Windows into Reality Pt. 2

Well it has been Seventeen Days since my plea for help in raising fundage to attend the Workshop with the master and as of this moment the couffers are still pretty bare.

I'm telling you this is not encouraging; not one bit.   I mean is it really that big of deal to help a brother out?  Really, come on people this is a Once in a Lifetime Oppurtunity^TM here and I am going to miss it!

Safari (v62) Or something like it.

UPDATE: Upon further consideration, I am wondering if Apple allowed (v62) to be leaked.   I mean Apple legal is pretty much on top of things and there hasn't been any other leaked builds of Safari that I am aware of.

It seems to me that they (Apple) have alot to gain from this beta that includes the no. 1 most requested feature to fall into the hands of the Faithful.  Interesting.

Recently there has been a lot of hulla-bullu surrounding the leaking of 1.0 beta (v62) of Safari.

If you frequent the blog of the most excellent David Hyatt you will see the most compelling evidence to move Safari to a nightly build system.   In this post you find that a early, motivated adopter had found a bug in the aforementioned version and word travelled back to the ears of said Hyatt allowing for the bug to be squashed, post haste.   This sort of squashing could be the norm, not the exception if Apple would see to fit to release periodic binaries; it wouldn't even need to be a nightly, I would be happy with a weekly checkout from CVS that is compiled and offered for Bleeding Edge types.

This would allow for a more robust and varied testing of Safari's relative capabilities and shortcomings culminating in a faster, more targeted refinement and development of core features.

Now that being said if I were to have this theoretical build, and use it exclusively I might run into a flash/tabs related bug.   Something like this might happen when I am surfing:

If I am surfing at Site^A and then open a tab and load Flash Site^B, then decide that Flash Site^B is taking to long to load and close the tab, Safari might crash... every single time.

But of course this is all conjecture and speculation since there is no leaked 1.0 beta (v62), and even if there was then I for one would not be running it... exclusively.. and loving every minute of it.  Seriously.   Stop looking at me that way.

Puh-lease...

I have ceased expecting objective, well researched journalism from online sources especially those that reside in Canada but this story just takes the cake.

Not only is this story devoid of any real evidence to support the writers argument, he fails to bring up anything that hasn't been said since 1985.  The fact of the matter is that Apple Computer has always been viewed as “On the Verge of Folding”.  From 1987 on the name Apple Computer could not be uttered in the media without being accompanied by the adjective “Beleaguered”, it wasn't until the summer of 1998 with the introduction of the G3 PowerBook, PowerMac and iMac that things started to turn around in the area of media perception.

Heralding the triumphant return of the Jobsobian Horde to power at Apple the media switched their view of Apple from Pariah to Darling.  Now this canuck believes the Fruit Company^TM is heading for oblivion again, sighting lagging unit sales and the fact that 3^rd party software vendors don't even have Mac users on the map.

All this is very interesting indeed when you look at the amount of new software that is released for MacOS X everyday; there are currently over 5,000 apps available for MacOS v.10.2, and the list is growing exponentially as Linux and UNIX heads recompile apps for Jaguar.  The PowerBook G4 is heralded as the perfect laptop and the XServe is one of the most well received, affordable and powerful 1U server offerings ever.

One of his biggest indicators of Apple's imminent demise was:

In its latest numbers released in January for its fiscal first quarter of 2003, revenue fell from a year earlier and all of the company's major computer lines saw diminished numbers. PowerMac sales were down 20%, while iBook sales fell 8%

While this is all fine and dandy Mr. Thompson neglects to point out that the loss was due to:

The quarter's results included several non-recurring items: the write-down of certain equity investments totaling $49 million net of tax; a restructuring charge of $4 million net of tax; an in-process R&D charge of $1 million net of tax; and the reversal of a portion of a previous executive compensation expense resulting in a favorable impact of $2 million. Excluding these non-recurring items, the Company's net profit for the quarter would have been $7 million, or $.02 per share.

And while the numbers of Macs shipped has fallen, 734 thousand Macintosh

The Hulk

Well just for Mr. Hibbity Gibbity, here are some links to the history of the Incredible Hulk.

First up is a pretty well put together site, if you overlook the frames that is, called The Hulk Library.  Among other features is a really well presented History of the Hulk.  The only thing that this site doesn't cover in real depth is the different Hulks and why the exist.  So for that info you go over to incrediblehulk.com.  Here you will find the Pre-Hulk Banner History as well as the useful Hulk Incarnations Page and the Hulk Enemies Page.

So True Believers, good reading to you but be warned there is high bandwidth ahead, each of these sites makes use of large images, so be prepared for less than optimal download times.

Google Shines Again...

As you can see I have been able to resurrect some of the lost posts.

I am still holding out the hope that I can find the database that holds all my content, but until then my butt is saved by Google Cache.  Through the wonder of this feature I am able to call up past snapshots of my site and recover the content, while I doubt I will be doing this for all 260+ posts, it is allowing me to find some of the posts that I lost.

So back to the searching to find a salvageable copy of my database.

I am seriously going to have to set up a cron job to backup my database to a secure location, you know away from me, I will probably have it backup and then launch an applescript that burns a CD of it.  Yeah that sounds like a plan.

