More Freebies

Back again on the Internet beat the Peanut Whistle has returned with some great free forever software and services many of you can use.

One of our faves is Picasa™ from Google. For electronic photo sharing and storage and—did we mention?—it is free. Google offers a full gigabyte of storage of your priceless pics. Instead of the photo software native to our computers the Whistle has opted for Picasa. Check it out at http://www.google.com/picasa

For photo editing try Paint Dot Net; a surprisingly comprehensive and feature laden image editing software 100% no charge forever. Many of the things you can do in Photoshop™ are done just as well with Paint Dot Net. Follow the link above or: http://www.getpaint.net 

Finally, the Peanut Whistle has found a wonderful file storage site that is totally free; we now use it for all our audio storage. The sound clip elements on this and our sister blog, Gospel Aircheck plus the Gospel Rewind Podcasts are handled by DivShare. You get 5 Gigs of storage and 10 Gigs of monthly downloads. They offer more storage for a fee, but we highly recommend the free starter package. So far, so good; they promise storage is forever. Recently that offer seemed very attractive due to a failure with another so called free storage site that erased all our sound files because their 90 day inactivity policy. Do not use File Factory get DivShare.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden, The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved



.

Deal Me!

What a fantastic time was had by all! Last Friday night I played announcer for a live version of the classic game show Let's Make a Deal!

The butterflies abated at show time; I was once again in my element, although this type of audience participation show never entered my repertoire until then. I brought along my "Traveling Microphone" (thanks Paul Harvey) to get that larger than life blast out to the traders.

I think we surprised everyone who once thought I was an unassuming bench warmer in the church that hosted the game show fund raiser. I noticed a few puzzled faces in the crowd trying to reconcile that voice with my face.

Our "Monty Hall" was one of our regular musicians in the church who is used to the live audiences and is not shy. He kept the crowd well entertained with deals donated from some of our local businesses. Of course I provided the Jay Stewart to his Monty Hall. We referred to each other by our new found stage names. One thing I learned: the TV pros make it look much easier than it is.

It was all in good fun, though. We'll need some tweaking before it's ready for prime time.

Stay tuned

©2010 The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.

Echoes of Mercy

“Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a fore-taste of Glory Devine!

Heir of Salvation

Purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit

Washed in His Blood.”

That song by Fanny Crosby was composed in 1873 which is, along with It is Well With My Soul a close second, my favorite hymn. It is based on Hebrews 10:22, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”

In 1873, blind hymn composer Fanny Crosby, was visiting her friend Phoebe Knapp. Mrs. Knapp was having a large pipe organ installed in her home. Thrilled with a melody she had written, Mrs. Knapp asked her friend’s opinion of the tune played on the piano for Crosby. (The pipe organ’s installation was incomplete.) Said Knapp, “What do you think the tune says?” Crosby replied, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.” The rest is history.

I first truly noticed this gem in 1986 while attending the funeral services of my favorite great-uncle Wilbur Gene known as “Billy” to all of us. Blessed Assurance resounded from the Hammond organ via two large Leslie speaker cabinets in the immense, reverberant hall. Had I not been trying to keep my composure that day I would have immediately fell to my knees in reverent awe of God’s inspiration. Out of the tragedy of a life cut shot was the realization that Uncle Bill had met Jesus personally having just accepted Christ prior to his fatal heart attack. My dad had led Billy to his knees in prayer at our apartment home one evening. Only now in retrospect do I begin to feel the gravity of that moment.

Those Echoes of Mercy still resound within me. It is a tune on a loop in my head and often I find myself humming it. Thanks to you, Mrs. Crosby.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden and Gospel Aircheck

 

 

Rabbit Ears

Wow! I love the new technological age we live in now — especially High Definition TV. What I like about it is, digital TV returns free television — truly no cost — back to all of us with just old fashioned “rabbit ears”.

With digital the signal is delivered with astounding picture and sound quality never experienced in analog.

One thing Washington got right — for a change — was mandating the Switch to DTV last year.

Living in the Metro Atlanta area we can receive over 30 channels of free over-the-air TV — most of them in HD. This is all without a cable bill. I said, “Goodbye and good riddance” to Comcast months ago when I discovered this secret cable companies don’t want us knowing. Plus, suppose I install an honest to goodness roof-top setup — I believe many more channels would come in. You see, each TV station has the ability to transmit one or more additional channels along with their primary signal. There is one local station that has 10 or so extra “virtual” channels.

Digital TV has a few quirks; signal strength is important. Make sure your antenna is pointed correctly. This process is fairly easy, though. Search YouTube for more information under, “Homemade HDTV antenna.” I opted for Walmart™ and a less than $50 price point.

Before I go, here is one more thing about cable you should know. You’re not getting real High Definition TV on 99% of your channels, when you subscribe to basic service; true HD costs $100 more a month with an additional cable box. Simple rabbit ears feed genuine HD to that new plasma or LCD screen when the stations’ signal allows — 100% of the time.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden, The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.

This is a Test

From time to time this blog seeks new ways to go about the business of blogging. Right now I am using a fantastic new version of Microsoft Word™, Office 2010. You can link over to their website and download a free trial of the new Office program, no strings attached. I whole-heartedly recommend the 2010 version, it is better than ever as I have only scratched the surface of its many intuitive features.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden and Gospel Aircheck. All rights reserved