What does it mean to be hungry for something?
OED: "Having or characterized by a strong desire or craving [for something]".
And craving, "Urgent desire; longing, yearning."
If, in a room full of hungry people, you announce a feast, the expected response is one of elation.
If you claim that you are hungry for something, yet let that very thing pass by with barely an acknowledgement - are you really hungry?
If not - why not?
"Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death" Romans 8 v2
To borrow rather heavily from Mary Mary: the shackles have been taken off your feet. Why do you choose, rather than dancing, to continue shuffling in lines like prisoners?
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
5th Week: Learning a New Language
"And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days." -- Joel 2:27-29, The Bible
I've been running visuals for the Late Service at St. Aldate's. In an "ordinary" service this would mean getting the words of songs on screen at the right time, and keeping the speaker on-camera - straightforward stuff and all things I've done so often, they've become reflex. (Watch me during a service I'm not on AV, if you don't believe that...) The Late Service has gone beyond that, using video backgrounds behind the song words to aid the worship.
"Uh-huh, what's so special about that?" you may (or may not) ask. There is the ever-present danger of doing it for the sake of doing it, for the technical challenge, or even to "liven up" the worship - to which you might well reply "So what?". Background visuals can be just a "nice touch" but I always strive for more than that; to become as much a part of the worship as each instrument in the band, as each heart of the congregation. What I do behind the sound desk is my worship to God, my offering laid out on the screens that everyone can see. (That, by the way, is why it upsets me when I have to put up things that I know are low-quality. I want to give God more than that.)
Tonight, as Owen was playing and singing "For greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city" I felt God say, "Look outside. Outside the doors." Outside? How could I do that? The collection of loops we have is limited and there wasn't what I wanted to show. I went for the only "outside shot" I had available to me: across the entrance foyer and out through the front doors. And someone promptly walked across the shot and out of the building.
It struck me (as I walked to hand in work to the comlab at 1.15am) that what I was doing was learning a new language. As with any language, when you start you have a limited vocabulary - and when you want to express a specific thing, you can be scrabbling for words, hoping vaguely to get your point across. Here, the language was pictures, the point was God's heart, and my attempts to communicate were in desperation the closest thing I could get to the picture in my head. But that's OK - any language takes time to learn. And I know the point was gotten across (thanks Emily).
I really want to develop this further - I want to take a camcorder out and just walk around Oxford for a day, for one. The more words you have in your vocab list, and the more you learn them, the more expressive you'll be in the language. And the more new words you add, the less likely you are to fall back to the very basics - "Bonjour, je m'appelle James, j'ai vingt ans, j'habite a Oxford..." has a certain equivalence with those time-lapse clouds. They have a place, but there's so much more to French (right, Jenny?)
Oh, go on then.
And as for my vocab list? It'd be really useful if the thumbnail menu we have actually linked in with VLC to select what video was playing. And seamless looping in VLC would be nice, too... The former, at least, I've already prototyped.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
4th Week: Space is a harsh mistress
It was only a machine.
No - it wasn't even that. It was a computer simulation of a machine. A machine, created by a machine. How perverse.
It was just a lump of Tritanium (which doesn't exist). It didn't even have a Tech-II tank.
But we went through some good times. It never let me down. Even that time when I left a mission in 20% structure, hull on fire - it kept going, it got out at the last minute, to fight another day. We've been halfway across the Eve cluster together. On war operations with Eve Uni. Even (on the test server, anyway) to 0.0 space.
Last night was just too much... Warp-scrambling frigates and jamming cruisers conspired to trap me in a mission I couldn't tank. Eventually it lagged out so much that one frame, I was just in structure; the next, I was in a pod staring at the remains of the Anakin's Fall.
50 million ISK later, its Tech-II-tanked replacement (which I named the Vader's Fist) is flying... but it's not the same. It just feels... different. Sure, it can take even more punishment. Technically it's handling is the same; same speed; same everything. And yet it's different, somehow.
No - it wasn't even that. It was a computer simulation of a machine. A machine, created by a machine. How perverse.
It was just a lump of Tritanium (which doesn't exist). It didn't even have a Tech-II tank.
But we went through some good times. It never let me down. Even that time when I left a mission in 20% structure, hull on fire - it kept going, it got out at the last minute, to fight another day. We've been halfway across the Eve cluster together. On war operations with Eve Uni. Even (on the test server, anyway) to 0.0 space.
Last night was just too much... Warp-scrambling frigates and jamming cruisers conspired to trap me in a mission I couldn't tank. Eventually it lagged out so much that one frame, I was just in structure; the next, I was in a pod staring at the remains of the Anakin's Fall.
