In Perspective

This is a letter from Adoniram Judson to Anne Hasseltine during their betrothal. At the time, Adoniram was in England trying to get funding to make it to India:

January 1, 1811. Tuesday Morning
It is with the utmost sincerity, and with my whole heart, that I wish you, my love, a happy new year. May it be a year in which your walk will be close with God; your frame calm and serene; and the road that leads you to the Lamb marked with purer light. May it be a year in which you will have more largely the spirit of Christ, be raised above sublunary things, and be willing to be disposed of in this world just as God shall please. As every moment of the year will bring you nearer the end of your pilgrimage, may it bring you nearer to God, and find you more prepared to hail the messenger of death as a deliverer and a friend. And now, since I have begun to wish, I will go on. May this be the year in which you will change your name; in which you will take a final leave of your relatives and native land; in which you will cross the wide ocean, and dwell on the other side of the world, among a heathen people. What a great change will this year probably effect in our lives! How very different will be our situation and employment! If our lives are preserved and our attempt prospered, we shall next new year's day be in India, and perhaps wish each other a happy new year in the uncouth dialect of Hindostan or Burmah. We shall no more see our kind friends around us, or enjoy the conveniences of civilized life, or go to the house of God with those that keep holy day; but swarthy countenances will everywhere meet our eye, the jargon of an unknown tongue will assail our ears, and we shall witness the assembling of the heathen to celebrate the worship of idol gods. We shall be weary of the world, and wish for wings like a dove, that we may fly away and be at rest. We shall probably experience seasons when we shall be 'exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. We shall see many dreary, disconsolate hours, and feel a sinking of spirits, anguish of mind, of which now we can form little conception. O, we shall wish to lie down and die. And that time may soon come. One of us may be unable to sustain the heat of the climate and the change of habits; and the other may say, with literal truth, over the grave--

'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed;
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed;
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned;'

but whether we shall be honored and mourned by strangers, God only knows. At least, either of us will be certain of one mourner. In view of such scenes shall we not pray with earnestness 'O for an overcoming faith,' etc.?

Puts any little self improvement resolutions I might have into perspective. Maybe my 2009 resolutions will be:

1. Learn to write goooder
2. Be willing to die for the exceeding great joy that surpasses understanding

Happy New Year.

For you Wordsmiths

Lake Superior State University has authored a very sweet list of words for you to add to your organic list of words that have been banished in this post 9/11 era. Unfortunately, such a long random list will create a surge in this list, so I don't mean to throw anybody under the bus. It seems that with the overuse of these words in so many different areas, a perfect storm of overuse and misuse has occurred. LSSU seems to say that less is the new more, so we should decimate overused phrases we used back in the day. I don't think they're going so far as to say that those who don't give back should undergo waterboarding, but these phrases will no longer make your presentation pop. To see these phrases go away, so soon after Black Friday makes me a little emotional, but it is what it is.

You'll have to read the list since there's no webinar available.

Our Christmas

We had another great Christmas this year. On Christmas Eve, we got all the groceries we would need for dinner on Christmas Day, went to the Christmas Eve service at our church, and came home and opened gifts. V has the low-down on the gift exchange, including pictures. Of course, I've been looking forward to an Arduino for a long time - I'm a geek that way, but the girls also made me a duct-tape wallet, including a pocket to hold my USB/SD card so my password safe is always with me. And K made me a Wendy's wig, a hot juicy burger, and a Diet Dr. Pepper - all after our favorite commercial. (Actually, my favorite Wendy's commercial is this one, but I don't think K is quite ready for it.)

But Christmas was a delight. The girls let V and I sleep a little late, and we came down and made a big breakfast. After breakfast, the girls began making a birthday cake for Jesus. Once the cake was ready, we made a snack-ish dinner of things V is used to on Christmas. I moved from my customary seat at the table to an extra chair we brought in. We set a place for Jesus at the head of the table, and spent our dinner talking about the Christmas story and the things that are really in it (like, it wasn't necessarily winter, there weren't necessarily three magi, and the Bible makes no mention of how long it might have taken for them to get there).

