the hype continues

So, in response to all the hype about the documentary about Jesus' family ossuaries being found, thanks to a documentary (mockumentary?) by director James Cameron and Filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici. Check out the following links:

http://losttombofjesuschrist.com/
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2007/0305lost-tomb-review.asp
http://dev.bible.org/bock/node/106

They put it much better than me. Question, has anyone else noticed the growing animosity towards Jesus Christ? We are becoming far more polarised on the issue of who Jesus is. Over the past few years we have been bombarded by Time, Newsweek, etc with very strong claims which attempt to undermine the gospel accounts of Jesus. His birth, His death and resurrection, and His life here on earth. I expect this to grow, and I expect the proponents of these stories to continue in trying to malign the name of my King. My only concern is those who are led astray due to bad information being the order of the day... the Dan Brown's don't bug me personally, but when they reach those who would otherwise simply be following Jesus, and they cause them to stumble, then I get annoyed.

As the apostle Paul said - (1 Cor 15:1-4,12-22)
Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
...
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Client site promo: UNAIDS

Yesterday at 'noon the UNAIDS RSTESA website went live. Lots of work went into updating the content to be relevant and informative. There were a few iterations of this before I got my developer paws on it, but none of them went live as far as I know. Check back periodically for new sections like calendar of events and polls and the likes. You can find the site at www.unaidsrstesa.org.

Any comments, ideas and suggestions are welcome, I'll forward them on to the appropriate channels.

symfony 1.0 released

Symfony, the php 5 based web framework hit version 1 (stable) on Monday. We're currently developing a site using this technology, so it's great news. More on that when we go live. Check it out - www.symfony-project.com

pet peeves version 1.0

I don't want this site to be a place where i just sit and moan at all around me. But sometimes a good moan needs to be had, even if it's just to make me feel better. Here are my current issues:

1) Being phoned by robots.
This is the second month now that I have been harassed by an unknown company offering me interest free credit. It starts with a phone call, where I get asked if I want "cash in a flash" and I must push any key to find out more. There was no mention of any company, nothing. After the 4rth time of hanging up the call, I decided to push any button to speak to a human to find out which company they represented. I got through to what sounded like the loud background noise of call centre, and no one answered my repeated "hello, HELLO?"... The second time I pushed a number (yes, they keep calling me) I did get through to a human that heard me. She said "yes?" so I asked which company I had gotten through to. She hung up. Now I can't call back because they're calling me.
The calls have not stopped, I got another 3 today, and I still don't know which company is at the source of this madness.
At least with the other companies that harass me for their credit, I know who I'm dealing with and can take action. (Which I will do if flippen Nedbank send me any more SMS's offering me credit)
Is anyone else receiving these highly annoying calls? Please comment here, let's turn this into an Internet Investigation!! Heck, if this works we can branch out and have a site dedicated to this, drawing all CSI-wannabe's from around the country. POP, ok, back to reality.

At least if I knew who it was I could get them to hound my bad payers: (people like Two Tone Branding who owe me R5600 since February 2006) - yes, it's unprofessional to mention them, but hey, they've been promising "we'll pay you next friday" for 4 months now, so I don't believe they actually intend on paying me. Anyone know the laws on me mentioning this publicly on this site? If they sue me, or pay me, I'll remove this entry. (If you're from Two Tone and you're reading this, go with the paying me option please!)

2) Seeing my taxes subsidise cheap air travel
SAA, and Mango give us cheap rates because our tax-Rand is being pumped into their business to support them. So the prices are cheap, but paid for by us, who knows what we're paying really. Also, what about the other airlines who are trying to run a decent business. This parasitic nature is obviously big in the business world, but it shouldn't be actively funded by the government. Also, service levels are affected: why should a business give good service to attract return customers, when 1) their subsidised low price will do that, and 2) no matter if they treat the customers like rubbish, and their profits dive, they'll be handed a bundle of cash to run their business anyways...


3) Bad internet connections
When can I have real bandwidth like my friends overseas? Please please? when?


Thats it for now.

OMG

I sometimes come across song lyrics which really get my attention. Either because I relate to them entirely, or because they raise some interesting things I haven't thought about, or because I don't know exactly what they mean. Well, this song fits all three of these. When I first heard it I was uncertain if I liked the lyrics. I had no idea what Danny Haseltine was on about. But the more I listened to the song, the more it seemed to unravel itself to me. Eventually it had the same effect on me as my first encounter with Jars of Clay all those years back. In my opinion this song is a music epic, on par with Worlds Apart - in the way it has different sections and just builds up throughout.

