Darian Hickman

A few things I've learned at Bethel.

2011-05-31T00:57:00.000-05:00

After being here for a whole two months I realized it was time log everything I learned about while soaking in the Bethel community. Each of these could probably be a book. But I wanted to at least make them available online.

Bethel has ties to Heroes of the Nation, a pro-microenterprise orphanage in Kenya.
You need to worship God in the deepest part of your valley, the dark moments of pain, loss, confusion. You will not get to give God that gift when you are in Heaven. -Bill Johnson in the civic center in redding.
David was really bad at confronting his own children and family. He overreacted to how he felt confronted by his spiritual authority. You don’t make good, Godly decisions by reacting to evil. You make them by pursuing God.
The constitution of your community is more important than the fervency of your prayers. Matt 18:15. - Lou Engle during the OneThing conference.
We must have air supremacy over the Enemy through extended fasting. - Lou Engle
The highest currency in spiritual trade is DNA. That’s why sex, masturbation, blood covenants, mass homicide matter, Jesus death on the cross all matter because they involve DNA. - Ian Clayton
Worship - Ministry to the Lord vs ministry to the people. God responds to sincere worship. Jack Hayford.
Bill Johnson | 5 Apri 2011 - Joy will change you. Same as teaching on worship God in darkness.
More fruit comes from abiding in his pleasure. The only thing you can be for the rest of your life is you. Crystal | 7 April | 2011
God is not Santa Claus. He isnt Scrooge either.
Abide in the rest of the Holy Spirit. not sure the source sometime in April.
Healthy Marriage takes rational wise life in public, and a crazy illogical love in private. | 8 April 2011
Some think life with God is suffering with pockets of joy. The modern understanding is improving that life is joy with pockets of disaster. Prime Example Job: Prior to his testing he lived filled with prosperity. And then after his trial he experienced even more prosperity.
Battle for Significance - you don’t become significant by pursuing significance. You become significant by pursuing God.
Celebrate what’s right with the World. National Geographic photographer documentary. | April 12 2011
Dan Farley = Interpretive Principle. Cultural relativity - when do we obey scripture vs say it was for that time. Like women in church leadership and gays marrying.
Without faith it is impossible to please God, without faith it is impossible to reach your Destiny.
Andy Mason | Dream Culture
Ian Clayton | We have mislearned some things through Greek pedagogy. We need to relearn things thru experience not just head knowledge
Cambodian neighborhood in La | Innerchange organization might have some good connections for LA
Lead | Erica Greeves at Campus Awakening at UCLA
Kris Valloton | talking about identity | God has a dream and puts a man in it. We need to relinquish regret of our design. We learn from Moses that sometimes when we think we are ready for the mission we aren’t and sometimes when you don’t think you’re ready; you are.
The way we treat each other is the best professor of our faith. In the context of relationships.
Personal Revelation: Who am I to complain how long my destiny is taking to manifest. Moses had to spend 40 years guiding the tribe of Israel. If I’m planning on taking millions out of poverty then who am I to complain about taking 5 years already. Dreams come true.
Faith brings an answer. Enduring faith character and an answer. Delayed answers to prayer are gaining compound interest.
Lead: Carl Richardson is a great revival pastor here at Bethel.
Epiphany: I can live my dream life at a local scale. I can enjoy my anything scales to destiny. Just enjoy acting, presenting to family foreigners, teaching a small group. Scale later.
Epiphany: Accomplishments cannot be a substitute for Joy of the Lord.
Lead: connect with Jason Day he’s really connected to theatre community.
Lead: website Jumo like kickstarter.
Lead: decide.com
Patricia King | know what level of creative maturity you are and grow from there.
Lead: Brene Brown Ted Talk on vulnerability.
Ref: Madeleine L’Engle | Walking on Water
Ref: themoth.com
Thankfulness is key to living in the rest that Hebrews promises.
Epiphany: God I receive the destiny of rest. I will work hard out of rest.
God bring on the celebrity anointing.
Bill Johnson | Longevity | Ending badly is absoluttely unnecessary. Increased favor positions us to serve more efficiently, more effectively, not destroy us. | If you don’t live by the praised of men then you won’t die by the criticisms of men. Insecurity reveals a false security.
Epiphany: How do expose myself to lots of positive black swans? Shoot a lot of silly movies and the catch on Youtube.
Lead: Danny Silk has a great well research book on relationships| Great Communition | Loving on Purpose | Define the relationship.

Plane Crash Testimony

2011-04-07T03:26:00.001-05:00

I stumbled upon this great testimony of somebody who was given a near death chance to receive a second chance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcOvWGuQTow

Bethel is even cooler than expected

2011-04-07T02:57:00.000-05:00

Within 90 minutes of landing in Redding, I learned of Bethel students engaged in business solutions to extreme poverty.
Monday I heard a powerful teaching from Bill Johnson on how life on Earth offers us the only chance to worship God in the midst of our pain, suffering, loss, and confusion. When we are in heaven we won't have the chance to give God that gift. Bill's teaching reaffirmed this ongoing theme that suffering matters. Suffering creeps me out but I can not deny that suffering somehow leads to intimacy with Christ.

Monday night gave me a few a hours to meet a great house church where blue collar types mingled with Bethel alum. Prophecy and healing flowed amidst their faith and love. God gave me a chance to pray for healing for one of the guys. This tested my faith when his knee actually got a little worse in the first couple of minutes of prayer. That hurt my pride. Fortunately during the second bout of prayer his knee healed completely. Very powerful test of my faith at that time.

Wednesday, Chris Vallotin shared out of 2 Samuel how David confronted his enemies well on the battlefield but let his Kingdom decay with injustice when family members and close military companions sinned grievously. I can see that. Confronting people we care about hurts so much more than killing outright enemies. In the context of Saul (David's spiritual father) chronic abuse of his power to confront close family David's weakness in confrontation makes sense. David reacted in the opposite spirit and grew unable to confront at home. His story served as an excellent example of how we can't arrive at healthy by just doing the opposite of abuse. We most focus on perfect love. Chris Vallontin followed up this example with Christ both confronting and accepting insult. Christ taught us to turn the other cheek. This does not mean be a doormat and let people abuse you. Christ means the attacks on you cannot dictate your behavior. Christ also demonstrates confrontation when it mattered a lot more than a slap on the cheek. He confronted Pharisees and whipped the money changers out of God's house.

God I pray for power to do healthy and timely confrontation.

Wednesday night, Stefan and Brian and myself went on a treasure hunt for people who needed some God in their life. Stefan and Brian shared a lot of great testimonies of people set free from injuries, pain, disease even in places as unspiritual as Wal-Mart. God likes to move beyond boxes with steeples on them. We experienced the full spectrum of responses from the people we prayed over: complete appreciation, small miracles, irritation that we approached, and deep conversation w prayer. Personally, I have to confess walking up to strangers and sharing God is still nerve racking even after hearing all the great testimonies.

We'll see what God does next. Have a great day Interwebs,

Darian

Village the Game Show and Tell Fundraiser

2009-10-22T22:39:00.000-05:00

Sunday, Nov 1, 2009 (7:00 PM to 9:30 PM) at PIHOP

1401 N Lake Ave, Pasadena, CA Google

www.villagethegame.com

Socializr URL: www.socializr.com/event/512603101

Posted by Darian Hickman

Imagine while teaching English in rural Nigeria, you tell one of your students about Kickstart MoneyMaker pumps. Your student buys one to irrigate his 2 acre farm. In the first growing season, he makes 10 times more income and brings his entire family out of poverty. His neighbors copy

his success and together they climb out of poverty while producing more food for themselves and their community.

Join us on Nov 1st at the Pasadena International House of Prayer to learn about how Village the Game is going to inspire volunteers, teachers, cross cultural workers, and entrepreneurs to make even greater impact in the communities they serve.

Village the Game is an initiative to raise awareness of several amazing enterprises in the Third World that are providing tools to villagers which help these villagers rise permanently out of poverty.

Agenda

Introduction and refreshments
The New Heroes documentary (episode on Kickstart)
How is a video game going to alleviate poverty?
Show and Tell of current prototype of Village the Game.
Q and A with Darian
Q and A with God

New Resume: Darian Hickman Web Project Manager

2008-11-27T04:47:00.005-05:00

hire@darianhickman.org | Sierra Madre, CA 91024 | http://www.linkedin.com/in/darianhickman

Summary

Entrepreneurial professional with 7 years experience in project management and web development.
Excellent communicator: proficient in writing, public speaking, and training.
Excellent analytical ability for creatively, strategically producing solutions.

Work Experience

Programmer, Project Manager, Numedeon Inc. (www.numedeon.com), May 2008 – Nov 2008

Led teams of 2-5 members to produce $68,000 worth of sponsored content inside www.whyville.net.
Managed 5 banner ad campaigns on Whyville that brought in $20,000 of supplemental revenue.
Managed weekly focus groups and surveys to determine the highest ROI upgrades to Whyville.
Managed 3-man team to build production estimates and price points for the 7 best in-world product placement campaigns and produced an ad kit to simplify the sale of these campaigns.
Conducted competitive analysis to determine best features to improve monthly uniques and revenue per user.
Programmed 2 chat rooms in proprietary language built on Mysql-Java Servlets-Apache-Velocity stack.
Programmed Perl script to anonymize chat logs before delivering to customers.

Founder, Village the Game (www.villagethegame.com), May 2006 - Present

Recruited, managed 3-man team and built a prototype of a realtime strategy version of Village the Game.
Scripted additional online board game prototype of Village in Javascript, CSS, and HTML.
Interviewed 7 social entrepreneurs on location in Kenya and India to learn how best to model their organizations inside Village the Game.
Attended forums, gave presentations, and made over 200 contacts with business school, computer science students and alumni engaged in social ventures at Stanford, Caltech, UCLA, CMU, and USC.
Gave 5 interviews and received press from SF Chronicle, WorldChanging.com, NextBillion.net and many blogs and podcasts building a fan base for Village the Game (500+ members on launch alert mailing list and 2,000 pre-launch monthly uniques with $0 spent on advertising).
Continuing to work on prototype development, recruiting investors, marketing partners, and advisors.

Software Engineer, Technology Management Associates, Jun 2004 – Apr 2005

Built Java apps and PLSQL packages to transform and filter data from xml files, csv files, deprecated oracle records and load them into new oracle records.
Upgraded and maintained JSP based webapps to display timeline and geospatial data delivered by Microstrategy Intelligence Server.

Software Engineer, Object Sciences Corporation, Sep 2003 – Jun 2004

Evaluated and deployed the best jabber instant messaging platforms for communication amongst Object Sciences employees and Object Sciences customers.
Deployed VMWare ESX server to prep software demonstrations for South Korean/US joint Army forces.

Software Engineer, ITT Industries, Advanced Engineering and Sciences, Jan 2002 – Sep 2003

Developed multithreaded Java applications to interface with various hardware components via Telnet, SNMP APIs and coded Perl scripts to test Java applications.
Trained teammates in Java, Perl, and Redhat Linux Server Administration.

Education: B.S. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University, May 2001.

Additional Information

Volunteer Experience

Trained youth groups from 18 churches how to do overseas missions with YWAM.org. May 2005- Jan 2006.

Led 3-man team to build a customized PC for a blind friend with motion disabilities. Nov 2002 – May 2005.
Performed on CrossCurrent Ministries Drama Team. Aug 2004 – Feb 2005.

Military Experience

Completed Boot Camp and School of Infantry for US Marine Corps Reserves. Feb 2003 - Jul 2003.
Continued training as Rifleman in 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion USMCR. Jul 2003 – Jun 2005.

Interests

Acting, entrepreneurship in developing nations, investing, soccer, volleyball, surfing, kayaking, frisbee.

Explaining the Financial Crisis and the Bailout

2008-09-26T19:15:00.002-05:00

Pat Dorsey is a pretty smart guy, Director of Equity Research at Morningstar. He explains why the bailout is a safety net for Main Street not a bailout for Wall Street. I understand this I just wish there was a better alternative like getting loans from www.prosper.com. Unfortunately Prosper.com only allows loans of $25,000 which just isn't enough for a lot of companies. Maybe Prosper will expand soon to ease the short term credit crisis. Well here's Pat Dorsey's take on the credit crisis:

Video promoting Ethanol

2008-04-29T03:45:00.000-05:00

Rate my video in this contest!

Submit entry

Contest details

Meet Vincent Nwana

2008-02-26T12:40:00.004-05:00

Vincent Nwana,from Cameroon, Northwest Province is one of my classmates here in Thailand. Just to get the visa he had to travel to a neighboring country that had an embassy, push a car 2km when it broke down and deal with corrupt border guards . As I've learned getting an African citizen into Chiang Mai is nothing short of a miracle.

This past week I went on a field trip with Vincent and 4 other classmates to remote regions of Thailand to see how various Christian entrepreneurs are using business to bless the people of Thailand. One group is operating tilapia fish farms, greeting card production, and lychee orchards in order to fund a boys and gilrls home and a vocational training center for children rescued from prostitution and/or at-risk of enslavement. Surprising to me, the greeting card business is the most cashflow positive of all the projects.

One powerful and pragmatic lesson I've learned is that God doesn't grant shortcuts to experience. Every newbie entrepreneur has had to go through their own learning curve before they could really bless people with their start-ups. That is definitely matching my experience.

Going on this field trip with Vincent and my brothers from Cote D'Ivoire, Mali, and Malaysia made the trip exceptionally meaningful because they are gathering ideas they can actually use in their communities. Btw, if you know how Vincent can get get hooked up with a microloan to start his own tilapia fish farm in Cameroon definitely let me know. There was no obvious way from www.Kiva.org.

Prayer Requests

Pray for deeper relationships with my classmates.

Pray that board game version of Village is an astounding success when we playtest it tomorrow.

