<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[AdamParish.org]]></title><description><![CDATA[Articles]]></description><link>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/</link><copyright><![CDATA[Copyright AdamParish.org]]></copyright><generator>sNews CMS</generator><item><title><![CDATA[The Rule of 72 and More Simple Financial Ideas]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Today I finished a financial class called Surviving Financial Meltdown - Confident Decisions in an Uncertain World.  The primary author of the class, Ron Blue, is a very good teacher.  He's explanations are calm, thoughtful, funny and financially sound.  Ron has a "keep it simple" approach, and supports his ideas with verses from the Bible and his personal experiences.  

  Here is Ron's basic approach to financial management:    
1) Think long-term with goals and investing  
2) Spend less than you earn  
3) Maintain liquidity (or emergency savings)  
4) Minimize the use of debt  

  In addition to these four basic principles, I also learned about the simple rule of 72.  I don't know how I never stumbled upon this rule before.  The Rule of 72 is a quick way to estimate the time required to double your investment.  For example if you $1,000 dollars earning a 6% return.  You divide 72 by 6, which means it would take 12 years for your $1000 dollars to become $2000 dollars.  

  As a result of this class, I'm working to streamline the amount of financial accounts down to one or two financial institutions.  I created a budget using Mint.com, and I have a goal to do some estate planning as soon as possible.  


]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:49:37 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/business/the-rule-of-72-and-more-simple-financial-ideas/</link><guid>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/business/the-rule-of-72-and-more-simple-financial-ideas/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The .LY in Link Shrinking (A Closer Look at Bit.ly and Ow.ly)]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Hundreds of link shortening services are available today, but I believe some research and consideration is a must before embracing two of the more popular services. Let me explain. Bit.ly and ow.ly are two link shrinking services that are trending toward greater acceptance.  A NY Times article from this summer estimated that bit.ly accounted for 46 percent of all links shortened.  

  Bit.ly’s recent success is a derivative of Twitter’s integration with bit.ly as their default link shortening service. Unlike the hundreds of other services, bit.ly has focused on reliability and basic analytics. Tinyurl, the original link shrinker, never embraced value-added services and had some issues with reliability, which most likely explains why Twitter shifted from Tinyurl to bit.ly.  Also, bit.ly has attracted several well-recognized investors to solidify their dominance in the link shrinking space.  

  So what’s the concern with bit.ly or ow.ly?  Well the concern has very little to do with features, management, business plans or competition.  In fact it is as simple as politics.  To clarify, it’s the politics of one country, Libya.  Bit.ly and ow.ly built their companies around a top-level domain (TLD) controlled by Libya thus the .ly in their names.  

  I’m not even a novice on international politics, but the encyclopedia Britannica defines the Libyan form of government as authoritarian.  Wikipedia uses the term dictatorship to describe the country’s government.  In a recent NPR interview, Libya was portrayed as a country that is making positive changes with the international community, but that the country’s leadership is unpredictable.  More positively, in January of this year after three decades, the US Government re-established an official US Embassy in Libya.  

  To summarize, bit.ly and ow.ly to a lesser extent are becoming pervasive throughout social media.  Bit.ly in particular seems to be a solid link shrinker with value added solutions.  However, both bit.ly and ow.ly, no matter how solid their business plans, operate at the benevolence of a foreign government that controls their top-level domain name - .ly.  While the Libyan government has recently improved it’s international standing, like any autonomous state, they could modify their license of the .ly domain and potentially re-direct an enormous amount of Internet traffic.  

  I’m not an alarmist, but it seems prudent to seed indexed content in the most reliable manner.  This means taking the time to reduce force majeure variables especially if an alternative option exists or could be easily created as is the cases for link shrinking.  
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:43:00 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/technology/the-ly-in-link-shrinking-a-closer-look-at-bitly-and-owly/</link><guid>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/technology/the-ly-in-link-shrinking-a-closer-look-at-bitly-and-owly/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Winston Churchill on Health Care]]></title><description><![CDATA[    "The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available." 
    