Until tonight I was still unsure of what the writer meant, but I had my theories, and I was happy to find out I was spot on. Give this song a listen when you get a chance, and take a look at the meaning below also... (skips back to song, plays it again)... ahh

Oh my God, look around this place,
Your fingers reach around the bone,
you set the break and set the tone
For flights of grace, and future falls
In present pain all fools say, "Oh my God."

Oh my God, why are we so afraid?
we make it worse when we don't bleed,
there is no cure for our disease.
Turn a phrase and rise again,
or fake your death and only tell your closest friends,
Oh My God.

Oh my God, can I complain?
You take away my firm belief and graft my soul upon your grief.
Weddings, boats, and alibis,
All drift away, and a mother cries...
=========================
Liars and fools, sons and failures, theives will always say..
Lost and found, ailing wanderers, healers always say..
Whores and angels, men with problems, leavers always say..
Broken hearted, separated, orphans always say..
War creators, racial haters, preachers always say..
Distant fathers, fallen warriors, givers always say..
Pilgrim saints, lonely widows, users always say..
Fearful mothers, watchful doubters, Saviors always say..
=========================
Sometimes I can not forgive
and these days mercy cuts so deep,
If the world was how it should be, maybe I could get some sleep.
While I lay, I'd dream we're better, scales were gone and faces lighter,
When we wake we hate our brother, we still move to hurt each other,
Sometimes I can close my eyes and all the fear the keeps me silent,
Falls below my heavy breathing, what makes me so badly bent?
We all have a chance to murder, we all have the need for wonder.
We still want to be reminded that the pain is worth the thunder.

Sometimes when I lose my grip, I wonder what to make of heaven,
All the times I thought to reach up, all the times I had to give up.
Babies underneath their beds, in hospitals that cannot treat
All the wounds that money causes, all the comforts of cathedrals,
All the cries of thirsty children, this is our inheritance,
All the rage of watching mothers, this is our greatest offense
Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.


Written by Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason, Matt Odmark © 2006 Pogostick Music (BMI) / Bridge Building (BMI). All rights for the world on behalf of Pogostick Music (BMI) administered by Bridge Building (BMI).

Behind the Song:
"With Oh My God, we wanted to kind of communicate that everybody at some point intersects with God, whether they choose to believe or not, and people all have their reasons for crying out to God. And some of those are really deep, deep doubts. There are times when I wrestle with that now, but growing up I didn’t know the gospel could stand up to the scrutiny. It’s a question that I think needs to be asked. This song has three parts. It starts out being many people’ stories and the third part is my personal story...Why I cry out to God." - Dan Haseltine (Jars Of Clay)

[words and information from: www.jesusfreakhideout.com, lyrics updated from official in-sleeve booklet]

blood diamonds, blood platinum

I was appalled to see news articles about South African Government welcoming, and meeting with the President of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao, this week. Not only is South Africa meeting with him, and strengthening ties, we're accepting his donations. Are we so simple minded to not think that there could be consequences to this? Dire ones.

China, while undoubtedly a world leader in many respects, is no world leader in liberty. Yes, it certainly would be good economically to make ties with this giant, but we cannot afford to consider economics at the expense of doing what is right.

Now while you might think I'm going to shoot off on a tangent about under-age and under-paid kids producing western label gadgets and clothing, I'm about to shoot of on another tangent entirely.

OK, let's step back and look at this. What do they want? According to a Bloomberg news article they want to invest in our mining. We have an abundance of precious metals and minerals which they would love to tap into for continuing development of their technologies. OK, fine. We get that.

What do we want? Well, it seems, handout: Gifts, Money, Business. Thats good for us, right? I mean, as long as it's not ivory or rhino horns - because that would create a stir these days.

So we're all set to go. But wait a minute. Isn't this the same China that persecutes hundreds, if not thousands of Christians yearly? Yes it is. Even today, even this month, there have been reports of people being arrested, molested and yes, even killed. You haven't heard about this? That doesn't mean it isn't happening.

We westerners are very skeptical of the US and British governments, I've heard endless opinions criticising Bush and Blair; and yet, when President Hu lands on our soil, we welcome him with open arms?