Pray for right people to help me with Village fundraising in March.

Pray for money to rain down from heaven. First for the $5000 I need for this trip and then $3500 to help start businesses in Morroco in May with Mosaic Church.

Support My Trip

To donate online: Donate via Paypal.
For tax-deductible donations: Mail a check made payable to "PIHOP" to:
PIHOP
1401 N. Lake Ave,
Pasadena 91104.
For accounting purposes, put 'Thailand' in the memo, not my name. Thank you supporters!! So far you have donated $1200 of the $5000 I am fundraising for this trip.

Pictures!!

ywam bam field trip

In Thailand with new Friends

2008-01-28T00:26:00.000-05:00

The pic above is a few of us Business as Mission students enjoying our first dinner together. I am quite impressed and astounded at the variety of backgrounds of the students attending this course from pastors who support their church by selling fish in Cameroon to retired commercial real estate brokers looking for their next move. Kyung-min the guy on left is trying to convince me to go to b-school with him in the Fall at Michigan. He just finished 4 years in the automotive industry.

I apologize for not sending an update sooner. While sitting in the airport in Bangkok, I learned that I was not accepted to Stanford business school, so now I have been scurrying to get apps out for other b-schools that have a strong social enterprise community. That's quite frustrating since it has taken away time to spend connecting with people as much as I want. Pray for grace on that.

Also I want to say Thank You to my financial and prayer supporters for helping me get here. So far I've raised $1,025 for this course. Thank you!. I still have about $3975 to go. If you would like to contribute more:
To donate online: Donate via Paypal.
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=darian%2ehickman%40villagethegame%2ecom&item_name=Send%20Darian%20to%20Thailand&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD&lc=US&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

For tax-deductible donations: Mail a check made payable to “PIHOP” to

PIHOP
1401 N. Lake Ave,
Pasadena 91104.

For accounting purposes, put 'Thailand' in the memo, not my name.

Updated Prayer Request: Pray for clear communication. Apparently one of the gods worshipped here is a god of communication and the staff have noticed that since they've been here they have experienced major miscommunications.

I look forward to sharing how God is using this time here in Thailand to make me more useful for Him in the marketplace. Off to lunch!

Update on Trip to Thailand; prayer requests; donations

2008-01-19T17:27:00.001-05:00

I'm departing Wednesday morning for Chiang Mai, Thailand. And with all the funny timezone issues I'll be arriving Friday morning even though the trip takes less than 24 hours.
To recap on why Thailand:

Christians are discovering that business can be used to promote justice, peace and love. It is possible to pursue profitable enterprise and share the love of God with others at the same time. The concept has been around for centuries, but in recent years it has a label: Business as Mission. Some of the veteran practitioners of Business as Mission are gathering together in Chiang Mai, Thailand to mentor those who also have a heart for using business to serve God.

After considerable prayer and reflection, it has become obvious that I should attend this 6 week program for several reasons:

To Use Village. Village could be used to promote some of the entrepreneurs and their companies that I'll be meeting in Chiang Mai.
More Useful Darian. God can use me more effectively as I grow in knowledge of real-world examples of people pursuing profit and pursuing God's goals at the same time and how they balance these layers of accountability.
Building Bridges. Cross-cultural workers here in California are already asking me to connect them with the veterans I'll be meeting.
Echoing Green prep. Village the Game just made it to the second round of the Echoing Green competition which requires a detailed business plan. My mentors during the course will be coaching me on my business plan, hence it's strategic timing to move things forward for Village.
Internship Opps. I'll be meeting successful entrepreneurs throughout Southeast Asia. God willing one of those connections will lead to an internship between April and September when I head to business school.

Prayer Requests

Pray God will keep my heart and eyes open to opportunities to serve others while I am attending this 6 week program.
Pray for clarity on what to pursue between April and September.
Pray for focus on the relationships I'll be building.
Pray that God will make me more useful in serving others through business.
Pray that all the funding arrives for attending this course.

Donations.
Good news! You can now donate online or tax-deductible. Y'all may have seen the attempt a ChipIn funddrive, but I think the website died. Instead it's PayPal directly. PIHOP (Pasadena International House of Prayer) has volunteered to receive funds for this Thailand trip, tax-deductible. My hope is you will prayerfully consider partnering with me to share God through business by contributing. Your donation of $100, $200, or more will be a great contribution to the $5,000 I am responsible for.
To donate online: Donate via Paypal.
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=darian%2ehickman%40villagethegame%2ecom&item_name=Send%20Darian%20to%20Thailand&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD&lc=US&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

For tax-deductible donations: Mail a check made payable to “PIHOP” to

PIHOP
1401 N. Lake Ave,
Pasadena 91104.

For accounting purposes, put 'Thailand' in the memo, not my name.

I want to hear from you. This is a YWAM sponsored event so there is definitely going to much time devoted to prayer. Let me know what's on your heart for prayer.

Links
For more on Echoing Green: http://www.echoinggreen.com
For more on Business as Mission: http://www.businessasmission.com
For more on Darian: http://www.darianhickman.org
For more on Village: http://www.villagethegame.com

Thailand here I come!

2008-01-17T01:41:00.000-05:00

New development! Now that I’m done licking my wounds from 2007, it’s time to move forward on the dream. YWAM is offering a course on Business as Mission, essentially how to run companies in a cross-cultural setting, and I’ve been accepted to attend. We’ll be attending lectures taught by entrepreneurs who have been running companies successfully overseas. Part of the 6 week course is in fact a field trip to already successful enterprises. Considering how much talk there is about sharing Christ through business, it will be refreshing to meet entrepreneurs who are actually doing it. I’m headed to Thailand on Jan 24 for the 6 week course. I am hoping and praying that this adventure will lead to deep insight into the world of international business and ministry and possibly some meaningful employment between now and when business school starts in the fall.

The application is all done, thank you Josh and Chris for the recs, now the biggest hurdle is the course fee of $3500 which covers food, lodging, everything but the airfare to Thailand. Fortunately it’s the off season for tickets to Thailand so even this last minute, they are $1200.00. This is a strong move for Village the Game and for clarifying the way that I’m to serve others long term. My big prayer request is that I’m hearing God correctly on this one. Let me know if you’re praying for me. That’s always encouraging.

Play it, love it, live it,

Darian Hickman

P.S. Village the Game is a semifinalist in the Echoing Green Fellowship competition! 350 were selected from 1500 entries and in the next phase they will be narrowed down to 30 social enterprises. Pray for that too!

More on Echoing Green
http://www.echoinggreen.org/blog/2008-semifinalists-announced

More on Business as Mission
https://www.ywamconnect.com/ubasicpage.jsp?siteid=29315&pageid=430781

2007 was painful. 2008 is prayerful.

2008-01-16T17:56:00.000-05:00

2007 was painful. Managing a remote team all in separate locations was painful. Running out of money to spend on Village was painful. Watching my condo sit empty for months and burn through my savings was painful. Falling in love with a girl dating another guy was really painful. On the other hand getting to know the social entrepreneurs at the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford was wonderful. Connecting more with my roommates, and friends who have been helping me with Village has all been great. But, except for some new and stronger relationships with friends, 2007 was pretty painful.

Through all this pain, though, I learned a great deal about management and relationships. Regarding management you can summarize the lesson as don't let ambition and impatience compel you to skip steps. But more importantly, I learned a key thing about relationships: stay focused on what is right, and what is going well. As Tom Rath explains, it fills other peoples' emotional buckets (he wrote "How Full is Your Bucket?'). I really felt this lesson during the last week of August when I volunteered for a foster kid's camp. Our mandate was to catch kids doing things right. It was a beautiful moving experience for me. I think the kids enjoyed it too.

And then there was the girl. She personified this lesson while we had a chance to hang out in November. Just being around her kindness and generosity made me more thoughtful of others without really trying. Maybe that's why I felt so strongly about her. Positive people are contagious. I think that was the theme of basically what God wanted to teach me in 2007. Fill buckets, notice and celebrate what is going right. Pray that the lesson sticks in 2008.

2008 is starting off with a new theme: Take more decisions to God in prayer. This year is starting off with a great trend of more prayer time with my roommates and more clarity and confidence about decisions. I'm not going to predict a lot of milestones for Village. Instead, I'm going to follow the advice of more seasoned producers and entrepreneurs while pursuing more achievable short term goals. Beyond tomorrow, the only thing I'm relatively certain about is business school starting in the Fall. I find out Jan 24^th if Stanford accepted me. I made a lot of great friends while I was living up there last winter so I'm really hoping to go ther

Has anyone else been ripped off by TLG*GREATFN

2007-10-12T17:33:00.001-05:00

While trying out this new financial management service at Mint.com I noticed a fraudulent charge: TLG*GREATFN12673045SEP 800-290-8603 CT $9.99
Apparently they have been stealing $9.99 from my credit card for the past year, and I didn't notice until a month ago. I googled them and sure enough there all over the web for being a scam. Mint.com helps you organize your bank and credit card transactions so you can see where you're money is going. Hopefully in the near future they will have an alerts feature for fraudulent charges like TLG*GREATFN.

And so that begs the question: where do we start the class action lawsuit?

Royal Family Kid's Camp

2007-09-10T18:29:00.000-05:00

For the last week of August, I spent 5 days tending to foster kids at camp organized by Lake Avenue Church and Royal Family Kids Camp. Our entire mission that week was to be the positive, encouraging memories for children enduring childhoods of questionably dark times filled with unknown forms of abuse. I couldn't tell just by interacting with them what they were dealing with in the other 51 weeks of their year, but I do know that when these campers come back next year, they will remember specific conversations they had with us counselors.

My primary job was looking after one particular child, “D-man”. Connecting with D-man was new for me. I'm not a parent. I have no pets, not even plants to care for. Being consumed with thinking about another living being for a week straight was completely new to me.

D-man is ADD and required the extra herding that comes with not hearing people when they are calling your name. He's quite the "ladies man" and went through a couple of girlfriends during the week. Relationships at 9-years-old are pretty volatile, I guess. He was aggressive and overly sensitive to every tease from the other campers. I spent good chunks of time breaking up his fights; nothing crazy, just frequent.

For the most part I'm a predominantly self-centered person. I'm usually thinking and praying about the next step to make my mark on history, giving occasional thought and effort to helping friends achieve their dreams. What meager acts of "other-focus" come out of me are largely due to Jesus. I've known for over a decade now that His plan for a fulfilling life is far more fulfilling than any stereotypical plan or any plan that I could come up with on my own. His plan means loving others so that's what I do when I'm not distracted by life's comforts, pleasures, or my pride.

I knew something was different the first day, when lunch arrived. I was so focused on helping D-man get his food that I forgot to get a plate for myself. I don't remember that happening in any other situation.

One day, D-man asked me why I picked him. I don't think any counselor picked their kids, but I went with it: "Because you remind me a lot of myself when I was a kid. You're always asking questions, very curious about everything." I don't know why he thought I picked him, but I'm glad he did.

To conclude this exhausting, fun, and incredibly meaningful week we put the kids back on the bus to their other life. Up until that moment I didn't realize how much D-man had touched my life. A little after noon, a string of kids stood in line to get on the bus. Some counselors were giving their final hugs and sharing some quick prayers with the kids before departing. Then, as usual, D-man got out of the line. But this time he came toward me and gave me a hug. Then he got back on the bus and the bus left with all the kids on board. As I walked back up to the cabin to gather some forgotten towels, bird houses and toys, I wept; tears of release, tears of joy. Something I did this week mattered for eternity. I connected with a kid named D-man.

I want to thank RFKC leadership: Staci, Tamara, and Leon for setting up a week where I never felt alone while trying to be the love of Christ to these kids. It was an exhausting and beautiful experience. An exquisite moment of mission and community, a time of catching kids doing things right. It was a reminder of why I pledged allegiance to Christ almost 10 years ago, and a solid confirmation of what I have always believed about the Love of God: the best way to experience it is to give it to others. Thank you for creating that opportunity.

Doing greater things than even Jesus

2007-05-30T09:47:00.000-05:00

In the gospel of John, Jesus is quoted "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."

That's a huge promise, doing things greater than the miracles of Jesus. While he was walking around 2000 years ago, he fed 5000 with a few fish and not even a basket of bread, turned water into wine, did all kinds of healing miracles on the blind, the sick, the paralyzed.

Today we are doing things even greater through science and thoughtful design. We have technology now that does more than just feed 5000 with a few fish. We can share knowledge and appropriate technology that creates 10's of thousands of new jobs enabling 100's of thousands to feed themselves and their family for a lifetime. One example is Kickstart MoneyMaker Pump. It costs $100 and can help a farmer go from $300 income a year to $3000 a year, creating 10's of thousands of jobs in the process. The power we have to care for others is greater than it ever has been and much of this power falls under the label social enterprise.

Is this fulfillment of prophecy?

Who wants a job at Kiva?

2007-05-17T16:21:00.000-05:00

I just had a chat with the new CTO of Kiva, Sam Mankiewicz, and he mentioned a couple positions open for software engineers. If you got Linux Apache Mysql Php skills and want to be a part of the microcredit revolution definitely check out these job links:
http://www.kiva.org/about/job3.php
http://www.kiva.org/about/job4.php

Visiting Virginia for the end of the Month; and present project: Panango.

2007-05-14T22:13:00.000-05:00

Visiting Virginia May 21 to May 30.
I'm coming back home to visit the folks and friends in Virginia at the end of the month, May 21 to May 30. Let's catch up for sure. If you guys need any furniture I probably have a living room set to give away. I'm going up to Reston to clean out my condo and get it ready for new tenants. Don't think I'll be selling it after. Actually, I'm just too overwhelmed with Village projects to spreadsheet selling vs. renting the condo. The biggest Village project is called Panango. Read below.

A powerful, pragmatic partnership in propagating social enterprise.

