Cherryvile BC is closer than Hudson Bay SK

From Calgary Hudson Bay SK is about 966 KM of driving, where Cherryvile is brief 625 km drive. A couple of people were surprised that I made the drive to Cherryvile for Melissa and Phil's reception. I pointed out that is was closer than Hudson's Bay where I would have been for Steve & Julie's ordination if I hadn't been in Cherryvile.

Steve emailed:

The ordination was an excellent evening, and we felt very affirmed and supported. A brief write-up (and the text of the sermon) is on the diocesan website if you want to get a feel for it.

I quite liked the sermon as it has a sense of humor deals honestly with the demands of clergy life:

Saint Matthias was chosen to replace Judas, and into almost any Parish or ministry Julie and Steve enter, they will be replacing someone. Thank God then that no matter how little you or those with whom you serve think of your predecessor, it was not and will not be Judas.
...
The spirit of our age adores busyness and we get drawn into this all the time. So often we clergy seem to preach salvation by works in the way that we manage our time and our lives. If you listened to me most of the time you would think that Jesus’ yoke was made of lead.

Dean Michael Hawkins of the Anglican Diocese of Saskatchewan

- Peace

Tagged By Jordon

I was tagged by Jordon to Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself:

1. I spent the night with a woman who then eloped with another man two days latter.
   
2. I will find the most awkward spin to put on something.
3. I like Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke with Lime but can't stand Diet Coke
4. I love it when people say they hate the look of the Honda Element. It's a love it or hate kinda vehicle and I like that.
5. I am currently using 991 MB (15%) of my 6468 MB on Gmail.
6. I've only had one old friend find me via Facebook.
   

the next Six to be tagged:

1. Vince
2. Dave
3. Debbi
4. Suzi
5. Lisa
6. Kris

- Peace

Larry Norman: Visiting This Planet No Longer

I got into Christian music in 1983, by then Larry Norman was the legendary first Christian rocker, someone older people mentioned but not someone my friends or I listened to. I remember quite enjoying Jeff Moore and The Distance's cover of Larry's classic Why Should The Devil Have All the Good Music?

Andy Whitman from Paste has wonderfully honest farewell to Larry:

Larry, who died yesterday, was a friend I never knew, and a frustratingly untrustworthy witness to the faith. He was talented, insecure, prone to fanciful tales that bore little or no relationship to the truth, possibly mad as a hatter, and utterly, fearlessly in love with Jesus. The truth is that he made about three good albums over the course of thirty five years and dozens of releases. He repackaged his thirty great songs over and over again, made ridiculous claims about his role in the music industry (the founder of rap was my favorite), and claimed to be the spiritual mentor to everyone from Paul McCartney to Bob Dylan. He was also the self-proclaimed Father of Christian Rock, and for once he got it right.

Those who are familiar with the safe, sanitized world of Contemporary Christian Music might be startled if they listened to those thirty songs. There was nothing safe and sanitized about Larry Norman’s music. He sang about gonorrhea, drug addiction, NASA’s foibles, the death of Janis Joplin, and Jesus. Always about Jesus. Larry was wrong about some of those things. The devil never ever had all the good music. Larry Norman had some of it, too, and so did all the lost pagans Larry both excoriated and loved. But there was an emotional directness and honesty and prophetic tenacity about those songs that anyone – CCM musician or otherwise – would do well to recapture:

You kill a black man at midnight
Just for talking to your daughter
Then you make his wife your mistress
And you leave her without water
And the sheet you wear upon your face
Is the sheet your children sleep on
At every meal you say a prayer
You don’t believe but still you keep on

Larry Singing his signature song:


- Peace

Weekend With Family

Speant the weekend celebrating Phil and Melissa's marriage in BC. I deeply appreciated the way they included me as part of the family, I got to stay at the family farm and enjoy some fantastic food. Will be posting pictures to flickr this week.

- Peace

Three OS Family

We're now a three OS Family. OS X on my MaxBook Pro, Windows on the PC and now Ubuntu Linux on our Lenovo Laptop. We've had Windows on it for a year and a half and I'ved had to restore Windows multiple times. The latest crash took out the built in restore system. Sarah uses OpenOffice for some of her group meetings, we use Firefox for email, browsing etc. Only other thing we've used for is picture editing with Picassa while on vacation last year. All of those things are available on Linux so instead of fighting with Windows I thought Ubuntu was worth a try.

Install was very simple, it even walked me through setting up the WiFi for my Broadcom card. Googleing Broadcom and Linux brings up all sorts of horror stories, but most of them are from a couple of years ago. Ubuntu 7.10 handled it with ease. If it runs for 6 months without corrupting Systems files it will have out performed Windows XP.

- Peace

535

Putting the Media in the Media Radar

The Resonate Media Radar tracks new YouTube video's posted within two clicks of the Resonate Blog List. But Media implies more than just YouTube, well now RMR also tracks when something new breaks into the top 20 over at Who Reads What. WRW tracks all the Amazon links posted within two clicks of the Resonate Blog List, so while it provides a good overview of what's interesting it changes week to week not day to day. Adding new to the Top 20 should make both RMR and WRW more interesting to track.

On the technical side WRW and RMR got a number of improvements under the hood:

Now using the TagSoup parser, as the previous parser hat a low level IO but that the new Resonate Server exposed.

Code is now checked into Subversion, so that I can work on my MacBook Pro and my PC.

Using DBDeploy to mangae DataBase migration as I now have two dev environments and a production instance

- Peace

Out of the Void

Been quiet for a bit, a time of reflection and soul searching. Odd that I didn't feel the need to write much. Anyways I'm back.

- Peace