If we support China's development, we support their government, and we condone their actions, philosophy and methodology. The countries which had economic sanctions against South Africa in the Apartheid era made this statement by their actions: "We do not support or condone your Apartheid philosophy and legislature, and so we will not support your development." The countries that had a business as usual attitude with South Africa back then, weren't necessarily supporting apartheid, but they were not prepared to lose their benefits for the sake of what is right. Right now, South Africa boldly stands in the position of the latter, which is ironic taking her past into account.

This year alone, in China:
3 Jan 2007: Christmas Celebration Raided in Inner Mongolia
China ranked 8th worst country of persecution in the world
9 Jan 2007: New Year Bible Study in Communist Party School Raided in Hebei
14 Jan 2007: Released two of nine underground priests arrested in Hebei
16 Jan 2007: Christian service raided in Henan Province
25 Jan 2007: Christians under attack in China
28 Jan 2007: House Church worship service raided in Anhui Province
28 Jan 2007: 9 Arrested House Church Leaders in Henan released after 15 days detention
29 Jan 2007: Beijing House Church Activist Hua Huiqi and his mother attacked and detained by police
30 Jan 2007: Executed for distributing bibles
6 Feb 2007: China's shifting policies still hindering religion

Information taken from Persecution.org, a watchdog of Christian religious freedom worldwide.

Release International, describes China:
Religious Freedom Rating: 6 (7 is worst)
Population: 1287 million (2003 est.)
Widespread persecution of church leaders and members, especially those in unregistered (underground) churches, which may represent as many as 100 million believers.

A last note: before reading this, your ignorance to what is happening in China protected you from responsibility of doing something. Now you are informed - and your choice is simple:
1) denial, which is willful ignorance. It will appease your conscience for a while, but you will be guilty of knowing the facts and deciding to pretend they aren't there or are lies.
2) acknowledgement, where you realise what is going on, and admit to it, even if doing nothing.
3) action, where you protest either actively or passively. Actively would constitute writing letters or speaking to people, praying for the Christians in China, getting involved with organisations that support those who are persecuted there - passively would be deciding in your own capacity not to support China's trade by buying their products.

It is important that you understand that I am not speaking out against the Chinese people, or people of Chinese heritage. I am aiming my words straight at the South African and Chinese governments, their policies, decisions and statutes.

well said Steve

Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. just gave his thoughts on the DRM (digital rights management) restrictions of the downloaded music from iTunes on the iPod. Let's open up the DRM-restrictions on downloaded music.
Though I think Option 4 would be to incorporate an open standard that is open source and managed by the community. While the Record Labels might have a problem with this, and solutions might come in slower to breaches in security, at least no one company or small conglomerate of companies control the DRM development and implementation.

Steve, if you're reading this (haha, I think I'm the only person who reads my blog at this point) - how about opening the iTunes Store in South Africa too?

To open source, or not to open source.

This post started very differently. I was all boisterous in my description of Open Source software and how advanced it was getting... and then my open source browser crashed and I lost everything. I don't normally swear, but 3 minutes ago I let one slip. It happens.

I guess it goes to prove what I've seen time and again. Things work marvelously, until you show someone how well they work, or until you tell someone about it in your blog. (sigh, save as draft.. continue)

I've been using Open Source software for quite a number of years now. And I've realised that the decision to use Open Source is quite an individual one, and requires thinking about your particular situation. There are times when an Open Source replacement will suffice, and other times where the added time and frustration caused by moving to Open Source/freeware is just not worth it. I remember trying to convince Wesley that Eudora was the coolest Mail Client out there. I never really succeeded in this, and more often I think I was trying to convince myself of my decision. I'm currently using Thunderbird which is not my idea of the perfect mail client either. It is an example of something that is almost but not quite there.

When I switched. Switching is a term I've learnt from the Mac users I've recently come into contact with. People who move from PC to Mac are known as switchers. I'm not applying this term to people who move across to the Open Source alternative, because, the move from the known and familiar to the unknown is a common factor. So, look into it when switching.

