Most of the people who have had the largest impact in my life have done so in similar ways as my art teacher from high-school. He was a completely different kind of “teacher” than any I had experienced before. He had a formal lesson plan for the year, every year, but when a student in his class showed some level of both talent and desire to learn, instead of making us conform to the lesson plan he laid out for the year he allowed us to develop our own plan of action with some mutual advice from him and his experience in working with the educational system. Especially in 11th and 12th grades while we were preparing to go off to college and develop some form of a career. Instead of forcing us to succumb to tests and evaluations he allowed us to find what our talents would uncover by the natural progression of being surrounded by artistic inspiration and competition.

Competition was a key for me, I loved to win. I wasn’t much of a person in the athletic arena, I weighed only 110lbs from 9th grade until I was about 26 years old. But put a piece of paper in front of me, or a piece of chalk, or even a pencil and a napkin, and I will demand the attention of everyone around me by creating something out of nothing. I have always loved to do that. It actually began all the way back in 5th grade when I began drawing cartoons on the playground – the girls all wanted me to do a drawing for them – and I very quickly realized that this was a much less painful method of wooing the girls than the athletic competition happening on the jungle gym or the football or baseball fields. Don’t get me wrong I was pretty decent in most sports and played baseball, football, ran track and took Shotokan for several years. But I was never one of the best at any of those things and I always felt that God put me here to be the best at something. Not just one of those guys on the team, there was somewhere that I was supposed to be the captain, the leader, the president and something inside me would settle for nothing less. Of course after high school I have yet to become the president of anything substantial, but I am still searching!

Mr Verge’s teaching style was incredibly refreshing, we actually used to sneak out of other classes by forging notes claiming to be from Mr. Verge and go to his class to work on whatever piece we were working on at the time. How many students do you know that skip school or classes – not to leave school and get into some kind of mischief – but to go to another classroom to work on a project for college entrances and scholarship competitions? Mr. Verge created an atmosphere of comfort and freedom that didn’t exist in most other places. My father didn’t understand the value of that freedom until the end of 11th grade when I began wining competitions worth money! But he eventually came around and became a huge advocate for my career.

It took me almost 25 years to come back home and reconnect with Mr. Verge and many of the students from those days in school. Now I find out that I was only one of many many students that thrived under Mr. Verge’s unique style. Florida’s educational system will have a very large void to fill indeed after he retires from teaching!

Thank you Mr. Verge for giving all of your students over the years such a welcome place of solitude and freedom for all of us to find ourselves. We all owe you a great deal…. http://suncoastpasco.tbo.com/content/2010/may/18/190000/pe-students-frame-a-perfect-ending-for-art-teacher/

I often get asked to provide assistance in getting these kinds of things accomplished so instead of spending hours with each person that asks me for help I thought I would provide a step by step instruction manual on doing these things.

My classroom is based on using the hosting company Hostek, where I have all of my own websites hosted, WordPress which is my primary application platform of choice, and then using plug-ins to enable all kinds of social media connectivity with Twitter, FaceBook, You Tube, LinkedIn, and countless other social media tools.

Let me know how you like the class!!!!

Sincerely,
Shaun McNicholas

I helped a friend of mine develop this game application that is now available in FaceBook as well as directly from the net, the iPhone application should be out soon. Check it out and let me know what you think. It’s a very cool concept! Find the matching person from the random face image and you’ll win an iPod Nano! For real! Trust me all of us involved will make sure that the prizes are legit! Actually I’ve seen the prizes and he’s got some great stuff to give away!!!!

The first portion of the game ends tonight at 9 PM EST so get involved early. The game is much more interesting when more people get involved!!!

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=140190745992558

http://theluckiestmanintheworld.net

This CD has been more than two years in the making and is a fantastic addition to any library and one of the best new albums to enter the genre of Christian Rock and Contemporary Christian music. A fine achievement from a great friend!

Congratulations Steve! I can’t wait to be one of the first to purchase this CD from iTunes and add it to my library!

Shaun McNicholas!

