JesseSutherland

Living My Faith Transparently February 5, 2010

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 July 17, 2009

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 July 7, 2009

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 June 23, 2009

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 May 22, 2009

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 March 16, 2009

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.

::Sigh:: I Joined Twitter March 3, 2009

I know I said this would probably never happen, but the unthinkable has happened. I joined Twitter after the persistance of two friends. (cough, cough).

Truthfully, I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do with it, but I guess every once in awhile I’ll pop on and post some profound 140 character message. You’d better friend me quick if you don’t want to miss out on any of that profundity. In addition, I’ll get my Lifestream to update with it as well.

In other news, I’ve got two new web sites launching soon. Stay tuned.

Contentedness February 8, 2009

One of the things I have often noticed, and often been frustrated with, is my natural discontent in almost every situation. You may have noticed it yourself in your life, whatever you seem to be doing, you think it could be better somehow. Strange, but we’re discontented creatures, never quite happy with the situation we’re in.

I notice it especially when I’m traveling. When I’m away from home I wish I could just rest at home and enjoy some down-time. Then, when I finally get home, I get bored quickly and wish I was out doing something fun. How ridiculous is that? Shouldn’t I just be able to enjoy the situation I’m in and not always wish it were something else?

Yes… I should.

I was thinking about what Paul says in Philippians 4:12, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation…”

Then I read Proverbs 19:23 the other day: ” The fear of the LORD leads to life: Then one rests content, untouched by trouble.”

Finally, 1 Timothy 6:6 says “But godliness with contentment is great gain.”

And I’m only quoting a few verses… Obviously, the Bible has a lot to say about being content. Oftentimes it relates to money and posessions, but I think the issue goes much deeper. We feel like we deserve more, like there’s always something better out there that we deserve. Why is that?

Truthfully, I don’t know how to solve this dilemma of the human condition, and I’m trying to learn from the verses above how to experience “godliness with contentment.” But its not always easy.

This weekend, I noticed a discontented attitude settling in, which was rediculous because I was up at a cabin with my family and friends enjoying the beautiful outdoors! So I worked hard to ask God to help me be content, and enjoy the situation that I was in, right there, right then. And you know what? He answered my prayer. It was an amazing weekend. Thanks Lord.

New Website Launched January 29, 2009

Yesterday I had the pleasure of launching Phoenix Endeavors’ new website. It feels good to launch it after starting on the project about eight months ago! The company is an SAP software consulting firm here in Minneapolis who came to me for a complete website, wanting to be able to update it themselves after it was completed.

I’m pretty happy with how the design turned out. It’s clean and simple, with a lot of white space. The design has some nice dimension, where the photo feels like its coming off of the page. I like how the menu is a bit unique from other drop down menu’s, and it makes use of some cool transparency.

It was hard to nail down exactly what type of photography should be used, I was really trying to steer them away from the typical “business people shaking hands in a conference room” sort of imagery, as is common on a lot of consulting websites.

They told me that they wanted to be perceived as experts at what they did while working in partnership with the companies that hire them. At some point along the way I stumbled on the analogy of fighter pilots, or Blue Angel type of guys. They’re experts, and they have to coordinate everything they do as partners.

Overall, it was a fun project to work on and I’m proud to add it to my portfolio. Let me know what you think about it. Like it, love it, hate it?