Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I stumbled onto this python charting thing and decided I’d better bookmark it here on the blog. I can see it being kinda useful if I ever do another automation project. After all, the only reason I can imagine for not doing the graphical stuff in python is so that I can do it in ruby.

That’s only 1/2 kidding. I don’t really know my way around GUI in python or in ruby.

There are lots of individuals and churches who could not use OpenOffice for their presentation software because it did not support multiple monitors. Well, good news came to me today! Open office is working now with multiple monitors. That means that there’s no reason that churches have to put out hundreds of dollars for a copy of Microsoft Power Point. This may not be early enough to help some people, but it means that the next upgrade cycle could be your opportunity to get off of the upgrade treadmill and start making use of free software.

I love OpenOffice and have been using it for many years. When the Mac OS X version is ready, I’ll have a bunch more friends ready to switch.

Had to use windows again today. Probably will have to for a week or two.

I don’t know if I’d just put it out of my head, or maybe never really realized it before, but windows completely and totally stinks. It’s hard to use, uglier, and far less reliable than I expected.

Oh, and I had a big download (8 hours!!) to do, and I set it to go overnight. Somewhere in the middle of the night, Windows (!!!!!) pulled down a security update and decided for itself (!!!!!) that it was so important that it needed to reboot right away(!!!). As a result of having an operating system so stupid that someone has to tell it to keep running (think about that a minute!) I ended up having to start the download all over, and sit here stuck in windows (ick.. ptui) until it completes, just to make sure that it doesn’t decide to reboot on me… again.

Someone explain to me why on earth so many corporations insist on using it? It’s such a nightmare on so many levels. When I use windows, I start to miss CP/M… but only a little. I miss Linux and OS X a lot. This afternoon, I’m going back to Linux and will do anything I can to make sure that I can avoid windows in the future.

Subversion is a very nice version control system normally, but I found a funny thing today. I was in /data partition. See, I pretty much always am running in XUbuntu linux, but the machine is dual-boot and sometimes I am forced by circumstances to run Windows (ick.. ack.. ptui) on rare occasions. On my machine there is a linux partition (actually a boot partition, a home partition, a root partition, and a swap space) and there is a windows partition (only one) and there is this no-mans land that I mount in linux as /data. It is a FAT32 (VFAT) file system so that I can access it from either side. It holds the files that can be used form either side.

Here’s the problem:

$ svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fitnessedotnet/trunk ./something
svn: Can’t set file ‘fitnessedotnet/.svn/entries’ read-only: Operation not permitted
$

It turns out to happen all the time when I’m in the fat32 space. In the EXT3 partitions it is just fine. I don’t know why, but I don’t like it. I really want it to work there as well.

sigh.

This is maybe not a very well-developed thought, but it dawned on me that American elections tend to be won by the “swing vote”, those who may vote republican one time and democrat the next and those that split their vote among the parties. If that part is true, and there are not enough straight-ticket in either party to secure the election (apparently true also) then it means that the swing voters are the ones being courted by BOTH political parties in order to win an election.

What that means to me is that by being an independent voter, I have the attention (in a general, demographic-kind-of-way) of both parties every single time. Think about that for a minute. If I remain centrist and independent, I have doubled my political power — almost.

The “almost” is because I have limited my voice while increasing my desirability. Nobody speaks for me, since I’m independent. I’ve looked at the “moderate” party, and they are nearly my exact opposite (last I checked). By being an ethical centrist, I take views at odds even with other centrists and specifically “moderates”. I have common causes with all the parties (well, the major three and a few others).

So I can vote for individuals instead of parties, in the hopes that a sufficiently ethical band of representatives would be willing to cross party lines for sufficiently important legislature. “Sufficiently important legislature” includes that type likely to win a lot of swing votes for the candidate, but also includes those things of universal interest or strong, legitimate compassion. It includes issues of principle. Strictly partisan measures which are intended to enrich or empower one party will fail because it will not cross party lines in a “split legislature”. Good. Let’s split it. Let’s move neither “team” forward. Let’s save law-making for only the causes that cross party lines, and leave the rest to rot in committee.