50 million ISK later, its Tech-II-tanked replacement (which I named the Vader's Fist) is flying... but it's not the same. It just feels... different. Sure, it can take even more punishment. Technically it's handling is the same; same speed; same everything. And yet it's different, somehow.
2008.02.08 17:39:00
Victim: Muscaat
Alliance: Ivy League
Corp: Eve University
Destroyed: Drake
System: Poinen
Security: 0.6
Damage Taken: 70334
Involved parties:
Name: Juggernaut Torpedo / Guristas Pirates (laid the final blow)
Damage Done: 70334
Destroyed items:
Small EMP Smartbomb I
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 1262 (Cargo)
Shield Recharger I
Warrior I (Drone Bay)
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Qty: 5
Type-D Power Core Modification: Shield Power Relay
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 150
Hammerhead I, Qty: 2 (Drone Bay)
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Invulnerability Field I
Hellhound F.O.F. Heavy Missile I, Qty: 100 (Cargo)
R.S. Officer's Passcard (Cargo)
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I
Exotic Dancers, Qty: 10 (Cargo)
Core Defence Field Purger I, Qty: 3
Dropped items:
Shield Recharger I, Qty: 2
Heavy Missile Launcher I
Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 388 (Cargo)
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction, Qty: 2
Type-D Power Core Modification: Shield Power Relay
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 24
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Kruul's DNA (Cargo)
Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 962 (Cargo)
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
7th Week: Whoops...
So, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs have lost two discs containing records for every UK family claiming child benefit in the post. Sky News emphasises this point: "It means that the personal details of every family in the country with a child under 16 have gone missing."
And this is the Government that wants to create a central database containing personal and biometric data for every single person living in the UK.
The Government that claims such a central database will be "in the interest of national security".
Why were they even sending the records by post? Has nobody told them of "the Internet"?
So apparently the discs were "password-protected"... what on earth that means, nobody knows (certainly not the Government). Thank goodness the BBC know some computer 'experts': "Experts say such data should normally be sent in encrypted form." Oh really?
To close with an Internet nerd-ism: Epic fail.
And this is the Government that wants to create a central database containing personal and biometric data for every single person living in the UK.
The Government that claims such a central database will be "in the interest of national security".
Why were they even sending the records by post? Has nobody told them of "the Internet"?
So apparently the discs were "password-protected"... what on earth that means, nobody knows (certainly not the Government). Thank goodness the BBC know some computer 'experts': "Experts say such data should normally be sent in encrypted form." Oh really?
To close with an Internet nerd-ism: Epic fail.
Monday, November 19, 2007
7th Week: Why Is Firefox Blocked?
There seems to be a bit of a hoo-hah going on with some websites blocking Firefox due to the AdBlock Plus plugin. For the uninitiated, this is a plugin that will automatically prevent adverts from loading and displaying on websites you visit. PC Plus last month ran an article with the headline "Firefox killing web". The rather militant Why Firefox Is Blocked even goes so far as to say that "blanket ad blocking in general is still theft".
Woah, woah, back up there...
Since when has it become a crime to not display part of a web page - a page that is freely given out by a web server? Indeed, some web browsers are incapable of displaying some parts of a web page - try your phone's browser, for example, or the text-based browser Links. Is it, therefore, a crime to use such browsers?
WFIB also makes the claim that "Ad Block Plus... also prevents site owners from blocking people using it". Come again? I think what they mean is "it is non-trivial to identify users with this plugin enabled". To suggest it actively prevents such detection is plain wrong. Mind you, such detection is not exactly very complicated which suggests to me that the (anonymous) authors of WFIB simply don't know what they're talking about.
This point of view is reinforced when they claim that "Demographics have shown that not only are FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending". Inexplicable capitalisation aside, no source (or even any concrete figures) for these mysterious "demographics" is cited. I'll cite my own here, then: in the last month 44.88% of visitors to www.oiccu.org.uk used Firefox compared to 48.96% using Internet Explorer. I'm not a statistician, but 45% doesn't seem "somewhat small", and certainly not in the context of the market leader having a 49% share. (Usual disclaimers apply: not representative, only one site, but no, they weren't all me - Google Analytics ignores requests from my (static) IP address). As for online spending, I certainly don't trust entering my card details into IE any more. Perhaps these demographics came from the same place as the BBC got their figures for Linux users?
