January 2005

A few weeks back (Greenflame: Home Library Software) I started looking for some software to organize all our books at home. I had a look at various piece of software and settled for Booxter because it did what we wanted, ran under Jaguar (OSX 10.2) on the Mac and was inexpensive (NZ$22.50). One of the nice things about it is it supports access to online catalogues beyond just Amazon - so we can use Australian and UK ones which works out well with our mix of Aus/NZ, UK and US books.

So now we’ve started. 227 books catalogued. I’m hoping to scrounge a barcode scanner this week to zap the rest in rather than typing in ISBNs.

One thing it doesn’t do is other forms of media - e.g. DVDs. But you can download Books for MacOS X, an open source project, that allows you to enter an Amazon ASIN. If you do that for a DVD it sucks the data down with cover picture just fine. You could, suprisingly enough, use Books for the cataloging of books too but I’d need to ugrade to 10.3 to use the latest version. I’ll probably catalogue my videos and DVDs with it when we finish the books.

As for PC software to do that same thing, I didn’t find anything I liked (too expensive or really clunking interface) but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something good out there. If there was a Windows XP version of Booxter we’d probably get that too.

William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer gave data and information a 3-D structure within cyberspace. Information became the landscape. It’s a little bit how I’m feeling at the moment as I stuggle to put my Virtual Theology paper to bed. I have a beginning and I know where I want to end but the middle feels like I’m in a landscape with no map. I can see all sorts of things around me - notes I’ve made, papers I’ve read, half-read books, multiple drafts of sections, innumerable outlines - but no clear path through to the other side. Or rather more than one path and I don’t know which is the best to pursue. It’s not a wilderness - it’s a jungle.

I’m hot and I’m mentally and physically tired. Writing feels like futile chipping away at a mountain with a hammer and chisel. It’s not that the material isn’t interesting - but it’s too interesting and I’m not doing it justice.

I’m hope things will look better in the morning when I revisit my draft. Maybe then I’ll see the critical connections between the parts and something unforeseen will emerge.

Pretty much like my experience when I got my iBook. Nice interface, the iApps work well, set up was a snap, some commercial software was needed (Office, EndNote) and a nice UNIX system under the skin for downloading, testing and running open-source software and systems (Makes testing things like blogging software really easy). Again like the article writer I use Linux for servers (Greenflame’s on a Linux box) and OSX for the desktop and development.

See: The Mac Mini Experience - OSNews.com

Not sure I’d buy a Mini but some of the project that people are using them for (integration with home theater and cable TV) look interesting.

Came across this essay in Crux today while searching for something else written by Steven Bouma-Prediger.

The Peace of Creation: Recovering a Theological Balance by Jonathan R. Wilson. (Crux September 2004/Vol. XL, No. 3).

It’s exactly the sort of essay I could give to my theology students when we’re talking about creation and how other aspects of theology (incarnation, atonement and eschatology) interact with it and how we live today. It’s not a radical piece for many of us but it would hopefully start some on a journey of looking at creation with new eyes. Wilson opens his essay,

In the midst of rising concern about care for creation, conservative Christians present various responses. Some are deeply involved in the environmental movement; others are profoundly opposed to policies that protect and preserve the environment. My own view is that Christian doctrine, properly understood, commits Christians to care for the environment. In this article I will identify the (mistaken) theological basis for conservative Christian opposition to the environment and propose some theological correctives that would lead to support for environmental concern. Of course, political, sociological and economic interests are interwoven with theology in this opposition. But theological analysis is important, because conservative Christianity is most deeply formed by a commitment to biblical faithfulness. If we are able to identify a more faithful theology, then we may be able to find ways of forging a theological consensus on care for creation that crosses other boundaries.

Also have a look at RCA: Resources on Caring for the Earth an “Annotated Resource List on Caring for the Earth” compiled by Steven Bouma-Prediger.

Came across this article today as part of my pulling stuff together for my “Hacking as Theology” paper I’m working on at the moment.
Sociology of Religion: May the Force of the Operating System be with You: Macintosh Devotion as Implicit Religion (From Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2001 by Pui-Yan Lam)

As practice, identity, and mystification, technological mysticism lies at the heart of advance industrial society. When we look at technology this way, we find some remarkable similarities with theological traditions. Like a religion, technological mysticism ‘binds together’ core values into a coherent, if implicit (and often unexamined) set of beliefs and rituals.

BBC NEWS | Education | Academics give lessons on blogs

Blogs are giving departments, staff and students the freedom and informality of tone impossible in scholarly journals or even the student newspaper.

Blogging lecturers say the technology provides them with easy online web access to students and improves communication outside of the classroom.