So it’s an interesting picture. I’ve suddenly validated or rationalized my political leanings. Are you proud of me?

Edison Glass is a pretty cool alternative band of Christians. They’ll be glad I said it that way.

Maybe I’m too old or too old-fashioned or too non-new-york to get this song. I love the band, I love the sound of the songs, the vocals, the guitar work, the anthemic quality.

But I have no idea what they’re talking about.

I shut all my windows
They protect me from the storm
I’m alone but I wait for someone
One who keeps the lights on
One who keeps the house warm

I feel a swaying rhythm
If we get swept to sea I’ll be happy
It’s all we wish for now
I wish you’d keep the lights down
I wish you’d keep the house warm

We have enough we can handle it
If we don’t make I will fall apart
All is in vain for us.

I think we can make it now
I think that we can make it
I wish you’d keep the lights down
I wish you’d keep the house warm

I welcome any interpretations. And do they want the lights on or down or what? For a song that I like so much, and a band I respect, I sure am lost in this cryptic tangle. My lights didn’t come on, and all is in vain for me.

Oh, you can listen at their web site but it’s one of those “so cool” javascript dealios so that I can’t link to anything there. Whee.

PS. Buy the album.

Here is one for the guitarheads: go listen to the Vox samples page. You’ll feel a little guilty about “just browsing” but there are some really great demos there.

I saw this article from Speaking Out Of Turn and was immediately incensed. The author puts across a few points that I take issue with.

The first is that heavy people, by virtue of being large, are people with self-control problems and aren’t trusted (shouldn’t be?):

when someone on the stage can’t control their diet and lifestyle, it makes people checking out the church wonder if they can trust what else these people have to say.

I rub shoulders with quite the array of highly-respected, highly-trusted, highly-paid professionals in the secular world. These are the top of the top in technology. Guess what? About half are overweight. I also work in offices with all kinds of managers and leaders, and these also are about the same. The secular people at the secular organizations don’t think twice about the weight of the consultant or manager who is helping them get their product developed and out the door.

This is the kind of “church for the attractive” thing that ticks me off. There is no reason that your best worshipers, best singers, best ministers should have to look like sports models. In fact, you might have an equal-but-opposite distraction of you put the “hotties” on the stage and hide the “fatties” in the back. Ask the hotties sometimes, and you’ll find that a lot of times people have no idea what they’re saying. Also, there is jealousy and disdain for them that they don’t deserve and never ask for.

The best programmers and consultants on the earth are not the best-looking ones or the most athletic. Those factors seem to be unrelated.

Overweight people on the stage, be they pastors or volunteers, send a signal that the leaders of this church struggle with self-control.

Hmmm. I went through a list of all the best and worst ministers I’ve ever known, and guess what? It was an even split. Some of the worst ministers I’ve ever seen were athletic (or at least trim) and pretty nice looking. A few of the best I’ve ever worked with had no earthy beauty that we should follow them. In fact, that line sound familiar to me. Didn’t I hear it somewhere before? At least one of the best I know of (strong integrity, full transparency, a real heart for ministry, a powerful stand for what is right, a life of conviction) is quite heavy, even “substantially” so (almost morbidly). I don’t think that this is an exception to the rule that self-control is a general trait. I think that kind of broad brush does nobody any good.

Leaders forget that the people are a part of the programming itself
Churches that do evangelism right spend countless man hours and dollars creating compelling services – lights, stage, video, drama, experiential elements, etc. What leaders often fail to realize is that the people on stage are part of that presentation. Shouldn’t the same amount of planning and intensity go into the presentation of the people on stage as the other elements?

This is the kind of appearance-mongering that I think is at fault for a lot of church problems. The planning of people is that you should pick those that have the talent and the integrity and the commitment and the heart for what they are doing, regardless of appearance. And if you have a choice between a hotty with mediocre heart and average voice and an ugly person who is no more talented but has a real heart for the work, I suggest you pass on the hottie. It should be about the work and the servanthood, not about the look.

