Saturday, March 06, 2004
Shiite Muslim Ashoura Ritual
Joshua Claybourne posts some images (purportedly) from this festival.
A fascinating thread of comments follows the orignal post.
Emerging Church
Andrew Hamilton has written a definition of the emerging church. I think our church is just starting to cross into stage 5 now. Its exciting to be involved.
For me the emerging church is just obvious. I'll start with what it's not.
It's not a rebellion against hierarchical church structures.
It's not a new "branding" of church.
It's not an attempt to be relevant even although that is certainly a result, but it's not what it is.
It's not a more professional business structure type of organisation, though that certainly helps.
I think the emerging church is simply what church is meant to be.
If you read through Acts the definition of an emerging church is everywhere. It is relational, missional and relevant. It looks after people who need looking after (widows, orphans etc) though redistribution of God blessed wealth. It reaches out to the lost where the lost are using tools the lost recognise not as tools, but as real people seeking to be of real help.
People like Andrew Hamilton, Darren Rowse, epitomise those who are moving forward, not worrying about definitions, just getting the job done.
Too many people I know consider "religion" to be the TV News stereotypical image of the priest in long robes and a pointy hat ceremonially parading down a cathedral naive flanked by sycophants waving smoking candles and smiling altar boys singing angelically.
They have dismissed this wholeheartedly as having any relevance for them and I can see why.
Emerging church reaches these people with real religion where they are at.
Storm
We are having a storm here - kids have all piled into bed with Mum - Dad was in bed with Mum - now Dad's in the office on the pc!.
We have had a flood again - at least we have had water getting into things and about 4 inches lapping around the back of the house and flooding across the yard.
Sorry - the pics didnt come out well - camera was low on batteries and the house kept moving around while we were taking the photos!
Friday, March 05, 2004
Uganda
Andrew Harding the BBC Correspondent reports from Uganda and the recent killings there. Scary stuff.
Linkage
The Register has a follow up article to the Internet Governance Issue
The War of The Worms heats up!
St Patricks Day is Coming
Amanda at Lypton Village suggests Paint your Day Green
I'll let you know what I am going to do when I decide - or maybe after the event - we will see...
Thursday, March 04, 2004
My day today
This blog is supposed to be about me as well as the fascinating things I find out there on the web
So for those who want to know the next installment, well guess what - today I had a great day!
You see I only ever have great days - or sometimes fantastic ones. I choose to have great days and believe it or not they turn out that way - always.
You heard the definition of optimists and pessimists as being people who look at a part filled glass of water as half full and half empty respectively.
I have chosen to become a SUPER OPTIMIST. I see the glass as completely full. Half water and the other half air (or H2O on the bottom and on top a mixture of O2, CO2, N, H and a few other trace elements for the scientists amongst us!)
So today was a great day.
I went and delivered my proof of concept code to the client and got a blanket go ahead to develop the technical scientific application. Without breaking confidentiality this is high tech manufacturing physics - stress loads, metal shear coefficients, etc for mega multi million dollar machinery that operates over several kilometers in length. So I'm rapt that my design skills have got me the job. Even better he paid me on the spot for the work done to date - so that will keep the wolf from the door for a week or so!
From there to lunch and a blood test, then drop Jude and Miranda at the mall and went to lick the middle two kids up from preschool. They were excited to see me - nothing better than scanning a playground for your kids to hear "DADDY" from one followed by "DADDY" from the other one and to see two little darlings running full tilt into your arms!
They have such fun there. Today Jade wanted to know why I was "early". She wanted to keep playing. We are always early to pick them up - don't like leaving them there for more than 5-6 hours.
Then off to the mall where I picked up my new toy (oops tool!) for the office. We got walkabout handsfree speaker phones with a digital answering machine built in. I have been getting more and more frustrated with trying to hold a phone to my head while I work with clients on the phone. Now I have two portable speaker phones! Got them cheaper than retail too! They were shelf display stock (funny that I chose the only combination in the store that they didn't have in the shelf already boxed!
So the batteries are charging for 24 hours (yeah right!) waiting for me to get at them and learn how they work. (Already read the manual!)
They are Doro DECT 5045.
Then home for a power snooze before dinner - lying on the floor with phone instruction manual on my face so I could absorb its contents.
Then off to the office to work. Right now I am helping the girl next door do her school assignment on the causes of World War 1. Fascinating tool the internet. Even found copies of the original treaties and alliance documents between Germany, Prussia, Hungary etc.
See - another
Passion News
Mark Shea writes an awesome review
Secret agent Man does too.
He Lives dispels many myths about the movie and points to some other great reviews.
I am going to see it next Wednesday with our church. Dont spoil the ending for me please...
Spam the Spammers
Pedro offers this interesting piece of html code to get back at the spammers with!