Via: maggi dawn: Blogging lecturers

I grew up just north of Wellington looking at this view everyday. Our elevation was greater so we could see out over the Golden Gate peninsula to the Tasman Sea as well as a greater sweep of Pauatahanui Inlet but the same bay was always there. There’s something soul refreshing about watching the sea (just like watching forests). The light and water colour change, the wind and tide shape the dynamics of the water and there’s always a sea-smell in the air. Sometimes I could spend hours in front of the windows or on the balcony with a book and a drink just looking at the sea. When I left it to go to university in Christchurch the sea was one of the things I really missed. One day I’d like to have a view like this - with hills for the light to play on, green forests to absorb and the sea always present.

(Click on the picture for a larger image)

Here’s a movie clip of the paragliders. They looked so close you felt you could touch them. The second glider taking off in the clip just made it off the ground and over the trees. (Pop-up window with Paragliding Movie [Streaming QuickTime 950K]).

I’ve never posted a movie before in Movable Type so it’s a bit of an experiment.

Watching paragliders at North Head, Devonport today while exploring the old gun emplacement tunnels with family.

Not sure if B5 will make it on the big screen. Part of the appeal was 5 years of interconnected stories that built upon each other to produce a “novel”. Exploring a variety of interesting ideas. In a movie there’s no time for that so I expect it will be more of an “action-flick”. Still JMS is involved and the character Galen is there so there’s hope.

See:
Babylon 5 Movie Starts Filming in April

If you’re running OSX 10.3.5 and you are looking for a text editor that has more features than TextEdit then have a look at TextWrangler from Bare Bones Software. They’ve just released version 2 as freeware so try it and see.

Seeing as I’m still back in Bronze Age OSX 10.2 I use their old editor BBEdit Lite which just keeps on working for me. Except when I’m back using my close and dear friend “vi” - years of using it to edit source code on SVR3 UNIX systems had embedded it into my RNA, I think.

:wq

From Comic Book Movies by David Hughes,

Why this sudden fascination with comic book heroes? Perhaps because so many directors and studio executives grew up (as I did) on Marvel and DC comics - an entire generation learned about morality, heroism and the difficult choices faced by heroes not from the classics, but from Spider-Man and The Hulk, with mythologies as potent and powerful as those of the gods of ancient times.

I’m thinking about metaphors to connect Christianity and technology - what stories and imagery do each use that might connect through novelty rather than a search for truth.

If you’re looking to investigate the relationships between science and religion in general you’d be hard pressed to go past the book God for the 21st Century. The library managed to interloan me a copy from the Christchurch public library so I’ve been skimming through it.

It’s a collection of 50 short opinion pieces and essays from writers around the world and from different religious perspectives. The essays are brief, easy to read (no footnotes) and cover a good range of positions. The ones of mind and personhood were useful in alterting me to writers to follow up later. A good introduction to some of the current issues in the field.

Here’s a link to a book that’s a collection of photos of Iceland that comes from the creator of the movie below. Some very nice shots in the gallery section. See: Iceland - Another Take.

From the Visual Explorations section of Metanexus is a movie entitled “Motion” with a series of images of nature in motion in Iceland.

Part of their ongoing series based on art being a bridge between science and religion. The comment that “beautiful images from the sciences can also transform our vision of ourselves and the universe.”

(The movie is about 4MB so it takes a while to load)

Read this paper today while working on my own for the Virtual Theology colloquium. Some interesting ideas on techno-culture becoming a third strand in Western civilization to stand with science and the arts. Thinking about how religion, especially Christianity, fits in here. Venn diagrams are beginning to come to mind. Is religion a set on its own, is a a subset of each culture or merely part of the humanities or arts?

EDGE 3rd Culture: THE THIRD CULTURE - by Kevin Kelly.

While science and art generate truth and beauty, technology generates opportunities: new things to explain; new ways of expression; new media of communications; and, if we are honest, new forms of destruction. Indeed, raw opportunity may be the only thing of lasting value that technology provides us.

It’s not going to solve our social ills, or bring meaning to our lives. For those, we need the other two cultures. What it does bring us-and this is sufficient-are possibilities.

I’d probably want to nuance that last part more (and Kelly does that in a more theological paper elsewhere) but the idea of techno-culture being driven by novelty looks a promising avenue for investigation theologically.

I’ve always been a fan of panoramas made up of mutiple photographs. Here’s a site I discovered recently dedicated to the various aspects of panorama making with archives from around the world. See the New Year’s page at: Panoramas.dk - New Year celebrations around the world - Fullscreen QTVR photos.

Wired News: Real World Doesn’t Use a Joystick

Kozy Kitchens’ experience with having a difficult time separating her real-life consciousness from that of her game playing is all too common among hard-core gamers. It’s so common, in fact, that game publishers might want to consider warning their customers that they may soon be unable to tell the difference between the game and reality.

If you want to read some interesting essays and articles about how people interact online or shape their “real lives” and “virtual lives” see Sherry Turkle. (Her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet is an accessible, if a little dated now, survey of online life and its psychological and sociological implications)

Well, maybe not. However this article shows how to use a local style sheet to override the one on a web site.