After a few months of planning and paperwork, we now have Panango, an NGO ready to send students to Papua New Guinea. There Stanford University students will be exploring the needs of villagers while teaching English. Village the Game is working with Panango to model these villages inside the game and explore some of the existing solutions in other countries that could also work in Papua New Guinea.

Pictured here is founding team of Panango from left to right: Darian Hickman, Christa Morris, Nick Benavides, Ally Stewart, Cole Paulson, Chenxing Han, and AdamTolnay. Not pictured: Andi Kleissner, and Angel Inokon.

Mission of Panango
Panango is a student run non-profit organization dedicated to equipping rural populations in Papua New Guinea with the English skills necessary to act as effective community advocates on a variety of environmental, educational and health issues while simultaneously preparing program volunteers to become social entrepreneurs. Through a combination of mentorship, hands on experience, and entrepreneurial simulations such as Village the Game, Panango creates a positive feedback loop where students are trained to find community needs and respond with their own innovative social ventures. In addition to teaching English and empowering villagers, Panango volunteers develop a forward thinking, activist approach to service: finding needs while meeting needs.

Sure, it's a cool job. But do games pay? - On the Level - MSNBC.com

2007-05-03T13:38:00.000-05:00

Sure, it's a cool job. But do games pay? - On the Level - MSNBC.com
This is a sobering article on the games industry. I definitely won't be a Blizzard programmer anytime soon.

Anybody need a some great back up software?

2007-05-01T02:10:00.000-05:00

Dear Darian Decarlo Hickman

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So spread the joy by clicking the link below:
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If this link is not working, please COPY and PASTE the entire link into your browser

Not only will that make your friends' day, but also when only 3 of these referrals buy Genie Backup Manager Home Edition, you will get an additional complementary license of (GBM Home) or a free upgrade to the upcoming major version.

Your efforts with us never go unrewarded.

Please note that any email address you provide will be used solely for the purpose of sending this invitation, and they will not be saved, used again, or given to a third party.

Genie-Soft wishes you, your family, and friends an enjoyable backup experience Genie Backup Manager Home offers.

Sincerely,
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www.genie-soft.com

Playing Warfish on Warfish.net

2007-04-28T02:26:00.000-05:00

I have to copy this idea of generating movies from played games. This is my first time in a while of playing risk and basically the first time online. Warfish needs a lot of polish, but it's a cool site for playing RISK type games.

Kiva is working and working well

2007-04-25T04:30:00.000-05:00

Here's the latest note I got from Kiva about my borrower I'm funding in Kenya. I just wanted to show that the Kiva system for helping entrepreneurs is working:

Dear Darian Hickman ,

The business you have loaned to, Elizabeth Wambui Njoroge , has made a repayment of $240.00. The total amount repaid up to now is $720.00. The payment was collected and deposited by Women`s Economic Empowerment Consort. This repayment will be divided amongst all the lenders who helped to fund this business, depending upon the percentage each lender contributed. Note that you cannot actually withdraw or reloan these funds until after the loan term is complete.Comment:

scheduled repayment

To view your Kiva loan portfolio go to:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=account

______________________________
Loans that change lives
http://www.kiva.org/

I don't follow the physics of what this guy does.

2007-04-23T01:57:00.000-05:00

Unbelievable breakdancing talent.

Very Cool and Uplifting News from Acumen Fund

2007-04-18T03:29:00.001-05:00

Social Entrepreneurship is a quickly growing phenomenon.

Dear Acumen Fund Friends,

Greetings to you in this season of renewal. I hope this finds you well.

I've just returned from Nairobi, the last in our series of visits to cities in the U.S., Pakistan, India and Kenya to interview final candidates for the 2008 class of Acumen Fund fellows. The experience has been exhilarating and humbling. We've met truly extraordinary individuals from all over the world. From a pool of 500 candidates from 60 countries, we now have to select eight fellows – a difficult task to say the least.

--
Darian Hickman | +1 (650) 464-5342 | Palo Alto, CA | Pasadena, CA
Play the world of social enterprise: www.VillagetheGame.com
Village the Game Alerts: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/villagethegame

Get a Wii

2007-04-14T23:03:00.000-05:00

I just played Wii. This is true innovation in gameplay and if it takes off it will solve America's obesity problem. If you need more exercise and for some reason can't leave the house, get a Wii and play the sports games. They're awesome.

Groupbuy and Grouprent

2007-04-06T18:43:00.000-05:00

Along time ago, 2000 AD I think, I got curious about building software to make group purchases and group rentals ridiculously easy. For example: one neighborhood should only need to own one leafblower, one snowblower not several. Or a group of yuppies could own a yacht together. What beyond existing group tools like Google Groups, Groove, or Spreadsheets would a group need?

They would need several capabilities:
Finding, Storing template documents for contracts, insurance policies, user agreements. Timesharing calendar to manage when someone used the leafblower. Membership signup. Accounting, tax document preparation, splitting repair/maintenance bills.
Voting capabilities for electing management and officers. Social networking tool to keep track of who is in the group and also referrals for new members. Member credit ratings: [how well do people take care of the group stuff, do they pay bills on time?]

I'm guessing that right now there's all kinds of proprietary solutions that each different cooperative is using. Enterprise Rent-a-car has their own software for renting out their fleet of vehicles. Could it be adapted so a group of friends could own a work truck together?

Send a missions team to Kenya

2007-04-04T03:25:00.001-05:00

Hey party people!

As you may know, I am a filmmaker. My desire is to capture incredible stories from around the world and bring them back home to inspie people. Many of you supported my trip to Cambodia in July of '06. Here is a link to the trailer and another one to some of the photos I shot while I was there. Take a look - the team and I are pretty proud of the work we captured.

Well... I'm at it again. This time its a new continent with new faces and new stories to tell.

I am stoked to fill you in on my next big adventure. I'm going on an AIDS relief trip to Kenya in Africa in a couple weeks. This will be a two week trip where I'll be spending most of my time working in a massive slum called Kibera just outside of Nairobi. It's the world's largest slum with over 1 million people living there. It's also in the film "The Constant Gardener."

I'll be directly involved in working with AIDS affected orphans and widows. I will also be filming a "video diary" and pretty much whatever else comes my way. I will be bringing back footage of the devastation as well as the hope that is going on there.

bottom line - I need 3 things from YOU:

1) LOTS of prayer. LOTS, people. I'm not kidding. this is pro football, here, and I need my starting lineup...and coach... and fans. basically, I'm just the ball.

2) $10 (or more... you know, whatever) of your hard earned cash dropped into our team's paypal account (see PAYPAL ink below). and last but not least...

3) fwd this to your friends. $10 x 210 people = brandon gets on the plane to KENYA!! Think of it as giving up a latte or two for African AIDS Orphans. There now, doesn't that make it all worthwile? Yeah, i know. Just call me Sally Struthers.

By the way, I'm heading over with a team of ten people from Ecclesia, a church in Hollywood and we are partnering with Global Action. Check out our team website at www.kenyateam2007.com. Be sure and watch the video to see some of the work we've already done.

My full trip cost is $3100 - turns out plane tickets to Nairobi are expensive!! I've already raised the first third but I'm still in need of $2000 and I only have TWO weeks to raise it. ...nobody ever accused me of being consistently early. Besides, I do my best work on a deadline. Congratulations! You get to be part of a money-raising miracle!

The donation is tax deductible. I've included the snail mail address as well as an electronic payment option - just click the PAYPAL link below. (Very easy and secure.)

Thank you so much for your prayers and generosity! This is going to be a life-changing trip. I can't wait to tell (and show!!) you the stories when I get back. Thanks for joining in the adventure with me! I'll keep you updated as the trip gets closer.

God Bless!
Brandon Lippard

PAYPAL address: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=donations%40kenyateam2007%2ecom&item_name=send%20us%20to%20KENYA%21%21&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD&lc=US&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

snail mail:
Global Action
7660 Goddard St
Ste 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado
80902

Cambodia YouTube address: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-yUWTPwj6WM

Netsquared likes Village and I'm in LA now.

2007-03-26T19:41:00.000-05:00

On March 13th, Village the Game received a great response from the NetSquared NetTuesday meeting in San Francisco. It's really encouraging to meet so many people who want to help Village succeed.

Now I'm off to LA to work with buddies in "the industry" for creating some promo videos for Village the Game. Most recent epiphany I've had: Sharing the vision of Village is a lot more effective in a visual format rather than as a casual conversation at a bar. :)

If you're in LA let me know. I'd love to catch up.

Robot dance. Kinda old by Youtube standards but outright amazing.

2007-03-17T02:00:00.000-05:00

Being Productive with God

2007-03-14T13:32:00.000-05:00

“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”- 2 Peter 1:5-8

I forgot there was a formula for being productive with God. I'm definitely seeing the need for more self-control. I have too many desires to pursue at once and it's taking a lot of self-control to just pursue Village and not a whole lot of other hobbies. I'm not sure what godliness is or how that is different from love. Brotherly kindness.... hmm it's hard to think of acts of kindness while so focused on Village.

Lessons Learned while building Village

2007-03-09T00:54:00.001-05:00

Since May 2006, I have been designing a game, designing a company, building a game, and building a company all at the same time. It's been fun and hell at the same time too. I thank God for all the cool people that I have met along the way and for the advisors cheering me on. Ironically these veterans of gaming and social enterprise are the same people who never expected Village to get as far as it has. Most first-timers would have long since given up on a game of this magnitude. In a way I'm glad I didn't know how hard this would be. I've learned a lot about game production over the last 10 months and I'm sure there's plenty more to learn in the next 10 months:

1. Don't waste time with dev studios that can't show prior work because it's "cloaked behind NDA's". If they don't have what it takes to make some sample work for their portfolio, then they don't have what it takes period.
2. Managing a remote development team spread all over the planet is possible, but it's a painful amount of email, messaging, and documentation.
3. Collaborating with an artist is 10x easier in person.
4. Rookie mistake: I didn't play strategy games similar to Village with my teammates. That would have helped so much with being on the same page. It's important the programmers and the artists have experience playing similar games. No amount of documentation will better clarify expectations.
5. The lower your budget is the more documentation, gui sketches, and spreadsheets become necessary to prevent wasted time in multiple revisions of the game.
6. There is no such thing as a complete or flawless design document. No matter how anally detailed the docs grow, artists and programmers will mis-interpret, mis-understand the design.
7. When picking a game engine for a 'first project' make sure a similar game has already been built on it. Building an RTS on top of Torque Game Builder is hard with no examples to follow.
8. For a first project, don't worry about innovating on game mechanics; instead throw all your innovation budget into quality artwork and storyline with an established game mechanic.
9. Milestones not only need clearly defined deadlines but also drop-deadlines. When a subcontractor is falling way behind on completion of a milestone it's often better to just call the deal off rather than waste more time waiting for it to get done.
10. Advisors who are veterans of the industry are essential. There are too many wrong paths to figure out everything by trial-and-error without them.
11. Getting press helps boost everyone's motivation on the team.

Charlie the Unicorn. I love it. :)

2007-03-04T02:04:00.000-05:00

That was a lot of Founders

2007-02-27T19:31:00.001-05:00

I just attended this talk "Finding the next Google". Great panel of entrepreneurs who now pretty much own their own venture capital firms. Peter Thiel co-founder of Paypal, Reid Hoffman founder of LinkedIn, Sean Parker co-founder of Plaxo and Napster and Facebook, and Matt Cohler VP of Facebook.

Top Lessons:

It's all about distribution. You must solve your distribution problem first for consumer internet applications.
If you aren't embarrassed by your product launch, you waited too long to launch.
Don't perfect your product before shipping. Put it out in the market, find out who's using and respond to requested changes fast.

In another VC talk this week Ron Conway said that VC's are still interested in funding more social networking sites and more video sharing sites. Apparently the market is still huge and they expect there will be plenty of quality social networking sites that can co-exist with Myspace and Youtube being the dominant players.

Knowing what to say 'yes' to.

2007-02-06T12:03:00.000-05:00

Proverbs 21: 21 "He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity ^[a] and honor."

I love verses like these. One stereotype of the Bible is that it's a rule book designed to tell you what not to do. Verses like these instead remind me what I am supposed to say 'yes' to.

In Stephen Covey's book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" he calls it the 'burning yes'. Although Covey is coming at it from a time management perspective: I have to know what my 'burning yes' is because otherwise my schedule will get filled up with things I should have said 'no' to. Right now my 'burning yes' is Village the Game and the things I have to say 'no' to are often things that are worth doing be it taking classes, tutoring, or going on retreats with other Christians.

From the Bible's perspective our 'burning yes' is righteousness and love, and sin is what we have to say 'no' too. And even with obvious things like porn, knowing what my 'burning yes' makes it 10 times easier to say 'no'. I have to say 'no' in order to keep going with Village, which is my primary effort to pursue righteousness and love in this chapter of my life.

This is so brilliant I had to share.

2007-02-04T04:46:00.000-05:00

This is outright ingenious! Researchers at CMU have figured out how to turn tasks still difficult for computers into games for humans. They are creating a new concept called human computation, and they're getting it done by creating simple games playable over the internet that are pretty similar to games like Catchphrase or Taboo. I wonder if this has any application to identifying solutions to extreme poverty?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143

Good times with Stanford ACM

2007-01-27T20:25:00.000-05:00

I presented to the Stanford Association for Computing Machinery yesterday, and it went incredibly well! I shared with them about Village the Game and all the technical challenges we must face. It was really well received and the audience asked a lot of great questions. I wish I could remember all the questions and put them into an FAQ post. There's some potential for turning some of the tech work into senior projects. We'll see where things lead. :)
Here's a link to the Powerpoint slides from yesterday:
HTML -> http://acm.stanford.edu/presentations/1_26_07/village_game_stanford_acm_1_26_07.html
PPT -> http://acm.stanford.edu/presentations/1_26_07/village_game_stanford_acm_1_26_07.ppt

Letter to Editor: Extra $billion well spent

2007-01-22T10:52:00.000-05:00

Right now, Congress has an incredible opportunity to continue saving millions of lives in the world's poorest countries by fully funding the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty.