Furthermore, if a web designer does not take reasonable steps to ensure his content is accessible to as many browser technologies as possible, then surely not displaying some of that content is a consequence of their actions, rather than a crime on behalf of the visitor? I would count "reasonable steps" to include making sure that your page is valid HTML; the very simple WFIB homepage fails validation on 15 counts. Perhaps that has something to do with it being knocked up in Microsoft FrontPage 4.0.
And I haven't heard anyone object to the small text adverts that Google adds to search results...
Woah, woah, back up there...
Since when has it become a crime to not display part of a web page - a page that is freely given out by a web server? Indeed, some web browsers are incapable of displaying some parts of a web page - try your phone's browser, for example, or the text-based browser Links. Is it, therefore, a crime to use such browsers?
WFIB also makes the claim that "Ad Block Plus... also prevents site owners from blocking people using it". Come again? I think what they mean is "it is non-trivial to identify users with this plugin enabled". To suggest it actively prevents such detection is plain wrong. Mind you, such detection is not exactly very complicated which suggests to me that the (anonymous) authors of WFIB simply don't know what they're talking about.
This point of view is reinforced when they claim that "Demographics have shown that not only are FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending". Inexplicable capitalisation aside, no source (or even any concrete figures) for these mysterious "demographics" is cited. I'll cite my own here, then: in the last month 44.88% of visitors to www.oiccu.org.uk used Firefox compared to 48.96% using Internet Explorer. I'm not a statistician, but 45% doesn't seem "somewhat small", and certainly not in the context of the market leader having a 49% share. (Usual disclaimers apply: not representative, only one site, but no, they weren't all me - Google Analytics ignores requests from my (static) IP address). As for online spending, I certainly don't trust entering my card details into IE any more. Perhaps these demographics came from the same place as the BBC got their figures for Linux users?
Furthermore, if a web designer does not take reasonable steps to ensure his content is accessible to as many browser technologies as possible, then surely not displaying some of that content is a consequence of their actions, rather than a crime on behalf of the visitor? I would count "reasonable steps" to include making sure that your page is valid HTML; the very simple WFIB homepage fails validation on 15 counts. Perhaps that has something to do with it being knocked up in Microsoft FrontPage 4.0.
And I haven't heard anyone object to the small text adverts that Google adds to search results...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
4th Week: Song projection...
So, I'm going to try OpenSong and/or Lyricue at the OICCU central meeting on Wednesday. Neither of them, though, let me do as I would like to and run the lyrics with a transparent background over a video window.
Lyricue has an experimental transparent display... but to get it working I've had to hack in Perl a couple of times, and the flicker makes it simply unusable in a production setting. I also don't think Lyricue handles verse transition well at all (it's actually hideous unless I'm missing a trick); OpenSong at least lets you jump from verse to verse as you need to. With the keyboard.
It took me a little while to get Lyricue's Gnome2::Canvas display working... for some reason none of the deb packages I tried had the right Perl bindings as a dependency.
Writing my own song lyric projection software has been on my "to-do" list for a while now, but realistically it's not going to happen before Wednesday at 5pm! And there's only one central meeting after this at Wes Mem, we move back to St. Aldate's next term (thank goodness) where looped video backgrounds are fast becoming the norm. I wonder what OICCU will make of them...
Lyricue has an experimental transparent display... but to get it working I've had to hack in Perl a couple of times, and the flicker makes it simply unusable in a production setting. I also don't think Lyricue handles verse transition well at all (it's actually hideous unless I'm missing a trick); OpenSong at least lets you jump from verse to verse as you need to. With the keyboard.
It took me a little while to get Lyricue's Gnome2::Canvas display working... for some reason none of the deb packages I tried had the right Perl bindings as a dependency.
Writing my own song lyric projection software has been on my "to-do" list for a while now, but realistically it's not going to happen before Wednesday at 5pm! And there's only one central meeting after this at Wes Mem, we move back to St. Aldate's next term (thank goodness) where looped video backgrounds are fast becoming the norm. I wonder what OICCU will make of them...
Saturday, October 27, 2007
3rd Week: I'm Not American...
...which means Amazon don't want me to pay money to download MP3s. I don't run Windows or Mac, which means iTunes doesn't want my cash. I'm not going to "upgrade" from what Walmart thinks is Windows 98, so they won't accept any finances from me. Neither Virgin nor HMV have heard of Chris Tomlin, PuraShop doesn't do downloads, and I don't see the point in paying vast sums of money for things I won't use (eg a physical CD) and don't need (the packaging, shipping costs etc).
Does the music industry still wonder why people use torrents?
Does the music industry still wonder why people use torrents?
Friday, October 12, 2007
1st Week: SJC MCR Fire
You heard it here first*, folks...
