Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
A great site dedicated to Outlining software (especially older versions). Covers both Mac and PC (DOS & Windows) with downloads. See Outliners.Com: Welcome to Outliners.Com!
Sure you can do outlining in Word but I’m a big fan of many small, different, efficient and dedicated pieces of software working together to get the job done (as in the “Body of Christ”?). Must be the UNIX background coming through.
For those of you using Macs but not Mac OS X then Acta, one of the earliest outliner programs is available here. Acta, the easiest outline processor
Snappy and still very useful.
I love outliner software. Just the way I think and organise my information. Came across this gem the other day that is both an outliner and an image map generator. So a quick (and limited) outline of my web site and we get the following graphic with hyperlinks. Cool.
The software is called myMind, it’s for Mac OS X and it’s
“How many people are on the Internet? By stunning coincidence, the total turns out to be exactly the same as the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.” [Paul Andrews, Seattle Times, 14 Jan 96]
I’m speaking at the following on cyber/techno-spirituality along with some other speakers . Both using it for spiritual purposes and wondering if technology has it’s own spiritual agenda. Rachel and Steve are also speaking and you can visit their blogs under the Wayfarers menu on this page. (Note to self: Must check if Kirsten has a blog.)
You are invited to join a group of IT and theological professionals
meeting:
On: Saturday 1st November 4pm-6pm
At: Carey Baptist College, 473 Great South Rd, Penrose, Auckland.The objectives of the group are to facilitate discussion of issues at the interface of IT Church and Culture; to network and to discuss projects of interest.
The November 1st meeting will discuss four presentations:
Kirsten Abbot: Wrestling with the (hyper)text: Gen 32
Rachel Cunliffe: CensusAtSchool
Steve Taylor: A postmodern monastery: the catalytic earthing of an “open-source” spirituality
Stephen Garner: Techno-spirituality
In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams described the “Total Perspective Vortex” – a devices that allowed you to see exactly where in the universe you fitted in. Of course, when you realised how insignificant you were then it blew your mind.
Over at TouchGraph they have something similar. Just enter in the name of your web site or blog and their Java applet will draw a map of how your site links with others in Google’s cyberspace directory. Sometimes the oddest links have been made by people.
Check out TouchGraph GoogleBrowser V1.01
In a lecture the other week a student asked me in a lecture whether I felt any pressure to write blog entries. Did I feel incomplete or stressed if I hadn’t posted anything for a day or so? My answer was, in good lecturer fence-sitting style, “yes” and “no”.
I don’t think that I need to post things in order to be. Sometimes I read blogs and think that the person is simply filling in the gaps to prove to others and themselves that they still exist – “I blog therefore I am.” So, if like for the last week, life is such that posting is inconvenient or impossible then I don’t lose (too much) sleep over my blog just lying here in cyberspace.
On the other hand blogging helps me collate information and ideas as I come across them. It’s like a diary or journal (my first blog was called “Web Wanderings”, a travelogue). The danger being that you can hang yourself out far more publically than in a diary.
When Paul talks of “praying without ceasing” I imagine that has a lot in common with blogging. In fact prayer might be thought of “blogging with God”. Daily ramblings, concerns, joys, hopes, disappointments all written on a divine web log. With space of course for a comments field 🙂
Maybe I should be more concerned when that blog has no entries for a few days.
“Technology is the knack of so ordering the world that we don’t have to experience it.” (Kim Stanley Robinson, The Martians)
Newsgaming.com is a group based in Uruguay producing video games with a political edge. They argue that the medium is useful for communicating and exploring issues based on current events.
Certainly their September 12th game is disturbing, with its exploration of collateral damage in the war against terror.
When I wrote up my masters thesis (a long time ago) I had a JRR Tolkien calendar on the wall. The picture for the hardest and darkest month was of Frodo and Sam at the top of the cliff in the dark wondering how to get down. Recently I’ve found Dave Pritchard’s Lord of the Rings: an allegory of the PhD?
It begins
The story starts with Frodo: a young hobbit, quite bright, a bit dissatisfied with what he’s learnt so far and with his mates back home who just seem to want to get jobs and settle down and drink beer. He’s also very much in awe of his tutor and mentor, the very senior professor Gandalf, so when Gandalf suggests he take on a short project for him (carrying the Ring to Rivendell), he agrees.
(see link for the rest)
If we follow the plot so far I’ve made it to Rivendell. Only the hard stuff to go.