KZIONradio

I’m trying out a new look and color scheme for KZION. This page is what I have so far. Let me know what you think. This is the only page that is completed so clicking on any of the links will lead you to an existing KZION page. Also, the Playing Now iFrame has not been adjusted for the new look.

I finally found a spell check program similar to IESpell that checks spelling in form fields when using Firefox. Sheesh, I was really missing my IESpell.

I thought I had a bad week. Pawel Banaszek’s house burned down, he was mugged and left on the train tracks for dead, was run over by the train and paralyzed, and to top it all off, Pawel has to pay the state railway service because of delays caused by his being run over by the train.

Sometimes life sucks

Microsoft said that it will keep the new version of Microsoft’s IE Web browser available only as part of the recently released Windows XP operating system, Service Pack 2. In other words, unless you run XP you can not get any future security or performance upgrades to IE. One more reason I will never go back to using IE.

Tab Content Script via Dynamic Drive

2-col tableless layout

HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, Articles and News

CSS Resources

Ten CSS tricks you may not know via evolt.org

Ten Questions for John Gallant via the Web Standards Group

Music Everywhere – It’s all about the algorithm, but which one will win?

Last Sunday we had an unusual sacrament meeting. In testimony style, the bishop invited members of the congregation to come up and briefly tell what their favorite hymn was and why. The congragation would then sing two versus of the hymn. It was wonderful and everyone I talked to left feeling spiritually uplifted. I don’t think I’ve ever attended a sacrament meeting like that one.

This entry is my 500th posting to my weblog. I started this blog back in June of 2003 to write about my trip to Nauvoo to promote the Best New LDS Musicians CD with Rich Bischoff and Stephanie Smith. I never intended to pursue it beyond the trip to Nauvoo but I enjoyed it so much I decided to continue. So, 500 entries later I’m still here writing mostly about inconsequential stuff.

Here’s an update since I haven’t written much this past week.

My second oldest son who is attending Weber State University called last week from work and said that he was having severe chest pains with pain shooting down his arm. He suffers from Tachycardia which causes his heart to beat at an accelerated speed and can give symptoms of a heart attack, but Josh has never had the pain down his arm which scared us. We told him to get to the emergency room ASAP so he did. He did not have a heart attack but was told he needs to get in to see a cardiologist as soon as he can. We felt so helpless being 400 miles away and not being able to be there with him.

Our youngest son James who has had the migraine headache for almost a year now went in for several new tests last week and finally his doctor found something. His hormones are out of whack and the neurologist thinks that is the cause of the headache. We have an appointment with an endocrinologist on October 1st. So we might actually be seeing some light for the poor kid. We’re hoping it’s not anything serious that just requires some hormonal therapy.

We went to Cedar City on Thursday for James’ football game. In the third quarter James’ best friend was hit hard and he began having a seizure. We were sitting next to the boys parents and I was watching through my binoculars describing what was happening not knowing which boy it was on the ground. I knew it wasn’t James. Once I saw it was the boy of the parents we were sitting next to I encouraged them to get over to their son as it looked pretty serious. At first word back from the parents it looked like the boy may have broken his neck. It took the ambulance about 20 minutes to get to the field and during the wait I saw one of the most remarkable things. I saw 60 Dixie High football players gather together in a big huddle, kneeling with one boy in the center as voice, and they prayed together for their teammate. I knew right then that the injured player was going to be fine.

Shelly went with the parents to the hospital and I stayed behind to finish out the game. James was just pacing up and down the sidelines and many of the players were coming up to him to console him, it was very touching to see how these players lift each other up. After the disappointing loss to the Cedar Redmen I met James and his other best friend and I could see that they were both teary eyed but I knew in my heart that their best friend was going to be fine. There was no way Heavenly Father was going to let the faith of 60 football players go in vain.

I know a person who trys to explain away miracles and I don’t think he believes that God works daily in our lives even though this person is an active member of the church. I have a very simple knowledge of the gospel. In fact my motto is found in Alma 37:6, “Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.” I see the hand of God in all things.

We hustled over to the emergency room and learned that the boy was finishing up some x-rays and that he was responsive and able to move his limbs. After about an hour the boys mom came to the waiting room with a great big smile and thumbs up. The injured player was fine. He was hit in the head so hard that it caused a mild seizure but he was fine. Thirty minutes later the boy was released and tears of joy filled his best friends eyes. Later as we all sat around a table at Denny’s laughing and enjoying each other I couldn’t get the picture of those 60 football players huddled together in prayer out of my mind. Was the miracle the recovery of the injured player or that 60 teenage boys would have the faith to come together and pray for their fellow teammate?

Tables, Semantics, and CSS

Cracking Under the Pressure? It’s Just the Opposite, for Some

Overcoming Writer’s Block – Strategies for dealing with writers block as it relates to Web content.

In a fitting manner, after posting the previous entry I received an eMail from my stats provider to cease using their services or upgrade to a paying account.

We would really like to continue to provide you stats about your visitors. But unfortunately as stated several times on the website. We can only afford to track websites getting under 250,000 pageloads a month for free. Your website is outside this model with more than 9,000 pageloads a day! Please upgrade your account or remove the code immediately.

I wrote an entry last night which never got published, thankfully. I was announcing that KZION was going to an all subscription radio station and that I was tired of people failing to support me yet at the same time complaining about some aspect of the service.

