Saturday, October 03, 2009
Get Real
A young friend once said to me that she wished people could be more "real". It bothered me that I could never put my finger on what that exactly that meant. It just occurred to me that perhaps, being "real" isn't so much what we do or how we act, but rather the ability to see ourselves as we really are, or more to the point, how Jesus sees us, good and bad, strengths and weaknesses, failures and successes. We no longer have to put on the masks that other people make for us so that we'll fit in. We no longer have to polish our halos in order to make God appreciate us.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
We got out the clay...
Another funny little twist: We had a "Spiritual Emphasis Week" here at the OM USA office, which involved a lot of time for team building and training... and just sort of mixing things up. Since OM has a substantial "Arts Link" department (http://omartslink.org/), they set up some tables in the main worship area with different kinds of art supplies, encouraging people to "get out of the box" and use the arts to worship, or just kind of exercise the other side of their brain.
Well, they had one table with drawing and painting supplies and another with colored paper and stamps and glue for making cards and pictures and another table with a huge pile of Lego blocks ... and another table with home made play-dough. Now, this was actually pretty good quality play-dough, but it's still not the same as REAL clay. I still had a 25lb block of air-hardening clay left over from when I did the kids ceramics class in our Sunday School a few months ago, so I asked if I could add that in. Well, once I got started with the clay, I immediately got absorbed. The team had scheduled lots of free times through the week (games down in the dining room and just time to get away...) and I started making things out of clay. Some of the families brought in their kids in, so I found I had an instant class room of anywhere from one or two, to a half dozen children, all VERY anxious to get their hands into the clay. I don't think I've been that happy in years! I was able to make some significant pieces during that time (I'll try to get some pictures soon), but the funniest thing was how surprised all the people in the office there were at seeing a totally different side of my personality. They all know (and appreciate) the technical side of my work there, and how I can do what they consider to be miraculous things with their computers, but they'd never imagined the artist lurking inside of me. Especially the real artists there in the group. I think they're already scheming about how to get me along on their next Arts Link trip to work along side of their musicians and dancers and painters and all... ;-)
Well Mom, I guess all those ceramics classes you sent me to at the Memorial Art Gallery during the summers when I was a kid really seem to be paying off! ;-)
Well, they had one table with drawing and painting supplies and another with colored paper and stamps and glue for making cards and pictures and another table with a huge pile of Lego blocks ... and another table with home made play-dough. Now, this was actually pretty good quality play-dough, but it's still not the same as REAL clay. I still had a 25lb block of air-hardening clay left over from when I did the kids ceramics class in our Sunday School a few months ago, so I asked if I could add that in. Well, once I got started with the clay, I immediately got absorbed. The team had scheduled lots of free times through the week (games down in the dining room and just time to get away...) and I started making things out of clay. Some of the families brought in their kids in, so I found I had an instant class room of anywhere from one or two, to a half dozen children, all VERY anxious to get their hands into the clay. I don't think I've been that happy in years! I was able to make some significant pieces during that time (I'll try to get some pictures soon), but the funniest thing was how surprised all the people in the office there were at seeing a totally different side of my personality. They all know (and appreciate) the technical side of my work there, and how I can do what they consider to be miraculous things with their computers, but they'd never imagined the artist lurking inside of me. Especially the real artists there in the group. I think they're already scheming about how to get me along on their next Arts Link trip to work along side of their musicians and dancers and painters and all... ;-)
Well Mom, I guess all those ceramics classes you sent me to at the Memorial Art Gallery during the summers when I was a kid really seem to be paying off! ;-)
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Seven good reasons to switch to Windows 7?
Well, I read the WIRED article, Seven good reasons to switch to Windows 7, and unfortunately I found it to be pretty thin.Two questions in the opening paragraph really put me off:
"Do I really want to continue using an eight-year-old operating system?" -- Well, that's like asking, "Do I really want to continue living in a eight-year-old house?" If the house fits me, and is comfortable, and has all the things I need, then I'll be perfectly happy to live there for another eight years, thank you very much. Just because something is old doesn't automatically mean it's broken. (Of course, this is an article written in WIRED, so maybe that's the way that crowd thinks.)
