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Make Long Distance Phone Calls 100% Free

November 22, 2011 in Culture, Family, iPhone, People, Rogers, Technology with 2 Comments

From time to time I stumble across something on the internet that is just to good and to useful not to share, this is one of those things.

My family all live on the east coast.. New Brunswick and PEI, and during this time of the year, my parents live in the Dominican Republic, so, phone bills are always a pain in the butt. Yes, I know, you’re probably saying “it’s 2011, who uses the phone anymore”.. well sometimes you don’t want to sit in front of a computer and have a chat, sometimes you want to walk around with a phone and get some house work done while you catch up on all the goings on back home.

Last night I was told about freephoneline.ca . This is a site that has a number of services, but one of the services they have is, they give you a 100% free local number, which you can set up to forward to another number. I found this to be really neat, because I can set up a second number and have it forwarded to my cellphone, which then could give me a business line, and a personal line.. share the business number with work people, personal with family and friends, and now you don’t need to carry around 2 cellphones. Now there are a number of other services out there that allow you to have a second number coming to your phone, if you have a smart phone, for example, you could use Line2.. but line 2 costs about $20/month… freephoneline is 100% free.

So how do you make free long distance calls, just because you get a free number.. well, the title may be a little misleading, because its not free calls to anyone at any time.. but, what we have done is pick the few long distance people who we make most of our calls to, and now we can call all of them for free. Heres how…

Set up an account at freephoneline.ca and select a number that is local to you.. then go into the account settings and enable forwarding.. it asks you what number to forward the number to.. you put in the number of the long distance person you want to call… hit save, and NOW when you call the local number you selected, it will automatically forward to the long distance number you set up.

In short, it looks like this ->

My account with a local number for ME -> forwards to my parents number in the Dominican Republic -> I make a local call for me, it rings on their end.. and there are no fees…

They can also set up an account with a number that is local for them, and it forwards to my number.. and when they call their local number, it’ll forward to me!

It’s really quite brilliant.. and I think its another step in the right direction.. I’m a firm believer that phone companies are ripping us off like crazy, and anything I can do (that’s legal) that “sticks it to them” I try to do, because they are charging me an arm and a leg and profitting 100000000% on everything they charge you.

Blue Like Jazz… The Movie?

September 13, 2011 in Culture, Ministry with 0 Comments

Saw this preview the other day on Facebook.. As I was watching it, the thing that came to mind was.. “this movie looks really.. Real”… As in it just looks like a realistic topic.. It doesn’t look like a cheesy God film, it just looks like life.. A guy who struggle with his faith in God when he goes to university… How much more real can you get than that?

They don’t have any kind of a release date yet, as it’s still in production, but I will be looking out for this one.. Think it’s going to be well worth the watch.. And I can’t even remember anything about the book…

Canadian’s Can Access Netflix USA

August 14, 2011 in Culture, featured, iPhone, Mac, Movies, Technology with 16 Comments

This is something very cool that I quite literally stumbled on by accident.  If you have a Netflix Canada account (I mean really, it’s $8.. even if their movies suck, what I’m about to tell you is going to make it worth it!).. Anyway, as I was saying, if you have a Netflix Canada account, you can access the whole Netflix USA library.. and it’s not hard to do at all.

Simply install a VPN on your computer or iOS device (I use HotSpot Shield on my MacBook.. it’s free!!) All you do is turn on your VPN, then go to netflix.ca and sign in as you usually would with your Canadian login information.  Netflix reads your IP address, and since your VPN is spoofing a US address, the netflix site thinks you are in USA, and allows you to access the US Netflix system.

I’ve done this with my computer, and I also tried it tonight with my iPhone, and it works great. I now have a whole new library of GOOD movies available to me!

If you need details for getting Hotspot Shield to work on your iPhone, as they’ve stopped supporting it, please click here

Try it out, and let me know if it works for you down in the comments!

NOTE:  I thought this went without saying.. but you HAVE TO HAVE A NETFLIX CANADA ACCOUNT… you can’t just watch the movies for free, you need a Canada account in order for this to work.