Of the 500+ listeners who registered since August 1st only a handful opted for a Level 2 membership. Is $3.95 a month too much to ask for a service that is used daily or at least several times per week. Looking at preliminary survey results, 58.97% of the respondents listen to KZION daily and 38.46% listen a couple times per week.

I understand that some people cannot afford it but 97% of the people who registered? I can’t continue to provide a service that costs me money and an extraordinary amount of my time.

After sleeping on it I have decided not to convert KZION to a subscription only radio station for now, but that time is not far off unless more people who use it, support it.

How to give and receive criticism.

If you’re teaching a firearms safety class it can be quite embarrassing when you accidentally shoot yourself in the leg while teaching the class. I think you’ll have a hard time getting another gig too.

I received another eMail today that really touched me so I thought I would share.

I am with the U.S. Army at Camp Anaconda in the Sunni Triangle area of Northern Iraq. It’s a tough working environment and we endure daily mortar attacks, but I want you to know how much listening to KZION over the Internet lifts my spirits and keeps me going. We are proud to be here and grateful for the opportunity to serve, but its great knowing you support us back home. Thank you and God bless…

I haven’t reported the numbers for currently released LDS themed movies in awhile, so here we go.

Best Two Years, The Halestorm Entertainment $992,170 in 192 days

Saints and Soldiers Excel Entertainment $489,316 in 24 days

Napoleon Dynamite Fox Searchlight $22,380,194 in 80 days. Yeah, you’re not reading that wrong. Twenty two MILLION dollars in 80 days!! The budget was only $400,000. There are a couple new millionaires on the BYU campus.

Pride and Prejudice Excel Entertainment $372,752 in 206 days.

Work and the Story, The Off-Hollywood $16,137 in 248 days.

Home Teachers, The $202,268 in 94 days

Book of Mormon Movie $1,581,093 in 213 days.

I just released the 2004 annual KZION listener survey. I will post the results here as well as comments made in the survey. I hope to get a good sample set this year. Last year I had the large KZION eMail list to rely on but this year no mailing list. If you’re registered then you’re invited to take the survey. Look for the link in the members menu.

A very basic web style guide.

For about the past year now I have been running my own dedicated server. That means there is no one to go to if the server fails, there are no experts to upgrade system software or make configuration changes. Luckily my server uses Webhost Manager to manage most aspects of running a server.

I’ve had a message in WHM saying that I was running an insecure version of Apache and that I needed to upgrade. I hate upgrading Apache, WHM or Cpanel because it seems like everytime I do there is a problem. This upgrade was no exception. I upgraded Apache and everything seemed to go according to plan except after the upgrade all my PHP pages were downloading and not executing. I checked the httpd.conf file and everything was set properly. Meanwhile my pages were open to anyone who wanted to see them including sensitive server and database details. After a half hour of searching Google for answers I decided to recompile Apache and sure enough everything was back to normal.

I then checked the server time and it was slow by 2 minutes. I tried syncing it through WHM and it was still 2 minutes off. I searched for a good hour on how to get the server time corrected and finally found the answer. I’ll post it here in case anyone else needs it.

First SSH into your server and then su – root

ntpdate ntp1.cs.wisc.edu

That fixed my time difference.

I then had to change all my database passwords in case they had become comprimised. I think everything is back to normal now.

August was a productive month for KZION Radio. The new website was launched, six albums were added to the playlist, over 400 listeners registered on the website, four new countries were added to the list of countries with listeners, and August was a record breaking month for the number of listeners and time spent listening.

August 1st saw the launch of the new website. I don’t know exactly how many hours were spent developing it but it was well over 400 hours. A new registration system was put into place, voting and commenting was designed to create a more controlled environment, and many new features were added to provide a user friendly website for listener interaction.

New albums added to the playlist in August included Songs For Young Women, Volumes 1 & 2 produced by Greg Hansen which includes KZION favorites Jenny Jordan Frogley and Jessie Clark. Barry Hansen’s debut CD My Soul Hungered was added as well as A Cappella Spotlight, Especially For Dance, and the Charly Soundtrack.

Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Uruguay, and Finland were added to the list of countries which have residents who listen to KZION, bringing the total reach of KZION to 36 countries.

August brought many new listeners to KZION. The total simultaneous listeners record was broken several times during the month. The record is now set at 238 simultaneous listeners. There’s no doubt that if there was enough capacity, KZION would of seen 240-250 simultaneous listeners, but many times the servers were at capacity for several hours at a time keeping additional listeners from connecting.

As predicted, Total Performances exceeeded one million for the month of August with 1,157,685 performances. Aggregated Tuning Hours reached 78,403. Almost 11,000 songs played during the month with 2,354 of those being unique. Requested songs was at an all-time high of 2,283.

A new sponsorship program was put into place in hopes of driving additional revenue to keep up with listener demand. The servers fill up almost every weekday but I cannot add additional capacity until more revenue starts to flow in. I hate not being able to grow KZION because of a lack of resources, but that’s the reality of Internet radio.

September begins KZION’s 5th year of broadcasting on the Internet. It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this for four years. I’m even more passionate about what I do then I was four years ago. There have been times when I needed to get away from KZION but my desire to help LDS music be heard by anyone who wants to listen has never diminished. My goal has always been to provide a service which allows people from all over the world to have easy access to LDS value based music.

It’s going to be exciting to see what the next four years has in store for KZION LDS Internet Radio.