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When I find something particularly awesome on the web I like to share it with you. Also includes news about my website.

The Revenge of Lionel Worthington

Lionel Worthington is back and better than ever in the fourth installment of Campus Safari. My roommate Zack reprised his role as the awareness avenger. This time he’s advocating alcohol safety. Once again the short film was directed by Bryan Zhang.

Almost everyone else who had a hand in making this film is a friend of mine. Rachel plays the startled woman enduring Lionel’s lesson. Clint is her on-screen and real-life boyfriend. Patrick returns as the man in charge of cinematography.

I was hoping we hadn’t seen the last of Campus Safari. Only three episodes were produced for the Breathe Easy Initiative (plus one special edition film). I’m now expecting many more.

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Guest Authors Coming Soon

I will be spending the next several days in Middle-of-Nowhere, Kentucky taking a much-needed personal retreat. I’ve been told I won’t have phone signal, which should mean the 3G on my phone will be equally useless. This is actually a good thing, as I’m trying to get away from civilization so I can write, read, and invigorate my soul.

At first I figured I would put my blog on hiatus. But I realized I had an opportunity to try something new. Over the next week and a half you’ll see three posts appear on my blog written by guest authors. I wrote a post as a guest author for Churchm.ag a couple years ago and had a great time doing it. All this year I’ve been working at expanding the scope of what this blog is all about, even adding new types of content such as my podcast. I think having guest authors write for my blog is a great new addition, one that I will probably incorporate regularly in 2012.

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Spiritual Generations – Sara deLeon

Watch on Vimeo: Generations – Sara

Bryan Zhang has created his third video for the Generations series, which highlights college students who have been impacted by the discipleship of a student or staff in The Navigators. In this video Sara deLeon, a senior at FSU, shares how she was influenced by the discipleship of Lauren Paxton.

Ten Years of Interruptions

Watch on ESPN: The Big Finish (October 24, 2011)

ESPN’s sports debate show Pardon the Interruption first aired on Oct 22, 2001. It’s been one of my favorite shows ever since. I don’t have cable in my home anymore, but I still keep up with the show through its podcast. Yesterday was their first show since the ten-year anniversary. The video above shows the celebration at the end of the show.

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You’re going to have to get in the WABAC machine for this one. Each spring all the campus ministries at FSU come together for an event called Rez Week (short for Resurrection Week) just before or just after Easter. In 2004 the FSU Navigators worship team led worship at one of the Rez Week corporate meetings. Those songs were recorded by the Wesley Foundation (where Rez Week was held in ’04) and two of those songs were made available online. I saved them to my computer and forgot about them until I stumbled across the files last night. I have to admit, I was pretty excited by the discovery.

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His + Hers by The Hawk in Paris

His + Hers by The Hawk in ParisI want to share a music recommendation with you. Recently Noisetrade.com gave away an EP called His + Hers by a band called The Hawk in Paris. I downloaded it and think it’s great. The band is an amalgam of talent, featuring Dan Haseltine (lead vocalist of Jars of Clay), Jeremy Bose, and Matt Bronleewe. The style is a blend of electronica and acoustic sounds. Lyrically the songs are love laments, each melancholy, calling to mind the revealing, awkward, and even dark moments experienced as a result of unrequited or rejected affection. The words are oddly yet satisfyingly counterbalanced by the songs’ catchy melodies.

This is a seven-track EP. A full-length album will be released in the spring of next year.

I recommend you head over to Noisetrade and download a three-track preview of His + Hers today. The entire EP is available on iTunes and AmazonMP3. You can also like The Hawk in Paris on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

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No New Podcast Episode this Week

As you might have noticed (emphasis on might) I did not post a new podcast episode yesterday. This is the first time since I started podcasting back in May that I’ve missed a week, which if you’d allow me to congratulate myself I think is a rather impressive accomplishment. Yesterday I had a lot of work to do at all three of my jobs. One of my new tenants moved in, I attended part of a planning meeting and also a pool party with the FSU Navigators, and my job at The Marketing Institute was as busy as ever. Plus my new roommate moved in and I wanted to help him get situated with whatever remaining time I had.

I invite you to listen to a past episode. My favorite one so far is episode ten, entitled The Healing Process.

UPDATE: No new podcast on the 22nd or the 29th. Same old story: too busy. But next Monday is Memorial Day and I promise I will have a new episode that day.

A New Way to Introduce Myself

Personal Page

I really dig this new page I whipped up. It’s on a subdomain of my website: whois.jaledwith.com. I intend to use it as a way to introduce myself to people via the web. If I ever get around to having some calling cards printed I intend to include this page’s address on those cards (or possibly a short domain that points to this page).

Even though my blog is my primary web property it’s not exactly a great way to find out who I am and what I’m all about in a hurry. The first content you see on my blog is whatever I’ve been writing recently. Yeah, the About Me page is just a click away, but even that page is about me in relation to the blog. This is much more general. Plus, I think this new page is a lot more striking than my intentionally minimalistic blog.

I made this page using The Personal Page, a great template developed by Naz Hamid. This is the first time in a while that I’ve made a website without using WordPress. I’m pretty sure the first person I saw using this template was Chris Bowler. The photo is by Bryan Zhang. I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of this shot, using it on my new Nav prayer card and several places on the web.

Let me know what you think of my new personal page.

Engagement Safari

Watch on Vimeo: Safari Engagement

Lionel Worthington, star of the Campus Safari videos, was part of his most important project yet last week. This time he was playing a role in a real-life engagement story. It was a classic bait-and-switch. Sara, the actress who played Annie in the second Campus Safari video, was asked to rush out to a park in Tallahassee to shoot another video. This time she was to play an adult and would need to be dressed up for the part. Shaun, the man who is now her fiancé, was there waiting for her.

To really sell the scheme Bryan, the director, sent Sara a fake script. He and Zack were at the park shooting this little intro, I presume in order to keep her truly unaware until the moment she saw Shaun. Well done, men. And again, congratulations to Shaun and Sara!

In which Bryan is Awkward

Awkward BryanNow that I own BryanZhang.com I’ve decided to put it to good use. Well, calling this use “good” might be a bit of a stretch.

For whatever reason, there seem to be a lot of awkward photos of Bryan floating around the web. My buddy Patrick suggested I start a website featuring a collection of these images. So I created a new Tumblr and started The Many Awkward Faces of Bryan (creating the site took all of about 10 minutes). Each post asks the visitor to provide their own photo caption. I refuse to take sole responsibility for this nonsense, so I’ve authorized several people to be contributors. We’re also taking submissions from the public.

From a geek perspective, I think the best part of this little website is that it’s on a subdomain. Meaning, if and when Bryan chooses to start using BryanZhang.com for his own purposes we could keep this site active without it interfering with his real website (though I’d password protect it and rename it so he’d actually be taken seriously as a professional). Or, you know, I could just trash the whole thing if he wants.

You can get notification of new posts by email, RSS, or Twitter via @AwkwardBryan. (This is the other part the geek in me enjoys. The creation of this Twitter account makes the name of Bryan’s actual Twitter account — @realbryanzhang — make more sense.)

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