The logic for transposing a song is suprisingly complicated. I had to go through the chart a line at a time, looking for lines that had only chords and chord symbols. My assumption: every chord will start with a captital letter between A and G, or a slash (for bass notation). Or a bracket ( to indicate a special chord— or other special characters I use in transcriptions (|,[:,:], etc).

When I find a line with only chord symbols, I convert all the chords to numbers, one through twelve. Then I do the transposition math on them, before converting them back to letters (sharps or flats— depending on your preference).

Maybe sounds easy in English, but try telling a computer to do it.

The reason for this script is to integrate it into ServiceBuilder. Then worship leaders can change the keys for the songs if they wish, and we don’t have to change what’s in the database. The next step is to rewrite the program in Visual Basic. Fun fun fun!

~Jason

They login, search the database for songs they want, then click the add button. When finished adding, they can set the order, or remove songs. They can also see when songs were last used, the key they are in, and more. To save to the database, they just enter a special password, and click a button.

This feature is long overdue, and was added partly because Craig from the Meeting House churches requested it. The next feature he has requested which I’m working on is the ability to transpose chord charts automatically.

~Jason

Not all web hosts allow server side includes, and many do not provide statistical information about your visitors. You’d like to know who is visiting your page, what route they’re taking through your site, what browser they are using, and what time they were there? Maybe you want to know the sites which are linking to you and which links are generating the most traffic.

Now this is all possible, even with limited CGI access. If you can run basic Perl scripts, and have access to SendMail on this server, CounterMail can retrieve the information from your visitors, and email it to you. You get to choose when the email comes; every visit, after 10 visits, 50 visits, or any number of visits— it doesn’t matter.

Want to show a counter on your page? This script can be called using SSI, to show a simple count of unique visitors. A visitor won’t be counted twice, even if the counter is placed on all your pages.

Call it with an img tag, and add the string /blank.gif to the end of the script to display a one pixel gif. Or, call it with a Server Side Include to show the visitor count.

This is a brand new script, so try it out and let me know what you think. I decided to try using it on ServiceBuilder.net. Cool!

~Jason

FileCABINET is the database script which shows the various programs I have for sale at Intelliscript.net. It allows users to search the database, purchase and make payments with an integrated shopping cart; it generates XML PAD files for software download sites, and lots more.

The two added features are RSS Sydnication and an automated Froogle feed.

RSS (Really Simple Sydnication) allows you to license your content to other sites. It also allows people to subscribe to your content if they want to keep tabs on what’s going on without visiting your site everyday. They can add the ‘feed’ to their newsreader, and this reader will automatically show you when there is new content to view.

FileCABINET lets each script have its own feed (in case someone is interested in subscribing to late-breaking information on any particular script. It also generates a summary RSS feed covering all of the scripts.

Froogle is Google’s integrated shopping search engine. Google asks you to monthly upload a text file containing certain information about your products for sale. Now FileCABINET will generate this file automatically so it’s always an up-to-date reflection of correct prices and information about the scripts.

FileCABINET has only sold one copy— not exactly stellar compared to a script like Auto FollowUp or Crossword (a Scrabble-style game). But it’s becoming one of the most time-saving and efficient programs I’ve written.

~Jason

First of all, they don’t call them small groups. Instead, they’re ‘home churches.’ Some home churches have 30 or more people in attendance! These churches provide a way to free more people to do ministry.

Here’s an example: instead of having a benevolent fund for helping special needs in the congregation, each home church is responsible for their own mini-congregations. There have been times when people call the main office and say, “We need $200 because we’re out of work, and we need to buy medication for our children.” Their answer: “We’re just the office. Have you called your home church yet?”

If they’re not in a home church, then they get placed in one. That mini-congregation then helps to care for the needs of this individual.

We’ve all heard about Bruxy’s “Purge Service.” It may not be as harsh as we thought it was. Here’s what he says: “If you’ve been coming for six months now, and you can’t find time to go to home church too, then you need to stop coming to this service and just go to home church. Ministry happens in home church.”

This is such a compelling idea. Though I am hesitant to jump on yet another bandwagon, I’d love to talk about how we can think like this.

It won’t be easy. Craig said that for some time, people were resistant to the idea. But now home church is part of the culture. It’s putting mission and ministry back in the hands of the people.

Cool, eh?
Jason

One of those features is to give volunteer worship leaders the ability to login to SB on the web, choose songs for a worship package and send their selection directly to the overseeing worship pastor with one simple click. They will be able to filter out recently used songs, just like you can with the main version of SB.

