Day: May 27, 2011

 

i’m pretty pumped. today i accomplished a first for me … i caught two muskies in one day. i’m not really a muskie fisherman. i would rather fish for smallmouth and therefore that is what i usually do.

i think smallmouth bass are the king of freshwater fish. they fight wonderfully, are very dramatic with all their jumps, are incredibly aggressive attacking things that there is no way they could actually eat, and are plentiful. i can go out on a good day and catch 50-100 14” smallies. that’s a wonderful day. since smallmouth are so awesome i don’t usually put much effort into catching muskies.

don’t get me wrong muskies are awesome too. they put up a fight unlike much else. it’s just that they are pretty rare and when i go out i want to catch something. there is a reason they call muskies the fish of 10,000 casts. i know plenty of people who have fished in wisconsin all their lives and haven’t caught a muskie. the only reason i catch the two i normally catch a year (i’ve caught two every year we’ve been in wisconsin) is because the point area is crammed full of muskie and my friend andy lickel is an amazing guide (take a look at the muskie andy caught sunday and compare my little guys to that monster). i usually catch one at the beginning of the season and another at the end. that’s the way it has gone for three years. that is until today.

today i caught two muskies while fishing for crappie. neither one of the was huge (both around 30ish) but i still caught two. it was a pretty good day.

btw, here’s the first smallie of 2011. he wasn’t very big and he fought almost as good as the two muskies. i love smallmouth bass.

infocus just posted the results from their “worst powerpoint slide” competition (these slides were actually used and not false creations). the slides are awesome.

i am constantly amazed at some of the presentations i see. sometimes these are in churches and other times they are in lectures (community and classroom). some of the presentations are horrendous. why should i listen to you when i can read your information off the screen faster than you can talk about it? why use presentation slides that actually distract from the message you are trying to convey.

TED talks and death by powerpoint changed the way i use presentation software. they both use presentation software amazingly well by keeping it very simple. if you watch a TED talk video you will normally find that their presentations slides are VERY SIMPLE. the speaker’s slides are usually just images or small phrases.

here are the simple design rules from “death by powerpoint” that i try to follow

• one point per slide
• few matching colors
• very few fonts
• photos (not clip art)

i generally use my slides for the small segments of scripture, single words, and LOTS of imagery. i believe most of the threads would tell you that they remember the points of the message better by the images i use than they do anything else.

the irony is that i have actually seen someone do an absolutely terrible presentation on how to use powerpoint effectively in sermons. it was an awful presentation that demonstrated the exact opposite of what the presenter was trying to convey.