You will find that a lot of people who are tops in secular work are heavy partly because their schedules keep them on airplanes and business meetings and at desks working on documents and books and design work. Sedentary lifestyle is hard to avoid when one is in high demand, and the call of work often pulls us to sacrifice feeling better for getting things done. It’s a hazard, of course. Try adding having a wife and children to having a busy schedule with travel engagements, and it takes an awful lot of self control to keep things under control. This is why a lot of experts are either heavy or underweight (controlled through diet or nervousness rather than athletic self-maintenance).

I started working out 3-4 times a week. Ironically enough, I joined Weight Watchers. Since February I dropped from 268.7 pounds to my goal weight of 210. I’ve kept the weight off and feel great.

More importantly I feel confident on the stage.

No one’s ever accused me of being a supermodel, so my confidence hasn’t come from looking better. It’s come from feeling in control of my lifestyle, and not feeling like my appearance is a stumbling block to what I’m trying to say.

Sleeping great and having 10x’s the energy hasn’t hurt either.

Ah. Well. Congrats to Pastor Jones for conquering this difficult problem and for improving his self image and his energy and sleep quality! A big WOOT for that.

But to other people it probably didn’t matter so much as it does to him, and I suspect that neither his congregation nor his god love him any more or any less on account of it. I suspect that it matters rather a lot less than he thinks.

My worship team is actually a set of pretty attractive people. Only a few of us are big, and the others are actually very attractive larger women. I’m the only guy sporting a spare. Mind you, my weight is not always up, and I’m working on bringing it down, but I know that I’m doing that for me, not for God. Glenn Kaiser has more weight than me and he’s a wonderful guitar player and minister. If I had to be his size to be more like him, I would do that in a second. And if I were skinny and dead gorgeous, it would still be brilliant to replace me with him (were he to move to my area).

I’m writing a program to copy my podcasts and mp3 files to my player. Copying is not a big deal, but I have funny ideas about how to do it.

Before I tried writing a program I would pick them by hand and copy them to my player. That was clearly for the birds. I don’t need to spend 1/2 hour picking my songs and programs each day or even each week. It’s too much.

I started by collecting up all the files and then pulling them by random selection, but that left a lot to be desired. Some of the podcasts are series. I don’t want to hear the episodes out of order. Then there are some that are long, and having them chosen twice in the same month is too much. I end up skipping them, and it wastes space for stuff I want to hear.

I tried to work it out by file date, but it’s not really related to anything but when I retrieve files. When I subscribe to a new series, I really don’t want to listen to all 7 episodes I just downloaded in order of retrieval. I want them to “merge into the flow” with all the other programs I have. Especially if they’re talk programs (engadget, buzz, etc).

So I figure that I should write a program to deal with my complex “needs”. It needs rules.

• I don’t want two files from the same series, so I need to group by series
• Within a series, I want the oldest file that I’ve not already heard
• I want to be sure I get a file from each time-sensitive program if possible
• Once I get the time-sensitive stuff, I want to fill with non-time-sensitive stuff
• I want to get as much as possible on my player each time
• I just want to click a button and have it “happen”. I don’t want to be involved

Guess what? This is really hard when podcasts don’t have their ID3 tags filled in. I’m writing all kinds of silly “fall-back” algorithms to try to figure out what series and episode and date I’m dealing with. What I would love to see is consistent use of “ALBUM”, “TRACKNUMBER”, “YEAR” and “ARTIST”.

• ALBUM: the podcast
• YEAR: the podcast year if possible. That would be *this* year if you’re making new ones
• TRACK NUMBER: either an index for this year, or for all time. Either is fine
• ARTIST: if you have a guest or are rebroadcasting, this is handy. If you broadcast OTR, then “The Shadow” is a fine artist name. This way, I can group all of The Shadow broadcasts and file them through in order, and can treat “Fibber McGee and Molly” separately.

If you are broadcasting sermons, a similar scheme is much recommended. ALBUM would be your church, and ARTIST would be the minister. The others are unchanged.