  Winston Churchill  
  
March 2, 1944  

  Winston Churchill was very much a conservative member of the British Tory Party, but he nevertheless seems to have supported some kind of national health care system for the British people.  
  
  Source:     Churchhill by Himself:  The Definitive Collection of Quotations    
 ]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:26:58 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/home/winston-churchill-on-health-care/</link><guid>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/home/winston-churchill-on-health-care/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Moved and  Shaken]]></title><description><![CDATA[  I had the opportunity to attend an event this evening and John Quinones of ABC News was the keynote speaker.  John's latest news show "What Would You Do?" is an ethical test for the common American.  John's show has had an impact on us. Fans of the show helped a sometimes homeless woman,   Linda Hamilton  , get back on her feet after America witnessed her willingness to help a man when others simply passed over him.  

  John Quinones has an interesting story and his journalism is "shedding light on the dark corners of the world," as he so eloquently stated.
  
  In addition to his well delivered speech and interesting work, I wrote this blog post to capture a quote John recounted from a phone call he had with the late news anchor Peter Jennings.  During the call Jennings mentored a frustrated and young Quinones by saying, "It's not the movers and shakers we need to hear from. It's the moved and shaken." I want to remember that.  ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2009 23:30:48 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/home/the-moved-and-shaken/</link><guid>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/home/the-moved-and-shaken/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Bible Verse Tweet]]></title><description><![CDATA[    Earlier this week I built a quick tool that automatically updates a Twitter account with a daily Bible verse from ESV.org (@  TodaysVerse  ).  The English Standard Version Bible has a really nice API that allows anyone to pull passages directly from their site.  Likewise, Twitter has a very popular API that allows developers to build programs and scripts that can update a status and much more.  

  Since I'm a fan of open source solutions, I'm sharing this PHP script as an example of updating Twitter using PHP-Twitter with the Twitter API.  Enjoy.  

    Step 1:    Download   PHP-Twitter   - This is a single class file that is "installed" by copying the file 'class.twitter.php' to your web server.  

    Step 2:   Copy the code below to a file that is in the same directory as the 'class.twitter.php' file.  

    Step 3:   Read the documentation in the script below as an example of how to update your Twitter account with data from a source API or database.  

    Step 4:   Add the PHP command line code   #!/usr/local/bin/php.cli)   to the very first line of your PHP script and then schedule the job to run nightly in CRON.  

  
//This script will select a verse from the ESV Bible API
//and then post that verse on Twitter
//Author: @AdamParish

//Script requires the PHP-Twitter Class file
//http://code.google.com/p/php-twitter/
include_once('class.twitter.php');

//Create new instance of the twitter function
$t = new twitter();
$t-> username='TwitterAccount';          
$t-> password='TwitterPassword';

//Obtain a Bible Verse from the ESV Bible API
$key = "IP";
$format = "plain-text";
//$passage = urlencode("Psalm 46:3");
$options = "include-passage-references=true";
$options .= "&include-footnotes=false";
$options .= "&include-headings=false";
$options .= "&include-subheadings=false";
$options .= "&include-first-verse-numbers=false";
$options .= "&include-verse-numbers=false";
$options .= "&include-passage-horizontal-lines=false";
$options .= "&include-heading-horizontal-lines=false";
$options .= "&include-short-copyright=false";
//$url = "http://www.esvapi.org/v2/rest/passageQuery?key=$key&output-  format=$format&passage=$passage&$options";
$url = "http://www.esvapi.org/v2/rest/dailyVerse?  key=$key&output-format=$format&$options";
$ch = curl_init($url); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

//Updating Twitter with this verse
$t-> update($response);

//Output repsonse to screen if ran manually
print $response;
  
  
Just let me know if you have any questions or need help with this script.]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:38:21 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/open-source/bible-verse-tweet/</link><guid>http://www.adamparish.org/blog/open-source/bible-verse-tweet/</guid></item></channel></rss>