Windows into Reality

A quick note: I need at least $100.00 by April 30th to get a seat for the workshop, I imagine that it will fill up quickly, but that is the timeline as of now.

The following text was taken from Theology of the Icon, Volume 1.

Why does the Church attribute such a great importance to the icon?  The icon is not just a simple image, nor a decoration, nor even an illustration of Holy Scripture.  It is something greater.  It is an object of worship and an integral part of the liturgy.  The Church sees in its holy image not simply one of the aspects of Orthodox teaching, but the expression of Orthodoxy in its totality, the expression of Orthodoxy as such.  The icon is one of the manifestations of the holy Tradition of the Church, similar to the written and oral traditions.  As we shall see in our study, the "icon," according to the teaching of the Church, corresponds entirely to the "word" of Scripture.

So you might be asking yourself what does all this mean... that is a funny way to start off a blog entry!

Well you are correct sir or madam, but there is a method to my madness; namely that Master Iconographer Xenia Pokrovsky is actually going to be here in my neck of the woods along with Fr. Thomas Hopko, Dean, St. Vladimir's Seminary - retired.  These two luminaries of their respective fields being together anywhere that I could actually make it is a gift enough but in some divine strat

That busy Feeling...

I have that feeling that I am going overboard again with the feature set of my blog.

I ditched the justification of the text until I hack up some pref switching action for ChrisJDavis.org; I plan on having justified/not justified and some color picking nonsense going on soon.  Also you will notice that I tightened up the UI some and added more oooh, ahhh features like the auto generated time last updated feature and the soon to be finished right bar that will link to Amazon.com.

Well that is quite enough for this evening.. err this morning.

Experiments

Well getting back to the topic at hand, namely the use of extensions on the net.

You will see as I pointed out earlier you no longer need to worry about extensions on the pages here, navigation only relies on the name of the page... i. e. index instead of index.html/index.php/index.asp.   My main point is that file extensions are a hindrance to the usability of the net for those of us who don't own a pocket protector, as well as its absence (file extension) gives the site administrator the ability to change the underlying technology that drives the site transparently to the user without resorting to mod_rewrite or some other overly complicated trick.

Well anyway try it out and leave a comment and tell me what you think.  And you could always take up the challenge yourselves, if you would like to know how to set up Apache Webserver to function this way just let me know in the comments and I will post a tutorial.

Riddles in the Dark...

Ahh... answers finally, after a fashion.

For those just tuning in I have been wondering about a couple of specific subjects during my trek to Orthodoxy.  One of these was the issue of Piercing and Tattooing, being that I am of the pierced, tattooed freak variety of person.

I have received varying answers to this query ranging from "That is mutilation and therefore BAD." to "There is always a certain amount of grace afforded to those coming into the Church, these things having transpired before Chrismation."

While both are valid answers.. one better than the other, neither of them reflect a firm stance on the subject by the Church only conjecture on the part of individuals.  I was hoping for clear, or at least a less murky stance that would clearly communicate the decision of the Canonical Orthodox Faith^TM.  Well today it seems that I finally have that, one of the features that I love most at the OCA.org is the Further Q&A on the Orthodox Faith by Fr. John Matusiak.  Fr. Matusiak is a wonderful choice for this task, I have found his correspondence wonderfully succinct and focused, and today I was blessed by running across this entry, Piercing & Tattoos.

Here is a snippet from his answer to the question: Many young people in our community are looking at traditional/cultural body piercing and tattoos, and are wondering what view the church has on such practices.

Unfortunately, there is little in the way of precedent on the matter of body piercing and tattoos. There is nothing, at least to my knowledge (which is somewhat limited), in the Holy Fathers on such matters, and I do not believe that any hierarch or Synod has addressed this currently popular practice.

What we do find throughout history, however, are some proscriptions on self mutilation, and I have seem some writings lately which condemn piercings and tattoos on the grounds that they constitute self mutilation. On the other hand, there are those who see piercings and tattoos as a passing fashion fad, much like teased hair and white wet-look lipstick in the 1960s or purple spiked hair and black lipstick in the punk era. Yet the Church has always warned against undue concern for one's appearance or undue concern for calling attention to the self, especially when doing so becomes obsession and, therefore, a sin.

In my book you have to give credit to any Priest who references the Punk era..  If you have the time I would highly suggest reading Fr. Matusiak it is well worth your time, and if you read it for no other reason then you simply must read it for the story he relates from his own parish concerning this subject.

Here we go Again...

UPDATE: I returned from my 2:00 pm meeting with the wonderful people over at Bluegrass Regional Mental Health- Mental Retardation Board at 4:15 pm feeling comfortable and upbeat for the first time in months.  The two managers I met with today were extremely helpful and positive and the facilities were simply beautiful.

Heres hoping that I get a call in the next couple of days saying that they have chosen me to become their newest Systems Analyst.

Well gentle reader, I am preparing for a job interview.

Not only a job interview but an interview for a job that I not only honestly need but want, really want.  I am qualified for the position and I am stoked about the oppurtunty.

I have really become tired of the never-ending, doomed quest that is finding a job for me.  Everytime that I think I have found a good stable job, either the contract ends, or I am laid off due to fluctuating conditions in the market and the economy.

Kinda tired of that am I, as Master Yoda would say... Yes...