How Your iPhone Can Turn Any Article Into A Podcast

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. How about admitting it might be a problem? Step 0.5 maybe? Let's do that.

I might have a problem. I binge on podcasts every week. I just counted and I subscribe to 24 podcasts. Most release content once a week. A couple release shows 3 times a week. One has a new show every day.

For what ever reason, I've noticed I rather listen to content than read it. It's ironic because I really like writing here.

Even though I might listen to 30 shows a week, I may only read two or three online articles. This is unfortunate. There is a lot of wisdom and good information in the digitally printed word.

Then I found a trick with the iPhone that turns any article into listenable content. It's awesome.

The secret is to have Siri read you the article. Siri's voice may not be the most soothing, but it's a great way to digest longform post while washing the dishes, mowing the lawn or taking a walk. Plus Siri's misinterpretations of the written word are more humorous than annoying.

Here's how to work this magic.

Step 1: Click "Settings"

Can you handle that?

Step 2: Click "General"

The icon is a gear icon.

Step 3: Click "Accessibility"

Step 4: Click "Speech"

Step 5: Turn "Speak Screen" On

Siri is now willing to read you the internet. With this feature you can open up any webpage in your mobile Safari browser and have Siri read it to you everything on that page.

We'll get into how you get Siri to do that but first, you may have noticed there is problem. Not everything on the screen is something you want read. There are ads and comments and all sorts of internet clutter on a page. We only want Siri to read the content we want to hear. Here's how to work around that.

Step 6: Pick An Article To Read

This means opening up Safari and pick what ever article or post you want to hear.

When the page loads, you'll see four lines in the top left corner of the next to the URL. That's Apples web reader for the mobile web. It takes out all the internet clutter on a page and only gives you the content you came for.

Step 7: Click The Reader Icon

When you click the reader icon, you'll get a clean looking page resembling a Kindle Reader. It will look like this:

It's nice and beautiful. Only the words you want. Mostly.

Step 8: The Two-Fingered Swipe

Take two fingers-they can be next to each other or apart-and place them on the phone above the screen. With both fingers, swipe down onto the screen.

Wait a second and you'll see this screen and Siri will start reading to you in signature fractured voice.

This control panel allows you to stop, skip ahead, move back speed up and slow down.

It also has a sweet minimize feature that makes the control panel look like this.

Once it's minimized you can use the other functions on your iPhone and still have Siri read the article.

Good luck and get ready to consume the entire internet through your ears.

-Jed

PS. I haven't written on this in years. I usually write here about worship music and church. If you're interested in that sort of thing then you'll like my blog because you can use Siri to read you what I wrote.

What is This!?!

Asians have super powers

Tone Journeys: The New Pedalboard

A pedalboard to a guitar player is like a utility belt to Batman. I am now on my journey of reorganizing my “utility belt.”

Some of you know that my tools have outgrown my toolbox. My pedalboard is too small. For those who have seen my rig you have seen that I often hook up one or two more pedals next to the board. It really is sad to see.

The solution: a bigger pedalboard.

My friend Jason found a pedalboard online at Rondo Music It’s not as high quality as my old Pedeltrain, but it was also half as much.

So now I get to go on the exciting tone journey of organizing my chain of effects. When I used to be confined by space I am now able to have the order I have always dreamed about having.

And here it is:

Cry Baby Wah>CS-3>Tube Screamer>Twin Tube>Micro Amp (Boost)>VP Jr.> A Phaser I’m ashamed of>Carbon Copy (Analog Delay)>DL-4

I’ve always wanted to have the Volume Pedal after the distortions and compressions because they create so much hum in the signal.

In the future I would like to replace the DL-4 with a TREX Replica.


Then replace the Tube Screamer with something like the Phantom Drive.


This is a journey and I’m having a whole lot of fun on the way.

Star Trek Fans Are Disapointed With New Movie

Their Big Fat Romanian Wedding: Sunday

Choosing the Axe

Sunday morning arrived after a refreshing sleep at the Enea’s. Daniel (the Romanian groomsmen whose name was mispronounced during the reception entrance) volunteered to pick me up to drive Agape church and drive me to the airport once the service was done. What a good man.

We arrived at 8:15am to see Utu, a hard-working, detailed oriented, worship-ministry-trooper with a big smile, working on the stage set up. Since I didn’t have any gear with me, he had arranged for me to use his guitar rig.

Utu was the ultimate accommodator. Not only did I use his gear but he brought his two electric guitars for me to choose, a Tele-custom and a Parkwood Hybrid. As I was experimenting with the guitars another gentlemen (one of the vocalist) came in with a mid-80s Fender Strat. And a little later another person (I believe the worship leader) came in with a faded Gibson SG for me to use. Utu then apologized as the man who owned the Les Paul was out of town.