Skinning Gmail with a Custom Stylesheet

No longer will I have to suffer bizarre colour combinations when accessing things like library catalogues - now I can override it so I get readable black text on a white/grey background and buttons that I can read. Content first!

A quick rewrite of the stylesheet and away we go. The link is above in case you want to do it yourself and fix any problems you think my blog has.

Found this neat little Mac OS X app the other day that connect iTunes to my Creative MuVo TX FM MP3/WMA player. Plug the USB connection in, iTunes starts up and displays the MuVo as a device and you can drag music onto it without having those annoying hidden OSX files appearing if you did it in the finder. Saves having to dig around in the Music folder to find what I want.

Check out MuVo Helper here.

The little app that could.

Following a link from an article on copyright stuff I came across this incident where a girl was prevented (wrongly) by a gallery guard from sketching art works on display. How nuts is this?

Eyewitness News 11.com: Young Prospective Artist Finds Herself in a ‘No Sketch’ Zone

Treehugger: Q&A. Eco Coffee for the Office.

Kim’s reorganised all the fiction books in the house, bought two new bookshelves, and we’re now at the point where we’ve run out of space for books in the interim. (Barring building a new room or putting the kids in a tent.)

Looking at all the books (plus the non-fiction and my own work-related library) has me thinking about doing an electronic inventory. I know Delicious Monster is available for Mac OS X 10.3 (but I’m still on Jaguar) so any suggestions for Windows or Mac software that can take the ISBN and complete the record would be helpful. EndNote would do at a pinch but some sort of borrower list would be good. (At the moment we use the notebook & pencil system.)

Thought provoking article at Seed Magazine: Science is Culture - Collapse on ecological suicide–ecocide.

At first, a critic, noting the obvious differences, might be tempted to object: “It’s ridiculous to suppose that the collapses of all those ancient peoples could have broad relevance today, especially to the modern United States. Those ancients didn’t enjoy the wonders of modern technology, which benefits us and which lets us solve problems by inventing new environment-friendly technologies. Those ancients had the misfortune to suffer from effects of climate change. They behaved stupidly and ruined their own environments by doing obviously dumb things, like cutting down their forests, overharvesting wild-animal sources of protein, watching their topsoil erode away, and building cities in dry areas likely to run short of water. They had foolish leaders who didn’t have books and so couldn’t learn from history, and who embroiled them in expensive and destabilizing wars, cared only about staying in power, and didn’t pay attention to problems at home. They got overwhelmed by desperate, starving immigrants as one society after another collapsed, sending floods of economic refugees to tax the resources of the societies that weren’t collapsing. In all those respects, we moderns are fundamentally different from those primitive ancients, and there is nothing that we could learn from them. Especially in the U.S., the richest and most powerful country in the world today, with the most productive environment and wise leaders and strong, loyal allies and only weak, insignificant enemies–none of those bad things could possibly apply.”

Via: Nouslife: Ecocide.

Wish I’d been there. Sounds fascinating.
Science & Theology News - News: Sci-fi conference removes fiction from fact.

From the latest Science & Theology News : Real Life Religion: Tolkien’s writing has religious ring

I don’t preach very often in a church setting. I do lecture and tutor theology, teach in house groups etc. so maybe some preaching comes out there from time to time. So sermon prep this week is a reasonably unusual activity. In preparation for wondering how Micah might approach New Year’s resolutions I’ve been reading Walter Brueggemann’s “Voices of the Night - Against Justice.” (Pages 5-28 in To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly: An Agenda for Ministers Edited by Brueggemann, Walter, Sharon Parks, and Thomas H Groome. New York: Paulist Press, 1986.) Some good stuff in there.

I especially like his comment about Micah 6:8 where he says,

The three elements are well known to us. To do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God - these may embody all that we need to know in order to be faithful and to be human. They are not three “virtues.” They are not three “things to do.” Rather, they speak of three dimensions of a life of faithfulness, each of which depends on and is reinforced by the other two.

Reminiscent of Duncan Forrester’s view that justice is not the application of faith – it is its substance – the how and why of living.

Anyway, time for a break. It’s that warm, hard-to-think, part of the afternoon.

Here’s a snap of Tarawera Falls not far from where my in-laws live in the Bay of Plenty that I took a few days ago. After a drive into the forest you get out and walk through the bush beside the Tarawera River for about 20 minutes to these awesome falls. There’s an outlet from Lake Tarawera that flows into the rock up top and then the falls erupt straight out of the cliff face. It’s great just to sit and watch them and soak up the enviroment. So many shades of green everywhere. Click on the image for a larger picture or click here for the really big image (700K JPEG).

Links in with the previous post : Dictionary of the History of Ideas.

Thoroughly enjoying the series BBC - Radio 4 - In Our Time with each week podcasted as an MP3.