I haven't seen Gibson's The Passion of the Christ yet, but I've been reading about it and listening to thoughts from those who have.
Joy recently posted her pastors article on the topic: karagraphy: Pastor Bixby’s protest against the evangelical ecstasy over the Passion movie. I'll be reading through that soon.
Yesterday I used some time to read two short articles from Time Magazine on the topic. You can use the links below for a limited time (Time Magazine charges for archives).
Discussion is welcome.
More thoughts to come.
XML and technologies that use it have always inspired me. When I created Ben's Friends my plan (which still holds) was to create an actual "friends" network. Not long after began the process with Moveable Type I came across FOAF.
At that time FOAF had just begun and was very much in its infancy. Today, it's a bit farther along.
You may have noticed the small (but growing) "Stickers" section at the bottom right of HatShop. One is to get the best standalone browser available and the other is for my (currently minimal) FOAF file. Lord willing, I'll be developing it further and helping the rest of the Ben's Friends family create some as well.
Now, single files about relationships are great, but what if you wanted to record the relationship between the author of a document and the people in it? Or maybe you'd like to link the names of people mentioned in your online photo album to more information about them, but you wanted people to know what relationship you have with the person of that name? It's all possible using XFN. The XHTML Friends Network is really just a standardized way to record relationships in the "rel" attribute of an <a /> tag. It's a solid concept and will likely contemplate FOAF well.
Lord willing, Ben's Friends will be using them both in the future. For now, enjoy the ideas. 8o)
This morning I ran across some scum in the guestbook of one of the Mambo sites I frequent. Paulo, the owner, is a good template designer. I e-mailed him about the scum and he removed it promptly. In his reply, he sent me a free copy of one of the templates he normally sells (Peek Sys Blue).
Gratitude is a wonderful and very inspiring thing.
Thank you, Paulo.
For Your name's sake, O Lord,
pardon my guilt, for it is great.
Who is the man who fears the Lord?
Him will he instruct in the way
that he should choose.
His soul shall abide in well-being,
and his offspring shall inherit
the land.
The friendship of the Lord is for
those who fear Him,
and He makes known to them
His covenant.
My eyes are ever toward the
Lord,
for He will pluck my feet out of
the net.
Psalm 25:11-15
Mozilla Firefox - The Browser, Reloaded
Firefox is the new name for the stand-alone browser formerly named Firebird.
I was planning on writing a blog about this new release as soon as I found it, but I decided to hold off and do a bit of testing with it myself first.
Out of all the Firebird/fox releases this one seems most like a preview release. In the past, I've been able to forget the fact that the browser I was using was considered "pre-release." This time, it's a bit more evident.
Firefox improves on the Firebird code by adding an improved download manager, an installer, and better bookmarking, among others. The download manager is nice, but also seems to be the source of most of the new bugs and crashes. It's hasn't crashed on me "a ton," but it did jump ship a few times when I had just begun to use it.
The first thing I would do after downloading and installing it (which I still recommend doing) is to change the download manager settings. You can do this under Tools | Options | Downloads. The first setting to change is the default download location (unless you like your downloads on your desktop). The other setting I changed was to keep the download manager window open after downloading (just personal preference).
There has only been on rendering bug that I've found. If you visit BigBlueHat or Fast Company, you may notice that the rollovers in the navigation no longer work. Or if they do, they tend to get "stuck." I'm not sure what's made that happen. I let the Fast Company design know, and I'll probably file a bugzilla report in the future.
So, there's the skinny on the fox. It's a nice piece of software. Worth the upgrade. Nice new logo too, btw. Be aware that there are a few bugs, but that *should be* expected with prerelease software even though it hasn't been to date. 8o)
ABCNews.com has written a short article called "Gone Too Far?" about television content and they are asking for response.
ABCNEWS.com : Which TV Moments Went Too Far?
Please be advised that there is a list of "questionable" scenes that you will be asked to "review."
Cross-Browser.com : DHTML Libraries and Applications
There are some very impressive (and potentially handy) pieces of JavaScript code for doing site layout and navigation across multiple browsers. The author of these little JavaScript apps has (with help) strung a number of them together to make x-desktop.org an in-browser windowing system.
x-desktop could be very useful in the future. It's not nearly as developed as the old desktop.com used to be. Sadly desktop.com's business model wasn't the best and they never got it off the ground. It would have been nice if they had open sourced the code they'd written. Who knows where it is now. Probably rotting or overwritten by the new CEO of what ever company bought them out. Very sad.
Google has helped Lindows with a very nice deal. You can download the Developer's Edition of LindowsOS 4.5 for free.
LindowsOS is a Windows alternative. It's very user friendly as far as desktop Linux operating systems go. Which would explain the lawsuit levied by Microsoft over their use of a "Windows" like name.
