I made this for Nora’s 1st Birthday, but it took a little while to post it. We love our fun little bundle of energy.
Author: Jesse
Twas the Eve of Thanksgiving
Twas the eve of Thanksgiving
And all through the night
On the road we did go
It caused quite a fright.
While others were dreaming
Of turkey and stuffing
Except for this poem
We did absolutely nothing.
It began with the traffic
Continued with the snow
It ended with rainfall
To mother’s house we did go.
We found ourselves blessed
As the wind fiercely blowed
Many unfortunate souls
Off the unplowed road.
We were greeted in Neenah
With a hug and a kiss
From our family to yours:
Thanksgiving bliss!
Superior Hiking Trail
This past weekend we backpacked the Superior Hiking Trail along the North Shore of Minnesota. Our small group dubbed last summer’s trip the “Death March”, so this year we set out with more wisdom and a more realistic amount of miles to be hiked. We were joined by our great friends Ross and Megan Jahnke. With pouring rain at the beginning of the trail Friday morning, we wondered about our sanity but decided to venture on anyway. Thankfully, the rain stopped in the early afternoon. It remained dry the rest of the weekend except the extreme muddiness of the trail (which in my clumsiness I fell in twice). We hiked from Temperance River State Park to Lutsen (a total of 17.5 miles with 3 different mountain summit hikes). We climbed Britton Peak, Carlton Peak, Leveaux Mountain, Oberg Mountain, Moose Mountain, and Mystery Mountain. Our starting point was 600 feet and we reached a height of 1600 feet.
Those are the facts of the trip. The things you can’t see in the pictures are the silly songs we created to distract our bodies from the pain, the extreme stink of three days without a shower, and the sense of pride and accomplishment you feel knowing you traveled so many miles with a 25-pound (or more) pack on your back. The scenery was breath-taking and the company was a blast, but it is always good to be home…clean…eating real food…in a comfortable bed…with no bugs buzzing around your head…
Click on a photo and scroll through…enjoy (and join us next time)!
Starting a Blog
Andrea and I have had the idea to start a blog for awhile now, but it took until a few weeks ago when we were on a vacation down to South Carolina to decide that we were going to make it happen. It was at that time that Andrea had the idea for the name “Sutherland Road” which encapsulates our married adventures together.
We’re planning to talk about our crazy adventures that we have together on our roadtrips, our camping adventures, and in the daily events of life. We’re not really sure anyone is interested in hearing about all of that, but that never stopped anyone from blogging before, has it?
We’re both perfectionists in one way or another, so I think blogging will be hard for us, but we’re going to give it a go. If you’ve got a comment, please leave it, as I’m sure it would encourage us a lot! Thanks!
Living My Faith Transparently
I was reading in Psalms this morning and came across Psalm 40:8-10,
I desire to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart.”I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly;
I do not seal my lips, as you know, O LORD.I do not hide your righteousness in my heart;
I speak of your faithfulness and salvation.
I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.
The Lord used it to get me thinking about living my faith more transparently. David didn’t hide his faith. He lived it out by speaking of God’s faithfulness and salvation.
Recently at work one of our clients from the Salvation Army stopped by to tell us a story about how a commercial that we had helped to create had been used by God to bring a man who had been addicted to drugs out of his sin and into repentance and Jesus’ grace. Wow! I couldn’t help but smile as she excitedly told myself and my coworkers this not really knowing or caring what any of us believed. Her faith was attractive.
For another example, I’ve been impressed with following Pastor Mark Driscoll on Twitter. I love the way he represents his life and faith through a mere 140 characters. He tells about how proud he is of his kids, how he’s encouraged in his faith, and motivates people to serve others.
That’s what I desire in my life. Living out my faith in real, bold, attractive manner. I know its not exactly a huge revelation or new information, but I feel like it’s what God is teaching me right now. Hopefully I’ll be able to follow others examples as I seek to model this in my life. Do you have any examples of people living their faith out transparently, please share!
Superior Hiking Trail Photos
My wife and I took a backpacking trip to the north woods of Minnesota last weekend. We came away with some gorgeous Lake views, and sore backs. I took some photos along the way and posted the more artistic ones in the photography section. If you’re my friend on Facebook you can see some more of them with Andrea and I.
