So it's the night before Columbus Day, a day where we reflect on where we've been, where we're going, and how we're feeling about all that. What's that?...It's just a holiday celebrating the man who discovered America? Oh well. I'm sitting at a just-cleaned-off desk while my family gets some shut-eye, and I'm reflecting.

I haven't made much headway on the Joy website redesign. I've completed one of the main subpages, which actually took quite a bit of tweaking, and I've found a new method for streaming the sermon audio on the site, which will hopefully address the issues many people have been having with that. Things have been more busy at the office, meaning I have less time to tinker with things like site designs. I'm hoping to make a big dent in this week's workload tomorrow to free up some time later in the week.

I'm tracking along with my iPhone game. If you haven't heard, I'm working on an iPhone game (to be released for iPad too). I've always had a dream of developing a game for the Mac. I took a stab at it earlier in my life thanks to a little program called HyperCard (anyone?...anyone?). With the explosion of the iOS platform, it makes sense to try to get a game on there. I've been in the planning stages for a few months now and was blessed to get the financial support of a kind investor. So far I have a title, storyline, outline of the gameplay, a killer musical theme, and an awesome artist drawing up the character artwork. Development is more slow-going than I'd thought, but my goal is to release a high-quality, super fun game, fulfill a little dream, and hopefully make a little money in the end. As development progresses, I'll post some teaser images and announce the launch of the game's website, hopefully sometime before Christmas!

For the past two days, the girls (especially Ashlin) have kept themselves occupied by dancing. I shuffle tracks on my Apple TV, and if they like the song that's playing, they come up with the most hilarious dance moves and make the funniest faces. Ashlin has discovered she likes Bruno Mars, a welcome reprieve from Justin Bieber.

Speaking of music, we're rooting for Drew Reyniewicz on The X Factor. She's from Chino Valley, AZ, fourteen years old, and her slowed-down rendition of Baby was totally original and marketable. I'm betting on her to win the whole thing.

So, The X Factor debuted on Wednesday (my birthday) and I was hoping it would supplant The Voice (which supplanted American Idol) as my favorite singing-competition show. Alas, that didn't happen. Not that it matters, because ratings will ultimately determine what happens with the show, but here are my top 5 suggestions to polish the big X:

1. Shorten it! It's billed as a four-hour, two-night premiere. Are you seriously going to make me sit through a season premiere longer than The Fellowship of the Ring?

2. Deflate it! Perhaps it stems from Simon Cowell, but the show's ultra-dramatic beauty shots of the judges walking in slow motion while backlit in a cloud of fog, over-the-top graphics and crane shots of the thousands of contestants outside the arena (or are those just people waiting in line to be in the audience?), pump it up like it's God's gift to television, just like Simon thinks he's God's gift to the music industry. Come on. Just let the kids sing.

3. Nix the bad auditions! The show is excruciating when we have to watch some poor sap who thinks he/she can sing get booed by a crowd of four thousand. Thank goodness for The Voice, where at least the contestants are all somewhat vocally capable.

4. Nix the cheesy profiles! This might help solve suggestion #1. Why are cameras following these people before they audition? I sure have high hopes of winning 5 million dollars! I work at the local petting zoo part time! The whole family tells me what a great voice I have! I snort when I laugh! Root for me when I audition! ...oh, you really can't sing, can you? Glad I got to hear your story, because I won't ever hear from you again.

5. Show more auditions! My goodness, four hours and four cities just passed before my eyes and it seems like I only saw a dozen good singers. L.A., Nicole, Paula and Simon, cut the chit-chat. I dare you to let them start singing the second they hit the stage. If you like the audition, then get to know them a little bit. It's The X Factor. Give everybody a big X to light up like America's Got Talent. Three lit-up Xs and the singer leaves the stage. Better still, just line 'em all up and let the next singer start right away.

I'm going to start a show called 15 Minutes to Fame. The entire season takes place in one quick episode, sandwiched between ads for Doritos and T-Mobile.

Construction of the redesigned home page is underway. This is about 2/3 of the full page. Beneath the C-Life/Features bar will be Twitter, Facebook and Blog activity feeds. Navigation will be added to the top gray bar, in case you were wondering. I'm probably most excited about the new video area featured on the home page. It will add some much needed life to the site. Stay tuned for more screenshots as project: redesign continues!

It's funny how I get the urge to redesign a website. For example, Community Church of Joy's website was redesigned not more than eight months ago or so, and in general, I've been happy with how it's been working out. It's bright, easy to navigate and isn't hard to keep updated. But over the past several weeks, I've looked at areas that could be enhanced, tweaked, slightly modified... and when I look more at what a site could be rather than what it is, I know it's time to redesign.

I've played with the site's background a few times over the past couple weeks. One of the aspects of the site I'm most happy with is the ease at which I can change the background without affecting the structure or design of the site. That is one thing that is staying put. In fact, it's so easy to change the background that I plan to utilize different backgrounds for various sections of the site. For example, the Children's page will get a fun, whimsical background. The Students page will be edgy and exciting.

I've also looked at a lot of other sites lately that I admire. Part of the fun of designing sites is taking bits and pieces that work well on multiple sites and incorporating them into your own. Social media is huge now, and the home page should reflect how people are interacting with CCOJ on Facebook and Twitter, and enabling them to more easily share what they find on the CCOJ website with their friends.

I also need to make the content even more compelling. I'll be adding video to the home page—snippets of recent sermons, fun interactions with pastors and staff, highlights from Community Life, that sort of stuff. (Staff, get ready to be ambushed.) The blog page will get weekly updates, instead of "whenever I get around to it" updates. Facebook comments will be added to enable interaction using a platform many of us are already part of.

So that's a little bit about what I'm planning to do. We're now in that wonderful lull between kickoff and Christmas where we church folk sit around scratching our heads, so I figured I'd use the time to dial the design up a few notches. I'll let you know how it goes!

Oh man, have I been asleep all year? I can't believe I haven't updated this blog since last February! Things have been busy, but seriously! I resolve to keep this thing more updated, and post some great and wonderful things I run across online. Things such as this:

OK, so any Gmail users out there able to use Buzz? It's not showing up for me yet; maybe soon...

A sampling of some of my work from the past 6-12 months. Photo cred on The Sounding home page: the awesome Eric Barz.

Snapped with LittleSnapper on Feb. 8 @ 10 PM.

Who wouldn't want a coffee table that looks like a giant iPod? From Italian design house Mirko Ginepro, these tables are shaped as huge iPods with glass for the screen and hollow innards, meaning you could, theoretically, use them to store your CD collection—a sort of Gulliver-scale physical format version of the original digital music device.

Thought I'd start out my new blog with some pics of sweet clouds...that I took while driving on Happy Valley. Hey, at least I wasn't texting.