Another change — which will take more effort— is to allow services to occur at exactly the same time in different locations. Presently, services must occur at different times.

~Jason

Whether we’re going at it in a death match, or cooperating on one of the 90 built in missions, the simplicity of this old game doesn’t tire me out. It’s great too, that it runs on old, tired computers— being that it’s an old, retired game.

Are any of my friends out there gamers? Up for an evening of bloodshed? The game is dirt cheap (especially for my friends). Let me know if you’re interested.

~Jason

Because it’s so big, it can be a little overwhelming too. I decided recently to start recording little 2 or 3 minute videos — screenshots that talk, to walk users through the various tasks of ServiceBuilder.

I’ve got three done so far— and will add more as I get time. Here’s the link.

~Jason

I’d love to take the credit, but alas, it wasn’t me. A fellow user and programmer— and I guess Scrabble lover— did the real work, and integrated the points subroutines! Pretty impressive.

So it’s not online yet, but will be soon, when I get my act together! Stay tuned.

~Jason

I’ve never really put it that way before, “being saved.” It sounds strange, but true. I grew up in Christianity, passionately believed and sought, even choosing to live my life for God. Yet I needed to be saved from myself, in the sense that I was quite self-centered and didn’t know how to break out of that cycle of depressive inward focus.

Dan helped, simply by being honest with me about how I came across to people.

So I spoke with him last night— maybe the first time in two or three years. I think the last time I spoke to him was actually more like six years ago! Wow. He’s started planting a new church in Calgary.

It’s a different approach to church. Instead of focusing on buying a building and drawing people to it, the services are always held at the pastor’s house. Dan has torn out a giant chimney and further rennovated in order to accomodate more than 60 people. He might have said 80 people. That’s kinda cool.

I hope we can come visit Dan and his wife Jodi, with their four girls! It’s great to pick up where one leaves off with friendship, as if there was no time away.

That’s a little what it felt like last night.

~Jason

Today they sent the letter out, and I was very pleased with their endorsement. Check it out!

~Jason

I’m crazy busy with Valentines, as well as everyday life. Seth’s been up the last few nights, and we found out today he has two ear infections. Grace is starting to be grumpy. Maybe she’s sick too?

Valentine’s was looking pretty scary last week— I was asking the big ‘do we need to cancel this’ question. But as of today, it’s looking pretty good.

We’re thinking about next years Valentine’s already… maybe asking a big band to come and do 40’s music. We would need to book now.

I’m pumped because the AGC sent a letter around to some of their churches about ServiceBuilder.

ServiceBuilder has been getting a lot of hits lately. 900 unique visitors in the last month or so. 200 in the last day or so. I’m rated at the top of most search engines in lots of different keywords. I must be getting better at that. Now if I could sell a few more copies!

The new colour printer we have, which uses a waxy solid ink is amazing. We printed up some in-house colour stuff, and it looks pro! Yeah!

I bought a new wireless LAN compact-flash network card for my pocket pc yesterday. I should be here in a week. It will also work with a PCMCIA slot using an adapter. Now I need to get a wireless lan! Only $75 Canadian! I got it from a great site, called www.factorydirect.ca. I’ll be going back there soon! Especially to get a replacement digital camera. Mine is toast.

G’night.

From the hard copy of the Toronto Star, April 18 2004.

It is interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1,890.00 and each can also get an additional $580.00 in social assistance for a total of $2,470.00.
This compares very well to a single pensioner who after contributing to the growth and development of Canada for 40 to 50 years can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012.00 in old age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement.
Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees!
Lets send this to all Canadians, so we can all be pissed off and maybe we can get the refugees cut back to $1,012.00 and the pensioners up to $2,470 00 and enjoy some of the money we were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 years.

Who knows how to fact check something like this? This is almost $30,000 a year per refugee. If someone is escaping persecution and possible death, then I don’t have a problem with welcoming them, and helping them to get on their feet here— but it seems like a whopping amount of cash to me, especially if there’s no requirement to work. The way I see it, if the government is going to pay you, you should be mopping floors somewhere, or licking envelopes, washing dishes, filling potholes…

~Jason

UPDATE: I’m glad someone checked into this and found it to be false. Thanks for the fact-checking! The blogosphere is at work! 

~Jason

(p.s. I use PayPal, and think it’s great, so don’t send me hate email)

~Jason