When we don't do the gift exchange or talk about Santa Claus, I think we're doing a good thing for the girls. We're less wrapped up in the commercialism than we used to be, and our focus is more on where it should be.

Pardon Me Sir, So I Can Hunt

Follow the link....

Unfortunately, that's our local "unbiased" paper. They completely insult those who protect and serve, such as firefighters, police officers, and teachers, while trying to make me feel bad that convicted felons can't go rabbit hunting.

I'm sorry, I have no sympathy for convicted drug dealers and girlfriend killers who can't go hunting with their dads. Go to Disney World instead. If that's too expensive, do something local, like the excellent Billy Graham Library. You can't tell me you didn't know selling weed was illegal, or killing your girlfriend was unlawful.

Luke 2:8-14

Kathryn's memory scripture at the end of the semester was Luke 2:8-14. She memorized KJV, which is the translation Linus uses in "It's Christmastime Charlie Brown", so Kathryn used that scene to learn it. This morning, Kathryn is having a play with the nativity set, reciting
her verses and being director. I love that we home school!

If you don't like the weather here

Just wait a bit.

Rain

We has it.

They're Home

My friend WKJ, his wife and adopted daughter finally made it back home. I'm very happy for them, and they made it back in time for Christmas, and even to make it to church on Sunday, assuming the jet lag doesn't get them. If their experience is anything like ours, they're going to be a grouchy family for awhile while the new daughter gets her clock re-adjusted.

Congratulations to you again. We're very happy for you!

Tools I Like: RSS (Part IV)

Now, while I've hopefully told you enough about RSS to get you to start using it - looking at those sites you visit frequently for the RSS icon and subscribing to those - there are some neat little tricks you can do with RSS. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Synchronize Bookmarks

Remember how Firefox can open a list of feed items as a Live Bookmark? I use this to actually synchronize my bookmarks across multiple computers. For "private" bookmarks, I use Google Bookmarks. I bookmark a page in Google Bookmarks, then give it a label, such as "frequent". When I sign into bookmarks, I check the "stay signed in" option. Then, I subscribe to the RSS feed for my "frequent" label, and put it on the bookmarks toolbar of all my browsers. Now, whenever there's a new site I visit frequently, I use Google Bookmarks for it, and it shows up on all my browsers.

Craig's List

If you've been looking for awhile for a Wii, but one never seems to come up, just go to Craig's List, be sure to go to your region, then go into the section you want, and enter your search terms. Then, there'll be the magic RSS icon in your address bar. Subscribe to it in your reader, and you'll be "notified" when new items match your search terms. We've been using this to look at housing in an area where Craig's List is the best way to move housing.

del.icio.us

While I use Google Bookmarks for my private bookmarks, I use del.icio.us for things I don't mind the world seeing. Here are a few ways I use del.icio.us with RSS:

• Wishlists. When I see something on the web that I covet, I bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag "wishlist". My family and friends know to look at the URL for my bookmarks labelled "wishlist", but they can also subscribe to that feed, so they can see when new things show up.
• Sharing with colleagues. We've used del.icio.us a couple of ways for sharing with friends, but the easiest is to make up a tag, say a keyword that you have in common, then reverse it so other people don't start labelling their things this way. Then, subscribe to the feed for that cryptic label. When your friends post something for the "group" to see, they'll all get it. (This is actually a really contrived way of doing it. I would *like* to have a "coworkers" tag, that includes for: tags for all my coworkers.)
• Having people share with you directly. You can add people to your friends list, and then they can save bookmarks for you. Suppose your del.icio.us account is ralph. When your friends see something you might be interested in, they label the bookmark for:ralph. When you sign in, subscribe to the feed "Links for you" - and when people have something to share with you, it'll come into your reader instead of the inbox.

If you can't tell from this, the inbox has become sacred ground to me. If gmail had a whitelist, I'd use it. Because most of the lists I used to subscribe to do RSS now, I'm not subscribed to any lists at all. So when something makes it to my inbox, I know it's important. Hooray for RSS!