If you don’t care to help by doing consistent tagging, then please try to use a good filename convention. I personally like the ALBUM-EPISODE-YYYY.MM.DD format. I can parse it and work with it rather well. Please don’t add extra separators or the like. And please don’t use US (MM/DD/YY) or European (DD/MM/YYYY) date formats or anything else clever. The thing I’m shooting for here is that the titles should sort well.

It would be easier yet if you were to use YYYY.MM.DD-ALBUM-EPISODE so that the names sort naturally.

Of course, that’s all a fallback position. I don’t care how you name or number your episodes if you will give me good ID3 tags. Dr Dan Hayden (a word from the Word) does a wonderful job. C/Net buzz stinks at it. Ravi Zacharius (just thinking) does a good job. IT Conversations stinks at it. Charles Hodgson (podictionary) is wonderful. Slashdot review stinks out loud.

It is funny to me that the ones that are best at using ID3 tags are the ones that are non-technical!! Is that bizarre? The educational and theological podcasts are leading the way in intelligent and consumer-friendly ID3 tags, while techy podcasts are seriously trailing. It’s crazy.

It seems like there’s good meta-data coming from sermon reviews over at Speaking Out Of Turn (an interesting blog generally). You might find it worth your time. It is telling, perhaps, that the best sermons are those that are about God and not about us or the needs of the local church. It reminds me that the thing we’re to do is spread The Word, not Our Words. After all, who gets the glory if we come up with some great turn of phrase or some witty stories or clever “hooks”? We do. Are we supposed to get the credit for what we do and say? Or is it supposed to be Someone else.

I guess that’s part of the whole struggle with being a “good preacher” or a “good teacher”. You want to do a good job, to rightfully handle the Word that’s entrusted to us, but then you want to give a good talk, a good oration, with a good hook so that you can hold the attention of the people and drive home the point of the message. But I guess that it’s another issue of primary motive. I suppose if we’re giving good oration to the message that’s one thing, and if we’re picking the message to support our goals or our style then it’s another.

I have a good pastor. He doesn’t go out of his way to be a comedian or a tear-jerker “inspirational speaker”. He teaches the bible every week, and he plans in advance to let the bible guide his sermons so that he doesn’t get caught up in the immediate happenings in the church. I think maybe he trusts that God will make the most of His message, and that he doesn’t have to do any special work to “make it relevant” since it’s all relevant and redeeming.

Its a good place for me to be and learn. I’ve had a few really great pastors lately, and I’m glad for the meta-education it gives me. I am learning about presentation and focus since the material itself is pretty familiar (thankfully!). Ah, I wish I’d been interested sooner and had managed to get educated sooner. I would love to know more about the culture of the biblical times, and would love to read them in ancient Greek and Hebrew. It would be cool.

In Enderle’s report on IE 7 he applauds the older browser:

Strangely enough, even though other browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Netscape have advanced in features substantially, IE6 has held its own and has at times taken market share back from the new browsers. This is largely because of compatibility. Companies, particularly for internal sites, often default to IE and the other browsers just didn’t work as well, forcing folks to grudgingly use IE some of the time.

Well, that’s right as far as it goes, except that the quality that let IE work with those sites is not compatibility, it is incompatibility. Microsoft wins no points for building systems that follow standards. Using the usual embrace and extend strategy, Microsoft built a browser that was intentionally incompatible with the HTML standards, and followed by building tools for webmasters, tools which produce broken web sites that only work when viewed from IE. This way, Microsoft leveraged the network effect to enforce and extende their would-be monopoly on web site development.

Now, most of us already know all about this, and it probably didn’t have to be stated in the review. Enderle seems to be crossing the minefield of IE criticism, avoiding the point in order to produce a positive review. He managed to do this by comparing the IE7 browser mostly with IE6, so that IE7 can be reported as a step forward for Microsoft. I tip my hat to this clever bit of faint praise:

… compared to IE6, version 7 is light years ahead.