The last Congress left nine critical spending bills unfinished and now the new Congress is left with the hard work of deciding our budget for 2007. They're facing tough decisions and at stake is $1 billion vital to continuing to provide clean water, education and life-saving medicines to people in Africa and the world's poorest countries. There are few places in the U.S. budget where dollars translate so directly into lives saved. Without this funding, 350,000 people will not receive life-saving AIDS medicines, nearly 1 million anti-malaria bednets will not be distributed and 120,000 people will not receive treatment for tuberculosis.

As a member of the ONE Campaign, I encourage Congress to protect this funding and ensure America's continued commitment to the fight against extreme poverty and global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. America's leadership in development assistance reflects the best American tradition of compassion and generosity. Together, we can give the world's poorest people the tools they need to beat extreme poverty and the chance for a hopeful future.

Awesome book: AK-47

2007-01-08T03:55:00.000-05:00

I got this for Christmas and learned an amazing amount about the last 50 years of global warfare and how the AK-47 has "democratized" warfare. They're so cheap nearly anyone can afford them so poor guerillas can fight hi tech behemoths causing a lot of drawn out wars with no real winning going on. And crazy enough, Kalashnikov the inventor is still alive figuring how to make money free market style since he never did under his motherland's communist regime.

Resume

2007-01-01T04:25:00.000-05:00

Education
Graduated May 2001 with B.S. in Computer Science from The Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering, Baltimore, Maryland 21218.
New York Film Academy. Completed One Month intensive course on acting for film. Burbank, CA. March 2006.

Leadership Experience
(1) Founded and run VillagetheGame.com to immerse gamers in the the world of social enterprise. April 2006 - Present.
(2) Recruited geek friends to help me build a customized PC for blind friend with profound motion and sensation deficits. November 2002 – May 2005;
(3) Lead and participated in a men's Bible study to help fellow Christians set and acheive their spiritual goals. March 2002 – May 2005.;
(4) Organized games of Cashflow to help friends and family better understand investing. July 2004 – March 2005.
(5) Project Manager, Web Developer, Students Sharing Coalition, Sept 1997 - 2000
(5.1) Founded and directed high school group to address labor rights of developing nations.
(5.2) Wrote successful grant proposal to fund multimedia lab for the homeless.
(5.3) Trained and managed students in renovation of low-income housing with Habitat for Humanity.
(5.4) Designed, built, maintained, managed content, and hosted StudentsSharing.org on my Linux, Apache server.
(5.5) Installed office LAN and maintained office workstations.
(6) Served as Student Government President at Middlesex High School, Saluda, VA. Sept 1996 - May 1997.
(7) Coached youth soccer league (12-14 year olds). Middlesex County, VA. Fall 1994 and Fall 1995.

Volunteer Experience
(1) YWAM Virginia. Volunteered a myriad of IT services from installing a small computer lab to training YWAM staff on how to use advance features of GMail, Blogger, Google Video.
(2) Performed on CrossCurrent Ministries Drama Team Aug 2003 - April 2005.
(3) Served at a summer bible school in Trinidad on a missions trip with CrossCurrent Ministries. August 2002
(4) Taught computer literacy classes at Greenmount Community Center. Spring 1998.
(5) Installed office LAN and maintained office workstations at Faith Christian Fellowship. Summer 2001.

Military Training/Experience
(1) Completed Basic Training for US Marine Corps Reserves. 19 Feb-25 Jul 2004.
(2) 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, July 2004 - May 2005.
(3) USMC Reserves IRR June 2005 - Present.

Work Experience
Mission Adventures Intern, Youth With A Mission Orlando, May 30- Aug 12 2005
(1) Responsible for training youth groups from various churches how to do overseas missions.
(2) Taught street drama to convey message of the gospels
(3) Lead groups in mercy ministry for the homeless.
(4) Participated in intercessory prayer on behalf of students and staff.

Technology Management Associates, June 2004 – Apr 2005
(1) Built Java apps and PLSQL packages to transform data from various datasources (xml files, oracle) into oracle tables. (2) Upgraded and maintained JSP based webapps to display timeline and geospatial data. (3) Evaluated additional uses for Microstrategy Intelligence Server. (4) Evaluated usefulness of Informatica for data transformation.

Object Sciences Corporation, Software Engineer, Sept. 2003 – June 2004.
(1) Evaluated the best jabber instant messaging platforms for deploying amongst Object Sciences employees and Object Sciences customers. (2) Learned basics of Jboss installation and administration. (3) Learned basics of VMWare ESX server installation and administration. (4) Wrote tutorial on Cities of Information, a situational awareness tool built in-house. (5) Learned Hibernate, an Object to Relational Mapping tool. (6) Learned Apache Ant, a build automation tool for Java development.

ITT Industries, Advanced Engineering and Sciences, Software Engineer, Jan. 2002 – Sept. 2003
(1) Developed multithreaded Java applications using Borland JBuilder to interface with various hardware components in a server rack. (2) Developed Perl scripts to test Java applications. (3) Administered Linux server and network for software team. (4) Trained teammates in Java, Perl, and Linux.

Business Development, D-Fusion, INC, April 2001-July 2001
(1) Researched early adopters for D-Fusion web-mining patents. (2) Developed data-filtering software products primarily in Java with a few scripts in Perl. (3) Made presentations to early stage investors and clients.

Intern Web Application Developer, Visual Multimedia Technologies June 1999-Present
(1) Designed and built Chinalane.com (e-commerce site) using Mysql and Perl. (2) Helped code and test ActivTrax.com using MS SQLServer and PHP. (3) Expanded Cold Fusion site for Department of CellBio at Johns Hopkins University.

Intern Web Application Developer, Roanoke Technology Corporation, June 2000-Aug 2000
(1) Helped build B2B bid-management system (RFQHosting.com). (1.1) Coded in Perl for a Postgres DBMS on UNIX platform. (1.2) Used Javascript heavily for validating and expediting web form input. (2) Built Perl interface to GIMP, a graphics app, for automatically generating images in a template-driven web-hosting application.

Web Developer, Department of Materials Science, JHU May 1998-Jan 2001
Designed and built Demobase a searchable online database of Materials Science demonstrations. Used MS Access DBMS with Cold Fusion interface.

Grunt, Henley's Do-It Center, Sept 1996-May 1997
(1) Manned cash register. (2) Loaded customers vehicles. (3) Ran inventory.

Carpenter, Manifest Construction, Summers of 1993-1997.
(1) Installed framing, masonry, windows, and patios for home renovations. (2) Painted interiors and exteriors.

Certifications/Qualifications
(1) Granted Top Secret Security Clearance (SSBI/SCI), March 2002. (2) Completed CI Poly, September 2004. ■

Funny from DarianHickman.com

2007-01-01T01:24:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of transitioning to blogspot with labels. Theoretically it's way easier and faster but for now it just means a lot of transition work.

Total Cost of Ownership for Cars

2006-12-29T00:56:00.000-05:00

I created a spreadsheet to compare the total cost of ownership between different cars.

To view, download, and edit the spreadsheet at Google Spreadsheets: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pCRoTBbGNNnWWlB6TDkmQDw

It basically concludes that hybrids still aren't worth the price. But at least it's still a good statement. Just an expensive statement.


TCO Summary	2006 Prius	Civic Hybrid	TDI	Civic LX	Honda Fit	99 Ford Escort	2003 Jetta	2004 Prius	Salv 2004 Civic 35k
Base price	$26,000.00	$22,000.00	$16,091.00	$17,000.00	$15,700.00	$5,000.00	$8,000.00	$22,988.00	$9,555.00
Sales Tax	$2,145.00	$1,815.00	$1,327.51	$1,402.50	$1,295.25	$412.50	$660.00	$1,896.51	$788.29
Tax + Base	$28,145.00	$23,815.00	$17,418.51	$18,402.50	$16,995.25	$5,412.50	$8,660.00	$24,884.51	$10,343.29
Annual fuel cost	$1,764.71	$2,250.00	$2,045.45	$2,571.43	$2,727.27	$3,103.45	$3,103.45	$1,764.71	$2,812.50
Monthly insurance	$60.00	$60.00	$60.00	$60.00	$60.00	$60.00	$60.00	$60.00	$60.00
Monthly loan payment*	$484.72	$410.15	$299.98	$316.93	$292.70	$93.22	$149.14	$428.57	$178.13
Monthly fuel cost	$147.06	$187.50	$170.45	$214.29	$227.27	$258.62	$258.62	$147.06	$234.38
Total Monthly	$691.78	$657.65	$530.44	$591.22	$579.97	$411.84	$467.76	$635.62	$472.51

Loan variables
Interest rate	4.50%	4.50%	4.50%	4.50%	4.50%	4.50%	4.50%	4.50%	4.50%
Loan period in years	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5
# payments per year	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12

Fuel Variables
$USD/gallon	$4.50	$4.50	$4.50	$4.50	$4.50	$4.50	$4.50	$4.50	$4.50
Miles/year	20000.00	20000.00	20000.00	20000.00	20000.00	20000.00	20000.00	20000.00	20000.00
Miles/gallon	51.00	40.00	44.00	35.00	33.00	29.00	29.00	51.00	32.00


Tax Variables
Sales tax rate	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%	8.25%

Insurance Variables





* Assumes tax is paid out of pocket and 100% of car is financed

Pictures from India

2006-12-28T14:18:00.000-05:00

I went to India in search of friends, teammates for Village, and to meet with awesome companies doing social enterprise stuff. Here's a few touristy pics to peruse.

india 2006

Pictures

2006-12-28T02:06:00.000-05:00

 CrossCurrent Encounter Retreat/      20-Mar-2005 22:52    -  
 Encounter Retreat/                   18-Apr-2005 19:50    -  
 Goofing off with Friends and Family/ 14-Sep-2005 19:27    -  
 LibraryOfCongress/                   26-Aug-2005 00:59    -  
 Trinidad_2002/                       27-Nov-2004 15:12    -  
 Wonderful Week in Key West/          25-Sep-2005 01:10    -  
 YWAM Orlando/                        26-Jun-2005 15:48    -  
 YWAM Orlando 2/                      24-Jul-2005 15:47    -  
 YWAM Orlando Buddies/                26-Oct-2005 21:45    -  
 books/                               29-Nov-2004 09:06    -  
 cheeto bad/                          22-Dec-2005 00:33    -  
 clarissa_shalani_artsy/              23-Dec-2005 16:03    -  
 friends/                             29-Nov-2005 16:02    -  
 hanggliding_trip/                    03-Jan-2005 22:51    -  
 headshots/                           17-May-2006 17:33    -  
 if_women_controlled_the_world/       13-Nov-2005 21:18    -  
 jamaica_team.jpg                     10-Jul-2005 17:04   25K 
 korea_jan_2004/                      16-Apr-2005 22:50    -  
 nyfa/                                29-Mar-2006 02:53    -  
 ywam richmond/                       28-Nov-2005 15:57    -

Buy Some Rosetta Stone

2006-12-28T01:50:00.000-05:00

Rosetta Stone: Learn a foreign language with powerful learning software -

I've been using Rosetta Stone software to learn Portuguese and absolutely love it. Most courses teach you to translate from English to another language. Rosetta Stone uses pictures and audio to connect the language straight to the concept like when you learned your native language. This is powerful learning software!

Friends

2006-12-28T01:40:00.000-05:00

Tim McGinnis - Thursday, May 18, 2006

One of my roommies in Pasadena.

http://tim-mcginnis.com/

AJDOWNTOWN.com - Experience it! - Sunday, June 05, 2005

AJDOWNTOWN.com - Experience it! My friend and roommate Adam is going into full-time missions in Morroco in the near future with Campus Crusade for Christ. I spent the last two months reading books of his shelf. Quality stuff like "Witnessing Without Fear", "Master Plan of Evangelism", "Praying with Power".

Kadee Jo's Website -

Kadee Jo's Website I made Kadee create a website so she could tell all her friends about her faith and what she's doing about it.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

2006-12-28T01:35:00.000-05:00

Ecclesiastes 3:11 God makes everything beautiful in its time. - Saturday, December 03, 2005

Ecclesiastes Chapter 3... ⁹ What does the worker gain from his toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on men. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ¹² I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. ¹³ That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. ¹⁴ I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.

I thought I posted on this earlier, but I guess I didn't. This verse came to me in a dream that gave me insight about my relationships with women; essentially don't rush romance. Wait for the right woman, instead of getting into half-hearted relationships with women that are really cool, but not the "right woman".

White and Nerdy

2006-12-28T01:27:00.000-05:00

White and Nerdy

My Spiritual Journey

2006-12-22T04:49:00.000-05:00

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." -Ecclesiastes 1:2

I remember a clear sunny day riding home from school on the big yellow bus when I first tried tracing 'why' all the way back. "Why I am riding on this bus?" To go to school and back. "Why am I going to school?" So I can get a job one day. "Why am I getting a job?" So I can raise a family. "Why am I raising a family and having kids?" So my kids can do the same thing I'm doing: Go to school. Go to job. Start a family. It's an endless cycle with no ultimate destination. "Well hold on maybe I'll find the cure for cancer or something and help humanity move forward?" So what? What is the point of advancing society? "Well the more we advance society the less people will suffer." So what? What is the ultimate purpose of reducing the suffering in the world? What will that lead to? The universe clearly doesn't have a problem with humans suffering from all sorts of things. Besides, if all the humans disappeared there would not be any human suffering. So that can't be the ultimate purpose of anyone's existence--alleviate human suffering; help humanity move forward. It's a circular problem. Humans can't be their own ultimate purpose for existing.