A Walk to Big Box

One of the best things about where we live is that it's walking
distance from a shopping center. We're on our way to the local big box
for wood screws and light bulbs.

Simon Pegg as Scotty?

I got this in an email from my sister. Now, /. had an article linking to this post that CBS was ditching startrek.com - or at least the team. I wasn't sure how much truth there was that Simon Pegg would play Scotty.

So I did some searching today, and lots of other sites seem to say so, and IMDB shows it in Pegg's Filmography, and who would argue with IMDB, right?

Now, I'm not a Trekkie. I've not even seen all of the movies. In fact, I'm so much not a Trekkie that my favorite of the spin-off series was Voyager, which most Trekkies I know dis to high-heaven. But I liked the ongoing story (we wanna go home!) and only a few of the actors were annoying enough that I could live without them.

But if Simon Pegg is playing Scotty, I would I have certainly have to see that. I mean, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were the leads in two of the bes movies ever, right? I'm not implying that everything Simon Pegg is in is gold, but to see him play Scotty - now that would be worth viewing.

And if you don't know who Simon Pegg is, but enjoy a really good side-splitting laugh, check out Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Happy Birthday, V!

Yesterday was V's birthday. And on the shortest day (in daylight) of the year, too. We joke about waking up at 10am, it's still dark outside, having a bit of lunch, remembering it's your birthday, and reading one card just in time to realize that it's dark again - time to go back to bed. And just think, we're only at 35°N right now - and we're talking about moving to 37°N or even 44°N - talk about a short birthday.

So I worked from home so that the girls and I could run out and finish the last minute (er - 90 minute) preparations for V's birthday. We had picked out a "Scrabble Express" game for her (maybe she'll blog about it), which was the perfect gift for Mommy - but we still didn't have giftwrap, a card, or a cake. So we ran to the library to return some books, then ran to the local warehouse store (who would've thought they would have the best looking cakes?) and bonus - they even had giftbags, candles, and cards - on the Friday before Christmas, the local warehouse store is far less crowded than the local retailer, so we didn't have to fight that madness.

We came home did the cake and cards, then ran off to Red Robin, one of V's favorite places to eat - er...at least when there are small girls with us. V hates the shame that comes with the whole restaurant staff coming out to sing a silly Happy Birthday song, so I asked our server (with V present) to make sure as many people as possible could participate. It was sufficiently embarrassing, but V got a hot fudge sundae out of the deal.

We came home and had some down time, and when L had gone to bed, K, V, and I played Scrabble Express for awhile and had a really good laugh. I felt bad that L wasn't involved, but she's only learning her letters. But after playing one time, I realize that there's lots she can do to participate, like select and roll the dice (there are about 12 dice, and you pick 7 from a bag, then roll them for the letters that come up.)

It might sound like a nice time, but I doubt we made V feel any more special on her special day. See, my first year in college, during the winter break, I payed the extra to be able to stay on campus during the break. And my birthday fell during that time. V drove all the way up from her home to wish me a happy birtday, then she drove back home. This was a week before she had to be back on campus - she took the time to drive the hour up and the hour back just to tell me happy birthday. And that was before we even started dating. It's not that a birthday is a big deal, but V did a very good job of making me feel like a big deal.

Happy Birthday, Dear.

Tools I Like: RSS (Part III)

A couple of years ago, I couldn't say that Google owned my life. But I came to a realization after using Google Reader for a couple of months - not only had Google taken over my life, but I no longer needed the internet. I started having these thoughts of Google buying up lots of network wiring and making TV internet appliances (yes - they failed miserably in the 90's), and actually succeeding at it, because I didn't need the internet anymore - just Google - mail, docs and spreadsheets, images, videos, and now this - reader.

So why is Google Reader so popular with all the geeks who read my professional blog? And why do I speak of it with such awe and wonder? There are probably many reasons, but the biggest is this: River of News.

Most RSS readers (or aggregators, as they are also called, because they don't read, they aggregate), segment everything. So you've got your friend's blog in one section, then you have to click over to another section to see your sister's blog, then you've got to click over to another section to see your local news coverage. This isn't substantially more efficient than visiting the site directly to determine if there's something worth reading. Some sites will put all those feeds on one page in different boxes or columns, but it's still not very efficient.