I've used the Open Office suite since it's inception, and used StarOffice before then. This is a product that has really come a long way and I definitely recommend it. I tried it when I decided to legitimise the software on my machine, because there are times when I refuse to shell out a few grand (in ZAR) for a piece of software. Ofcourse, some of my choices turned out to be black sheep: my constant convincing my friend Wesley (and myself in the process) that Eudora was actually cool. [cough, change topic]

So when is it better to spend money on software. In my opinion, when it greatly affects your productivity or quality of work. For me: I've been very impressed with the (Macromedia) Adobe Studio product suite. And I paid up from version MX through to Studio 8. It is good software, great value at it's cost, and I'll gladly spend what I consider to be very reasonable upgrade fees to the newer version (hoping this stays reasonable with Adobe at the help of MM). AND you get Flash! That alone is worth it.

Recently, I've changed the primary technology I use for churning out websites. My focus has moved from predominantly Adobe Coldfusion websites to ones done in PHP, the widely used Open Source web language. I've also started working on a project which uses the Symfony framework as it's core, which is also Open Source. Learning PHP and Object Orientated thinking has really been exciting and challenging, but it has included a few frustrations now and then. I have to get out of the habit of wanting to write queries which do stuff. It's quite a discipline, and I'm fortunate to have a seasoned web programmer (PHP, Java, Python, TCL/Tk, PERL) leading the project, guiding and helping me adapt. The best way is just to do a project and learn from your mistakes. Mistakes like writing 16 lines of complicated PHP code instead of 1 line which says $this->user->save(); Wow. Thats when OO really blows your socks off!

Symfony work has shown me that the common idea of "Choosing Open Source means being abandoned to figure stuff out alone" is just not true. It is so well supported, and the developer are eager to help others out. And many of them are French, which goes against another common idea about helpfulness and the people of France. Je veux dire que les francais sont formidables sur le projet symfony!

Another option for Open Source is just to play around with software that you wouldn't invest in. An example: Blender3D. I'm no 3D artist, and I certainly wouldn't spend the thousands of Rands needed to get set up with Maya just to mess around. But I have installed Blender3D and I'm having fun playing around with it. What a great product, and it is available for PC, Mac and Linux. Students with future careers in animation, wanting to dabble, take note: Open Source/ Freeware is your friend.

So, sometimes it's worth switching over. But it's always fun to check stuff out and play. Here's a nice grouping of software to get you started. Enjoy.

introducing... my mac

Could it be a definite trend happening... or is it that I'm noticing it more now that I have one: but aren't there a lot of macs around these days? I keep noticing fellow mac users all around, in coffee shops, in meetings I go to (and I don't just hang around in ad agency circles either), even the DJ at the New Years Concert at the Dome in Northgate... so what gives? Has the iPod swung the Cupertino doors open to Apple acceptance here in South Africa? It certainly seems so! I mean even my aunt got a nifty little black macbook (2nd generation, faster than mine!) I helped her set it up (not that she needed me either, it was child's play), and she loves it - she went to some free Apple training that they give to new users.

I've had my mac for a few months now and I love it. Every week or two I find some other neat little feature that I didn't know about before. That being said, it did take some adjusting from the PC I'd gotten used to. A friend sent me a link today: http://teenagefanboy.blogspot.com/2007/01/ten-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i.html
and I found it a great read. It's a list of 10 things that can help new mac users, as some of the things are definitely very different on mac.

In fact, one of the focuses of this blog will be about Apple, Mac, iPod and all that stuff.
When I find more nifty features I'll be sure to post them here.

In the meanwhile, here's a great site I found with helpful shortcut commands. Being a developer, knowing lots of shortcuts is kind of like having experience points in the field of battle... "Oh, you fought in Korea?" - yeah, so rack these suckers up and impress your friends.

http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html

what it is...

Well with the start of 2007 I've decided that I need a place to blog. Not just because everyone's doing it, but because sometimes there are just things that need to be said. Unlike some other blogs I've seen, this won't have a specific focus. This will be more a philosophical sketch pad, mixed with a cool findings outlet...

I've often found that the people with the loudest voices often have very different views to mine. I have no problem with views that are different. I just want to impress that the loudest and most popular views are not always the ones that should be heeded. Not to say that my views should be heeded any more because they are different. Something should be valued by it's own substance or lack thereof, not by the volume of it's message, or it's peculiarity or popularity.

I often stumble across things which are not mainstream where I think "gee, I wish others would somehow find out about this" - So, even if only to a handful of folks: I hope to bring this out, and if thought is provoked, then there is value in this...