I heard it will be held at Expo. It is organised by New Creation Church, and I want to go!
Oh, and I just purchased my copy of With Hearts As One. Recording quality is less than impressive honestly, I have most of the songs already, but what drew me to spend that 20+ bucks is that the live worship was simply fantastic. A recommended buy!
Australian Christian band Planetshakers was recently in Singapore last Thursday and Friday night (10-11 April), where they performed at the Max Pavilion (Singapore Expo) in an event organised together with Alpha Singapore. Also, Tim Hughes and the Worship Central band made their presence on both nights in the extraordinary worship event.
I went for the concert on Thursday, the first night, with church friends Dexter and Kenneth. Alpha Singapore managed to pay for the entire event, hence there was no entrance fee. There were simply so so many people that turned up that night even though it was a weekday, and the front half of the hall was completely filled, mostly comprising of youths and young adults.
While waiting for the event to start:
More pictures during the event taken on my crappy phone:
This is the third time Planetshakers is here, and during the concert, they performed a few new songs from their latest album, Free. I don't know how to describe the concert on Thurs... to call it a concert wouldn't be accurate, it was more of a youth service-like outreach effort. I enjoyed the time spent; the worship was phenomenal, one of the best I had this year. To be surrounded with fellow worshippers in Christ seemed as if you shared something in common even though you've never met the person standing on your left... and that similarity is our passion for God. The atmosphere of an entire congregation singing in unison and proclaiming the power of God... that's an indescribable scene and emotions just cannot be penned down. Declaring in one voice as a generation and shouting the praises of God, the whole hall was filled with song and genuine worship unto our Lord. Throughout all the songs, such as 'Beautiful Saviour', something struck me: that our God is the most beautiful thing on Earth... Now and forevermore. That evening was a time of connecting with God to give Him the glory that He deserves.
It wasn't about Planetshakers as a cool band or anything, it wasn't about the loud music or that cute lead singer or the glamour on stage, but it was all about shouting out how good God is and saying that we adore Him, through the songs we sing. In this day and age, it's so easy to listen to such Christian contemporary music and lose focus. We must remember that at the end of the day, it's not about the music, but about who we are singing for. Christian music should not be the replacement for reading the Bible or our daily devotion, but it should be something we do in our walk to further enrich our Christian lives. Hillsong United takes a clear stand that they don't want to raise up a generation who knows only the music lyrics of their songs and nothing else. Bible verses are still the most fundamental, and it is important that Christian bands stress this: that all their songs are based on the infallible word of God and nothing else.
So after a bit of sidetrack, let's get back to the concert. Planetshakers came up stage first and started off with the song 'Praise You', an upbeat jumpy track. Then there were other fast songs such as 'Majesty', 'Pick It Up', 'Free' and 'Jump Around' which literally got everyone on a physical workout as we jumped and danced.
Then the slower songs came. 'Healer' is a very powerful song singing about God the healer in our lives. We also sang 'Beautiful Saviour' which was indeed a beautiful song, followed by the new song 'I Need You', which was super nice and 'Saving Grace', both from the album 'Free'. When Planetshakers was done, Tim Hughes and the band came up next to perform 'Happy Day' from his new album 'Holding Nothing Back', together with other songs like 'Blessed Be Your Name' and Chris Tomlin's 'How Great Is Our God'. Then, to my surprise, they also performed a few Hillsong favs such as 'Mighty To Save', 'Here I Am To Worship' and 'One Way'. Finally, after a short message, Planetshakers returned to end off the evening with a song that I can't remember now... Haha :D
Lastly, it ended up with an autograph session but I left knowing that I had school the next day. All in all, a meaningful and unique worship encounter that I will never forget.
To me, it's surprising how so many people don't like Vista. I was at a bookstore last Sunday, and a quick read at the content of computer magazines showed a similar and worrying trend that claim Vista to be lousy, buggy, and a memory-hog. Many of these magazines do not do justice to the amount of effort the Vista team has put in, and definitely do not portray Vista accurately. They all claim that Vista is slow and requires expensive hardware to run well, that it is buggy and unreliable, that UAC sucks, and that it is inferior to XP.
Yes, Vista might run slower, that's true. But hey, when XP first released, wasn't that what people said about XP over Windows 2000? I mean, we can only expect each successive OS to run on more demanding hardware than before. How can a new OS, with more advanced features and UI, run better on slower hardware than it's predecessor? It doesn't make sense. Furthermore, what these magazines and articles miss out is the fact that you're trading the slower performance for more security, a better looking interface (Aero), and new features, such as Instant Search. To me, it's a fair trade-off. Vista is indeed more secure than any other version of Windows. I don't know how to put it, but it's frustrating how people simply dismiss Vista saying that it is worse than XP. Even close friends of mine are sticking with XP, and that baffles me. For me, I use Vista because it's the future of Windows. XP was the past, and it's no good clinging onto something so dated. It's high time for us to move on and adopt Vista. It's the best version of Windows yet I believe.
But why aren't people moving on? Paul Thurrott alludes XP to a comfortable but dirty old sweatshirt that you've been wearing for years. You know it's old, but yet you aren't willing to throw it away because you're too attached to it. And that's the biggest problem with Vista: they delayed it too much, in an attempt to release a polished OS, such that people get too familiar with XP and they become contented with it.
Well, now that SP1 is out, it may be time to reevaluate your stand. I've been playing around with SP1 recently, it doesn't offer significant visual improvements, but improves performance such as time taken to move files etc.
Let's move on. Vista is the future of computing, not XP.
Before I got the new iMac, I was using a HP desktop with a 15-inch LCD display. But now that the HP is no longer in use, the display has been sitting in a corner collecting dust, until today.
I should have thought of it earlier, but somehow the idea didn't hit me that I could use the old 15" display together with the iMac for an extended desktop experience, meaning, dual display.
Setting it up was easy. After messing around with some cables, this is how my computer table-top looks like:
So this is how it works. The iMac has a Mini-DVI video-out port. I borrowed my dad's DVI to VGA adapter for his MacBook, and used it to hook up the 15" display. Then, under System Preferences, I arranged the monitors such that dragging any windows out of the iMac's screen to the left would result in that window appearing on the other display.
Only a few people would realise how useful this dual display configuration is. It's like having two computers and one CPU. It is beneficial when using software such as photoshop, where I move all my toolbars on the other monitor so that there is space to work on whatever photo I'm editing. It's useful when you're checking mail and working on a document at the same time. Just shift the web browser window over to the other monitor so that the word doc can occupy the iMac screen. I can see so many reason why I could use this extended screen experience.
And I'm turning junk into good use! My only complain: placing a 15" beside a 20" is like David versus Goliath. It looks weird!
Alpha Singapore has organised a worship concert with Planetshakers and Tim Hughes, and I've got tickets for the 10th April concert! Haha, going with church friends Dex and Kenneth, it's at the Max Pavilion, EXPO! Looking forward to a wonderful time of praise and worship.
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