On Friday night an electrical fault with the dishwasher in the MCR kitchen caused a fire at St. John's College. Several fire appliances were in attendance and at one stage seven firefighters were reported to have entered the building in breathing apparatus. The fire had been put out by 11.30pm; MCR members are waiting to be allowed back in to the building to collect possessions, it is hoped within the hour.
*Or maybe second, depending on if you've heard it elsewhere first.
On Friday night an electrical fault with the dishwasher in the MCR kitchen caused a fire at St. John's College. Several fire appliances were in attendance and at one stage seven firefighters were reported to have entered the building in breathing apparatus. The fire had been put out by 11.30pm; MCR members are waiting to be allowed back in to the building to collect possessions, it is hoped within the hour.
*Or maybe second, depending on if you've heard it elsewhere first.
1st Week: From absurd to absurd-er
The ITV-F1 website reports that an FIA scrutineer is to keep an eye on McLaren during the final Grand Prix of the season in Brazil next weekend, due to pressure from the Spanish motorsport federation.
WTF?? Alonso can't hack it that a rookie driver might beat him to the title, and has already thrown his toys out of the cockpit several times this season. And now the FIA are joining in?
The political fight, while usually adding extra tension to a season, this year has overshadowed the real fight on the track. The constructors' championship has been decided by an FIA hearing (which resulted in a completely unprecedented fine for McLaren). The reigning world champion has been acting like a seven-year-old brat being forced to share his toys, and nas asked his bigger friend in the year above to protect him from the "bullies" of his team. And the FIA have shown themselves to be at best incompetent, and at worst corrupt.
Which is a shame, because we've had some of the best races since I started watching Formula 1.
I really hope Hamilton can win at Interlagos. Not because he's British, not because he's been the best driver, and not because it would be the perfect end to the completely unprecedented run of success he's had - let's not forget, at the start of the season we were all amazed he had three consecutive podium finishes! I want Hamilton to win because it would be the perfect two-fingers-up to everyone who's smeared F1 with dirty politics this year, while he's just done his job: get in the car and drive damn fast.
WTF?? Alonso can't hack it that a rookie driver might beat him to the title, and has already thrown his toys out of the cockpit several times this season. And now the FIA are joining in?
The political fight, while usually adding extra tension to a season, this year has overshadowed the real fight on the track. The constructors' championship has been decided by an FIA hearing (which resulted in a completely unprecedented fine for McLaren). The reigning world champion has been acting like a seven-year-old brat being forced to share his toys, and nas asked his bigger friend in the year above to protect him from the "bullies" of his team. And the FIA have shown themselves to be at best incompetent, and at worst corrupt.
Which is a shame, because we've had some of the best races since I started watching Formula 1.
I really hope Hamilton can win at Interlagos. Not because he's British, not because he's been the best driver, and not because it would be the perfect end to the completely unprecedented run of success he's had - let's not forget, at the start of the season we were all amazed he had three consecutive podium finishes! I want Hamilton to win because it would be the perfect two-fingers-up to everyone who's smeared F1 with dirty politics this year, while he's just done his job: get in the car and drive damn fast.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
1st Week: From Kubuntu To The World
OK, so after my last post I was feeling a little fed up with the world according to Mark Shuttleworth and the rest of Ubuntu. I decided to take a peek at what else was out there...
I'd picked up a copy of Linux User & Developer magazine, with a cover CD of Sabayon Linux (based on Gentoo). I plugged the CD in and booted my (non-work-critical) laptop, and saw what I could see...
First off, it plays music while it boots. It's an interesting quirk, and not one that gets repeated with the installed version! Incidentally the DVD also came with live options for Tor web browsing plus a handful of games. The CD prompts you to set up Compiz Fusion graphics when X first loads - the first distro I have tried that has integrated such eye-candy from the off. The app package selection was good, and even for a live CD it was very responsive and fast.
Then I decided to see if there are packages to update.
Following instructions found somewhere on their site, I did the "do this after new install" thing... and waited.
And waited.
And then, after three hours of thinking, it came up with a non-error message, telling me to run a different command to find the real error message.
I ran this command. It told me that the package that it was trying to update didn't exist, apparently.
I like Sabayon. I like their attitude: forget finnicking about this license or that license, people want to be able to play MP3s, dammit! A whole lot better than Ubuntu's left-hand-vs-right-hand approach, not including proprietary drivers yet writing a whole lot of code to simplify installation of the same. But I really don't have the time to hunt through pages of documentation just to get at an error message! Not giving the user a useful error message at the off isn't just bad design - in this day and age, it's just rude.