Check out more about 39 Stripes at:
http://twitter.com/39stripes
http://myspace.com/39stripes
http://facebook.com/39stripes

After two years in the studio, 39 Stripes is releasing its newest CD “Beyond Broken” in September of 2010 with the title track’s music video already getting thousands of hits on YouTube. The band returns with a bigger sound and the addition of new lead vocalist Mike Wilson (American Idol). The band spent a lot of time making sure that “Beyond Broken” is their best sounding and most well written CD to date. Produced by Steve Henderlong and released by Hollar Records, 39 Stripes steps up with a faith filled recording showcasing the band at its best.

The first video below starts his conversation from February of 2006, the second video is his followup from this past February of 2010.

February 2006

February 2010

Part 1 – the first 6.5 miles – average speed 13.8 Mph – time 00:28:17
Part 2 – the remaining 5.8 miles – average speed 14.4 Mph – time 00:24:24
Total trip – 12.3 miles – average 14.1 Mph – time 00:52:41

Day 8 after work part 1

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Day 8 trip home part 2

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But I have never seen anyone with any other device that can do all of this simultaneously! And they haven’t even released the new multitasking version of the phone yet!

I was listening to high quality music from my library using a genius mix – an auto generated list of songs based on one of my favorites. Not as good as Pandora but pretty close. Through my high quality BlueTooth headphones that sound as good as wired ones.

I was riding an average of 12.4 Mph, never had to stop and while riding, without pausing my trip or my phone from tracking my trail, I didn’t even have to pause my music from playing! and I took a bunch of photographs to share what my bike trail looks like. Thanks to the iPhone and the EveryTrail app I was able to do all of these at the same time, GPS tracking, iPod music playback, Photograph my trail with the camera.

I LOVE MY PHONE! And I can’t wait to get the 4.0 version!

Trail to work Day 8

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It’s getting easier every day and my recovery time is much faster. My legs are still a little achy now 4 hours after getting off the bike but even that will stop in another week and will be replaced by a large amount of energy. It’s probably because I push myself just slightly harder every day as my endurance grows.

My appetite is beginning to grow as well so today I stocked up on wraps and lunch meats and cheese along with a good supply of fruits. So starting tomorrow my breakfast will be a whole grain cereal and a banana, then a healthy wrap for lunch (Tomato wrap) with turkey, pepperoni, havarti cheese, lettuce, onion, light mayonnaise and a dash of spices. In between I brought carrots from the farmer’s market and a fresh orange. I’ll try to eat healthy snacks in between meals like fruits and vegetables, but NO PROMISES! I do love my salty snacks! I don’t think indulging a couple of times a week is not such a big deal.

I am going to start keeping a journal of my daily diet and exercise activities along with unhealthy things so that as I replace the unhealthy with the healthy I can look back and see the changes it makes in my attitude and overall mental, physical and emotional health. For example I have a beer or two almost every day and the day I started riding I weighed in at 174 pounds. That’s almost the heaviest I’ve ever been! At 5′ 8″ most doctors would say I am healthy and average as far as the weight. But I want to be far above average personally in every aspect of my life. So the goal is a lean and muscular 155 lbs. Not a flabby 170 lbs.

Trail to work Day 6

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This trail was captured on my iPhone using GPS but I haven’t used the app in several months so it needed an update before I could start capturing my path which delayed the start of the capture by about 10 minutes and about 2 miles. My actual trip was right at about 55 minutes and the distance is actually about 12.5 miles. Today was my fourth day of riding, I started last Wednesday after work and as of today I’ve been 75 miles in four and a half work days. I didn’t ride over the weekend.

I’ll put up my results this evening after my trip home from work and we’ll see what the difference is after working all day. Of course I’m a computer programmer so it’s not like I will be physically tired from my day’s work.

Trail to work

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That’s why I like bicycling so much. It’s definitely a great way to exercise and get’s you from point A to point B in a rather timely fashion, while giving your body the healthy activity it needs. Of course when I do things I like to fully engage! So I’ve started riding my bike again to and from work. As long as rain isn’t expected for the day I’ll be riding to and from work every day, which is great because it’s just close enough to make the trip in about an hour and far enough away to get a really good workout. 12.5 miles each way, currently I am riding at one hour exactly. First day took me about an hour and twenty minutes of course. But as I ride my body remembers how to ride. So in the past three days I will have gone 62.5 miles at an average of about 12 mph!

This is approximately my path to and from – I’ll be posting some of my results as I capture them.

This was last summer – but my office is not far from the end of the path.
Day 7 Upper Tampa Trail at EveryTrail

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