I was like a kid in a candy store…or just me in a guitar store.

I ended up using the Parkwood because Utu’s gear was EQed and set up for that guitar, so it sounded amazing.

Introduction to the Team or An Offer Only Jed Could Refuse

As Utu was showing me how to use his rig he would periodically introduce me to the other team members as they showed up. One of the team members was a vocalist was named Denisah (although the Denisah previously mentioned in the other blogs was a worship leader at Agape this was not her; she was on her way to Hawaii to meet up with her family on vacation; we felt sorry for her).

Realizing that I would have remembered this name Utu told me that half of the girls were named Denisah. At that point a male vocalist I had not met yet yelled from the middle of the auditorium yelled “And half of them are single.”

This was sort of like when a mother makes a joke (or a hint in a jokes clothing) about how if I ever wanted to date/court/pursue/propose-to their daughter she (the mother) wouldn’t mind (whether or not the daughter would mind was never established), but never before has man in front of so many people made me an offer (on behalf of so many people) who was not directly related to or responsible for, made me such an offer. First, I was impressed that this man had the ability to detect such and eligible and strapping young bachelor in the room without even meeting him (yes, I’m arrogant); second, I felt sorry for any single women named Denisah who was present.

A lesser man may have cracked under either the pressure or the temptation of the offer (for those single men who are into brunettes, I suggest you get yourself invited to a Romanian wedding); however, I am an expert on being and staying a bachelor, all of the single women named Denisah are still just that: single.

Playing by Ear

The practice started at 8:30am. The music was contemporary worship music with basic chord changes that we all know and love. It was fortunate for me that it wasn’t anything more complicated than I had encountered before.

Half of the songs were in Romanian. For a musician this is a particular challenge because when you are looking at a chord chart the chords you are suppose to play are written above the words they are suppose to be played with. When the words are in a language you don’t understand, it makes the chord chart useful for finding the key of the song and that’s about it. Every bit of ear training and “faking it” trick that I knew was used on these songs.

It worked. After one of the songs the worship leader turned around and said “you must be half Romanian; you know all these songs.” Because I wanted to seem better than I really was I didn’t deny it. I also wondered if being declared half Romanian made me eligible to date/court/pursue/propose-to any single Romanian women who were not named Denisah.

The Service

Agape Church has a half hour of open prayer starting at 9:00am before every service (practice was a refreshing thirty minutes long). After an edifying time of prayer, worship began. I was a little clumsy getting on stage because it was my first time at Agape and I did not know when to get up.

The worship was very much like any worship you might find in any contemporary American church…except half the songs were in Romanian. And like any other worship team, the members, with the exception of a hand raised, stood still…except me.

I must say, I was pretty mellow. I was in a church and a culture I didn’t know very well so I just played it safe acted very mellow.

When I saw Andrew after their short three day honeymoon, he said that according to his parents I wasn’t as mellow as I thought; however, Andrew’s younger brother, Joey (Joey has visited Andrew in Iowa and has seen me lead worship at Des Moines Fellowship), confirmed that I was very calm that particular Sunday.

A Lost Opportunity

The rest of the story is rather bland because it doesn’t involve any of my Romanian friends. We had to leave early to catch my flight so Daniel drove me to the airport about fifteen minutes before the service was over. When I got there I found out the there was trouble with the connecting flight to Denver and I would have to spend the night in a hotel in Portland.

This was great news. It meant I had another opportunity to spend some time with my newly made Romanian friends. The plan was to get settled in the hotel take a quick nap, get a bite to eat then make the call the latest contacts put into my cell phone.

To this day I wish I regret not setting an alarm.

I woke up at about 8:30pm. Because it was late and I knew people had to wake up for work the next day I decided not to call anyone and instead spent the night with Gregory House and Horatio Caine.

The sleep at the hotel was anything but comfortable.

The Trip Home

I left for Chicago the next day and from there I took a “puddle-jumper” to Des Moines. I’m proud to say I wasn’t even close to puking.

Upon arriving home, I watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It was just like that but without the Windex.

Final Thoughts

I have to say how honored I am to have been apart of that wedding. Even though there were ten people on each side Andrew and Oana were not short of people to ask to fill that spot. All though I felt at times like a foreigner I never felt unwelcomed. It was truly a privilege for me to have an inside look into their families, churches and culture as well as being apart of their special day.

Their Big Fat Romanian Wedding: Saturday Afternoon

Getting Away in the Getaway Car

After the wedding ceremony was done there were way too many people in a small lobby area congratulating the couple. Joel, Helena, Ashlynn and I decided to take the CTS (that was the car Joel was driving around) to the reception.

We wondered if the couple wanted to travel in a convoy, but we did not have any chance of reaching them through the crowd. We figured with the relaxed feeling of the wedding we could just leave.