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Church Web Development
Rivers Baptist Church is running a 40 Days of Purpose program this year. Here is the Web site I have been in charge of developing.
Couldn't have done it without the invaluable support and technical expertise of Rohan at RDSSA, Editor Rebecca and Photographer and Graphics Anna. Thanks Guys and Gals!
Blogging through the Bible
Andy has done a great job here
He has started a read through the Bible in a year project, and is writing commentary as he goes. He supplies a link to an online Bible for the text he's reading also. I am finding this very useful. He is currently in Job; a book I hadn't read for a long time.
Take the time to check this out and enjoy the Word.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
P2P Music
Electronic Frontier Foundation poses a very well written solution to the current P2P file sharing music situation. You may be aware of the court cases surrounding firms like Napster and KaZaa.
Check my previous posts here.
Syndication
All you ever wanted to know about syndication.
Actually I am mostly posting research I have aggregated from a bunch of other web sites on syndication here.
I have had an atom XML feed for a while - since blogger made it available actually. See button on the left hand side.
I have also been using Intravnews for my aggregator - which incidentally can't open atom XML feeds yet. But the developers say it is coming and as it is free I will wait.
But aggregators are the way to go - they allow you to subscribe to feeds from web sites. In short, a piece of code that is published every time a web site updates allowing you to see that in your aggregator. Intravnews tightly integrates with Outlook so I don't have to have another software application running. The blog posts appear just as they do on the web site, and you can also subscribe to a Haloscan user's comments (provided you know their Haloscan username). Thus you can quickly get updates on blogs as they post, without having to check them all just in case!
Here then are a bunch of links to getting you started with finding out about syndication and aggregators.
Syndication
These two pages will give you a stack of links that will assist you so I won't bother recreating all the links here.
d2r
Living Room
Some Aggregators
About
Intravnews
Google Search
Some Feeds
Robin Good
syndic8
Blogstreet
Feedster
Sunday, February 29, 2004
My Day today
The church web development is finished! - We go live tomorrow (fingers crossed). At least this stage is complete. There is more to come - but not on such a tight timeline. Details if you are interested.
Church was great this morning. We had Aliki Flodine as a guest artist. Her passion for life was obvious in her music. Captivating and relatable she along with her husband Rob (technical support) presented a montage of songs, anecdotal thoughts and an emotive visual presentation.
Based in Brisbane she has a list of her current gigs coming up on her website. Take the time to check her out.
The wife and kids headed off to the beach for a play this afternoon as I finished the web development. They brought home greenlip mussels, prawns and chips. Seafood for dinner - YUM! I steamed the mussels in a shallow pan with a lid. I chopped some garlic, shallots, threw in a slab of butter and a little water. Once the butter had melted I tossed in the mussels and put on the lid. About 5 minutes later they had all opened up and the aroma was delicious. Using a fork to capture the mussel and pull it off the "foot" I then dipped them in some lemon juice and a little tartare sauce and chewed the whole delectable morsel with gusto and great relish. Thanks love for a fantastic present.
Now it is some VBA coding for church followed by the rest of the cashflow modeling job. Then some blogging before bed.
Blogger Idol Week 7
This weeks topic is "Play"
Play for me revolves around one of three things - my children, computer gaming or hard physical exercise.
This may not be interesting for you but that's too bad - its my life.
My kids are great fun. They are also demanding players. They know how to play hard and they want serious playing when they play. They are all or nothing kids.
Examples of playing with the kids could be playing hide and seek in the dark. This means every single light in the house must be turned off. In fact this sometimes takes as long as the game. I like to make it as hard as possible for them to find me, which can be fairly simple given that it is quite dark and they are carrying a torch or a glow stick that isn't very bright. If I stand behind a curtain (same one as every time) they will often take 3-4 minutes to find me - running backwards and forwards looking for me. Even little whistles or squeaking noises from behind the curtain are met with cries of "where is he?"
This is great fun for me!
Another great game we play is Stronghold. This a multiplayer computer RTS game (Real Time Strategy)- so it gets two of my playing addictions out of the way at once. The wife isn't fooled though. She thinks that it is a cop out of looking after the kids to play computer games with them. I however am teaching them battle strategy, logical thinking and planning and strategic castle building and design - all important skills in today's world. Actually the strategic thinking skills they learn from this are important, not the least being that Daddy always wins! Though that has being getting harder lately also.
Serious physical exercise - not quite extreme, but up there - for me involves going as fast or hard as I can at a particular sport. Mountain biking is one of my favorite (and how I broke my collar bone last month!) I love a hard ride up a hill and then blasting down as hard as possible, sliding round corners - bunnyhopping logs and rocks, getting air of jumps and generally getting adrenalin surges! It is also great for cardiovascular and anaerobic fitness.
Other sports I enjoy and excel at are soccer, AFL, squash and basketball. Additionally volleyball, running, surfing and triathlons are sports I have actively participated in. I have also played cricket, rugby union, tennis and golf.