"Don't I deserve better?" Uh, well, prove to me that it is better! Sure, maybe I deserve a Mac, or Linux, or whatever. Show me that something is better, and then I'll decide if I deserve it or not.
Then, there were the seven reasons themselves:
You Asked for This
- There's no question that Win7 is better than Vista. That isn't saying much. Microsoft got the biggest black-eye in its history for Vista (well, maybe not including Windows ME), and they hopefully learned an important lesson: People don't shell out hundreds of dollars for a new version of Windows just because it has a NEW NAME. Oh, and don't spit in the eye of your hardware vendors. They don't play well with that kind of attitude either.
Upgrading Won't Screw You Over
- Uh... Some time real soon now, Microsoft will hopefully give you a compatibility tool which will tell you how much money you need to pay to get basically the same functionality as you already have now. And, they will include (if you pay extra for the "Ultimate" versions) a "virtual XP" layer, which will basically inherit all the warts of old XP, so you can still enjoy all those security vulnerabilities while running Win7. (Yea, virtualization is supposed to isolate those things, but you can still attack the virtual XP environment, and how long do you really think it will take before the hackers figure out how to break out of Microsoft's cardboard box?)
Automatically Installed Device Drivers
- Hummm.... Ubuntu has been automatically detecting proprietary drivers and downloading them for years now. Glad that MS has finally figured out how to do this.
Piracy
- OK. This one totally baffles me: Windows 7 is an OS practically made for pirates. Want to display your movies, photos or music on your TV? Bam! Windows Media Player will do that out of the box if you have a Wi-Fi enabled TV, or an Xbox. Huh?? How many people do you know who have a Wi-Fi enabled TV? Um, playing to your XBox? Notice that that is another Microsoft product? How about to your Wii? What's the chance you can play MS streamed content on that? Oh, and even if you have legitimately purchased DRM shackled media, if you don't have DRM equipped hardware, then BAM! Windows will nicely downgrade the quality of your video stream so you can't see it at its full HD level. (That's to keep the pirates from snarfing their movies by intercepting the decrypted data stream as it goes to the display unit.) Just because you can plug into a network and see your pirate friend's shared disk drive, what makes you think you're going to actually be able to play that DRM'ed content??? What universe is this guy living in?
A Better Interface
- OK, so Microsoft moved everything around so you have to learn Windows all over again. Funny -- the interface looks a lot more like a Mac. They've got a 3D desktop. Ooooooooh. Shiny!
More Advanced Hardware Support
- OK, if Microsoft really delivers on their promise (unlike the flop that was known as Vista), then this will be the one real driving point to force people off of XP. XP has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient under the stress of change, but there will come a point when it's just not going to be able to keep up with the pace of hardware and driver change. Multiple cores. 64 bit. Optimizing for solid state drives. Supporting touch screens and multiple platforms (read: smart phones) out of the box. Better behaved device drivers. This is going to be the one thing that finally puts a stake in the heart of XP.
It Looks Sexier
- Well, this is WIRED magazine. 'Nuf said.
So, I'll say I am using Windows 7 (Beta), and I like it, but I don't think I like it enough to run out and pay $300 for a license. (I can buy an entire computer for less than that.) If it comes installed on your new computer, then great! If you have a specific need for it (especially new hardware), or you feel like you understand the interface better than old XP, then go for it. However, I don't think you're going to see a lot of owners of existing computers paying to upgrade, at least until 1012 when Microsoft quits issuing security patches for XP and finally signs XP's death certificate.
There are plenty of ways that Windows 7 is better than Vista, and even some reasons why it is better than XP, but this article didn't do a very good job of convincing me. ;-)
"Do I really want to continue using an eight-year-old operating system?" -- Well, that's like asking, "Do I really want to continue living in a eight-year-old house?" If the house fits me, and is comfortable, and has all the things I need, then I'll be perfectly happy to live there for another eight years, thank you very much. Just because something is old doesn't automatically mean it's broken. (Of course, this is an article written in WIRED, so maybe that's the way that crowd thinks.)
"Don't I deserve better?" Uh, well, prove to me that it is better! Sure, maybe I deserve a Mac, or Linux, or whatever. Show me that something is better, and then I'll decide if I deserve it or not.
