Earlier this week, I took a 3hr+ train from Birmingham to Durham to attend a conference at the University (put on by CODEC) that explored the “theological refraction” of the internet.  One of the major questions discussed in the conference was should theology play a role in the internet, and vice versa.

The morning the conference was to begin, I decided to go down the road to the magnificent Durham Cathedral for morning prayer service.  I am not an Anglican, but wanted to pray and figured what better place to do that at the time then to go to this beautiful cathedral (below is a shot I took the evening before).

So I went… and was saddened.  In this grandiose building, there were but a handful of attendees to morning prayer.  But what was even more sad was that I had no clue what was happening the whole time I was there.

About an hour later, I attended this conference where one of the major themes discussed was whether or not we should engage theologically with the internet.  The answer seemed too obvious to me – but of course!  Maybe I am biased because I grew up using computers.  But technologies like the internet seems so much like an extension of the greater culture we live in and, therefore, an extension of what we must engage in what some theologians call a “theology of culture.”  Churches and cathedrals will remain relics of the past unless they are able to engage the advancements of this age.

I appreciated many of the discussions at this conference.  I think there was only one other technical person there (I was so jazzed up when he brought up the Turing test in his presentation!).  But that’s okay.  I appreciate the fact that many thoughtful people are asking questions about the internet’s impact on one’s understanding of the church, identity, society, etc.  (Among the many presentations, I found Tim Hutchings’ paper on Online Churches thoroughly fascinating.)  As Abraham Kuyper is often quoted as saying (and was echoed at the conference), “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

Sometimes, I get so frustrated about companies like Amazon, Walmart, etc.  I like walking down to my local hardware store or butcher or bookstore to get what I need.  Whenever possible, we should always be willing to pay a little bit more to support the independent shops.

Okay, just to warn, this a 100% geek post.

I was reading my RSS feeds today to catch up on the news and I came across this really interesting program called Weather Cal that puts the weather forecast on your iCal with these cool little icons that show what the weather is.

Neat huh?

So, I began to wonder… how do they actually get that little icon in the calendar?  It has to be some kind of a character that is supported by unicode (the standard that correlates a character like ‘a’ to the number ’97′, as well as Chinese characters and all that).  I went looking and did find it in unicode.  So for example, here are a few for weather (using two different fonts to show you that each font will display something different):

Now, being as cheap as I am, I was wondering if I could get around paying the stupid $10 to get the program that actually does this for you.  The answer, really, is yes… but I don’t have THAT much time to waste.  Basically, if you go to the page for http://www.wunderground.com/US/CA/Yosemite_National_Park.html, you will find a little icon.  If you right click on that icon and copy the link/URL, go into your iCal program (or some Microsoft rip-off), go into the “Calendar” menu and select “Subscribe”, and paste the URL into the field, you will effectively get the same thing (sans icons).

If you really want to have the little icons, well, find a nice programmer who has spare time on their hands to write a simple parser for you that will find the strings like “sunny,” “cloudy,” etc., and prepend the little sun icon or cloud icon.  However, if you are REALLY going to do that, might as well pay the stupid $10.

UPDATE: Upon further investigation, somebody actually did it for FREE!  Check out http://www.smashin.com/weather.

Yup.  I didn’t believe it.  But when Bert told me you could get the ESV Bible for free on the iPod Touch or iPhone with Kindle, I went online today to check it out.  And yes, it is true.  It is not the prettiest interface for the Bible, but hey, it is free and it is the full version of a solid, present-day translation.

So here’s what you do:

1. Download and install Kindle from the iTunes App Store.
2. Launch the app and login with your Amazon account (I hear it is only doable with a US account).
3. Go to the ESV page on Amazon.com, and you will see a buy option (for the low low price of $0.00) allowing it to send directly to your iPod Touch or iPhone.
4. Relaunch the Kindle app and it should be in your book list.

That’s it!  Enjoy.  :)

My CEO explains in his blog the very essence of Liferay’s existence: bless others as we too are blessed.  That is what I want all non-Christian institutions to embrace.  It is the gospel message.  It is the Abrahamic calling.  In fact, it really lies at the core of why us humans were made.

This reminds me of the parable of the good Samaritan.  Aside from religious and cultural status, what makes the Samaritan different from the others?  The others were too busy with other things.  The others were too much in love with their own lives to sacrifice some of their precious time to love one who was in need.  The others are me.

It’s now been almost two months since Alex and I got engaged on November 4th, 2007. From the very start, at least from my perspective, it feels like it’s been a balancing act between family and our own expectations/ideas for our wedding. I was definitely swept up in the romance of being engaged, and then realities about the actual planning details of a wedding started to sink in. As I (and Alex too, unfortunately) have found out, I can sometimes easily be overwhelmed by the many tasks that seem to require my immediate attention. Thankfully, with God’s grace, things are slowly falling into place.

It’s really quite exciting now that certain key things have been set, such as the venues for the wedding day and me getting a wedding dress already! I can allow myself to imagine a little what the real day will be like. The details are not completely there yet, but I think I want to enjoy my own little world for a bit anyway before having come back to earth with things like budgets and tasks still to do.

Things I’m thankful this past week:

1) finding our reception venue (New Year’s eve)

2) finding my dress at a good deal (Dec 27th)

3) building friendships at my first-ever Winter Conference retreat

4) ringing in 2008 with good friends and Alex

5) celebrating Christmas with both of our families