Review of Blogger Idol Week 6
Here are my top picks from week 6 - in no particular order
Ryan has some good thoughts about censorship
Kristyk describes her (our) our attempts to watch "adult" movies!
Skywalking writes a story using movie titles
Codswallop and Flapdoodle excellently works the blogger post into a long running story
Matt Harmless draws a line in the sand
This weeks topic is "Play"
Play for me revolves around one of three things - my children, computer gaming or hard physical exercise.
This may not be interesting for you but that's too bad - its my life.
My kids are great fun. They are also demanding players. They know how to play hard and they want serious playing when they play. They are all or nothing kids.
Examples of playing with the kids could be playing hide and seek in the dark. This means every single light in the house must be turned off. In fact this sometimes takes as long as the game. I like to make it as hard as possible for them to find me, which can be fairly simple given that it is quite dark and they are carrying a torch or a glow stick that isn't very bright. If I stand behind a curtain (same one as every time) they will often take 3-4 minutes to find me - running backwards and forwards looking for me. Even little whistles or squeaking noises from behind the curtain are met with cries of "where is he?"
This is great fun for me!
Another great game we play is Stronghold. This a multiplayer computer RTS game (Real Time Strategy)- so it gets two of my playing addictions out of the way at once. The wife isn't fooled though. She thinks that it is a cop out of looking after the kids to play computer games with them. I however am teaching them battle strategy, logical thinking and planning and strategic castle building and design - all important skills in today's world. Actually the strategic thinking skills they learn from this are important, not the least being that Daddy always wins! Though that has being getting harder lately also.
Serious physical exercise - not quite extreme, but up there - for me involves going as fast or hard as I can at a particular sport. Mountain biking is one of my favorite (and how I broke my collar bone last month!) I love a hard ride up a hill and then blasting down as hard as possible, sliding round corners - bunnyhopping logs and rocks, getting air of jumps and generally getting adrenalin surges! It is also great for cardiovascular and anaerobic fitness.
Other sports I enjoy and excel at are soccer, AFL, squash and basketball. Additionally volleyball, running, surfing and triathlons are sports I have actively participated in. I have also played cricket, rugby union, tennis and golf.
Review of Blogger Idol Week 6
Here are my top picks from week 6 - in no particular order
Ryan has some good thoughts about censorship
Kristyk describes her (our) our attempts to watch "adult" movies!
Skywalking writes a story using movie titles
Codswallop and Flapdoodle excellently works the blogger post into a long running story
Matt Harmless draws a line in the sand
Visual Thesaurus.
Man is this a cool thing - for many reasons, not the least being its use as a thesaurus.
I have got serious research coming up next time I have a few hours free!
For more ideas check Big Fractal Tangle.
Man is this a cool thing - for many reasons, not the least being its use as a thesaurus.
I have got serious research coming up next time I have a few hours free!
For more ideas check Big Fractal Tangle.
Timothy Falconer works like me!
and he has read my mind regarding PIMs (Personal Information Managers.
I want a device that is small enough to carry, that takes photos and video, is a phone, a personal manager with contacts, calendar, tasks and email, word and excel, pictue viewer etc (PDA functions in other words) synchronises with my PC and is bug and virus free. Is that too much to ask?
I need it by Feb 2005 when I get into my next round of upgrades - so if you make these things then get cracking will ya!
You can call it the TIM PIM then the two Tims will be happy.
Right now I carry an iPAQ a Siemens ME45, a USB Memory Stick, an HP Photosmart camera with a SD Card that fits into the iPAQ that can talk to the phone via infrared and a Compaq laptop that has a USB port and infrared. I need to carry less stuff!
and he has read my mind regarding PIMs (Personal Information Managers.
I want a device that is small enough to carry, that takes photos and video, is a phone, a personal manager with contacts, calendar, tasks and email, word and excel, pictue viewer etc (PDA functions in other words) synchronises with my PC and is bug and virus free. Is that too much to ask?
I need it by Feb 2005 when I get into my next round of upgrades - so if you make these things then get cracking will ya!
You can call it the TIM PIM then the two Tims will be happy.
Right now I carry an iPAQ a Siemens ME45, a USB Memory Stick, an HP Photosmart camera with a SD Card that fits into the iPAQ that can talk to the phone via infrared and a Compaq laptop that has a USB port and infrared. I need to carry less stuff!
ICANN and Verisign are in for a battle royal
Drew Cullen at The Register tells the story in evocative language here.
This battle has been brewing for a while and I have been watching the preplay with interest.