Then, there were the seven reasons themselves:
You Asked for This
- There's no question that Win7 is better than Vista. That isn't saying much. Microsoft got the biggest black-eye in its history for Vista (well, maybe not including Windows ME), and they hopefully learned an important lesson: People don't shell out hundreds of dollars for a new version of Windows just because it has a NEW NAME. Oh, and don't spit in the eye of your hardware vendors. They don't play well with that kind of attitude either.
Upgrading Won't Screw You Over
- Uh... Some time real soon now, Microsoft will hopefully give you a compatibility tool which will tell you how much money you need to pay to get basically the same functionality as you already have now. And, they will include (if you pay extra for the "Ultimate" versions) a "virtual XP" layer, which will basically inherit all the warts of old XP, so you can still enjoy all those security vulnerabilities while running Win7. (Yea, virtualization is supposed to isolate those things, but you can still attack the virtual XP environment, and how long do you really think it will take before the hackers figure out how to break out of Microsoft's cardboard box?)
Automatically Installed Device Drivers
- Hummm.... Ubuntu has been automatically detecting proprietary drivers and downloading them for years now. Glad that MS has finally figured out how to do this.
Piracy
- OK. This one totally baffles me: Windows 7 is an OS practically made for pirates. Want to display your movies, photos or music on your TV? Bam! Windows Media Player will do that out of the box if you have a Wi-Fi enabled TV, or an Xbox. Huh?? How many people do you know who have a Wi-Fi enabled TV? Um, playing to your XBox? Notice that that is another Microsoft product? How about to your Wii? What's the chance you can play MS streamed content on that? Oh, and even if you have legitimately purchased DRM shackled media, if you don't have DRM equipped hardware, then BAM! Windows will nicely downgrade the quality of your video stream so you can't see it at its full HD level. (That's to keep the pirates from snarfing their movies by intercepting the decrypted data stream as it goes to the display unit.) Just because you can plug into a network and see your pirate friend's shared disk drive, what makes you think you're going to actually be able to play that DRM'ed content??? What universe is this guy living in?
A Better Interface
- OK, so Microsoft moved everything around so you have to learn Windows all over again. Funny -- the interface looks a lot more like a Mac. They've got a 3D desktop. Ooooooooh. Shiny!
More Advanced Hardware Support
- OK, if Microsoft really delivers on their promise (unlike the flop that was known as Vista), then this will be the one real driving point to force people off of XP. XP has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient under the stress of change, but there will come a point when it's just not going to be able to keep up with the pace of hardware and driver change. Multiple cores. 64 bit. Optimizing for solid state drives. Supporting touch screens and multiple platforms (read: smart phones) out of the box. Better behaved device drivers. This is going to be the one thing that finally puts a stake in the heart of XP.
It Looks Sexier
- Well, this is WIRED magazine. 'Nuf said.
So, I'll say I am using Windows 7 (Beta), and I like it, but I don't think I like it enough to run out and pay $300 for a license. (I can buy an entire computer for less than that.) If it comes installed on your new computer, then great! If you have a specific need for it (especially new hardware), or you feel like you understand the interface better than old XP, then go for it. However, I don't think you're going to see a lot of owners of existing computers paying to upgrade, at least until 1012 when Microsoft quits issuing security patches for XP and finally signs XP's death certificate.
There are plenty of ways that Windows 7 is better than Vista, and even some reasons why it is better than XP, but this article didn't do a very good job of convincing me. ;-)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
ChromeOS and what Google is really doing
The Web changes everything...
I thought this was a good article talking about what ChromeOS may actually accomplish. In particular, I thought this was interesting:
The most promising parts of Office 2010 are the strikingly rich Web versions of Microsoft's Office applications, which will run equally well on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari (a close cousin to Google's Chrome). Similarly, with Exchange 2010, Microsoft is erasing IE's edge over other browsers and platforms for Outlook Web Access.
As Microsoft (along with everyone else) moves away from the desktop and toward the cloud, they are starting to loosen up on their dependence on trying to force everyone to use the IE browser. If the desktop really does become irrelevant (a big if), then it no longer makes sense to try to use IE as a leverage point to pressure people to use other Microsoft services.
With Chrome OS, Google is doing what other vendors should have done
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