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.