My questions are these:
The internet is supposed to be about cross governmental and political communication. It is about knowledge and information being available to all. Entertainment is part of that also because entertainment includes artistic knowledge like art and music. The anarchistic leanings of the initial internet growth in the early nineties was certainly part of that. The right to free speech and the ability of individuals in press censored countries to speak out was lauded as a benefit of this. Once governments around the world realised that they couldn't control the internet and it was growing fast, they attempted to regulate it. There have been arguments about charging for email, laws passed giving government agencies power to snoop on your email, censorship on net use in China and other communist countries, discussion about the so called digital divide etc.
Now it may come down to - government control or commercial control. Which is the lesser of these two evils. Verisign would be in a position to use its power to the boss of the internet if it wanted. ICANN or ITU has the power (maybe) to stop it - but to do so must take control itself.
What happened to the gentle group of slightly weird earnest nerd types huddling around a computer excitedly gesturing, drinking from stale cans of coke and pushing their spectacles up their noses when they slide down. These scientific types (boffins) used to own the internet - in fact they created it. Tim Berner-Lees did anyway. (Apologies for the stereotypical image.)
Now they are trying to recreate it.
This is well and good, but what about the infrastructure. Do we care who owns it and how it is run as long as we can use it? In the way that railroads and highways made huge financial empires for some smart and ruthless individuals who took control of construction of that infrastructure, so we have seen companies involved in the internet infrastructure take commanding positions financially. Intel, Cisco, Verisign, and the Phone and ISP companies providing the last mile infrastructure are all examples. User technology creators such as Microsoft, Symantec, Google, Linux and Hardware suppliers HP, IBM, Apple have all got on the bandwagon. Numerous are those gone by the wayside, lost in the wilderness, taken over or bought out. Netscape and score of smaller companies swamped by the might of Microsoft.
Is the control of this structure going to end up in regulated government hands like the roads and railways are now? We know that the government is inherently bureaucratic, inefficient and slow to move to market demand. The internet is about knowledge and it needs to be at the cutting edge of the technology.
So my vote is with Verisign. Yes I am a capitalist, but I also believe what comes around goes around. They have held a position through the low income years and are now entitled to the large income years. (Check out what an S-Curve in marketing is to understand that one.)
More importantly I don't want any government or QUANGO to gain control over the internet's key structure. Market forces would cause Verisign to lose its influence if another company could evolve the internet technologically in its direction. The government would naturally resist such an organisation wresting control from its grasp even if it was in a better direction for us all.
Drew Cullen at The Register tells the story in evocative language here.
This battle has been brewing for a while and I have been watching the preplay with interest.
My questions are these:
The internet is supposed to be about cross governmental and political communication. It is about knowledge and information being available to all. Entertainment is part of that also because entertainment includes artistic knowledge like art and music. The anarchistic leanings of the initial internet growth in the early nineties was certainly part of that. The right to free speech and the ability of individuals in press censored countries to speak out was lauded as a benefit of this. Once governments around the world realised that they couldn't control the internet and it was growing fast, they attempted to regulate it. There have been arguments about charging for email, laws passed giving government agencies power to snoop on your email, censorship on net use in China and other communist countries, discussion about the so called digital divide etc.
Now it may come down to - government control or commercial control. Which is the lesser of these two evils. Verisign would be in a position to use its power to the boss of the internet if it wanted. ICANN or ITU has the power (maybe) to stop it - but to do so must take control itself.
What happened to the gentle group of slightly weird earnest nerd types huddling around a computer excitedly gesturing, drinking from stale cans of coke and pushing their spectacles up their noses when they slide down. These scientific types (boffins) used to own the internet - in fact they created it. Tim Berner-Lees did anyway. (Apologies for the stereotypical image.)
Now they are trying to recreate it.
This is well and good, but what about the infrastructure. Do we care who owns it and how it is run as long as we can use it? In the way that railroads and highways made huge financial empires for some smart and ruthless individuals who took control of construction of that infrastructure, so we have seen companies involved in the internet infrastructure take commanding positions financially. Intel, Cisco, Verisign, and the Phone and ISP companies providing the last mile infrastructure are all examples. User technology creators such as Microsoft, Symantec, Google, Linux and Hardware suppliers HP, IBM, Apple have all got on the bandwagon. Numerous are those gone by the wayside, lost in the wilderness, taken over or bought out. Netscape and score of smaller companies swamped by the might of Microsoft.
Is the control of this structure going to end up in regulated government hands like the roads and railways are now? We know that the government is inherently bureaucratic, inefficient and slow to move to market demand. The internet is about knowledge and it needs to be at the cutting edge of the technology.
So my vote is with Verisign. Yes I am a capitalist, but I also believe what comes around goes around. They have held a position through the low income years and are now entitled to the large income years. (Check out what an S-Curve in marketing is to understand that one.)
More importantly I don't want any government or QUANGO to gain control over the internet's key structure. Market forces would cause Verisign to lose its influence if another company could evolve the internet technologically in its direction. The government would naturally resist such an organisation wresting control from its grasp even if it was in a better direction for us all.
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