The River of News idea is that all of your news comes in one stream. There are professional bloggers who read thousands of feeds a day using River of News format. In Google Reader, if you click on the All Items link on the left side, will show you all the latest news, from all of your feeds, in a very Google-calculated order. It's not just the most recent posts first, it's a very calculated decision based on post frequency, how often you click into feeds by that site, and how recently the post was published.

Google Reader also has keyboard shortcuts. This makes things very efficient. I'm subscribed to 73 feeds right now, but I can generally "catch up" on my reading in under 30 minutes a day. I go to Google Reader, type 'U' to see the "uncluttered" view, 'GA' to Go to All, then I keep pressing 'J' to Jump forward until I see something that interests me. I can usually tell in only a few words if I want to read it. Personal blogs, I almost always read all of them. News items, generally only if something in the headline jumps out, and professional things, I know the sites I rely on the most - there are two people in particular who rarely say anything boring, so I almost always read their stuff. And if I missed something, I can hit 'K' to go bacK (K is right next to J, so J is forward, K is back).

Now, I don't read during this first pass generally. If I see something I want to go back to, I hit 'S' for Star. Then, when I've passed through all my items, I hit 'GS' to Go to Starred items. Those are the items I want to read. If the whole story is there, then great. If not, I can hit 'V' to View it.

And if it's interesting enough that I want you to know about it, I hit Shift-S to Share it - that makes it pop up on the left side of my blog in the "What I'm Reading" section.

Now, if you prefer to break your reading into "News", then "Blogs", then "Professional", then "Entertainment" you can use tagging and label your individual feeds - this is like putting them into folders. Then, instead of reading all of the national news site, then all of the local news site, you can just read all your News in River of News style. Or you can click on each of your individual feeds and read it "traditional" style. I sometimes go to the more "traditional" style (or the "by label" style) when it's been a few days since I've read and I need to get caught up - the local news, I go through really quickly. Spirit stuff, a little more slowly because there are a few gems in there. And the blogs of personal friends, the slowest because they all seem to be really good.

So take Google Reader for a spin. I may put together a little video on using it, but there are plenty out there already - like here, or here. The second one is really basic, but she does a couple of things I don't like. She personally likes to use the titles only view, because she uses the mouse to scroll through items. I just J and K, so I view the full item - J and K will move you back and forth without having to scroll. Also, in Firefox, using the RSS icon on the address bar will get you the option to subscribe with Google Reader without having to use the Subscribe as you surf button.

The next post is on other nifty things you can do with RSS. Until then, check out Google Reader and see if you can be more up-to-date in less time.

Tools I Like: RSS (Part II)

In my previous post, I described what RSS is really good for, but I didn't tell you how to identify it.

Most sites that support RSS (or Atom, Google's version - it does exactly the same thing) will tell you so. Look on the front page of the site for an icon like the one in the picture here. Also, your browser may tell you that there's a feed available:


That's how a site with a feed shows up in firefox - see the orange RSS icon on the right side of the address bar?

Safari has to be a bit different:



They use a different icon than everybody else. Most sites that support RSS will have formatted their site in such a way that an RSS-savvy browser will tell you in the address bar, but if not, look on the page for a link that says "subscribe".

When you click on that icon in Firefox (or Navigator 9), you'll get a list of options with how to subscribe to it. If you choose Live Bookmarks, it will add a bookmark to your bookmarks, but instead of an ordinary bookmark, it's a folder with a listing of all the articles, the most recent on top. When you want to see if the site's been updated, just look at that listing and see if there's a story you like. Some other options are Google Reader (er - in Firefox, you get Google as a choice where you can subscribe either in your iGoogle page or Google Reader), My Yahoo, or Bloglines.

If you're using Safari, you can only add a bookmark for it, where you get it as a mini reader within safari. Nice to look at, but missing the one feature I like about Google Reader, which I'll cover in the next post.