If you delete humans from existence you delete the problem.

If all humans were gone, would the universe miss them? No. "Well maybe God would miss us?" So what? What is the problem with God being lonely in the universe? If God is the creator of everything then he created loneliness. Why not just delete loneliness and solve the problem that way? Matter of fact why doesn't God delete himself? Then all problems would be solved. No humans to keep God company therefore no human suffering. No God therefore no lonely God. "Wow! There is no ultimate purpose to any of this. There is no ultimate purpose for my existence. There is no ultimate purpose for God's existence. There is no ultimate purpose for existence, period."

"If all of Existence ceased to exist, would anyone care?"

Years later I learned to summarize this conclusion with a simple riddle, "If all of Existence ceased to exist, would anyone care?" Even with that glaringly obvious question, some people still don't get what I'm talking about when I say there is no ultimate purpose for Existence. That's okay. At least the guy who wrote Ecclesiastes seemed to understand what I was getting at.

Dying and ceasing to exist are not the same thing.

"Well Mr. Existence is Pointless, why don't you just kill yourself since your life is ultimately pointless?" Well, dying doesn't mean you cease to exist. It just means you're dead. Even though having an afterlife is pointless there is still a possibility it exists. Our Creator certainly doesn't require things to have an ultimate purpose when deciding what should exist. And there's no guarantee that afterlife is any better than current life. Suicide might piss God off. God is possible. I'm thirteen and functionally agnostic.

"What do you care what God thinks, he's pointless, so his opinion obviously should not matter to you? Besides there is no need for God so what really makes you think there is a God?" Nothing makes me believe there is definitely a God, but God is certainly a possibility.

Nonexistence is possible, but not likely. So now what?

"Well if life is ultimately pointless and you possibly don't have the option of nonexistence then what is there worth doing?" I searched for the answer to that question for the rest of my teenage years. "What goals are worth pursuing?" My search lead me through the Seven Habits of Highly

Effective People, through Deepak Chopra, through Gandhi, through I Ching, through eastern philosophies that seemed to me more straightforward and well thought out than Christianity.

Christianity felt like Fisher Price Theology. Christianity: Osh Kosh B'God.

Christianity always felt like a cartoonish explanation of God. A God so human-like with emotions and jealousy and anger and happiness. The authors of the Bible must have thrown that stuff in there just to make it more user-friendly for the masses. Christianity: the Macintosh of Organized Religion. The Eastern religions made a lot more sense. God is a simple abstract force in the universe. A set of consistent principles that Yogi's or zen monks or ninjas could learn and live harmoniously with to achieve their goals. I studied the weather patterns of life as documented by the I Ching: The Book of Changes. A very curious book about balancing the yin and yang, earthly and heavenly, passive and active forces of my life. I only have theories on how it could lead me to such powerful insights through its hexagrams. My simplest theory is Luke 11:9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” I sought wisdom so He gave it to me.

Visualization: think of it as multimedia prayer.

When I was young teenager Stephen Covey mentioned it and Shakti Gawain spelled it all out for me: Creative Visualization. I learned to visualize things I wanted and it became so effective that it forced me to take seriously that there is some intelligent force at work in the universe that science had not yet explained. Heading into eigth grade, I remember spending all summer daydreaming about this beautiful girl in my class. Towards the end of the summer Dad tells me he wants to try going to a church. This is the first time I ever remember my dad wanting to attend church. And of course the one person I knew at that church was that girl. I should have visualized courage to ask her out too. Oh well, better luck next time.

I'm seventeen and I got some cool soul skills. Now what?

So all this eastern mysticism, all this searching for ways to expand my influence over my present reality it didn't answer the big question: "If there is no ultimate purpose to existence, then what is worth doing with my life?" So I went back to the biographies I really admired, everyone from Jesus to Leonardo da Vinci to Gandhi. Towards the end of high school, all these biographies and all these teachings came down to one verb: Love. The only thing worth doing with one's life is to love others.

Love is the Game. Who is the Guru?

"So love is the answer. Which teacher knew this and expressed this above all others?" Jesus. The greatest philosopher of all time. Mind you, I did not consider myself a Christian because of this conclusion. I knew Jesus was a great teacher and somebody worth emulating. I learned this from all the biographies of the people I admired. However, I had no intention of affiliating myself with a group of people who blindly followed religious dogma; who cared more about banning abortion and fighting gay rights than living out the highest commandments: "Luke 10:27 He answered: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ [ Deut. 6:5] ; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ [ Lev. 19:18] ” Most Christians I knew back then were just not that impressive, certainly not like the hard core Christians I had read about like Mother Theresa, and St. Francis of Assisi. I had no motivation to call myself a Christian and no emotional connection to Jesus' death on the cross. It was Jesus' life that impressed me. That is what I decided I should strive to emulate. In the final years of my adolescence I focused my spiritual study almost exclusively on emulating Jesus and simultaneously paying little heed to conventional Christianity or to the whole issue of sin and redemption.

Sin is silly. College Christians are sincere but seemingly sedated.

Sin didn't mean much of anything to me. I've made mistakes in the past, but I never really felt condemned to Hell. Salvation solved a problem I didn't have. The challenge and adventure of emulating Christ's life kept me intrigued for years leading into college. So I read the Bible on a regular basis. The parts that made sense like prayer, meditating, fasting, keeping few possessions, and having a heart of charity I pursued with a vengeance. The parts that didn't make sense like: "Why would God send someone to eternal punishment for temporary mistakes?" or "Why is homosexuality a sin?" or "Why should Adam's sin ruin my chances to become sinless like Christ?" those questions I set to the side. Into sophomore year I found myself attending bible studies and hanging out more and more with Christians, no one hard-core like St. Francis of Assisi but definitely students sincere in their faith in Christ.

Sophomore year sucked. Time to sit in silence by a stream and accept salvation.

Then sophomore year brought on stress like I had never experienced before in my life. 19 credits of mostly boring and stressful classes and working 10 hours a week and pseudo-dating a girl that was mostly just causing me more grief. One October weekend I had to get away from it all and spend some time in the woods down by the stream behind Hopkins campus. I was reading Living Faith by Jimmy Carter. He was impressive in a more conventional sense. He did a lot to share God's love with others and at the same time he also raised a family. Sitting there on a rock along the stream behind Hopkins campus I asked God what is the next step in my spiritual growth? The answer came quietly and clearly, "Accept salvation, pledge your allegiance to Christ and get baptized." Accepting salvation was a huge step for me.

Jesus is not just the greatest gamer of this grand game of life. He is the Game.

Not much really profoundly changed in my life after accepting salvation through Christ, but it meant acknowledging that Jesus' death on the cross mattered to me. It meant that achieving Nirvana, Samadhi, complete fulfillment, getting into heaven, being one with God, or winning the game of life depended completely on another human being. It meant winning the game of life wasn't just about emulating the highest quality example, like studying Pele to become the greatest soccer player. There was this extra unintuitive/awkward part where I had to admit that I couldn't win the game by training hard. Only Jesus wins the game and only by joining his victory dance do we get to taste victory ourselves. Not very intuitive for me at all. It still befuddles me some. The whole concept of God's grace is still sinking in.

I have the freedom to love and not worry about anything else.

I'm still learning that the game of life isn't about becoming a household name as a great spiritual leader. It's not about going hard-core to earn my page in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's about accepting a free gift from a benevolent God. It's about taking that free gift of salvation and being set free from sin. And it is about using that freedom to freely love God and to love others without having to worry about anything else.

No Purpose. Play anyway and play to win.

Like I said at the beginning, there is no ultimate purpose to this whole game of existence. My stance hasn't changed on that at all. However it has no bearing on my decisions because I don't believe we have the option of ceasing to exist. So since we are here playing this game, we may as well play to win. Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. -John 14:6 I'm following Jesus because he is the only real way to win.

Subscribe to Darian Hickman Newsletter

2006-12-21T05:47:00.000-05:00

Blogger is way cooler now.

2006-12-21T05:28:00.000-05:00

This instant update feature they've recently added has convinced me to make the switch publishing at darianhickman.blogspot.com even though it doesn't look as cool as www.darianhickman.com

We'll see how it works all the old content is still there at http://www.darianhickman.com/blog.html

My first Skypecast podcast thinga-ma-jigger.

2006-12-18T21:00:00.000-05:00

It wasn't my smoothest talk ever, but it went pretty well. Allan Benamer author of www.NonprofitTechBlog.org interviewed me for a podcast. I've never listened to a podcast much less made one, so this is a pretty cool first-time experience. :)

Village development is going pretty well. Seattle didn't have power this weekend due to trees falling on power lines, so my programmer Anton has some catchup to do but nothing scary. For you game geeks out there our main algorithm challenge is pathfinding for characters on the map.

Things here in Palo Alto are pretty quiet. Most of the Stanford students have vacated the premises for the holidays. I will too but not until Christmas day. I'm doing a pseudo-holiday of one week in VA.

Orkut has really cleaned house

2006-12-14T04:44:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago the site would crash constantly, the search tool sucked, pages loaded way too slow. But now all that has changed. It's more or less what you would expect with the Google brand: fast, reliable, and friendly.

Now what we need is a Firefox plugin that can extract my myspace profile and insert it into Orkut and other social networks. Myspace still sucks by the way. Hopelessly faulty, annoying ads, slow pages, can't auto-resize photo uploads, just a dumb service all around. At least the Firefox Adblock will fix the ad problem for you.

If you need an invite to orkut email me at firstname@darianhickman.com.

Amazing Energy Technology that just went public

2006-12-12T13:57:00.000-05:00

Dr. Bussard talks about his research sealed for 11 years in government secrecy and how it could transform world economics, end global warming, eliminate nuclear waste, etc. This is his presentation at Google Headquarters:

Tenfold is now a verb.

2006-12-06T04:30:00.000-05:00

I'd like to announce that 'tenfold' is now a verb. Whenever I have to explain social enterprise I use the wonderful example of Kickstart. Their pump technology has helped subsistence farmers of Sub-Saharan Africa tenfold their income, going from making $110 a year to $1100 a year on average, basically moving them into the Sub-Saharan middle class. And now it's time to tenfold my bullet points on current life.

I made Waldorf salad 3 times now, twice successfully, with help, though. =)
Running a mini-multinational company is kinda fun. Nevermind that I spend my entire day in front of Gmail and Gtalk and Google Spreadsheets and Google Groups and Skype.
Village is getting great coverage recently in two of my favorite sites: NextBillion.net and WorldChanging.org
My brief visit to the 1570 this weekend for Mike and Angela's wedding made me miss Pasadena. I'm still amazed at the quality roommates, church, and friends I have there. *sniff *sniff *tender moment
No wife yet. I'm so distracted with trying to change the world there's no time to go shopping.
I got a Masaii tribe carving during my travels to Kenya for my cousin Tyler. He took it to school for show-and-tell. This is hilarious to me because no one realized it was actually a nicely carved knife with sheath. lol
Fawlty Towers is painfully funny. British humor is so painful. John Cleese is great.
My clothes are hanging in a closet in Palo Alto, CA. I've been living out of a suitcase since May 29th, 2005 so this is actually news.
The Stanford crowd is really awesome. I'm enjoying making friends here. Hanging out with other people who want to change the world ain't too bad.
I met Loren Cunningham the founder of YWAM two weeks ago at Stanford of all places, when he was giving a talk about Asians in missions. He's a cool guy.

Experimenting with Esnips service

2006-11-29T19:54:00.000-05:00

Does an image show up here? Also happens when I store a page at esnips.

DarianHickman.com is back in operation. Yay!

2006-11-08T21:13:00.000-05:00

And Google just converted my site administration to beta.blogger.com so now it's even cooler to use.

Oops. My Domain Died Temporarily

2006-11-07T20:47:00.000-05:00

I didn't take all those "soon to expire" notices seriously since all years prior it just autorenewed, but I guess they weren't kidding this time. I'll be fixing darianhickman.com in the coming days, but for now you can check my main blog at http://darianhickman.blogspot.com. Unfortunately most of the links to other content in my website will be broken now.

I'm back in Cali. Yay!!

2006-10-28T02:31:00.000-05:00

I flew into Burbank Thursday afternoon, caught with Allan at YWAM LA, got my wonder VW Jetta back, and had a good time visiting with the new crop of students there. After a great meeting with Blake about the artwork for the card game and video game I headed back up YWAM LA. Get this, I accidentally fasted the entire day until dinner with YWAM LA which was pretty cool because the YWAM students themselves were fasting on purpose.

Things are really moving forward with Village, too. Today I had lunch with a Fuller student named Shanek Fernando, who just happens to want to make a reality tv show about international development as well. Village the Show, of course, you knew it was coming. =)

My body is still on two timezones I think, I'm not sure which ones though. I'm dead tired in the afternoon around 2; take a quick 3 hour nap; and I'm still falling asleep at midnight. Hmm... go figure.

I'm at the 1570 again up in Pasadena. If you're in the area give me a call.

Crap Company Alert: Travel Reaction

2006-10-05T11:18:00.000-05:00

I tried signing up for their service. The first 3 days my web login was broken, and then they had the audacity to not honor their return policy on day 4. (they have a 3 day grace period when you sign up which means their used to customers cancelling as soon as they find out it's useless).
I would link to their site, but I don't want to accidentally improve their rank in Google searches.

Photos from my Kenya trip Sept 14th - Sept 26th 2006

2006-09-30T07:39:00.000-05:00

Kenya

Sep 27, 2006 - 24 photos - 8 MB

Photos from my Kenya trip Sept 14th - Sept 26th 2006

Hyderabad is crowded, noisy, and mostly friendly.

