J.I. Packer and Mark Driscoll discuss what young Christian leaders should study in order to be prepared for the next 50 years. The post is pretty short, so head over there and read the 4 points in detail: http://theresurgence.com/node/1091
The 4 points consist of: Regeneration, God-Centered Theology, Godliness Beings at Home and Trinity.
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Over on Flickr, there's an artist who likes painting rabbits on chairs. A couple weeks ago, I was asked if it would be ok to paint this picture:
Here's the result:
These are my bunnies in the backyard. They look like they're strangers and they're confused.
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I'm swapping my blogging engine one more time. Community Server was getting overly complicated. All I really needed was blogging engine. I didn't need any media manager or forums or rss rollup aggregation. I found out that the company that makes Community Server also makes an application called Graffit CMS. It's a basic content management system which I'm using as the blog engine. It may be basic, but it's got all the basics done well. The installation was super easy (simply copy some files onto my webserver and go, no sql setup). Migration of my old posts were pretty simple too. There's a tool which helps me move all my old posts to this new system. I did run into a problem with titles that have ellipsis (...) in them. I had a couple which I updated and then the migration of them went fine. I hope to write more in here since it's easier to use. I've also created a photolog category which I'm hoping to populate with the new Canon 40d camera I got (I finally upgraded from the 20d).
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"The biblical message, the good news, is a good news of content. It is here that feedback is important in regard to the style the artist chooses. Let us say, for example that you are playing in a Christian rock group, making an art form of rock. Suppose further that at the same time you are going into certain coffeehouses and using rock as a bridge to preach the Christian message. That’s fine. But then you must be careful of the feedback. When you finish playing you must ask whether the people who have heard you play have understood what you have been saying. Have they heard your message clearly because you have used their modern idiom, or have they simply heard again what they have always heard when they have listened to rock because you have used their form?"
- Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, c. 1973 by L’Abri Fellowship, 23
I was reading Andy Farmer's document on Important Values for Christian Artists, and I ran into this quote which caught my attention. Music used at church has dramatically changed over the years and does indeed resemble secular music (in style). This is a question that can be asked not only about musical form but also about how we run programs and build buildings (churches look more like business offices now and less like the cathedrals of before).
Are people hearing our message because we used their modern idoim or are they hearing what they always hear in their form? I certainly hope it's the former.
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For those of you know Nolen Lee, he's been on a blog posting splurg the last couple of days. You can find his blog here: http://www.nolenlee.com/
He's been posting up a lot of his artwork. It's worth a look.
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My phone at work got upgraded and I'm one of the cool kids now. I have the fancy phone with the big screen that interfaces with Communicator.
It looks like this:
I really didn't need something like this but it was fun to play with for 10 minutes.
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Wikipedia defines Root causes analysis as:
Root cause analysis (RCA) is a class of problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events. The practice of RCA is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms.
This is another topic we discussed in the new test leads class I was taking. It was an important topic because too often in software we address the immediate symptom and leave the root problem alone. Of course this issue is not limited to software alone. We have these same problems when I we analyze problems in our lives. Root cause analysis sounds good theoretically, but how are we supposed to do it pratically? One technique that is commonly used is called 5 Whys. The idea behind this is that when examining a problem, you'll come up with a cause. Don't stop there and ask yourself why again and again. Even though it's called *5* whys, it's not important that you do it exactly 5 times, but it's important that you dig deeper into the causes to find the root cause.
This is a good way to think of problems both at work and outside of work. Often, we're addressing the symptoms and not the problems.
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