22 Aug 2004
Unusual expression though the title of this post may seem (“A feast for sore eyes”), it does make quite a lot of sense once thought about. It is the amalgamation of the phrases “A sight for sore eyes” and “Feast your eyes on this” — the result of an attempted application of Australian/English-speaking colloquialisms by a foreigner.
Well, okay, not exactly a foreigner. An ex-pat of Australia… not even that! An Australian citizen whose work requires time spent away from this country in a semi-permanent setting. Yes. Something like that. Anyway, this man has been living in France for the past while (thirteen years? fourteen? I honestly can’t recall what he said…), working as a missionary there.
Whoa, hang on, Josh… Australia Christians are sending missionaries to France? But… isn’t France a country with Christian origins and stuff? Well… sort of. That doesn’t necessarily result in a significant number of people actually following Jesus, though. Much of France is either “culturally” religious (that is, they follow traditions without actually believing [in] the God or entity behind this), atheist, or Muslim.
Laws regarding separation of Church and State in France establish religion as a “private” thing, not to be shared (and certainly not taught) in the public sphere. That said, the Government in France is very supportive of the beliefs of the individual, which means that people (of any faith) cannot be persecuted for this.
So why, then, does our Church send people to France, if people are free to believe what they want? Surely, there are plenty of Christians in France if they can believe whatever they want?
Well, these missionaries are living and working in a city called Toulouse, which has three universities, and approximately 100,000 students. Toulouse is one of FOUR university cities in this region of France, and Owen Chadwick (the missionary) is the only staff-worker working with students in this area. So, one to a few hundred thousand students kind of ratio.
Yeah. So, this guy was speaking at my church (ESM) this evening, on a passage from a book in the New Testament called Ephesians. It was kind of odd, because this is the sort of passage which I’d normally glance at and then skip past… it looks fairly generic and boring.
http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=Eph+1%3A15-23&version=NIV is a link to the passage for anyone interested (Ephesians 1:15-23); it is a very exciting prayer, but I’d managed to completely miss this until it was presented tonight.
So what’s so exciting about it? It’s asking for “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation” — okay, so that means something has to be there to be revealed, that we don’t know about or aren’t aware of, right? The speaker likened us to being in a blackout, moving to the walls and feeling they were smooth. Hang on, we’re in a crumbly sandstone building! That’s not right! And if the walls were made from gold ingots, we wouldn’t know — it’s the same with Christians if God doesn’t reveal his riches to us.
And THAT is a good thing because…? What’s there that is so good, so worth knowing about? Back towards the start of Ephesians (Ephesians 1:3), the writer of this letter, Paul, says “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
EVERY blessing. So it’s not like a stack of gold piled around the walls. It’s much, much bigger. It’ll probably stay shiny for longer, too.
20 Aug 2004
Certain comments made previously are today being retracted.
This thing is damn cool. It’s still perfectly useless, but at least it’s no-longer useless and mediocre! Now, it’s possible that other lit-up mouses do this (I wouldn’t know, having never slept/been in dark places with Optical mouses and turned-off computers), but I’m impressed at the sheer trippyness of this product.
IT KEEPS GLOWING EVEN WHEN THE COMPUTER IS TURNED OFF! How insanely cool is that?!?! I’m so glad I don’t sleep in line of sight with my work area, because this thing would enhance insomnia no end!
1:00 – entrancing red glow continues
2:00 – entrancing red glow continues
3:00 – entrancing red glow continues
4:00 – entrancing red glow continues
5:00 – entrancing red glow continues
6:00 – The rising sun begins to distract Josh, as does the harsh sound of the alarm clock on his phone. Realising that hours have been spent gazing upon this warm glowy red object, he falls into a restless sleep for 45 minutes, before waking up more tired than he went to sleep, and continuing with the daily routine.
Phwoar. Respect for Labtec just increased back to normal levels again. The whole “with light” actually means that… it’s not a bid to make people think “optical”, afterall! In fact, I’d say they’ve done the underpromise, overdeliver trick… there is NO mention of glowy artifacts when computers are turned off on the packaging!
Possibly because this depends on the motherboard’s handling of the PS/2 port power management, but let’s not get technical… bottom line is, I have a cool mouse, and it was free.
20 Aug 2004
One of my more favoured pasttimes is the purchasing of stationary; as nerdy as this may seem, it’s something I actually enjoy quite a lot. Following discussions (where discussions is synonymous with email sessions, but hey, I am a geek as well as a nerd, it would seem) had regarding… well, many things… but the use of paper as an outlet came up.
I’d been meaning to get my hands on a nice notebook or two for some time now, and it was with some glee that I moved upon Officeworks in Clarence St. this afternoon to make this purchase. As far as Officeworks stores go, that one kind of sucks… the range just isn’t there. That said, I did find what I was looking for.
See, what I want to know is why the accountant people get such cool notebooks whilst the rest of us suffer ring-bound crap! Seriously! Accountant people AREN’T that cool! We (Ben was along for the ride, or something) discovered a range of notebooks akin to what I was looking for (a properly bound pad, without any dodgy ring crappiness), IN THE ACCOUNTING AISLE! Well… it wasn’t exactly labelled as such… but it was HIDDEN in amidst all the ledger books and other such boredom inducing stuff. I think the accountants want to keep these pads to themselves.
*insert conspiracy theory here*
Yes, anyway. I ended up getting two A5 pads, weighing in at 168 pages each. So that was cool.
