My wife is brave, and she makes a difference.

Despite her time constraints on raising our 9mo twins, she still made time to address the public about what’s important: Life.

See the article in Burlington’s Times-News. Link below:

http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/thetimesnews-31148-march-anniversary.html

The story will most probably go national soon in some specialized publications.

With this issue being so polarized, and people opinions being what they are, I believe that she is very brave.

I love her and I love her ministry.

The Lord has given us many miracles to celebrate

“Kicking It!” a movie about the Homeless World Cup, don’t laugh.

Everybody knows that in the United States we call it “soccer”, and the rest of the world calls it football.

But did you know that over 1 billion people in the world are homeless! And what’s the most popular sport in the world? “Kicking it”, the ball that is.  All over the world, one sees the poor taking a refreshment from their daily trials on the field, and for those minutes or hours they are as a rich in enjoyment as the greatest of professional game players.  Furthermore a championship world cup in the world’s most popular sport and one that draws only from the 1/5 to 1/6 of the world’s most vulnerable population is one of the most incredible ideas I have heard of for a long time.

Last night I had the privilege of watching the film “Kicking it!” about how a ball can change the life of a displaced person in the most dramatic of ways. It chronicles the lives of six homeless or formerly homeless individuals from five countries and how participating in playing in organized street ball can be taken all the way to a very real world championship tournament, in this case in South Africa emceed by  Bishop Desmond Tutu.

The idea was founded in 2001by  Mel Young co-founder of The Big Issue Scotland, and Harald Schmied, editor of Megaphon, a street paper in Austria while attending the International Network of Street Papers conference that was in Cape Town, South Africa. (wikipedia)

Colin Farrell gives the intros and exits to the documentary but the real characters are the six otherwise marginalized people who have the privilege of playing in the tournament:  Najib from war torn Afghanistan; Alex from the slums of Kenya; Damien and Simon from the drug rehab clinics of Dublin, Ireland; Craig from the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina; Jesus from the overflowing public shelters of Madrid, Spain, and Slavan from the shadow culture of the illegal rural immigrants to the big city of St. Petersburg, Russia. (movies.aol.com)

For those who care about the human condition, those in the poverty scene looking for ideas,  fans of any sport will enjoy this movie.  I enjoyed writing this article particularly to learn that other writers in my sector were responsible for making this happen.  I hope you’ll watch it then take some action in your area with a great idea as well.

btw I saw it on hulu.com, but I ‘m sure you can find the movie elsewhere.

Paul Gydos

Developing TinyPCNews.com with WordPress.org on a free webhost service

The most significant thing is I tried to create a wordpress.org site for the first time.  It took some wrangling to learn but basically it involved (as best as I can remember it) setting up the free host service, setting up a database there with MySQL, pointing my domain server’s DNS settings to the new host, then getting the wordpress.org code down to my own pc, making modifications to a sample file in a text editor with database settings and encrytion settings, saving that text file under another functional name, figuring out exactly how to archive that file for uploading to the server so that it would function correctly when extracted there, ftp uploading it to the right place so the  server knew how to extract the files correctly, running an initialization script through extrapolating the correct address for it in a webbrowser, downloading to my pc a template worth playing with, ftp uploading the template files into the correct folder on the server so that the wordpress interface knows how to find the template, making configurations to the templates widgets, going to one of my wordpress.com accounts to get an API key to get the Spam Filter Plug-In activated:

What did I produce: a content-less website with no statistics but one that is hosted on a server that I have contral panel access to and which I can use the full width of wordpress.org code and compatible code with.

Also for general internet presence I caught up on getting the following:

I got the http://tinypcnews.blogspot.com moniker from blogger, I also already had http://tinypcnews.wordpress.com I also set up a youtube at http://youtube.com/tinypcnews.  I also went up and set up a Amazon Storefront at:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/index.html?ie=UTF8&sellerID=A2ME2H26QFWC52

New addition to Gydos.com: JustSmartbooks.com

Time lately has been dominated by family activity, when twins arrived to my wife and me on April 25th, a little girl and a little boy.

Nonetheless, I have continued to expand my internet domain real estate and acquired http://www.justsmartbooks.com today.  I also set up an Amazon account as JustSmartbooks http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/index.html?ie=UTF8&sellerID=A3DR1FQQTEPEFW, I set up two blogs one at http://justsmartbooks.wordpress.com and another at http://justsmartbooks.blogspot.com,  a youtube account at http://www.youtube.com/justsmartbooks.  So far there is no content at any of these locations.

I also renewed my ownership of http://www.tinypcnews.com this past month

I am not active with http://www.hafup.com, http://www.ircgreensboro.com, or http://www.sparechangenews.com or at the HIVE or around town with HungryInGreensboro.  I have also been taking a sabattical from WRLP.  Nonetheless I have been sorting through the materials and experiences I acquired throughout this past fall, winter and spring slowly on my “free time” in order to best maximize the experiences.

Also purchased an ASUS 901 EEE W003X from RitzCamera.com.  Can’t wait to do the unboxing video and followup on what was don at www.minilini.net last year but through a new angle.

