When I still attended St. Andrews Parish United Methodist Church, I was a member of the youth praise band. The band started with the most rock-n-roll of names: "Youth Praise Band." This small group eventually transformed into the 6-member group known affectionately as "4½ Dudes." Finally, after a single performance, the band was renamed "Basilica." This name was chosen for (officially) its significance in the history of the Christian church and (unofficially) the semblance to Metallica. Indeed, the name was probably too metal for the group it represented, but it served the band well for several years.

When I arrived at Cokesbury, several members of Basilica followed, leaving the remaining members of the group to inexplicably rename themselves "Purple Dog." I don't understand it, but to each their own. The members who arrived at Cokesbury decided to form a newer band, featuring more heavy and electrified music. The new band's name: "Righteous Indignation"

Like Basilica's before it, Righteous Indignation's logo was designed by yours truly. For this logo design, I wanted the text to be easily visible but unclean; a teenage rock band should not have a well-polished logo like the one I designed for the church at large. The colors are loud, the text is vibrant, and (to appease Joshua) a cross is featured prominently.

It may not be the most elegant logo or the most enduring word mark, but it should serve the group well for now. Comments and criticism are appreciated.

Update (June 1): For comparison, the logo of "Basilica" been added.

To think, here I was expecting that Mr. Murphy's visit would be an afternoon trip. Little did I know that he was planning an extended vacation. Why, just this afternoon, he decided to help me paint my room.

As a little bit of background, we are redecorating my bedroom. When we first moved in to this house, my room was the nursery, with wall covered in purple, tutu-clad elephants. To make the room more appropriate for an energetic eleven year old, the room was painted white with blue trim and a hot-air balloon border around the top. Until a few days ago, the room had remained essentially unchanged. Now, though, we are painting the room a rich, chocolaty brown for a more sophisticated feel.

That brings me to today's experience. Murphy decided that he wanted to help me paint. To prevent paint from getting on the carpet, I got a drop cloth to set on the floor. As I set it down, it, unbeknownst to me, got caught on a small, black cable. The more I unfolded the drop cloth, the more this tiny cable was pulled. Finally, with Murphy laughing at me quietly, the cable got pulled off on the furniture, bring the attached iPod touch with it. Both landed with a "shplort!" in the tray full of that lovely brown paint. The resulting splash also coated the nearby carpet (which the drop cloth was designed to protect). What a sneaky devil that Murphy is. I thought he wanted to paint the walls, not the rest of the room.

Needless to say, I felt I should probably quit before he could play any more perfectly timed pranks on me. Hopefully he'll leave soon. If I had wanted a poo-brown music player, I would have just gotten a Zune.

Anything that can go wrong, will - at the worst possible moment

Finagle's corollary to Murphy's Law

Today I had an unexpected visitor: Mr. Murphy. It's been such a long time since he's come to visit, and he showed up just as the house looked like a disaster zone. He always does have such marvelous timing.

This morning, I decided that I would continue pressure washing the deck. It was still sticky outside from an earlier rain, but the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and it was still that perfect temperature. I got out the quasi-toxic deck cleaner, assembled the sprayer which I just discovered was in our possession, and got the washer ready to go. I started working, and was impressed by the progress I was making. Suddenly, Mr. Murphy arrived to say hello. Joy filled my heart as dark clouds moved in and rain poured from the sky by the bucketful. Thanks Murph, I really needed to freeze and be drenched.

To keep the machinery from rusting in the sudden downpour, I spent the next 15 minutes lugging stuff into the garage. After my unanticipated outdoor shower, I was eager to change into some dry clothes, which I proceeded to do. Looking out the window, I saw the shining sunbeams filtering their way through the trees as the clouds moved away. The birds, right on cue, began their songs, laughing at the practical joke Murphy had played. What a prankster he is.

It's going to be fun with him in town. Already, the church newsletter got messed up thanks to a misnamed document, font incompatibilities, computer illiterate people, and a pointless deadline. I'm excited to see what fun activities Mr. Murphy has planned for next.

Tonight I went to see Terminator: Salvation in theaters, just one week after having seen J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. The differences between the two films could not be more stark. I do not mean differences in plot or time or genre. Instead, these two films revealed a fundamental problem of effective communication, which I am coining "Story vs. Plot."

The plot of Terminator was, in my opinion, very well formed. Spoiler Alert: The behavior of Marcus, for instance, wherein he was executing Skynet's programming under the guise of free will, added great depth to the story line and caused the audience to see the events of the film on a more philosophical level, impressive for a sci-fi franchise. In fact, the entire plot was intricate in its detail, well-designed, and generally interesting. However, despite this great framework, when the credits began to roll, the entire theater was left speechless, and not in a good way. The film was completely unsatisfying. It had a great plot line and excellent special effects. Where did it go wrong?

The story. Terminator was a brilliantly executed plot that failed to tell a story.

For contrast, look at Star Trek. The overall plot was reasonably cliché for the franchise. Spoiler Alert: A vaguely scientific-sounding thing causes someone from the future to travel back in time, requiring the crew of the Enterprise to respond, saving the day just in the nick of time. Hmm, perhaps that wasn't much of a spoiler, just par for the series. Despite a modest and fairly typical plot, the film told an interesting story. Building from a basic foundation, Abrams showed deep human (and Vulcan) emotion and created a tale which would be interesting even without the multimillion dollar visual effects because he focussed on the story.

Terminator's undoing was that in the beginning, the human race, led by John Connor, was fighting the machines in an ongoing war in which the machines continually had the upper hand, whereas in the end, the human race, led by John Connor, is fighting the machines in an ongoing war in which the machines continually have the upper hand. Looking back, it seems as though the entire 2-hour film is irrelevant to the story of the Terminator universe. Despite a victory in the battle, humanity seems no better or worse off because of the movie. No story of importance was told, and so the character development and plot elements became nothing more than extraneous information.

In short, remember that to communicate well, you must tell a story which progresses from point A to point B. The plot line should only make the journey more enjoyable.

Since I first launched the website, I have been hard at work making it run better. For many of you, this tidbit of information may be the only thing in this post you care to read. While the content has been unfortunately stagnant (as in my About Me page), the behind-the-scenes scripting has undergone some major housekeeping and renovations.

Here is a sampling of the changes you probably did not notice.

• The blog section now has an RSS 2.0 feed. You can now subscribe to the blog in your RSS reader and automatically receive updates on new postings.
• Page loading has been vastly improved thanks to an updated Twitter engine. Twitter results are now cached on my server so that I no longer have to reach out and touch Twitter every time you load a page.
• The loading of blog pages should also be improved through the simplification of the code. The version of the blog which you used at launch required 19 or more database calls to render the homepage, and that number would increase with more posts. The new version requires just 4 queries.
• I have added support for new, shorter URLs. Rather than typing in http://williamflake.com/eportfolio/math_science_and_technology/, you can now get to the same page by typing http://williamflake.com/M http://williamflake.com/s/M. For Twitter users retweeting urls, you now have much more room in which to type your own thoughts.
• Finally, in the grand tradition of Apple's release notes, "Bug Fixes."

While most of these changes should not directly affect you, I hope that they will make your visits snappier and more enjoyable