We were discussing whether or not Joel needed to get something to eat (he said he was past the point of hunger and because there was food at the reception he would be fine) when Joel got a call from someone in the wedding party asking about his whereabouts. It turned out they did want to travel in a convoy. If we had known…we probably would have left anyway.

Allow Me This Indulgence

Since we were ahead of everyone and had some time to kill we did what every suburban-twenty-something-cool-people do: we went to Starbucks. This is really only not worthy news because Andrew works at not just any Starbucks, but one of the best Starbucks I have ever been to.

I had already been to a couple of Starbucks in Portland by this time and I am sorry to say they didn’t live up to the Andrew Enea Standards. Every time I would order a tall mocha. Every time it was wrong. Once I think they mislabeled it and I ended up with a hazelnut mocha thing. Very disappointing.

This particular Starbucks got it right. This doesn’t seem like a really big thing (you are probably asking yourself “Why is Jed wasting my time with this?”), but at the time it was. Here I was in a city I didn’t know with people I had just met in a culture where I was very much a foreigner. To drink that familiar tall mocha was like having a little bit of heaven shining down on me.

Thank you for humoring me. On with the reception.

The Next Best Thing to a Convoy

We couldn’t travel together in a triumphant demonstration of class that is a Cadillac Convoy so we decided to do the next best thing: take a picture of the wedding party with all the Cadillacs in a row.

This was difficult because everyone arrived at different times. There was the question of how long can we be parked in the fire lane. And other questions like: Where is the camera? Where are the drivers? Everyone is waiting for us, should we just go in? Where is the camera? Do we really have to do this? It is really cold; can we wait inside while you get everyone together? Everyone went inside so can we just park then? Aren’t we missing a car?

The bride and bridesmaids waited in the lobby while the best man tried to get the cars that did park back in the line. In the time it took for the drivers to walk back to their cars, it was decided that the guests had been waiting too long in the reception area for the wedding party’s entrance and were getting hungry.

When the missing drivers arrived with their once-parked cars, the whole venture had been (wisely) abandoned and they arrived just in time to hear that they had to park their cars again and get in line for the grand entrance. I was smiling the whole time.

My Grand Entrance

The wedding party was in a line behind the doors to the dining area. A gentleman I didn’t know would announce over the intercom the names of couples-first, the bridesmaid then the groomsmen-and the doors would open and the couple would walk in to an applauding audience. All of this was, of course, done in Romanian.

When it was time for Ashlynn and me to enter the announcer read her name than paused,then gave an awkward “…uh…Yedida.” I could not help but appreciate the irony having my name butchered in a room full of people with names I couldn’t pronounce. From that point on the bride referred to me as Yedididah.

I later learned that he actually pronounced it correctly in Romanian.

I also learned that he mispronounced the name of the Romanian groomsman in front of me.

Time to Eat You Girl

The reception was held at the Embassy Suites in a large conference-like room with seating for just under 500 people. All but three tables were taken. The food (mostly Italian provided by the hotel with a couple of Romanian dishes) was served buffet style in the large hallways outside of the dining area.

One of the groomsmen was (and still is) named Utu (pronounced ootsoo). He was one of the groomsmen/drivers and also the worship coordinator for Agape church who Andrew called when he asked me to play guitar on Sunday.

While in line for the buffet, Utu introduced me to the bridesmaid he walked down with, Denisah. This was Denise who introduced herself to me earlier during the photo shoot. After explaining to Utu that we had already met I began picking on Denise for not introducing me with her real name. She told me that her birth certificate stated, in fact, Denise and that Romanian tradition dictated that female names end in ‘uh.’

I then realized that not only was I dressed in pink, but my name, in Romanian, is a girl’s name. I’m currently seeking counseling for a recently developed gender complex.

Greatest Wedding Tradition Ever

The dining finished and there were some warm words spoken about how wonderful the bride and groom were, who is the real best man, and the meaning of Andrew's word “tsshaw.” At this point I had made two observations: 1. No one brought presents 2. Some of the groomsmen were placing envelopes on the tables.

As I was wandering around looking like I didn’t know what was going on, Andrew asked me if I wanted to be useful. He then handed me a plush white box about the size of a square basketball (use your imagination) with a slit in the top. I was to go around collecting envelopes from each table.

I was happy to do this; however, I feel someone who spoke a bit of Romanian would have been better suited for the mission. I would go around collecting checks (if you hadn’t figured out what was going on that was the clue), and there were a lot of them, then an older gentleman, usually a grandparent, would start talking to me in Romanian.

I would then give him a blank stare.

At some point an older lady, usually his wife would say something to him in Romanian, then the gentleman would ask me in English “Are you Romanian?” This happened about three times at least.

