You can grab version 3.0 here.

A few days ago, John posted a video explaining what the song is all about. It’s worth watching.

Watching this group of people play together is such a treat; the lineup is heavy on talent, including the likes of Andrew Osenga, Jill Phillips, Andy Gullahorn, Ben Shive, Pierce Pettis, and multi-instrumentalist Gabe Scott.  All in one room.  All creating something beautiful together.

Suffice to say, this was one of the highlights of my December.

Anyway, a while back I ran across a video someone had compiled for the Behold the Lamb of God performance at Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, KY.  It’s really well put together and gives a good preview of what it is like to attend one of these concerts.  Take a look at the video below (be sure to click “HQ” to view it in high quality!) and prepare to block out an evening or two this coming December to go watch them play.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A62FE2925410EF7F&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

If you don’t already own it, you can purchase Behold the Lamb of God in the store over at The Rabbit Room.  It’s one of my favorite albums, and I could listen to it all year long.

(Yeah, I know it’s August, but I was unable to find an embeddable version of this video before now.  It’s still worth watching.  )

Watch the video; there’s a reason why Hammock if one of my favorite bands.

The song comes from Fitzsimmons’ latest record, The Sparrow and The Crow, which is excellent.  I like the video, too. If you like what you hear, consider picking up the cd or buying it online from Amazon or on iTunes.

Given how easy it is to post a message on Twitter and have it be broadcast almost instantly to one’s followers, Twitter becomes a medium of content delivery that is both faster than e-mail and wider reaching than an instant message conversation. Numerous people have taken advantage of the power of Twitter; Barack Obama announced his running-mate over Twitter, for one, and thousands of people followed and identified with the daily goings-on of the Mars Phoenix Rover via an employee at JPL posting on its behalf. Twitter has been used to humanize large corporations, give a heads-up to deal-seekers, and reiterate a company’s commitment to being interactive with its users. Even news organizations have taken to twitter, from new start-ups to well established members of traditional media.

This way Twitter is being used in this last instance is both promising and potentially scary. Here’s why.

It’s wonderful to receive news as it happens. Twitter allows for news to be relayed faster than traditional media outlets are able to report. For example, a few weeks ago I heard about a plane crash on Twitter five to ten minutes before it hit the news. Twitter allow the “person on the ground” to be heard by those around the world in record time.

This is a great, great tool for citizen journalism. The problems manifest when you tradeoff speed for reliability. It’s easy for rumors and misinformation to be spread around the internet, anyway, and by providing the means for anyone to become a reporter, the standards of journalism and reporting that traditional news outlets are held to are not enforced. The pressure to “get it out first” sure doesn’t help, either. 

Last week, I received an Amber Alert via Twitter.  While Twitter is a good medium to transmit Amber Alerts, this one turned out to be a hoax.  Just yesterday, my friend Mark made this tweet:

trappermark Twitter news conflict: @cnnbrk telling me 9 dead in Turkish Air crash. At same time, @nytimes says just 20 hurt.

So not all reporting can be trusted, that’s a given.  As long as people fact-check and confirm the things they hear, there’s no problem with being presented with conflicting information.  Unfortunately, my experience tells me that most people do take what they hear at face value.  Maybe regular users of the internet are different, I don’t know.  Being able to quickly sort out fact from fiction is essential to using the web effectively as a research tool.  As the web extends deeper into every facet of our daily lives, this skill becomes more and more important in shaping how we see the world around us.

I say, bring on the citizen journalism.  Let’s just make sure we do it (and read it) responsibly.

There’s a funny short film parody put out by CollegeHumor.com called The Matrix Runs on Windows, and it features none other than my friend Winston Noel as Neo.  I went to both high school and college at the University of Virginia with Winston; after graduating, he moved up to New York City to pursue a career in acting.  I’d say he’s on his way up.

Congratulations, Winston!

Brock found it via a post on Gizmodo, where they wrote

The crew at CollegeHumor have outdone themselves with their latest short, The Matrix Runs on Windows. The concept is pretty self-explanatory: the movie The Matrix if the construct was run on Windows XP. It’s incredible that content shot for the web is reaching the quality of the movies that it spoofs. Seriously, how good does this look?

Pretty cool.

Check out the video and let me know your thoughts on Mark and the ministry of Mars Hill Church in the comments below.  I think it’s pretty cool, personally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oyHtsU5z9U