“Open Sourcing” my CMS Idea
About a year ago I decided that I didn’t like any of the content management options out there, and I wanted to create my own. As a designer I was looking for a system where I could handle more complicated content without getting my hands too dirty in programming.
Not being a programmer myself I just started concepting around how I wanted it to work and function, and eventually came up with an initial idea. It ended up taking inspiration from both Frog and WordPress. I showed it to a few programmer buddies, but when we considered the whole gambit of competing CMS’s, we decided there wasn’t a market, nor a need for another one.
The idea has sat dormant for awhile now, and as I was digging around cleaning up my web server tonight I ran into it again and thought I’d share it with the world.
I gave it an initial name, Flext. You can check out some screens from the beginnings of Flext CMS if you want.
Here’s the rundown of what some of the terminology means, I’ll admit that some of it got a little confusing:
Pages: Groupings of content in a hierarchical order.
Components: A way to define what kinds/types of content the CMS should ask for. Including what it should be called, how it should be entered, and how it should be formatted.
Filters: A way to look through multiple pages and pull certain types of content into a separate page.
Blocks: Groupings of content separated from the normal hierarchy of pages.
Code: Or “Code Blocks” would be PHP code that could be added anywhere in the layout.
Templates: CSS and XHTML layouts that define how pages will look to the viewers of the website.
Regions: Areas that are defined within templates to store blocks or page content.
Modules: Additional bits of programming that can add specific functionality to the CMS.
Feel free to diss it, ask any questions, steal the idea, whatever. Its now open sourced. =)
Movies with a View
Just saw Pixar’s new film “UP” this evening and enjoyed it immensely. Some of my favorite movies are those that help you zoom out and gain some perspective on your life. Movies like these help you to realize that the trivial stuff you worry about most of your day probably doesn’t matter anyway.
It was starkly saddening to see how quickly the main character went from a young boy, vibrant and excited, to a young man, in love with his wife, to a lonely old stodgy man.
I don’t think I appreciate the time I have with my wife the way that I should. I can’t believe its already been three years, I already wonder if I have really made the most of our time together? Why am I always waiting for the sun to shine, or when we have more money, or the “perfect moment”?
I’m thankful that God uses moments like these, stories like these, to capture our attention and remind us that He is Good, that he has blessed us exceedingly, and that we have a finite amount of time on this earth.
Lord, thank you for this reminder. Would you help me to live a life that reflects yours to the people around me, help me to appreciate my wife for the beautiful woman that she is.
Some New Work
It’s been awhile since I got around to posting some of the projects I’ve been working on over the last year at Morsekode. Here are three of my favorite projects:
To kick things off I posted the SAP E-Learning Elevator, which was an interactive demo to give people an overview of what SAP does. I also posted the Audio-Technica packaging project that has been a long time in coming, but might be out on store shelves soon? Finally, I posted the Heroic Productions website, which was for an audio and lighting production company here in Minneapolis.
I’d love to know what you guys think, leave me a comment and let me know!
My new website for designers
Ever since I started messing around with designing this website, JesseSutherland.com in WordPress, I’ve been enjoying playing around with and learning about all sorts of different content management systems, a.k.a. CMS’s. (which is basically just a dorky way to saying “a program that creates websites on the web”) I’ve also had the pleasure of working with several while at my job at Morsekode.
The tricky thing is, each one is totally different, and each of them have different strengths and weaknesses. Its hard to tell if one is going to work well for a website or not until you’ve really spent a decent amount of time learning about it.
Awhile ago I decided it would be a great idea to create a website for designers like myself who want to learn about these CMS’s themselves. I also wanted to make this into a website that could display advertising and potentially create a bit of income for myself, since it is such a niche market.
What was born out of this idea was the aptly named CMS Design Resource. After about a year of building this site on and off, I am finally launching it to the public. It’s not the first in its market, but I think it is unique in the market the way it sorts the systems, and allows users to leave reviews about them.
Check it out, and let me know if you have any feedback about the site.