Bank Account / Business Development

Business development is going slowly with Gydos.com with the majority of my time going to my Job Training Program at the Liason Project, helping my wife Leslie who is going into her third trimester with our twin girl and boy, and the work being put into Homeless and Friends United – Piedmont (hafup.com).  Getting ready for the babies is the most exciting part of my life.  The HAFUP work is something which is a burden to me.  There are over 120 more homeless discharges coming up in March than we normally have.  This population is heavily motivated to help themselves and have proven they can meet basic responsibilities.  They have volunteered around the community and their labor built largely the Interactive Resource Center.  So we hope to self-organize and be housed instead of homeless.  Check it out. Our next meeting is on Monday, March 9th 2009 at 7pm at the Nussbaum Meeting room at the Greensboro Public Library.  There is a free dinner served there at 6pm.

Gydos.com new developments: $19.05 cost of dba (doing business as) registration with the Guilford County Deeds Office.  March 4th 2009

$100 deposit was made to SunTrust to establish an business account for Gydos.com.

Gydos.com regular business news: The office’s rent was paid yesterday out of my disability check $140.  Earlier in the week the wireless internet bill was paid $20 out of my disability check .  Our storage warehouse re

nt was paid earlier in the week $125.

New Website for Discussion on Transitional Housing – http://hafup.com (note 2011 – domain expired, but googlegroup still archived)

I put a little bit of time in to crafting a website for The Discussion on Transitional Housing dubbed, Homeless and Friends United – Piedmont(HAFUP).  You all can see the results at http://hafup.com.

I purchased a short domain name which only costs $1.99 the first year.  Then I forwarded the domain to point to a free webserver service.

I put on the front page a widget which allows you to see the headlines and first few lines of each post on the Google Group Listserv which we created.  If you press on the right links there you can either come into the Google Group interface or read the whole story/post.

I also included a Google Calendar.  I gave access to change the calendar to Theresa Hicks, Liz Seymour, Jennifer Worrells, and myself (Paul Gydos).  If you require any training on Google Calendar feel free to contact me or if I missed someone who should be able to adjust
the calendar.

I included a Google Map for the Greensboro Central Library which for this week is pushed down in favor of a Google Map for the Greensboro Cultural Center.  You can get directions from wherever you are if you study the map widget.

So if you need to post to the website all you need to do is be on the Google Group listserver, then create a post from the Google Group interface or send an email to: homeless-and-friends-united-piedmont@googlegroups.com

I’m a total noobie when it comes to doing this kind of stuff, so I kept it simple for now, as some of what I included was already an exercise for me.

I hope that you like it.  Hopefully will create a list of weblinks soon.  I’m open to suggestions.

Paul Gydos
hafupadmin@gmail.com (for purposes of this discussion)
paulgydos@gmail.com (for general correspondance)
336-965-1816 [notable edit 2011: - no longer my phone number]

Topics for Winter Edition of SpareChangeNews.com – Greensboro, NC

SpareChangeNews is a print and blog hybrid with the mission of giving the homeless and those at risk-of-homelessness  a voice and an opportunity at free enterprise.

These are possible topics for the anticipated Winter Ed. of Spare Change News.com – Greensboro, NC

Living at the Hive: Successes of the WE! Winter Emergency Programs so far. (Greensboro, NC area /Guilford County)

Emergence of Interactive Resource Center to serve less fortunate population of Guilford County

Microenterprises let the poor help themselves. Focus: Yurt building from Industrial Materials (Winston-Salem, NC)

Getting ready for Community Gardening in the Spring.

Change of perspective: First time parent with Twins on the way.

The Book of James – 5 Chapters of focus during my storm /
How the Greensboro Pregnancy Care Center helps men too!

Public Library welcomes art of poor and homeless. Space allocation expands.

Computers for the children and the poor, In the USA! – Dream or Reality?

And of course, we bring you our special blend of social justice stories salted with Bible spirituality.

Well that outline is  the plan anyway.

Until then you can see our back issue at sparechangenews.com

The need for a personal blog

You might have your own reasons, but these are mine:

Currently I have three active public blogs, an archived public blog, and at least three more public blogs which have to be seen since I haven’t put up the first post, in addition to countless private blogs which I use to store information I might want to look over in the blog format, then several blogs which I moderate, write, or edit for.

I’ve lost count of the blogs, but how many times don’t I write or post because the topic doesn’t hit one of the existing blogs? Very often.

I don’t have time to set up a new blog for a new topic every time there is a new topic. I shouldn’t assume that there will be a continuing thread that will require its own forum and address.

Time to start a personal blog.

I suppose I don’t have one yet!

You see I started my first blog because I was aggravated by my attempts to set up a small parcel center and service bureau.  Now its closed.  I found specific topics I wanted to write about since then.  I’ve never had a general blog.

Has anyone else been where I am at?

So here it is brand spanking new to the world: A General Blog for Paul Gydos.

This will be a place to put all that content which doesn’t fit anywhere else.

For the first time I am going to attempt a four column theme: Fjords04 a free template at wordpress.com