From their web site: "Lindows.com is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft Corporation in any way - in fact, we don't even really like them because they are suing us."
Michael Wood of "Art of the Western World" fame has just started a new series called In Search of Shakespeare. As with many PBS sites this one is also well developed and very informative.
Special thanks to Michael Boone for giving me the heads up on the new Michael Wood appearance. 8o)
Open Source seems to be coming of age. Not only that, but the "Open Source Business Model" actually seems to be feasible these days (and a lot less of an oxymoron).
Phil Taylor a lead Mambo developer and Christian in the U.K. has begun working with the ListMessenger developers to create a Mambo edition of their product.
Until today, I hadn't even heard of ListMessenger. In my very quick look through the demo and features list, it seems like a great entry level e-mail list management system. The interface is excellently clean and organized (something very rare in Open Source).
BBH will more than likely begin using at least the free version of ListMessenger (happily we can because their wonderful people who have a great license for their code). In the future (when Phil is done), we'll probably offer the Mambo version to our customers.
This has been on exciting morning. 8o)
Last night in looking for something completely different, I ran across a handy dandy little extension for Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird. The Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick seems to have a lot of promise.
If you're at all interested in web development or design or if you're just plain curious about what goes on "under the hood," I'd suggest grabbing a copy. It's free. 8o)
dotProject 1.0.2 is an Open Source project management system. It hasn't been around that long. BigBlueHat started using it at version 1.0.1.
It's a great place to start for project management. The developers are good at keeping their community informed, and they make new releases every two or three months.
It seems three out of five web pages this morning have been in other languages. I'm not complaining mind you, just noticing my extreme lack of i18n* skills.
If I'm going to keep up with the web, life on this planet, and any kind of international ministry I'm going to have to learn at least one more.
My "to learn" languages list is exceeding long. The ones that I've found are most often used in my industry are (in order of most regular occurances): English (got that one), French, German, and Japanese.
Someday soon my friends.
a, ka, sa, ta, na...
* i18n stands for internationalization. It's my favorite child of the accronym boom of the late 90's. It has a younger sibling that's nice too: L10N - localization.
Many of you have probably read C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters. If not, you should. However, I'm not yet sure if you should read this one.
The book is called "Lord Foulgrin's Letters" and it was recently written by Randy Alcorn. I don't know anything about the author and currently very little about the book. It's definitely caught my interest since it's piggybacking it's way into readership by using Lewis' creativity and concepts from Screwtape Letters.
As mentioned before, I know very little about this book. If you know more, I'd love to hear about it.
After the news was "kind enough" to make the nation aware (at least the non-super-bowl-watching-portion) of another Jackson family social disturbance, I began to ponder the needs of our nation(s) and how society might be changed for the better.
Sometime last year a girl named Sarah gave a speech at BJ about the generation that began in the early 1980's called the Millennials (formerly Gen Y, Gen Next, Nexters). According to her profile the Millennials are a promising bunch. Their desires seem (at least) to be more morally focused.
In pondering the Millennials (particularly in contrast to the Jackson family and the much less than honorable talking heads), I came to the notion that something should be done to equip this generation that seems to hold so much promise. Changing the current "ruling" generation has proved to be an up hill fight since they are prone to believe anything and have no problem with embracing opponents under the flag of pluralism and a stretched definition of tolerance.
My thoughts are these:
1. The Millennials are just getting started. The eldest of the bunch are just turning 24 this year.
2. They need help. Millennials are looking for the Truth. Those who have it need to willingly give it (not force it, but offer it in Love). They'll also need equipping to make things change.
3. The Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers are loosing their respect in droves. They seem to be rather glad about it as it makes for good ratings and entertaining news (for those of the same lack-creeds who enjoy that which used to be shocking).
In the coming year Truth has an opportunity to make it into the lives of Millennials in a way it hasn't (and possibly won't) in the future. While the democrats have their high school class elections and "adults" leave their leadership roles to enjoy their junior high fantasies, the Millennials are increasingly disgusted.
This is no random idea.
This is an opportunity not to be wasted by Christ's Body.
The 60's and 70's were a failure because the Church yelled demands and complaints at a questioning generation instead of answering and leading.
We won't let that happen again.
The Idea
Millennials.com is owned by a man who understands at least the marketing promise his domain holds. He has placed his snail mail address on his web site for interested parties to write to. If he likes the idea presented, he will consider renting the space to a promising organization or company.
This is one domain of many we could use.
There is a growing list of web site opportunities in my head that we could use to change this nation one last time before the return of Christ our King.
If you're interested, please leave a comment.
Also, please keep blogging for the same reasons.