He also chooses not to mention that the features are mostly those that have been in Firefox for quite a while (esp if you consider not supporting ActiveX a feature, as I do. In fact, Firefox mostly escapes notice, Though this statement is clearly included:

Microsoft had to close a huge gap and many will still say accurately that there are advantages in some of the other browsers in one or more areas

Mr E also manages to avoid mentioning that MS has argued against tabbed browsing, doubting it was something customers wanted. It’s not their biggest miss to date. This is from an article two years ago (emphasis added):

“If there are features in our products that are sub-par or need to be added then I have great confidence that we are an organisation that responds pretty quickly and effectively to that,” said Vamos.
Microsoft’s English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing were not important to IE users.
“I don’t believe it is a true statement that IE doesn’t have the features that our customers want. We take user feedback very seriously. If you have that feedback then you should feed it back to us because we will feed it to the product team,” said English.

I guess two years is still pretty quick and effective … for an IE upgrade.
This is the browser that tries to play catch-up with the browsers we’re already using, and we’ll see how successful it is.

Frankly, I would like to see it continue to lose market share though it would be nice to have IE as an option if Microsoft continues to drop all the current browser incompatibilities (something they are working on, since IE5) so that people don’t have to take more dire measures. Thankfully, the IE world is reportedly making big steps in the right direction. I hope so.

That would be a real upgrade.

Universal has learned a very profitable lesson about the long tail theory. Publishing out-of-print music for even a tiny bit of money per song is much more profitable than letting it rot on some back self. Of course, industry insiders like Janis Ian have been saying this for a long time. Anything that invigorates the back catalog (and P2P DOES invigorate it) is a channel to making more money.

I think that The Church You Know has promise. I blog it only to share it with you and keep from losing it myself.

I was working a little with TFUG’s supybot plugin today, and I stumbled across this cool toy. Admittedly, I don’t need it right now, but what a cool toy. This will make it easier to do mashups and the like. What would be really, really, really cool is if I could figure out how to get it to coalesce different feeds so that I get each story only once. Hmmmm….

Actually, what would be cool is if I could get eMusic’s specs for the download manager. Could you imagine how nice it would be to have a wxPython toy that would work to manage downloads on any platform? Kind of a user contrib thing, for a non-free service, but it would be too cool if they only had to mantain one program and it was a python program. It would be nice for me because I need experience test-driving programs that have GUI and network components. It would be sweetness to learn that in Python.

Okay, tell me that the Music Pad Pro isn’t a cool idea. I don’t read music, so it’s not so useful to me, but the idea that it comes with a foot pedal is very cool. No more page turner. I think this would be especially cool for church pianists, who tend to use a lot of sheet music and tend to show up in all kinds of places that they can’t take their library with them.

Hmmm… tab and leadsheets would be cool this way too.

It seems that Linux is doing quite well in motorola handsets. Now, it’s possible that the rising tide is lifting all boats, as there is some pretty significant growth in smartphones all over the world. PDAs seem to be dead outside of North America, or at least dying.

The “fun” part of the article is the lead-in:

Strong Linux smartphone sales in China helped Motorola achieve the highest overall year-on-year growth among the top five vendors in the PDA/Smartphone market, according to Gartner. In contrast, Motorola’s Symbian- and Microsoft-based smartphones are “not making significant progress,” Gartner reports.

Symbian is a cool enough thing too. I haven’t been programming for either Symbian or telephony Linux, so I don’t know which is more pleasant. I think it’s just good to see Linux taking a place of importance.

With an use-programmable Linux handset, all kinds of media and mashups are possible. I don’t know how things are going with the smartphones, but I hope that there are kits for writing FOSS apps for them. It could be cool.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

Perhaps I can’t declare it to be required reading for all people (because I’ve missed too much required reading and basic civics even) but I can recommend George Washington’s farewell address as a political opinion I respect and with which I find agreement.

Among other things it says:

Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

But lest you think it is a sermon, you should read the whole thing. There is more than support for religion and morality. There are warnings against national disunity (brought about by partisan politics) and more. We’re all better educated in the philosophy of our founding fathers if we read a few of their works.

Poor GW must be spinning in his grave.

It stands in stark contrast to Jefferson’s Danbury letter which must be strained and pored over to find any meaning in one direction or another. It seems to answer no question, but to state that he would not answer on the grounds that he was not qualified. It’s had a large effect for a letter of so little content.