So, Sabayon was out. A mate of mine raves over Fedora (no-longer-Core) 7, so I thought I'd give that a go. They have a KDE spin now. I like KDE, so I tried that.
For some obscure reason, it installed both KDE and Gnome despite me only selecting the former, and ensuring the latter was deselected. I'm fairly certain amaroK doesn't depend on Metacity, the GNOME window manager... The GUI package tool was more clunky than Adept or Synaptic, and the package selection more limited. Beryl was installed by default but not running by default. With it running, it had a tendency to forget to draw parts of the screen, a problem I had not experienced running it under Kubuntu Feisty or with Compiz under Sabayon.
Fedora is known as a good distro in terms of art, and indeed it looked gorgeous for the most part; though the login screen truncated the words "Username" and "Password", and try as I might I couldn't get the fonts to render just as I like them (it reminded me, in fact, of MS ClearType).
Niggles though they were, they were minor ones, and if I had to I could probably get on very well with Fedora. However, I simply just don't have the time to learn all those little differences between RPM and deb-based distros...
Tryint out Gutsy now, a week before launch. Let's see what happens. From Kubuntu, to the world, only to find out I'm back where I started...
I'd picked up a copy of Linux User & Developer magazine, with a cover CD of Sabayon Linux (based on Gentoo). I plugged the CD in and booted my (non-work-critical) laptop, and saw what I could see...
First off, it plays music while it boots. It's an interesting quirk, and not one that gets repeated with the installed version! Incidentally the DVD also came with live options for Tor web browsing plus a handful of games. The CD prompts you to set up Compiz Fusion graphics when X first loads - the first distro I have tried that has integrated such eye-candy from the off. The app package selection was good, and even for a live CD it was very responsive and fast.
Then I decided to see if there are packages to update.
Following instructions found somewhere on their site, I did the "do this after new install" thing... and waited.
And waited.
And then, after three hours of thinking, it came up with a non-error message, telling me to run a different command to find the real error message.
I ran this command. It told me that the package that it was trying to update didn't exist, apparently.
I like Sabayon. I like their attitude: forget finnicking about this license or that license, people want to be able to play MP3s, dammit! A whole lot better than Ubuntu's left-hand-vs-right-hand approach, not including proprietary drivers yet writing a whole lot of code to simplify installation of the same. But I really don't have the time to hunt through pages of documentation just to get at an error message! Not giving the user a useful error message at the off isn't just bad design - in this day and age, it's just rude.
So, Sabayon was out. A mate of mine raves over Fedora (no-longer-Core) 7, so I thought I'd give that a go. They have a KDE spin now. I like KDE, so I tried that.
For some obscure reason, it installed both KDE and Gnome despite me only selecting the former, and ensuring the latter was deselected. I'm fairly certain amaroK doesn't depend on Metacity, the GNOME window manager... The GUI package tool was more clunky than Adept or Synaptic, and the package selection more limited. Beryl was installed by default but not running by default. With it running, it had a tendency to forget to draw parts of the screen, a problem I had not experienced running it under Kubuntu Feisty or with Compiz under Sabayon.
Fedora is known as a good distro in terms of art, and indeed it looked gorgeous for the most part; though the login screen truncated the words "Username" and "Password", and try as I might I couldn't get the fonts to render just as I like them (it reminded me, in fact, of MS ClearType).
Niggles though they were, they were minor ones, and if I had to I could probably get on very well with Fedora. However, I simply just don't have the time to learn all those little differences between RPM and deb-based distros...
Tryint out Gutsy now, a week before launch. Let's see what happens. From Kubuntu, to the world, only to find out I'm back where I started...
Monday, October 08, 2007
1st Week: Gutless Gibbon beta...
GutsyGibbon/Beta/Kubuntu - Ubuntu Wiki
Typo aside - removing features != ease of use. I'm sorry, it just doesn't! Grammer desaster as this entry is, it otherwise seems rather flawed...
"Kubuntu 7.10 now includes Dolphin as the default file manager.
Dolphin has not replaced Konqueror, but was chosen as the default file
manager to introduce new users to file management a bit easier than
what Konqueror could do. The main focus of Dolphin is usability with
the following features:Dolphin, unlike Konqueror, does not provide browser support as well as some of the advanced KIO slaves and options that Konqueror provided, therefor easing the use of the application."
a navigation bar for URLs allowing quick navigation through your file system
split views
and more...
Typo aside - removing features != ease of use. I'm sorry, it just doesn't! Grammer desaster as this entry is, it otherwise seems rather flawed...