The final installment will be coming soon.

As Promised

Something Different

Prepare to have your whole outlook of the world turned up-side-down.


My next video will be of a pig flying.

Their Big Fat Romanian Wedding: Saturday Morning

A Killer Look

Wedding day.

Now I had tried on the tux the day before to make sure it fit, which it did, but when I put it on the day of…looking at it was kind of like visually getting the wind knocked out of you.

The tuxes were brown and pink. Yes, brown and pink. And although I did not give Andrew much crap that weekend, I will never let him forget the humiliation he put me, and nine other men, through. Andrew did not wear anything like the groomsmen did.

You would think with such a feminine color available that the bridesmaids might have worn some,too. Nope. They just had cute, little, normal-looking,dark brown dresses. The bridesmaids all looked great and the groomsmen all looked hideous.

The bride herself made the comment, “Oh look at your shoes; they look like little turds.” Thanks, Andrew.

Photos

The photos for the bride and groom were actually taken Wednesday for the sake of practicality, so the photos that were taken the day of were focused on the wedding party. When you have ten people standing up on each side this is a trick and largely resulted in the Best Man doing a lot of frantic yelling, thankfully, in English.

There was a bit of down time during this photo shoot (by “a bit” I mean “a lot”) so as I was sitting down waiting to be called upon one of the bridesmaids came over and introduced herself. The first words out of her mouth were “Are you American or Romanian?” If only more introductions started that way. She then introduced herself to me as Denise.

Unless you are one of my sisters hoping beyond hopes this is some sign of me falling in love this isn’t very interesting; however, it is important to an event that happened on Sunday.

Romanian Time

One of the groomsmen was Joel (the Kansas license white guy). I had met him over Thanksgiving when he and his wife visited Andrew and Oana. Because we had met before we tended to gravitate toward each other.

The wedding party left the photo shoot a little later than desired. Joel and I, along with the bridesmaids we were walking down with, Helena (Romanian) and Ashlynn (Hawaiian), arrived at the church at 9:52am, eight minutes before the wedding was supposed to start. We were also the only ones among the wedding party who arrived before the wedding was supposed to start.

9:56am Joel, who is a tank commander in the Army and used to everything being fifteen minutes early, was in a difficult position. He didn’t eat breakfast and at this point was starving. Like a good soldier, he did not deviate from course.

10:09am We then learned something about Romanians: they operate on different time paradigm than Americans. Everything is about 15-20 minutes behind “American time” which Americans usually just call real time. 15 minutes after we were supposed to start guests were still showing up and no sense of urgency to get things started was detectable. The wedding started at 10:24am. We would have had plenty of time to grab something to eat.

And They're Off

We were warned that a Romanian wedding could last 2 ½ hours. The wedding starts with us walking down (all ten couples) and everyone standing for Oana who looked as beautiful as a bride should. Then one of the pastors started with the welcome--in Romanian.

At some point he had the congregation sit down. Fortunately for all of us in the wedding party that meant us too. In fact, even the bride and groom got to sit down in antique chairs which I think were brought over from Romania. Everyone got to sit except for any individual who was speaking at the time. Perhaps this is to encourage short sermons.

A young lady got up on stage and started speaking--in Romanian. Then she started speaking in English. I couldn’t believe it. A flicker of hope ran through me. Then it diminished. It was Shakespeare. All I could tell is that it was some sonnet about love, and how strong love was and how much they loved each other, I think.

Then a song…in Romanian. I don’t know what it was about but it seemed epic.

Then Justin leaned over and asked me if I would like him to translate. I accepted. I was so thankful that he did it. It made the ceremony for me. The first message likened the signs God gives us to street signs and he used three streets sign, Stop, One Way and Yield, as points for Andrew and Oana. It was about forty-five minutes long.

Then two more songs, one in Romanian and one in English.

Another message was given about loving God by loving people and for the bride and groom to love each other. This one was about forty-five minutes long.

After that the pastor who gave the welcome came up and gave them some last words of advice before Andrew and Oana gave their vows to one another. After this both Andrew and Oana kneeled facing each other while two pastors laid hands on their heads and prayed over them. I don’t remember if it was in English or Romanian but I do remember there being a sense of real urgency in their prayers. It was a beautiful scene.

Then they stood up, were pronounced man and wife, and the pastor said, “Andrew, I do not think it is a scene; but rather very appropriate for you to kiss your bride.”

Everyone cheered. I should note that they did not cheer as loudly as they do in most American weddings I have been to or have been a part of. I think it was because the ceremony was two hours long.

Apparently, in some Romanian denominations, it is inappropriate for a husband and wife to kiss in public thus the words spoken by the pastor. I am happy to report that Andrew and Oana were quite inappropriate for the rest of the day.