 

Repost: What Will We Remember

August 8, 2011 in Culture, Faith, Family, God, Ministry, Music, Music Monday, Worship with 0 Comments

This is a repost of a post I did back in 2006. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, and now that I’ve got more people actively reading my blog, thought I might get more input from you guys.

I had a very interesting conversation today with a elder from my church. He was talking to me about our Sunday Evening youth worship services. For those reading who do not know about Sunday night, it is a youth oriented service, because the churches around here don’t always offer a youth oriented service where the young people feel comfortable to worship, so we have started a service that plays music they like and messages they can relate to (of course the Gospel never changes, but sometimes we need to look at how we present it so that it can be presented in a culturally relevant way).

Now you need to understand that this guy is not a stick in the mud at all, he loves the youth and loves our services.

The elder came to our latest service, which was on April 9th I think was the date. He made the usual comment that I hear from older folks in the community “it’s a bit loud for me, but the youth love it, so keep it up.” But that is not what stuck out to me.

We started talking about worship music, and about how it’s certainly different today that it was 50 years ago (heck even 15 years ago) and he started talking about songs like Amazing Grace, and while talking about it, we started talking about really old folks, you know, the ones who are loosing their minds. We both have noticed the same thing, you can go into an old folks home, where people are gone totally senile and can’t remember anything, but if you pick up a guitar (or sing it aceppella) and sing a song like Amazing Grace, for some reason these people who can’t even remember their kids names, or why they are in this place, always seem to be able to sing along.

After we had this conversation, he left me with another thought to ponder. While there are some amazing songs coming out now a days by some great worship leaders such as Matt Redman or Tim Hughes, are their any songs being written now that we sing, that in 50, 60 , 70 years when we can’t remember to chew or how to tie our shoes, we will remember?

That really stuck out to me, because right now, I’m not so sure that I can think of a song as influential as Amazing Grace, or The Old Rugged Cross. While I LOVE absolutely LOVE worship music of today, and generally don’t enjoy hymns (I just don’t, get off my back) I can’t really say that anything is so memorable that in the state of senile-ness (I know its not a word) I would remember it.

Comment please, I want to hear your thoughts, or maybe a song suggestion from this generation that you believe will stand the test of time….. and sanity.

The Old Spice Youth Pastor

August 8, 2011 in Culture, Faith, God, Ministry, Youth, Youth Unlimited with 0 Comments

This is kinda old news.. but I’ve been super busy and haven’t really been posting much lately.. so I thought it’d be a good idea to post it now.  I’ve actually got a list of topics on my iPhone that I plan on blogging about soon.. it’s just finding the time to do it!

I love this, and I think it’s great.  The part that really sticks out to me (aside from the creativity) is the idea that we as youth workers get caught up with the idea that our kids want us to look and act a certain way, when the reality is, our kids just want us to be us, not someone else.

A Sign of the Times

May 11, 2011 in Culture with 0 Comments

It’s always interesting to see how things change in the world as culture changes.

Things like Twitter and FaceBook have completely changed how we interact with people in our day to day lives, and they don’t just impact young people, the world as a whole is a different place because of FaceBook.

Today I was reading an article in the Globe and Mail about the game Scrabble, and some new words that have been added to the official scrabble dictionary.

The Collins Official Scrabble Words book has long offered the final word on disputes over whether a player’s move is valid or not. Now, new additions to the list will make it a whole lot easier to score points in the popular board game.

Staff at the Glasgow-based Collins Dictionaries have introduced nearly 3,000 new words to the list, including street slang such as “thang,” or thing, “innit,” short for isn’t it, and “blingy,” used to describe flashy jewellery, according to the website of parent company HarperCollins. The addition of the slang term “grrl,” or “grrrl,” also known as a female with attitude, may come as a welcome relief at times when players run out of vowels.

You can read the entire article HERE … it’s an interesting read that outlines some of the other interesting words that have been added over the years.

What new slang words would you like to see added to the official scrabble dictionary?? Leave a comment below with your suggestions!

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