- Hiding the file tree from new users simply means they do not know that their filesystem is a tree. The locations seem disparate and unconnected. (The exact opposite of Windows' infinite-loop thing, I guess.) Most users will (should) be familiar with hierarchical file trees anyway from Windows (though I admit I don't use it often enough to be able to say for sure).
- Konqueror has split views. The Kubuntu devs disabled that feature by default. Go figure.
- So being able to just drag files from a local directory to (say) an FTP server, an SFTP server, over infra-red or Samba is more difficult than navigating to your local directory (without seeing the tree), then thinking, "Ah, that *is* where that file is... now what app do I need to load to transfer it using method x?", loading the app, navigating AGAIN to the directory...
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
A Thought From The Wilderness
Enough already.
Nothing can dull the pain of those still grieving? Maybe not. They say time is a healer, and God certainly is.
Can anything justify what happened that day? Certainly not.
But is every single year, re-opening that old wound that has already marked and shaped the 21st century, going to help?
I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories - the idea that "9/11" was constructed by the Bush administration is patently absurd. But now it's all Bush can do to drag people's minds back to the day America was attacked, because nothing but the raw emotion of that awful day can shroud the disasters his policies are making in the Middle East. Only by ensuring the wounds are fresh, the pain is still strong, have his warmongering policies survived six years.
Now, should someone criticise US "foreign policy" (or rather, military operations), Bush just needs to pull out the "9/11" card and he's won the argument.
And what _really_ gets to me, is that the whole thing is framed as some sort of good vs. evil, Christian vs. evil-terrorist-guys battle. A year after the WTC attacks, Bush quotes from John 1: "This ideal of
America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this
harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the
darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it." But note something very significant yet missed by most of the media at the time : Bush has replaced Jesus (the 'light' John was referring to) with the American Dream, a fact that seems to have been overlooked by Bible Belt America. (Stephen Chapman commented on this in more depth, in November 2002.)
I submit to you: America's response to the attacks on September 11th 2001 is not just un-Christian, it is anti-Christian. Bush himself, Sept. 11 2001: "Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America."
There are many in America who are not Christian, both supporters and opponents of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't seek to preach to them; my plea comes from Scripture.
Paul writes in Romans: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." (Rom 12:14 NIV). And from Jesus himself:
human nature."
We can't escape the fact that we are human, imperfect, even evil. But for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that is all we would ever be; but we as Christians are called to be perfect, as God is perfect - something only possible by God's grace. America chose to listen to America, and not God; and I believe that only God can clean up the mess that this first decade of the 21st century has left.
I hadn't planned to write such a long post tonight; this has been on my heart for a long time. What triggered it was a forum post by "Silentbrick" (a player of the MMO game Eve Online):
Nothing can dull the pain of those still grieving? Maybe not. They say time is a healer, and God certainly is.
Can anything justify what happened that day? Certainly not.
But is every single year, re-opening that old wound that has already marked and shaped the 21st century, going to help?
I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories - the idea that "9/11" was constructed by the Bush administration is patently absurd. But now it's all Bush can do to drag people's minds back to the day America was attacked, because nothing but the raw emotion of that awful day can shroud the disasters his policies are making in the Middle East. Only by ensuring the wounds are fresh, the pain is still strong, have his warmongering policies survived six years.
Now, should someone criticise US "foreign policy" (or rather, military operations), Bush just needs to pull out the "9/11" card and he's won the argument.
And what _really_ gets to me, is that the whole thing is framed as some sort of good vs. evil, Christian vs. evil-terrorist-guys battle. A year after the WTC attacks, Bush quotes from John 1: "This ideal of
America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this
harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the
darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it." But note something very significant yet missed by most of the media at the time : Bush has replaced Jesus (the 'light' John was referring to) with the American Dream, a fact that seems to have been overlooked by Bible Belt America. (Stephen Chapman commented on this in more depth, in November 2002.)
I submit to you: America's response to the attacks on September 11th 2001 is not just un-Christian, it is anti-Christian. Bush himself, Sept. 11 2001: "Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America."
There are many in America who are not Christian, both supporters and opponents of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't seek to preach to them; my plea comes from Scripture.
Paul writes in Romans: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." (Rom 12:14 NIV). And from Jesus himself:
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, thatThat is the true Christian response. Nobody said it was the easy response. The easy response was to fight back; if someone strikes you on the cheek, strike him back with your cruise missiles, right? That's human nature. Wait a sec... "Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of
you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5: 43-47 NIV)
human nature."