What happened next? Hmm. This bit is kind of weird. Jokingly or not, I haven’t asked, but Ben (in the course of conversation, not just randomly) raised his hand to his mouth, saying “Oooh, a diary!” in mock-shocked tones. I shrugged it off, without giving a direct answer, I think… but yes, that is what one of the two pads is for, if the world must know (which of course it DOESN’T, but I don’t mind sharing that much).
See, what I’m struck by is how this can be construed as any different to the maintenance of a ‘blog site. This IS essentially a self-censored, abridged, restricted online diary. The three conditions there exist simply because I am aware that the world has full access to all content posted on this resource. More on that in a second — My point for now is that I’m yet to have anyone comment on this with shocked expressions and mocking tones (I’m not saying that’s what Ben did, because I don’t know for certain and didn’t think to find out at the time, but there IS a stigma attached, so it would seem, reflected in this mock/or not mock opinion conveyed), despite some saying they don’t understand WHY people would ‘blog (which I think is perfectly understandable, and I agree with some of their reservations).
So what makes this website any different from a paper diary? Structured content, for one. Paper is infinitively more intuitive. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Graphics tablet? Pfft. It doesn’t FEEL the same. (heh, I was eyeing off some 110GSM paper this afternoon, but restrained myself). Structure has two aspects, though. This website isn’t searchable as yet (well, not via the interface most users here see — my local mirror has had experimentation done with varying degrees of success), but it could be with moderate effort. Everything is also sorted by date, and has permanent reference links.
Now, if I wanted searchable, dated content, I’d probably be using a system designed for such, i.e. NOT paper. But I don’t. And really, that demand can’t make what people do with paper that different to what hundreds of people worldwide do with weblogs. Personally, I try to keep my whinge sessions here to a minimum, both to avoid giving offence, and to avoid narcissistic trappings which such things can provide, especially if others begin to comment (ultimately fuelling the fire)… that said, I read many webloggers pages which aren’t like that, and are effectively a diary openly published to the world.
There is something about that I admire, I think, that they can be so open (or at least “open”) about their life. But then there are other websites which leave a sense of “get over it” hanging in the air. Like one weblog I read, about a guy whose relationship with his girlfriend ended two and half years ago. There was a lot of content on there, so I didn’t read all of it. I skipped about a quarter of a year at a time, but the consistent theme was this one girl, and his ensuing depression. Okay, I’m not going to speculate as to whether he “should” or “shouldn’t” be depressed — that’s a matter for him personally. If using the web as a medium for expression assists him, then great. I don’t think it was, though. After two and a half years, I think that other things need to be explored.
I know I’m guilty of using this publishing medium as a “sympathy net” at times, although it’s not something I’ll deliberately set out to achieve when writing content. Disclaimer out of the way, I’d like to direct your attention to a blog article posted a few days ago.
“Is that what blogs are about? Selfish desires.” – that provokes some thought for all personal (i.e. non-professional only) blog sites. Something I’m now aiming more to actively avoid, because I hadn’t thought about it too hard, and it’s a very valid point IMHO.
Apparently, though, the use of private expressionistic writing is something which is odd, unusual, taboo, undiscussed. Thoughts, anyone? What difference, if any, is there between private and public diary entry, online or otherwise? Is there a stigma attached to mediums or modes of writing?
19 Aug 2004
I had an interesting product sample land on my desk today (in a fairly literal sense: I honestly have absolutely no idea from whence it came!), which can only be described as gimmicky in a moderately useless way.
It’s a mouse. Which is okay, in and of itself. It’s quite a nice mouse, as far as these things go: it feels slightly lighter than my existing A4 USB thing, it moves more smoothly (hey, it’s a newer mouse, it’s to be expected)… nothing spectacular, but still, very usable.
For your admiration:
“Ooooh.”
What is that red thing, I hear you enquire?
That’s what I’m wondering, actually. The packaging on this mysterious object advertises it as follows:
Labtec
Wheel Mouse
with Light
The word “Light” is in red.
Note that in this instance, “Light” does not mean “Optical Mouse”.
Observe:
You’ll note the presence of a futile red LED, as well as a black mouse ball. Wonderful!
The mouse itself is decent (hey, it was free, no complaints from yours truly), but really: this is almost as bad as iiNet’s false value-adding schemes! Ah well. It’s not quite false advertising, but the implication is certainly there.
I’ve seen 5-unit pricing of optical mouses at $16 in the last six months, so surely it can’t be that much more expensive to ACTUALLY manufacture the real product! I’d imagine these would go for about $11 retail/unit, and down to $7 or $8 for OEM dealers. It’s a measly $8! I don’t see how that’s worth risking the wrath of upset consumers who purchase your product in error, but maybe that’s just me…
19 Aug 2004
Well, I’m fairly happy at the minute. Physics fell in a screaming heap from the 6th floor of SAH, landing in a somewhat diminished state on the adjacent Kent Street.
Reports that this caused traffic delays of up to fifteen minutes are unconfirmed, although it has been ascertained that traffic in certain parts of the city is moving at no more than two meters per minute, or so our correspondant, Joshua Street, writes from Circular Quay.
—
That aside, I now have a magnificent fourteen Studyhall periods per cycle, and no Physics to boot! Wooooooo!!! Chances are, had you met me in person this afternoon, this would have already been apparent to you from the ludicrous grin pasted on my face, but hey. Sincere apologies to anyone I distracted, who was previously trying to get work done in studyhall Period 4.
So, anyway, here it is:
Highlighted entries denote new studyhall periods.
I like!