2006-09-29T05:50:00.000-05:00

Here's my view from a mini-taxi. There are no road laws in Hyderabad. Crossing a street in Hyderabad is like playing Frogger except more air pollution. I found a restaurant yesterday with food that doesn't burn holes through my intestine. Chicken Kandahar is my friend. =) Have you heard the stereotype that Indians are great at hospitality but bad tippers? It's true. The people I'm visiting with go out of their way to make me welcome, walking around with me, or fetching me coffee, or showing me to restaurants. Then after dinner at the restaurant when I pay the bill they usually take half the tip I leave and put it back in my wallet. =)

Doh! Still in Richmond

2006-08-31T10:44:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Indian Embassy, I missed my flight the other day because I had to retrieve my passport in person from the embassy, nevermind that I sent it in weeks in advance and even paid extra for mailing fees. I haven't done that much and I'm already getting tired of international travel, especially embassies. So wish me luck as I attempt to reschedule my flight today.

Things are progressing on Village, and I'm doing a lot of thinking about what next. Business school? Acting school? I definitely want to get back into the university environment. Making things happen with Village and meeting the right people would be a lot easier if I was at Stanford right now. =)

Pray for Kay

2006-08-28T14:38:00.000-05:00


One of my YWAM buddies from YWAM Virginia, Kay just found out she has some cysts on her thyroid and a couple of them are probably cancerous. Pray for her complete recovery. She's been in Brazil helping start up a School of Jewish Studies there and is planned to go to Kiev, Ukraine to help with their SJS as well.

All kinds a Village going on

2006-08-16T17:18:00.000-05:00

Village Map ... Village Board Game ... Village Demo.
I haven't written in a month.... wow! I've been posting mostly on the blog at http://www.villagethegame.com. August has been pretty tame. Lots of emails, lots of phone calls, and just Hezbollah to keep me entertained. Last night I played the most annoying game of chess ever with my friend Josh. Three times I "knew" I had em and of course, it ends stalemate. Punk.

I was planning on a trip to California for a quick visit but I don't think that's going to happen. I'm burning through my money too fast and I'll probably be headed back there before winter anyways. Now it's looking like a week in South Carolina at the Zadok House of Prayer. Hopefully I can get recentered before I head off to Kenya on August 29th. Did I mention I was going to Africa? Yep Africa. Everyone's doing it. Why not. After Kenya for a month, Hyderabad, India for a month. Between those two continents I hope to ge t a lot of research and development done for Village. So VillagetheGame.com is probably going to have a lot more activity than DarianHickman.com. My personal life is on hold at the moment. No women, no Kung Fu, no soccer, nothing except Village and the occasional boob tube perusal. But hey, I'm learning a lot. I figure the amount of money I'll probably spend on Village is equal to about a year at Stanford Business School and I'll probably learn just as much, too. We'll see.

Village is a slow journey and I'm going to enjoy it.

2006-07-10T20:53:00.000-05:00

Here's the latest update of the cover art for Village. Btw, update your bookmarks: Village lives at http://www.villagethegame.com now not simvillage.blogspot.com. We've been having a great time of prayer at the 1570. We've done the "listening experiment" a few times now and it's gone really well. It's Tim's and my way of introducing people to the experience that you can ask God questions and He'll actually respond with words or pictures. A few of us prayed the other night about Village and what I'm supposed to do next. Ashley got the word "play". And Tim got some impression that I needed to figure out why I had such contempt for the way God does things. That same night I had a dream I was goofing off with Patrick, my younger brother. He started berating me because I was being a clutz and so I smacked him upside the head. In typical little brother fashion, he asked "What do you want from me?". "Patience" I replied in the dream. Of course, Dad was watching all this happen so he got up out of his chair and smacked me upside my head. Knowing fully why he smacked me, I just looked at him and stubbornly replied, "So be it." .... So after waking from this awkward family dream, I realized several things. God wants me to show more mercy towards others and more patience towards God. (If you want a fuller interpretation of the dream email me.) Building Village is going to take a while and God is okay with that so I have to be okay with that too. Ashley's word "play" is the only option. I have to enjoy this journey or it won't happen. There is no option to 'suck it up', ignore the pain, and just sprint to the finish line like I did repeatedly for four years in college. So Village is going to be a long journey and I'm going to enjoy it. =)

Biofuels: Think Outside The Barrel

2006-07-01T17:48:00.000-05:00

Google TechTalks
March 29, 2006

Vinod Khosla

Vinod Khosla is a venture capitalist considered one of the most successful and influential personalities in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986. In 2004 he formed Khosla Ventures.

ABSTRACT
On Wednesday, March 29th, by invitation from our co-founders and CEO, our special guest, Vinod Khosla, visited Google to deliver a tech talk about the emergence of ethanol as a viable, market ready, and competitive source of renewable energy.

His presentation has been making huge waves in the investor, policy, and business communities and we are privileged to have had him take time to talk to us about the tremendous potential for ethanol's explosion into the market. Here are some recent articles that might be of interest in relation to this talk:

Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley billionaire, who wants to save the world from oil
http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5655161

On the Ethanol Bandwagon, Big Names and Big Risks
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/business/yourmoney/26etha.html?_r=1&oref=login

Two awesome microenterprise sites

2006-06-27T00:20:00.000-05:00

I just discovered 2 awesome sites:
http://www.kiva.org
Kiva is an online microcredit service. Now anyone with $25 and Paypal can become a microcredit lender. Sign up with this site and lend money to the microentrepreneurs of your choice.

http://www.nextbillion.net
NextBillion.net brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise. Create an account today and start sharing your thoughts. Read more...

Synergy Pics

2006-06-23T01:09:00.000-05:00

SYNERGY (10 pictures)

Added by Tim M. on Jun 22, 2006

The Synergy clips are up

2006-06-23T01:07:00.000-05:00

Check out http://tim-mcginnis.com/audio.html for all the Synergy clips from last Sunday June 18

There are 12 video clips and 28 audio clips available for you to download and share with your friends.

Share 'em with your friends. Check out the upcoming events at the bottom of the post.

Too much fun. tim

--
Tim McGinnis, MA
Life Purpose Catalyst
http://tim-mcginnis.com
310-384-2425

Awesome times and prayer requests

2006-06-21T19:36:00.000-05:00

Village is moving forward.
An artist I met via Craigslist, Blake Douglas, drew up this thumbnail. His work is going to be the cover art and website art for VillagetheGame.com. Btw, I changed the name from SimVillage to Village. I decided I didn't want to get sued by SimCity.
Last Friday, I had a viewing of "The New Heroes" documentary. Eight more people now get why I'm building this game to show off what these social entrepreneurs are doing.
Last Sunday, we had our first night of "Synergy" at the 1570. Tim organized a night where anyone and everyone could share something. And something we got, everything from songs and poetry, to a guy making gross popping noises with his finger. Several shared something and deep and personal. So yeah, there's a lot going on to praise God for these days.

Prayer Requests
Pray for this coming Friday night, we're having people over to try listening to God. To some people listening is a foreign concept, usually prayer babbling on until you run out of things to say to God. Also pray for Ashley's variety show at our house. This is a huge step for her.

Regarding Village, I'm considering a move to India. Going to India could help me in several ways: (1) I can hire an Indian game development company to build a playable demo for about 1/4 the cost. (2) While I'm there I can practice building a third world village in a rural part of India and use that experience better design the game. (3) My rapidly disappearing finances could last longer at the Indian cost of living and buy me more time to focus full-time on the game. Moving to the other side of the planet is a huge gamble, and so I could really use a lot of prayer. If God tells you anything about this plan, please share it with me.

Calendar

2006-06-20T02:04:00.000-05:00

javascript AJAX prototype for online game

2006-06-18T05:43:00.000-05:00

Reply to: gigs-172746548@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-06-18, 3:33AM PDT

VillagetheGame.com is going to be a online game where you practice building villages in third world countries. Using real-world technology and businesses custom designed for developing nations you must set your village onto the path of prosperity. A great example of this technology is Kickstart's Money Maker pump http://www.kickstart.org.

I need someone experienced with javascript development, preferably somebody who has built a game in javascript. The full design doc for this prototype can be found at:
http://simvillage.blogspot.com/2006/06/webvillage-simvillages-first-prototype.html

no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: looking for bids.

Come see "The New Heroes" documentary

2006-06-15T16:26:00.000-05:00

When: 8pm Fri, Jun 16, 2006
Where:1570 N Holliston Ave, Pasadena CA 91104
http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/

The New Heroes tells the dramatic stories of 14 daring people from all corners of the globe who, against all odds, are successfully alleviating poverty and illness, combating unemployment and violence, and bringing education, light, opportunity and freedom to poor and marginalized people around the world.

Also known as "social entrepreneurs," they develop innovations that bring life-changing tools and resources to people desperate for viable solutions. What is possible? You'd be surprised. Take a journey into a world where people take action to make a big difference.

Drinks and snacks will already be there. Bring extra stuff if you want. Let me know if you need directions.

Reply to: comm-171965169@craigslist.org

Questions for the experts

2006-06-14T03:02:00.000-05:00

I came up with some critical questions for my game plan. If you're an expert in game development and got some answers please send me an email: answers@villagethegame.com.

How much does it really cost to build a quality game if you're not building your own gaming engine or graphics engine?
What's the best game engine to build on?
What should I expect to pay for sound effects, original compositions, and licensed music?
What's the cost difference between 2D animation and 3D animation?
Considering I'm not pushing the limits of graphics or gaming engines what quality of game could I build for $70,000?
How much would it cost to build Warcraft II with 2006 technology?

SimVillage Game Proposal

2006-06-10T19:59:00.000-05:00

Game Summary

SimVillage immerses the player into the real world of developing nations. As a super entrepreneur start up any business designed for the third world village. Fly over the village, look into what problems it has, assess what resources it has and choose the best businesses to start and how to manage them. Pick the right ones and the village's economy takes off, pick the wrong ones and watch the village waste away.

Initial Game Play

Imagine you are flying over top a village in Kenya watching people, cattle, pigs, chicken walking about, farmers tending to their crops, people buying and selling goods in the town markets. Imagine you can click on anybody in the village and see what income they have, what access they have to jobs, healthcare, education, etc. Click on the storefronts in the town center to find out what is selling well, and what's missing entirely. After perusing the village and assessing the needs of the villagers and what you think you can sell, you set up your own store fronts to provide microcredit, kickstart pumps, solar cell rentals, waste/recycling all the self-sustaining businesses that will have the biggest impact on the villagers lives. Your only constraint is what products and services villagers will actually buy and what you can afford with a third world business budget of $10000.

The Final Game Experience

Now imagine you've been playing this game for several months now, you're logged into the online game and growing healthy beautiful villages with teams of virtual entrepreneurs from around the world. You all have spent weeks perfecting the design of one particular village in Kenya. One day the pastor from your church calls you up to tell you that he's really enjoyed watching the village grow from the game website. Your church has decided to build your village for real as their next summer missions trip. Fundraising is a breeze because your friends and family have already been watching your creation come to life through the online game. Now, you're headed to Kenya to build it for real!

Competitive Advantage and Strategic Timing

The greatest competitive advantage of this game is it's tie to reality. Because our game is dealing with real problems and real solutions there are literally thousands of NGO's, and governments, and for-profit companies that stand to benefit from the game and therefore make them candidates for strategic alliances in marketing the game. Thousands of international organizations involved in community development, economic development, and public health such as Ashoka, Skoll Foundation, Technoserve, Acumen Fund, Habitat for Humanity, World Hope have a vested interest in seeing this game reach a wide audience. Every government of a developing nation: Brasil, India, Mexico, South Africa stands to benefit from promoting this game to encourage their wealthier, educated citizens to become entrepreneurs to the poor. For-profit companies selling technology to the poor will want to advertise their technology in this game so that when church groups and aid organizations start building these villages for real their products and services will be the ones they choose.

Right now the biggest trend in movies and television is Reality. The hottest trend in TV right now is reality TV and transformational TV: Pimp my Ride, Extreme Makeover. The hottest trend in movies is geo-political: Syriana, Crash, An Inconvenient Truth. America and the rest of the world love watching real people live their lives and watching real people transform their lives. The time is now for the video gaming industry to catch this wave and create reality/transformational gaming.

Who Will Play

The early adopters will be social entrepreneurs themselves. Their feedback in the development and improvement of the game will be invaluable and prepare the game for the full market push onto the PCs of college students and hich schoolers across the globe. Aside from students the next best segment to target are those who played SimCity, which has a lot of gameplay overlap.

Revenue Streams

Even without movie or reality tv spinoffs SimVillage stands to be a very strong revenue maker through:

Game sales.
Online subscriptions to the massively multiplayer version of the game.
Advertising on website.
Advertising within the game.

SimVillage offers a powerful, meaningful, and lucrative bridge between gaming and reality. Given all the possible strategic alliances with governments, NGO's, and for-profit companies and the trends in film, and TV, and given the all the potential revenue streams SimVillage is poised for gaming history.

SimVillage pre-production consumes my life.

2006-06-08T02:41:00.000-05:00

The picture above is one of the technologies I am promoting in the first prototype of SimVillage. It's a simple, affordable water pump invented by Kickstart and it's revolutionizing the lives of Kenyan farmers. With this simple pump thousands of farmers have tenfold their income! SimVillage with the occasional acting gig has been consuming my life. Last weekend I ended up at a house-warming party of a friend of a friend of a friends' =) Little did I know that I was going to be surrounded by game developers. I would have worn something nicer than swimming trunks. =)

1570 N Holliston and Jan Kaczmarek

2006-05-27T02:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a shot of my roommates and Jan Kaczmarek. Jan composed the score several movies most recently for Finding Neverland. Very cool guy! I asked him if he'd consider composing the score for a video game. He said he liked the idea. =) There was a beneift at TV Authority in Santa Monica for kids with cancer. Jan was the guest speaker. In the pic from left to right: James, Brandon, Jan, Darian, Tim. I live with a bunch of awesome guys. There's always something going on around here. I love this place.