There are also applications you can download for reading your news, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses. I can't tell you which is the best, but looking at the stats on my professional blog, 48% of my readers use Google Reader, Firefox Live Bookmarks accounted for 10% of my readers. The first desktop app on my listing was FeedReader, a free aggregator for Windows, but it only accounts for 2% of my readers. NetNewsWire is the top Mac reader on my professional blog, also only accounting for 2% of my readers.

So of geeks (I'm guessing most of the readership on my professional blog is geeks), almost 50% use Google Reader, and very few at all use a desktop reader. When I cover Google Reader in my next post, you'll see why I like it so much.

Tools I Like: RSS (Part I)

The audience of this blog is probably far less technical than my professional blog, so I'd like to share some technologies I use daily that I think are very useful. The first of those is Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

The best way to explain RSS is the best day-to-day use of it. If you don't already use RSS, you probably visit a bunch of sites daily because they change often. So you visit your local news site, then you visit a national news site, then you visit five or six blogs of friends that you like to follow. The problem, though, is that you have to remember to visit these every day, and the content doesn't change at a steady pace. The news sites you visit change very frequently - many times a day, whereas your friends post to their blog more sporadically.

What RSS does is it brings the changes in those sites to you when they happen. RSS is best used with an RSS reader, which will go and fetch the RSS feed for the site, which tells what new content was added when. So instead of remembering to go to all the sites you have to remember to go to, you just open your reader. If new stories or blog entries have been posted, they'll be in your reader, but if they haven't been updated, you won't have wasted your time going there to see that nothing happened.

My next post will be about how to know when a site has a feed to subscribe to, and then I'll give a post on my personal favorite reader. And last, I'll give a post on some additional nifty uses for RSS.

Subliminal Messages?

Watch the video just once first, then read the post.



See, evidently there's a big stink about something you probably didn't notice. If you watch it again, you can clearly see a bookcase in the background. Only, people are getting their feathers ruffled because they think it's supposed to be a cross.

Let me be perfectly clear. At :14 in the video, he very distinctly says:

...what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ...

Now, people who don't believe that Christ is the Christ don't call him Christ - they use terms like Jesus of Nazareth. Huckabee made very clear what this commercial is about - he's saying that it's important to remember the birth of Christ. And he hopes that you and your family have a magnificent Christmas season - not Holiday season, not "collection of winter festivals season".

Why would somebody who's not ashamed to say he's a Christian have to do something silly like deliberately put a white bookcase in the background to look like a cross?

On Serving

I had a really good opportunity to help a lady who doesn't get around very well. Actually, a bunch of us got together and did a bit of yard work for her. And I'm thankful for the person in our class who set it up. She's done a very good job of finding ministries for us to get involved in.

But it does bother me that I have to wait for somebody else to present the opportunity for me to serve. And it also bothers me that a lot of times I think the things I do are really meaningful. But the Bible is really clear about those we should help:

• Widows (James 1:27)
• Orphans (James 1:27)
• Hungry (Matthew 25:35)
• Thirsty (Matthew 25:35)
• Strangers (Matthew 25:35)
• Naked (Matthew 25:36)
• Sick (Matthew 25:36)
• Prisoners (Matthew 25:36)
• Poor (Exodus 22:25)

And the consequences of not helping these things are really bad. For example, the passage in Matthew 25:46 says that those who don't do all these things are cast into eternal punishment. That doesn't mean at all that we earn Christ's favor, but it does indicate that those who have been shown Christ's mercy will act with mercy. Those who have been saved by Jesus behave like they've been saved by Jesus.

It makes me really sad that the groups of people I'm most ready to serve are:

• People just like me
• People from the previous group, anytime somebody else makes the arrangements

Pray for me to be more eager to help widows, orphans, the poor, hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, sick, and strangers.

Reflections on Two

Hooray for this blog. It's grown by leaps and bounds. For those of you, this is the third post! While not as exciting as 100 Posts, it has been a wild 36 hours. I've tried to make some adjustments to the template, none of which worked (I hate layouts that don't use all the real estate), and I've been doing more reading.

But in all this time, I've not done one thing - explain to the audience why I've started blogging.