We can't escape the fact that we are human, imperfect, even evil. But for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that is all we would ever be; but we as Christians are called to be perfect, as God is perfect - something only possible by God's grace. America chose to listen to America, and not God; and I believe that only God can clean up the mess that this first decade of the 21st century has left.
I hadn't planned to write such a long post tonight; this has been on my heart for a long time. What triggered it was a forum post by "Silentbrick" (a player of the MMO game Eve Online):
Never ForgetThere is still so much anger, hurt and grieving over that day, not just in America but around the world. But I believe there is also a loving, healing God who is waiting for His children to turn to Him for comfort, and through Him and Him alone finding the strength to not just forgive, but to bless those who have persecuted them.
Never Forgive.
I'm not going to voice my opinion here. This isn't the place for it.
But the four words above are the ones that will always be tied to this
date for me.
Monday, June 04, 2007
7th Week: London 2012 Logo
Here's a pleasant break from revision... One of these logos is the real London 2012 logo. It cost (apparently) £400,000 and was designed by Wolff Olins (WARNING: Flash-based site, and the little HTML they use is buggy too). The other two were cooked up in about 10 minutes by readers of the BBC News website. Can you tell the genuine one? You may be unpleasantly surprised.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
6th Week: The St. Aldate's Leadership React to a Mug of Coffee
Don't ask me how this started... See if you can guess who's who! Some are, ahem, easier than others. (And don't take it too seriously - it's a bit of fun! All who are mentioned below are great people. :-) )
Leadership Team and Staff of St. Aldate's: A Cup Of Coffee
Leadership Team and Staff of St. Aldate's: A Cup Of Coffee
- I have three things to say about that coffee, but I might only have time for two of them.
- I think it's a prophetic mug of coffee; I think we should drink deeply of it, I think it talks of our destiny as coffee-drinkers.
- Is it Starbucks?
- Could you do it more like, uh... stirry-stirry-stirry chinkchink? (Hint: Risky sound checks)
- It's there! But we need to drink it! Download it into you and then something is activated inside of you - the caffeine gets activated - and you know that you know that you've just drunk some coffee! It happened to me! I think there are people here today who need that caffeine activated in their lives. If that's you just come forward...
- I've called this talk "Return of the King-dom Coffee"...
- Hi James? I was just wondering if you'd do visuals for the coffee this evening... you can? Great!
- Coffee? Cooooool.
- Hey, guess what's cool - Ubuntu Coffee. Based on Java. And I got it installed on my Mac!
- So, there was this E-mail that was sent... I hate people who start with a joke that's got nothing to do with what they're talking about, but that's got absolutely nothing to do with this coffee. Why not buy someone a coffee later?
- En France, nous rendons du café beaucoup plus agréable que vous. Mais nous vous aimons en tout cas!
- NowI'vebeenaskedtotalkaboutthiscoffeeandI'llmanagetogetatleastfiveheavytheologicalpointsfullydiscussedbeforeitgoescold.
- coffee
saturday 11am
church
be there :-) - That coffee is disgusting. I bring my own!
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
5th Week: Well-Packed Cargo Bay
Now, I know I'm not the best at packing suitcases and things. But someone really must be, to minimise space wastage like this...
Friday, May 18, 2007
4th Week: Five wins Neighbours soap fight
It is done, then... the BBC report that from spring next year Neighbours will be moving to five from BBC One.
Thanks to the wonders of timeshifting, the adverts won't really bother me. Were the BBC right to not pursue its most popular daytime TV show? IMHO yes - a ~300% price hike is nothing to take sitting down. five are willing to pay (and it has nothing to do with them being part of the same company as Fremantle Media, Neighbours' distributors, of course) and I'm glad, because I do like to watch the show. Both ways, we win.
Thanks to the wonders of timeshifting, the adverts won't really bother me. Were the BBC right to not pursue its most popular daytime TV show? IMHO yes - a ~300% price hike is nothing to take sitting down. five are willing to pay (and it has nothing to do with them being part of the same company as Fremantle Media, Neighbours' distributors, of course) and I'm glad, because I do like to watch the show. Both ways, we win.
4th Week: Note to Facebook...
...contrary to popular belief, not everyone in the world is American.
A few days ago Facebook launched their new Marketplace, which as the name suggests is a place for buying and selling things. In dollars.
Yes, that's right. The only choice of currency is the dollar. It doesn't matter if you're British, European or Japanese, you can only put ads that have a $ next to the price.
I was about to say "and nobody bothers to convert from GB£ to US$ to put the price up" but then I realised, who's to say it's US$? Why can it not be Canadian dollars, or Australian? Pick your exchange rate, people! Then pay up but only the converted amount.