Zoolander Pose

2006-05-19T02:32:00.000-05:00

Not quite.... I just got some new headshots done. This whole acting thing is a lot slower paced when you're not in school. I've revamped the website to make it obvious what I'm doing now, looking for acting gigs. Even church (http://www.mosaic.org) is slow right now for recruiting people onto the drama team.

I wonder how long it takes to get to the point where I can make absurd films like Zoolander and Starsky & Hutch with the same band of acting buddies over and over, having a blast, and making enough bank to fund whatever projects I want.

Speaking of projects, I've decided I'm going to try to save the world again... that's going to be my day job. Imagine SimCity for third world countries. Instead of building skyscrapers you're picking the smartest irrigation pumps, the best microcredit program, the best solar-powered refrigerators to install in your village. You watch your village flourish as you navigate all the demands of third world politics and economics. "SimVillage" except I can't call it that because it's already taken. Then imagine waking up one day and finding out somebody decided to bankroll your village and build it for real. The village you built in the game was so well done, your church decided to make it happen in real life partnering with World Hope, Google.org, and Ashoka to manage implementation. I'd definitely play the game. Hopefully a few million other people will too. =)

August 30, 2004 was when I first started using GMail.

2006-05-13T01:29:00.000-05:00

I just hit the 25% mark on my gmail quota. It's been almost 2 years of usage and I'm only at 25%. Wow. So at this rate I have six more years before I fill this account.

I finally got a car! Praise God!

2006-05-02T19:33:00.000-05:00

A lady in Pasadena was nice enough to sell me her 2003 VW Jetta GL for $8k. So now I can go to classes and audtions without having to beg the roommates for rides. Good times. Now all I have to do is figure out insurance and how to pay for it. =)

Life is slow but good these days. Not a whole lot of acting going on but a whole lot of uploading videos, sifting through craigslist, researching classes and nowcasting.com listings, business cards, head shots, blah, blah, blah....

The roommate Tim McGinnis is going hard core with his Life Coaching business. It's been cool to pray with him and the other guys in the house on all the goals and dreams we are all pursuing. It's like mini-YWAM in this house. I love it!

Ooh! I almost forgot... I went to the Biola Media Conference this weekend and it was awesome! The conference is an annual meeting to network and attend workshops to help Christians who have come to influence Hollywood. I had no idea how big the Christian movement in Hollywood really was until I went to this event. There's a movie coming out to the theatres on September 29th called "Facing the Giants". It's awesome! A multimedia pastor from Albany Georgia put this film together for $100,000 with his church as the crew and his actors. It's all done with nonprofessional actors and nonprofessional crew. Sony got wind of it and they are distributing it in 380 theatres nationwide this fall.

Here's a spreadsheet for comparing cars.

2006-04-29T03:41:00.000-05:00

Since I've been spending so much time researching cars I may as well share
this spreadsheet I built to compare cars. Let me know if you find it useful
or if you find some flaws.

http://groups.google.com/group/Darian-Hickman/browse_frm/thread/b8209d0aba279994/3ef40332a109e9e8#3ef40332a109e9e8

Here's the films I've done at NYFA so far.

2006-04-22T18:54:00.000-05:00

All these links will take you to Google Video where these videos are hosted. Enjoy! These are all student projects I did in the last 7 weeks. Some good, some great, some whatever. You decide.

Akanksha's Sister teaches us to dance.

Drinking in LA

F*cked by a Knife

Messed Up

Mind on Fire

Naughty George

Picker

The Champ

The Spy Who Annoyed Me

Grandma Phyllis went to heaven yesterday.

2006-04-13T12:13:00.000-05:00

Grandma went to heaven yesterday at about 8 am. Before the family told anybody, a friend of hers from church, who is currently working in Iraq, called and said that he had a dream that night of Phyllis dancing around in heaven, enjoying the freedom from her old body. That was a really cool confirmation. They are going to be having a couple of services for her, one in Indiana and one in Kansas. She's going to be buried next to her late husband Fred Hickman (Grandpa) in Kansas.

I graduate from NYFA acting for film today.

2006-04-01T02:58:00.000-05:00

This has been one of the best decisions of my life, coming out here and getting in-depth training in the heart of the media industry! Here's a picture of my filmmaking buddies (Toby and Gemini) doing a shoot last weekend for Toby's music video. Hopefully I can upload some clips from the films I've been in soon.

I've been researching to do next. For the next week I'll be helping my roommate Tim McGinnis produce a short film. After that I'm probably headed back to Virginia. I'm also researching a volunteer project with Needful Provision in Mexico. And then after that I'll probably be doing some serious job hunting.

Third week going very well.

2006-03-22T21:43:00.000-05:00

Classes have been taking up most of my time, so I've actually slowed down a little bit with meeting new people. However, I did finally visit with YWAM LA last night. They had an awesome time of worship and also Fred Markert (a ywam veteran) gave a great talk on how Jesus is really the answer to solving most of the worlds current problems be it corruption, AIDS, famine, or poverty. It was quite refreshing to be around YWAMers again. =) I miss you guys.

This past weekend of shooting was pretty interesting. I got be a burglar in one shot and a drunk bum wandering LA in another. Hopefully I'll get a copy of the films soon so I upload some clips to Google Video. Speaking of which, I helped my friend Allan Turner-Ward upload is reel to Google Video the other day check it out:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7630917745652713475. I met this Limey a week or two ago. Awesome guy. I really hope his career takes off.

Classes are going great!

2006-03-14T20:37:00.000-05:00

This is so much fun, it's ridiculous. Nevertheless, riddle me this all you psychology majors: why is it that every morning or day before, I don't want to go to class? I want to come up with some excuse to take the day off and just relax. Why? I learn a lot. It's incredibly exciting and challenging. I have my moments of embarrassment, of course, sometimes video taped. =) But that shouldn't phase me by now. Hmm...

Btw, I was in two student films this weekend. Nothing huge. Just some short short silent black and white films. If you go to video.google.com and search for "nyfa" you'll see some examples of student projects. Not very exciting, but definitely a good learning exercise. This past Sunday in my first film I trip on a curb, mess up my leg and watch people pass by me not offering to help and just look at me like I'm some kind of freak show. The filmmaker said she got the idea because it actually happened to her. :( Sohh ssad.

In the second movie I did Sunday morning, I hold this really big dude captive and torture him and kill him. These filmmakers don't seem that twisted. I guess it's just easier to do dark material when you're shooting in black and white.

The classes have opened my eyes to how complicated acting can be, especially Maria Gobetti's class on technique's for emotional preparing for a scene. Expressing emotions sincerely and precisely is a lot harder than I thought.

Mosaic is still an awesome church. They do a wonderful job of letting the creative people contribute to the service. Roommates are awesome too. We got two more guys moved in this week crashing on couches like me, which brings us to a grand total of 7 homies. Fun times.

And to top it all off, I've gained about 5 pounds from all the biking and weightlifting I've been doing. I didn't know I could put on weight that fast!

Great book: Now, Find Your Strengths. It's a good psychologically profiling method to help you discover what your talents are. Very interesting read. =)

Lovin' it out here on the West Coast

2006-03-04T02:58:00.000-05:00

The wave of cool new people to hang out with just doesn't end! I am overwhelmed and grateful for all the people that God has brought into my life over the past 2 weeks here on the West Coast. People who don't even know me except for my website have opened up their homes to me and helped me get rides to various small groups and events. Since I last blogged, I connected with a Christian group producing a short film for the 168Project.org Film Festival. They get one week (168 hours) to write, shoot, and edit an 11 minute film on a bible verse given to them at the beginning of the week. The festival airs the entries on March 11 (my birthday =) ) Just from volunteering as a grip on this project I learned a ton and met a lot of Christians working in various parts of "The Industry". I'm living some really cool guys up in Pasadena, CA now. Tim McGinnis heard through the email grape vine that I was looking for a place to stay and him and his roommates are letting me crash on their couch for the duration of my classes. Mana hooked me up with a 30 day pass to the gym where he's a personal trainer so I'm pretty much set for the next month. Found a great church, a great gym, great roommates ... now all I have to find is a better mode of transportation than the bus. =)

Btw, I finally uploaded my video montage of Buenos Aires. Check it out.

Yesterday I got to catch up with Kelly, one of the interns from the YWAM Orlando I met last summer. She convinced me to start networking with Myspace, so if you're a Myspace fan: http://www.myspace.com/darian311

Has ever heard of the William Carrey Institute? Me neither. Since I live two blocks away from it, I decided to go explore. Of course I met some more cool missionary-minded Christians there and got invited to a movie night; "Born into Brothels"- fantastic documentary by a photographer who lived amongst the children of prostitutes in one of India's red light districts. See it when you get the chance.

Pray for my audition tomorrow. I found a gig on craigslist. Somebody at UCLA is shooting a short film with persecute Jews in it. If I get the part, I get to play a persecuted Jew again =) (First time was this past summer playing Jesus when he got crucified.)

Hollywood is real!

2006-02-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

It really exists. I've heard about Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvd, and Bel Air, and 90210 and The OC. They're not just television fantasies. They really exist. It's nowhere near as glitzy though. Quite to the contrary, they have ugly people and crazy people and pretty people all the same. They have Satanists, and wiccans, and scientologists and Christians all over the place. Hollywood isn't as secular as I had stereotyped. It's chaulk full of all kinds of religions including Christianity. This morning the Satanist was explaining how the lady with the Tarot cards is probably demon possessed. My routine this past week has been some quiet slightly adventurous days exploring the mass transit system of LA, and the evenings have been filled with meeting just and insane number of Christian artists, actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians. There's groups all over the area for Christians in "The Industry".

By the way, Mosaic church is really awesome. The first night I attended, Erwin McManus spoke about taking initiative and not giving up. This guy is so dead on. Afterwards we went out to Pitfire Pizza and socialized for a bit. The got the whole warm open atmosphere down packed. I met too many people to count the first night I was there. Awesome group! Right now I'm reading Erwin latest book "Chasing Daylight". Again right on. Via a long chain of emails and Mosaic friends I found some guys who are letting me crash at their place in Pasadena, so I'm moving over there today. So things are definitely going better than the first day I arrived. =)

Headed to Acting Workshop on Saturday =)

2006-02-12T16:45:00.000-05:00

I'm headed to Burbank, CA early Saturday morning to get ready for a month long acting for film workshop. I decided to go two weeks early and do some exploring and research before I started classes. I'm leaving out of Richmond, so I don't think I'll be stopping by CrossCurrent before I go. :( Please let me know if you have friends in that area. I still haven't settled on a place to live in the area yet. And also let me know of any good churches or Christian fellowships in the Burbank area. Oh yeah, if you're on the West Coast over the next 6 weeks come visit me. My school is at 3801 Barham Blvd, Los Angeles, CA. I'll still have my cellphone with me so getting in touch with me should be easy.

Turn your website into a Blogger managed site.

2006-02-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

Discover the ease of maintaining your website once you turn it into a blogger driven template. I did this for my own website: http://www.darianhickman.com and now adding new content is a breeze. I started playing with Blogger in 2004 and fell in love with how easy it was to put up new content. The only hard part was creating a template that worked well with all the content I already had on my existing website.

Hire me to turn your existing website into a blogger managed site. It could cost as little as $200.00 depending on the complexity of your site. In addition to the main page I'll edit 5 other pages of your site to feed into Blogger.

Case Study: YWAM VA (http://www.ywamva.org)
Their old site was all in flash and very hard to update. Out-of-date content would stay up on their website for months as they waited for benevolent geeks like me to come help them out. Also since all of their text was embedded in the flash document it wasn't getting indexed by Google. For awhile my site www.darianhickman.com ranked higher for the search words "ywam richmond va" than www.ywamva.org itself, just because I had one blog post about working with them. Another side effect of keeping everything in flash was that the YWAM staff couldn't track which pages were getting viewed. That all changed when I took the look and feel of their flash site and turned it into a blogger template. After a one hour class on using the new blogger driven site, the YWAM staff could update their content as they needed, upload pictures, add in hyperlinks, and copy and paste html from other sites. Now their page ranks #1 for "ywam richmond va". Every page is getting their stats tracked using StatCounter.com. Their website is all-around more effective at reaching people and much easier to maintain.

The YWAM Package:

Conversion of flash template to blogger template.
Integrating statcounter.
One hour class, plus one hour of questions and answers.
Feeding 5 old pages into the new blogger template.

Package Price: $1195.00

I'm flying back to the US this weekend

2006-02-03T23:22:00.000-05:00

I changed my ticket. My flight arrives Sunday morning at 11:14 am. By the time I actually get off the plane and get my bags, CrossCurrent will probably be over. Who wants to pick me up?

I got in some quality conversation with God tonight praying on the roof of the YWAM townhouse here in Buenos Aires. A few things came clear then. I'm coming home this weekend, and I'm getting ready for the month long acting-for-film workshop I applied to before I left. New York Film Academy holds workshops monthly at Universal Studios in California. The one I joined starts March 6, 2006. Pray for my finances; tuition is $2500 and finding a place to stay for a month near Universal Studios could cost $1000 on short notice. Since I've blown all my savings on app fees and plane tickets and notorized documents from Brazil, this is now a nontrivial sum of money to produce.

Also a bigger prayer request than that is: pray this new training will shift people's paradigm about me. Pray people will stop thinking "Darian: the guy who can fix my computers and build my websites" and pray they start thinking "Darian: the guy who can help me convey my message on film, on stage, or in-person at a board meeting". It's been really hard this past year to shift my own paradigm, I never thought leaving behind the tech world would be so hard. Those habits and that approach to solving problems went a lot deeper inside me than I thought. During the past nine years of teaching people how to use technology, I learned that upgrading humans is a lot harder than upgrading technology. Now I realize I'm no exception.