For over a year now, I've had a professional blog. And it's been somewhat successful. But because of what I do, I can neither tell you where it is, nor can I talk about my personal life in that blog. That being said, here are some of the things that drove me to do this crazy thing:

• I'm really interested in a lot of stuff that's not work. Not to the point that I'm necessarily good at any of them, but at least to the point that I'd like to share.
• V has a very nice blog with lots of visitors. I'm the jealous type, so I thought I'd try this personal blogging thing myself.
• Writing is good for you. In my profession, things are a bit slow regarding things I can blog about, so this will keep me busy.
• I'm a big fan of journaling. No, this is not journaling, but having readers might make me more motivated to keep writing.
• No, I have no aspirations of being as good a writer as V. Nor will my posts be as interesting.

So what kind of stuff can you expect from my blog?

• Thoughts on things I read that I think others should read as well. Be sure to check out the "What I'm Reading" box on the left. I'll try to keep that up-to-date with interesting things I'm reading. If it's not updating, it's because I'm a slow reader, or the things I choose to read have stopped saying anything interesting.
• Somewhat more technical posts than simple opinion. I'll probably give some "geek tips for the masses" - lifehacks that make me more productive that I think will be helpful to you. (I've convinced V on some of them, but not enough that she's become an evangelist for it).
• A few spiritual discussions - things I've read in the Bible that have become convicting to me. I probably won't do too many of these - not because I don't think these things, but because I think your thoughts should be influenced by Scripture, not by my personal statements.
• Book/Music/Video/Software reviews. When I like something, I generally become a salesperson (not literally) for it. I'm passionate enough about things that I want them to be passionate about it, too.
• Links, links, links. I think the people around me have very interesting lives too. I think everybody should see how interesting their lives are.

So, thank you all you long-timers for sticking with me all these hours. I hope you'll continue to stick around.

The Value of 20 Questions

K and I used to try to find little games to pass the time. By the time Kathryn was 6, rock-paper-scissors was getting very old for those 10 minute times when we're waiting for a store to open, or a parking lot to clear, or for something to do while waiting for paint to dry.

When L was in the hospital, I tried out 20 questions.

The way we play 20 questions is that one person (say, D) picks an item in the room or otherwise in sight of both people, and doesn't disclose what it is. The other person (say, K) has 20 opportunities to as questions about the item to figure out what it is. Our rules on the 20 questions are:

• You must be able to answer the question with a "yes or no" response.
• The question must be clearly answerable by "yes or no".

While this is the same game everybody else plays as a kid, I think there are some valuable lessons we've learned so far:

• How to ask questions that are binary in decision
• How to use other items as a gauge for the response. For example, we don't allow questions like "is it tall" or "is it large" or "is it high up" - the best you can do is ask in relation to something else "is it taller than the bookshelf", "is it larger than this book", or "is it higher than the table".
• A square is a rectangle. This was our first run-in. Kathryn had picked an item, and I asked if it was a rectangle. She said it was not. All the other clues pointed to a mirror in the room, and we had to talk about squares - they're all of these: equilateral quadrilateral, rhombus, parallelogram, and possibly a trapezoid (some define a trapezoid or trapezium as having exactly one set of parallel sides, others one or more).
• Narrowing down slowly. Not a few games would start with something like:
  K: Is it red?
  D: Yes.
  K: Is it that tomato?
  D: No.
  K: Is it M's shirt?
  D: No.
  Rinse. Repeat.
  K now knows that things work better if you can slowly whittle down the choices - location, position, color, size, etc.
• And most importantly, K has learned that for me, if it's not in the box of 8 Crayolas (okay, maybe 16), it's not a color.

Congratulations WKJ and Family

What could be a better inaugural post to a personal blog than some very exciting news from a good friend? I received an email from WKJ today that they are in Nanchang in Jiangxi (same city we were in when we adopted L), and they're officially Tessa's parents now.

We've been praying for WKJ and their family for quite some time now. While we were at one point not too far off from each other during our adoption process, they hit some of the usual snags during the process, and have been anxiously awaiting this day for quite some time.

Come home soon. We'll have some Heels gear to give you.