleague.org/english.html







If any of my readers are ready to actually go out and start more proactively fulfilling The Great Commission, then I have a great resource for you. There is an organization called Fellowship Tract League that has several tracts available for FREE. This is so nice because all you have to do is go online, pick them out and they'll come right to your door. Jesus said,

    
     I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth! Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do everything I have told you. I will be with you always, even until the end of the world.
~Matthew  28:16-20


Tracts can provide a good way of planting a seed in someone's life. If you can, don't just stick it on a door or under a windshield wiper. People may respond better if you actually make a connection first. 

LINK to Fellowship Tract League

God bless!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Mouth of the South - Transparency Album


I just wanted to give everyone a heads up and let you know that Mouth of the South is giving their album Transparency away free right now. If you've never heard this band before, they are solid. You can either go to their Facebook page or follow this Link.


Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Acoustic Treatment For Home Recording Studio

As a student of audio recording, I subscribe to a site called Audio Masterclass. I read an article today that I thought would be helpful to my readers. It covers the basics of how to achieve better acoustics in your studio. Read on...



A brief introduction to acoustic treatment for the home recording studio


When you have achieved good soundproofing in your room, you will need acoustic treatment to make it sound good both for recording and monitoring.
By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass
Acoustic treatment and soundproofing are two totally separate concepts. To start thinking about acoustic treatment, imagine a room constructed from thick concrete - walls, floor and ceiling. It's soundproof, but it sounds terrible because of the strong reflections from the hard, parallel surfaces. So let us consider how we would apply basic acoustic treatment to this room...
Acoustic treatment should achieve one of two things. Either it should make the room sound pleasant, or it should make it as dead as possible. Sounding pleasant is best, but it is difficult to achieve in small rooms. In a small room, such as the smallest bedroom of your apartment or house that you want to convert to a studio, it is often more practical just to deaden it as much as possible. The reason for this has to do with the frequencies of the standing waves that are created in small rooms, but that's a more advanced topic for another occasion.
Suppose though that you have a fairly large room, around twenty square meters or more. It's still made of concrete remember. What you want to do is get rid of the ugly reflections and replace them with a pleasant acoustic ambience in which to make music.
What the bare room has is a small number of very strong reflections. Small number - very strong. This is important. So firstly you would need to consider absorbing some of the reflected sound. This can be achieved in two principle ways...
Porous absorbers
It's easier to give examples of porous absorbers than to embark on a long-winded scientific description. Carpets, curtains and cushions are all great porous absorbers. The "Three C's" of acoustic treatment perhaps. But there's a cheaper material that makes an excellent porous absorber - mineral wool. You will find this at a builders' merchant in the form of loft insulation. It's intended for thermal insulation, but it works extremely well for absorbing sound too. Fiber glass loft insulation can work too, but mineral wool is more commonly used professionally. The only downside of mineral wool is that it sheds fibers and must be contained behind a fabric barrier. But you would want to do this to make it look good anyway.
Porous absorption is great, but it has one limitation - it only works well at medium and high frequencies. To work well at low frequencies it has to be VERY thick, or spaced away from the wall. A room that is treated only with porous absorption will be dead at high frequencies but still reverberant at low frequencies. Subjectively the room can sound rather oppressive, to the point of not being a pleasant place in which to work. Having said that, a room that has only porous absorption will be better than a room that has no absorption at all. Those bare concrete walls, remember?
Panel and membrane absorbers
Panel and membrane absorbers are basically the same thing, but the way in which the terms are commonly used changes according to the nature of the material used.
What we would normally call a panel absorber is a wooden panel mounted on a frame that spaces it away from a wall. The space behind the panel is completely enclosed. Sound energy is absorbed in the meshing of the wood fibers as the panel vibrates in response to sound. The panel absorber can be tuned to a specific range of frequencies, according to a formula that includes the mass of the panel and the spacing distance. It is perfectly practical to tune panel absorbers to work well at low frequencies, where porous absorbers struggle.
What we would normally call a membrane absorber uses a flexible surface, such as a material with a rubbery consistency. Where a hard panel will reflect some sound energy and mid and high frequencies, the flexible membrane will provide absorption in itself, regardless of the air-space behind. It too can be tuned, but the panel absorber is more precisely tunable to specific problem frequencies.
Diffusion
Absorption isn't the whole of the story in acoustic treatment. Going back to the bare concrete room with just a few strong reflections. These will occur at certain frequencies dependent on the dimensions of the room. Having just a few strong reflections, creating resonances at certain frequencies, is subjectively unpleasant to the ear. It is much better to have many weak reflections, which will create a diffused sound field within the room.
This can be done with hard, irregular surfaces. You can buy diffusers, or make them yourself. A bookshelf filled with books of different sizes actually works quite well and provides a combination of diffusion and absorption.
In summary, good acoustic treatment consists of a combination of porous absorption, panel/membrane absorption, and diffusion. Although the very best results will be achieved through scientific methods and calculations, surprisingly good results can be achieved through educated guesswork and experimentation.
One more point...
Although professional recording studios have separate recording rooms and control rooms, at Audio Masterclass we recognize that most home recording studios have just a single room. Ideally the requirements in terms of acoustic treatment are different for recording and for monitoring, but there are methods and techniques that can be used to get the best results according to individual circumstances.
David MellorCourse Director, Audio Masterclass
Wednesday, January 1, 2014


P.S. I have personally been dedicated to Audio Education since 1986. Audio Masterclass has been online since 2001. We have helped literally thousands of our enrolled students make better recordings.
(end of article)

If you would like more information about Audio Masterclass follow this link:

www.audiomasterclass.com












Saturday, December 28, 2013

Jahi McMath Fund

It kind of blows me away that this lady isn't getting more support. If you are unaware of this story, then you should read up on it. Basically this lady took her daughter in for a fairly routine surgery and it went bad. Her kid has been declared brain dead and the hospital wants to pull the plug on Monday. Her mom feels like the girl needs more time for a miracle. She said that she believes she isn't brain dead. I know if I were in this position, I would want a miracle too, or at least have people support me until I had peace about it. She is looking for some financial help in order to get her daughter out of the current hospital and into another facility where they will give her more time. If you would care to help out, here is the link.