Regarding Brazil, that ball is in God's court now. I've done everything I can do. If God wants me in Brazil, he's going to have to put on some pastor's heart to give me a job at his church and sponsor my work visa to go down there. I'd still love to go down there and be apart of the spiritual and social renaissance happening there, but I'm done living my life like next month is the month I go to Brazil. Beto, I'd love to come down to Piratininga and help you set up a drama ministry. Hopefully after this intensive workshop I'll be more qualified to do so.

God Bless Y'all

Well, so much for operation "Back-Door"

2006-02-03T16:28:00.000-05:00

I just found out today from the Brasil consulate here in Buenos Aires that can't let me in either. Since the DC embassy won't let me in, none of them will let me in. Chasing after Brasil is starting to get old. If you know anybody who can get me a job in Brazil and a work visa, let me know. The tourist visa isn't going to happen and the volunteer visa doesn't look promising either. Beto sorry I couldn't meet up with you in Brazil. I think you're doing awesome things there in Piratininga and wish I could be a part of it. Hope all goes well with the fundraising for a new base.

A few people suggest that God is teaching me patience. I doubt it. I've already accepted God can do whatever He wants whenever He wants with whomever He wants. I'm not special. I'm just like every other schmuck on this planet waiting to arrive at the promised land trying to figure what God wants me to do in the meantime. I don't think God is trying to Job me either. I'm not qualified to be tested like Job. I have no grounds for claiming self-righteousness. I need Jesus righteousness and mercy just as badly as any other sinner. He's not punishing me for some sin either. I've already repented of everything I could think of.

Maybe this year simply was about building relationships with YWAMers in Orlando and Richmond and Buenos Aires. Maybe it was just about experiencing daily Christian community and confirming that's where I really feel at home. Maybe it was about showing missionaries how to use the Internet. Maybe I should have talked to the veteran YWAMers before I talked to the Brazilian embassy.

Is this where I am supposed to throw up my hands and chuckle, "This is as good as it gets." "Get happy with a second-hand experience of God" Be content that miracles and prophecy and profound love are just something you read about in the Bible and hear about from friends who had it happen to them, with only a brief first-person glance. Be content with another year not feeling like God will give me permission to take initiative on anything. Be content with another year of pseudo-dating relationships with Christian girls. Be content with another year of mediocre spiritual growth, where you're growing so slow you might even be regressing. Is this when I am supposed to seek the face of God and feel how unholy I am and fall on the floor weeping and sobbing with repentence? ... Been there. Done that-Charlotte, North Carolina.... Next. Is this where I am supposed to stop trying to do things for God and just "be" with Him, crawl into the lap of the Heavenly Daddy and seek His face. I've tried that too several times this past couple of months. I either fell asleep, got bored, or started daydreaming about sex. That whole "stop doing and just be" mantra just doesn't work for me.

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned work with Heavenly Daddy on a cool project. What happened to the whole get up on Saturday morning head out to the hardware store and think of something to build. I'm tired of having a relationship with God that's just a bunch of talk aka "prayer". When are we going to have a relationship of action? When is God going to give me a clear sense on what to take initiative?

Well enough pissing and moaning... here's what I am thankful for:
I really have enjoyed getting reacquainted with old friends like Chris Henley. Hanging out with the Araujo's has been a blast. God thank you for all the YWAMer's I have met this past year. God thank you for the intense summer in Orlando and that meeting with the Holy Spirit in Charlotte. Thank you for the little dreams to give me direction and the kindness and support of my friends in Northern VA and Richmond. Thank you for a family that supports me even if they don't get what I'm doing. Thank you for the chance to get to know my Dad's side of the family. God thank you for setting me free from the boring world of government software development. God thank you helping all those missionaries take hold of the Internet and communicate with their supporters more effectively. God I recognize that there is probably no better way to leverage what I know than to share it with YWAMers who by design will be touching so many lives for your Kingdom. I'm sorry for the times I have yawned at that opportunity. God thank you for landing me at this cool base in Buenos Aires. I don't know if I'll be around long enough to help out with the documentaries and community development but I pray you bless what they are doing here. Thank you for the times of communal intercession and prayer walks through Richmond. Thank you for Josh's and JP's hospitality.

I just had 'all you can eat' for $6.00

2006-01-30T16:19:00.000-05:00

I finally got a taste of that delicious Argentinian beef I've heard everyone talk about. It's good! This picture doesn't have any beef in it because I already ate it when I decided to be touristy and take pictures. The people here at YWAM Buenos Aires are really nice. Fabio picked me up at the airport and showed me around town. Im getting a lot of practice with my Spanish and Portuguese and mixing it all together. A whole bunch of people from this base left to do an outreach in Sao Paulo, Brasil. Mmm.... 30 hour bus ride; I couldn't fit in their luggage. =) Tomorrow I go to the embassy here and see if I can get a visa to Brazil and go on my own. As usual please pray for me.!

Im in Atlanta now waiting

2006-01-29T19:30:00.000-05:00

Im in Atlanta now waiting for a flight to Buenos Aires.

I'm going to Argentina on Sunday

2006-01-25T16:21:00.000-05:00

Argentina doesn't require a visa so going there will be a lot simpler than getting into Brazil. First stop in Argentina is visiting the YWAM base in Buenos Aires. I've heard good things about it via friends I met in Orkut.com. This picture here is the border between Argentina and Brasil, a set of gorgeous waterfalls that dwarf the Niagara Falls. Pray for my travel and also for clarity on what to focus on as I explore opportunities down there. I'll be coming back in 3 weeks so no need for long-winded farewells, yet.

More New Ideas

2006-01-22T20:01:00.000-05:00

Idea for a book. Jesus for Geeks: Jesus' algorithms for handling mankind's common problems. Do up all the teachings of Christ in the pseudocode and symbolic logic I learned in college.

What has Jesus done for me?

2006-01-21T20:03:00.000-05:00

He defined a simple path: Love God; Love Others.
He showed me what the highest priorities were; and cleared a simple path to happiness. If I can choose to care about what he cares about and to not care about the things he doesn't care about then my life will be gloriously simple and beautiful. And that doesn't even mention his grace and mercy. He's my link back to God the Father. I've screwed up that connection like all the rest of us and he paid the ultimate price to fix that.

Jesus showed me what I should care about. When I don't get sidetracked from His goals, I always experience something meaningful.

More most of my life Jesus was mainly my spiritual role model. As grew my understanding of salvation, then Jesus became my Savior.

anybody want to help finish googleopoly?

2006-01-21T01:13:00.000-05:00

I've uploaded a rough draft of the googleopoly gameboard. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the deed cards that I've been making in Photoshop.
http://www.darianhickman.com/googleopoly/

Look into http://www.darianhickman.com/googleopoly/deedcards to get the psd files you can use to create the additional deed cards. I could really use some help with this.

I'm in Northern Va now until Sunday.

2006-01-19T13:52:00.000-05:00

I just finished having a great visit with my Dad's side of the family in Indiana and now I'm in Northern VA at JP's house. Give me a call if you're in the area. Keep praying for my visa too. I should be getting that back this week. Also I'm looking for help with making the deed cards for Googleopoly. Let me know if you want to help.

Visiting Grandma; three week trip to Sao Paulo

2006-01-14T16:43:00.000-05:00

I'm headed to visit my Grandma this weekend. She's diagnosed with skin cancer and not expected to live long. She one of the most passionate Christians in the family and has already told us all that she is more than ready to go. So were not praying for her to recover but to go quickly without pain.

I'm working now on a three week trip to Brazil now from January 31 to February 21, so pray things go smoothly for that visa app.

Nothing much new for now, made a little progress on Googleopoly. More later....

dreams, ideas, projects yet to be

2006-01-03T18:58:00.000-05:00

I made a huge list of ideas, projects, and dreams yet to be implemented if ever. Here's a beginning list. I hope this list inspires some creativity and maybe some conversation on how to implement:

Vertical Village. Instead of mowing down farmland and forests to make way for single family homes, let's try piling everyone on top of each other in vertical villages. Basically replace these vast spreads of cookiecutter houses and replace them with one or two luxury condo high rise towers and keep the all the extra space for farmland and gardens and parks. Imagine having all the conveniences of living in downtown with a rural landscape.
Christian Commune with high-tech community service. I'm almost living this now with YWAM. They are a great tight knit Christian community but I haven't had access to the really cool mercy ministry projects related to economic development.
Group investing/Investor cooperative. I tried this back in 2005 but didn't get much off the ground. The basic idea is get a bunch of friends together and buy investment properties or businesses that have good rates of return.
Cell phones with embedded VOIP, SIP and voice chat capabilities. We should all have by now a phone that can route calls over the internet when we are near a wireless router. It's a no brainer, but I haven't seen any implementations yet.
Online database of videos of Christians sharing their story of how they became Christian.
"The Green Bear". A novel not written by Darian Hickman- a thriller pseudo science fiction story about what happens when computers start replacing jobs way faster than they create jobs. People start selling off homes and moving in with other families, a very distinct recession for the middle class ensues. Eventually someone catches on and forms a group to purchase investment properties.
"Mach Velli"- The brutally honest politician. Probably just a Saturday Night Live skit, about what would happen if politicians were just overwhelming honest about their motivations for making things happen.
Googleopoly. Like Monopoly except all the properties are big internet companies that would be good to swallow up to create an internet monopoly.
Automated Education Software for learning languages. Using some of the algorithms and techniques I learned back at Hopkins, create a proxy server that turns any web page into a quiz where people could practice language skills like choosing the prepositions or pronouns to use.
Automated translation guide using news articles. Build some smart software that matches up articles in different languages that are talking about the same event. Then use these articles to create a rough translation guide between the two languages.
Pick a city in Brasil and implement all the relevant business models that are listed in Ashoka.org
Computer with nonvisual interface for use while driving. Check email using a talking computer, browse sound files too. This idea was inspired by Jeff Watkins
Dream: Invest $625000 in mutual funds and live off it.
Build an online service that makes it ridiculously easy to rent stuff out. Kinda like the ebay of rental management. Potential markets: car rentals, lawn gear, computer rentals, apartment rentals.
SimVillage for rich people except it's not Sim. Make a website where people can pick a village in some remote poverty stricken country to develop and setup microcredit programs, or sustainable development, renewable energy sources like solar or biodiesel. Let them watch via webcams how the village is prospering.
Build smart software for renovating ugly websites. Crawl web find ugly sites and offer them an upgraded version. Should also offer blogger templates.
WIKI version of Rosetta Stone. Create an online forum of picture dictionaries with tests.
Port Rosetta Stone to PDA.
Open source versions of the credit bureau. Create a nonprofit cooperative for managing credit history information. Create api for the database to allow for custom weigtings of different events within the persons history.
Organize a church within the game the SIMS or some other online world.

Darian Hickman

A few things I've learned at Bethel.

Plane Crash Testimony

Bethel is even cooler than expected

Village the Game Show and Tell Fundraiser

New Resume: Darian Hickman Web Project Manager

Explaining the Financial Crisis and the Bailout

Video promoting Ethanol

Meet Vincent Nwana

Prayer Requests

Support My Trip

Pictures!!

In Thailand with new Friends

Update on Trip to Thailand; prayer requests; donations

Thailand here I come!

2007 was painful. 2008 is prayerful.

Has anyone else been ripped off by TLG*GREATFN

Royal Family Kid's Camp

Doing greater things than even Jesus

Who wants a job at Kiva?

Visiting Virginia for the end of the Month; and present project: Panango.

A powerful, pragmatic partnership in propagating social enterprise.

Sure, it's a cool job. But do games pay? - On the Level - MSNBC.com

Anybody need a some great back up software?

Playing Warfish on Warfish.net

Kiva is working and working well

I don't follow the physics of what this guy does.

Very Cool and Uplifting News from Acumen Fund

Get a Wii

Groupbuy and Grouprent

Send a missions team to Kenya

Netsquared likes Village and I'm in LA now.

Robot dance. Kinda old by Youtube standards but outright amazing.

Being Productive with God

Lessons Learned while building Village

Charlie the Unicorn. I love it. :)

That was a lot of Founders

Knowing what to say 'yes' to.

This is so brilliant I had to share.

Good times with Stanford ACM

Letter to Editor: Extra $billion well spent

Awesome book: AK-47

Resume

Funny from DarianHickman.com

Total Cost of Ownership for Cars

Pictures from India

Pictures

Buy Some Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone: Learn a foreign language with powerful learning software -

Friends

Tim McGinnis - Thursday, May 18, 2006

AJDOWNTOWN.com - Experience it! - Sunday, June 05, 2005

Kadee Jo's Website -

Websites of Friends -

Ecclesiastes 3:11

Ecclesiastes 3:11 God makes everything beautiful in its time. - Saturday, December 03, 2005

White and Nerdy

My Spiritual Journey

Subscribe to Darian Hickman Newsletter

Blogger is way cooler now.

My first Skypecast podcast thinga-ma-jigger.

Orkut has really cleaned house

Amazing Energy Technology that just went public

Tenfold is now a verb.

Experimenting with Esnips service

DarianHickman.com is back in operation. Yay!

Oops. My Domain Died Temporarily

I'm back in Cali. Yay!!

Crap Company Alert: Travel Reaction

Photos from my Kenya trip Sept 14th - Sept 26th 2006

Hyderabad is crowded, noisy, and mostly friendly.

Doh! Still in Richmond

Pray for Kay

All kinds a Village going on

Village is a slow journey and I'm going to enjoy it.

Biofuels: Think Outside The Barrel

Two awesome microenterprise sites

Synergy Pics

The Synergy clips are up

Awesome times and prayer requests