I put to Facebook that this might be considered false advertising on behalf of the sellers, if they demand in GB£ what is being advertised in $. Their response:
A few days ago Facebook launched their new Marketplace, which as the name suggests is a place for buying and selling things. In dollars.
Yes, that's right. The only choice of currency is the dollar. It doesn't matter if you're British, European or Japanese, you can only put ads that have a $ next to the price.
I was about to say "and nobody bothers to convert from GB£ to US$ to put the price up" but then I realised, who's to say it's US$? Why can it not be Canadian dollars, or Australian? Pick your exchange rate, people! Then pay up but only the converted amount.
I put to Facebook that this might be considered false advertising on behalf of the sellers, if they demand in GB£ what is being advertised in $. Their response:
Hi James,Looks like it's going to take a while...
Thanks for your feedback concerning Marketplace. We are
working hard to make this product as useful as possible to all
users, and we welcome any suggestions. Let us know if you have
any further questions or concerns.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Ryann
Customer Support Representative
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
3rd Week: Own Your Own Integer!
Well, since AACS LA claim to own an integer and are threatening to sue people who use it, lots of people have decided to ensure the security of their own portion of the set of positive integers ℤ.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1155
Any attempt to publish or use the number
(If you're reading this and thinking "WTF? You can't copyright numbers!" then you're in good company. Try telling that to AACS LA.)
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1155
Any attempt to publish or use the number
BA 84 46 1D 08 21 0D F4 9A 7C 2D BA CA 34 A1 68
within the United States (where the DCMA applies) will be met with... aw, heck, I can't be bothered to sue you. In fact, given that generally it doesn't matter where you are but they'll try and sue you under the DCMA anyway: I hereby license the reader to use, copy, redistribute or otherwise modify (including, but not limited to, the operations of "subtraction" and "multiplication") the above Number indefinitely and without limitation, as long as this notice accompanies it.(If you're reading this and thinking "WTF? You can't copyright numbers!" then you're in good company. Try telling that to AACS LA.)
Friday, May 04, 2007
2nd Week: Update: Microsoft in "We Came Up With This Idea, Really, And Patented It" Shock
On Wednesday I mentioned how Microsoft were trying to claim UAC was an amazing new idea that they had come up with, rather than it being a badly-copied sudo from the Unix world.
Now apparently, it transpires that Microsoft managed to patent UAC in 2000.Except, of course, they didn't patent "UAC", they patented:
Surely you can't argue now that software patents are anything other than a bloody stupid idea. When there's blatant prior art (sudo was around since the 1980s, not the 70s as I previously stated) a patent should not be given. It's clear that either the people granting the patents are being paid by Microsoft to not investigate fully (unlikely, since almost certainly this has happened elsewhere) or simply are not qualified to make decisions on technology matters.
Worse still: the patent explicitly states that "the invention is not to be limited to such specific examples, and the
inventions
may be practiced in general purpose computers or computers with
operating systems other than Windows.RTM., such as Unix or Linux."
How the f*** did this get through? And why does the European Parliament repeatedly need convincing that software patents are a bad idea?
Sorry about the language. It's been a long week, I've had far too little sleep and I have 25 minutes to do 2 hours' work.
Now apparently, it transpires that Microsoft managed to patent UAC in 2000.Except, of course, they didn't patent "UAC", they patented:
a method comprising: executing an administrativeWhich, in all but giving it a name, is sudo. (Read the full text here.)
security process under the administrative privilege level; the
administrative security process accepting a request from a user process
executing under the non-administrative privilege level to initiate a
particular administrative method, the user
process calling the administrative security process with parameters
comprising (a) an identification of the particular administrative
method and (b) arguments to be provided to said particular
administrative method; and the administrative security
process calling the identified particular administrative method on
behalf of the user process and providing the arguments to said
identified particular administrative method.
Surely you can't argue now that software patents are anything other than a bloody stupid idea. When there's blatant prior art (sudo was around since the 1980s, not the 70s as I previously stated) a patent should not be given. It's clear that either the people granting the patents are being paid by Microsoft to not investigate fully (unlikely, since almost certainly this has happened elsewhere) or simply are not qualified to make decisions on technology matters.
Worse still: the patent explicitly states that "the invention is not to be limited to such specific examples, and the
inventions
may be practiced in general purpose computers or computers with
operating systems other than Windows.RTM., such as Unix or Linux."
How the f*** did this get through? And why does the European Parliament repeatedly need convincing that software patents are a bad idea?
Sorry about the language. It's been a long week, I've had far too little sleep and I have 25 minutes to do 2 hours' work.
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