Kevin: April 2004 Archives

It doesn't take much to make the national news, I guess. All you have to do is cut the building out of the summer school equation in a district of 3,500. Here's what I'm talking about:

Students to take summer school classes over the Internet via USA Today and AP
COLUMBIA CITY, Ind. (AP) -- Whitley County students won't have to leave home to take summer school classes this year -- they can learn over the Internet.

"It's less personal in the sense of students having direct contact with teachers, but I think the program is definitely more personal from the standpoint that each teacher will know what each child needs to be successful, and children will be allowed to move at their own speed," Bloomfield said.

Google News shows similar stories on 45 different websites.

It has been a while since our school made the national papers, but we're there now. It took a half-million dollar investment in Compass Learning Odyssey, an online interactive curriculum that tailors itself to the student's understanding. Odyssey has been used with limited (technical) success from within the school system since March, but the success of the summer program is independant (again technically) of our school's network -- student home computers will connect and interact directly with the Compass servers at RackSpace in Texas.

The problems we've had internally have been with the poorly executed caching appliances that came with the investment from Compass Learning. Honestly, Compass needs to take some notes from Akamai or even Google for that matter, in terms of how an appliance should integrate with the current network.

The good news is that our connection to the internet can support a large amount of traffic if cached appropriately (or even if not in most cases). We have two full T-1's from the Central Office to IHETS -- shared over various links to the buildings -- and another 3M Sprint DSL connection at the High School.

This is an opportunity to pioneer a different way to push a curriculum onto students; I hope it lives up to the hype.

Just because we moved into a new house several months ago didn't mean that we wouldn't make it our own -- and this last addition really does just that.

Several months ago while searching for a large clock to replace a 4-foot diameter wreath that has hung in our living room, Jill stumbled upon an eBay auction for just such a thing! But... we didn't win the auction. So Jill contacted the seller directly and started an ongoing email conversation that has lasted about 2 months.

It turned out that the clock manufacturer lives in South Bend, IN, and custom makes her hand-made wares to order. Julia, of Jullian Clocks (jullianclocks.com) made sure that we knew what could be (it's nice to have options) and helped us get to what would be. That ended up as a beautiful 32" parchment, French-style clock with digits. We also had her put Jordan and Est 2000 on the clock to personalize it to our family.

The clock itself absolutely glows over our fireplace, accented by the brick-red wall. At night the spotlights make it seem as if the clock face itself is lit from within -- you have to see it. We couldn't be more pleased with the end product, especially considering the way it all came to be!

Well done Julia!

While scanning headlines this morning, I happened upon a NY Times article about Lowry Digital, a private company that specializes in restoring and archiving older movies using new digital scanning techniques and Apple computers. The story itself wasn't new, Apple did a piece on the company last year. What is interesting to me is that they are currently scanning some of my favorite movies, namely all of the James Bond films with Sean Connery.

Here's the interesting part:

Excerpt from 600 Macs, 4,000 Lines, One Giant Leap for DVD's

To put the magnitude of 4,000 lines in perspective, a television displays broadcast signals as 480 lines. High-definition televisions have up to 1,080 lines. (The greater number of lines, the more detailed the image -- the more closely it resembles a seamless, lifelike picture.) Impressive as HDTV looks, 35-millimeter film has far more color and detail. Engineers calculate that 4,000 lines of data would be needed to reproduce all the visual information in a frame of film -- exactly as many lines as the Imagica delivers.

So, if it scans an original camera negative, as it's doing with "You Only Live Twice," it creates a data file that's a virtual duplicate of the negative.

So, I don't have to worry about these films ever falling out of print, since each frame will forever be stored digitally for use with whatever display distribution method comes after DVD and HDTV. Now if only I could get Jill to enjoy Connery.

As a side note, while looking for a picture to grab for my entry, I stumbled across the MGM site for James Bond, along with Miss Moneypenney's Rolodex -- interesting for a bit of Bond trivia.

I've taken a new magazine recently as a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law: Forbes. It is a generally conservative, in my opinion, business rag that I have enjoyed quite a bit; delivered bi-weekly.

The last page of each edition is delegated to quotations on topic. And always at the lower right of the page is a reader submitted Bible verse.

The April 26th, 2004 issue's verse is James 3:13 (NIV):

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.

This is from a slightly longer passage discussing two types of wisdom.

James 3:14-18 (NIV)

14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

There is a great corresponding commentary from the Bible Gateway website, which I have copied below. It reminds me of two idioms that I try my hardest (but yet fail miserably most of the time) to focus on:

• Sometimes it is better to keep quiet as opposed to openning your mouth and letting people know how little you actually know, and
• The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

And I suppose there is another, which is to give God the glory for all things great and small -- even when our lives seem to be in turmoil if, through faith, we can trust God to execute His plan in our lives we are able to take strength in the fact that with His wisdom and strength we can overcome any obstacle.

Off on a tangent, but to me it would seem that these are the things of wisdom. Here are a few more.

Who Is Wise Among You? (3:13-18)

When James invites people who are (supposedly) wise and understanding to step forward and identify themselves, he is returning more explicitly to the topic of "teachers" addressed in 3:1. Especially for those who think they are wise enough to teach others, James wants his readers to know what true wisdom means. What he gives is more a description than a definition of wisdom. In fact, he has been describing it all along, with his talk of believing God, relying on God's goodness, doing what God's word says and living the righteous life that God desires. Now he will label this as wisdom and describe it further as a humble submissiveness to God which results in a life of goodness, purity and peace toward other people. To explain this, James analyzes three aspects of wisdom.The Nature of Wisdom

In regard to the nature of wisdom, first the impact of the question in 3:13 must be faced: Who is wise and understanding among you? For those who do not care about true wisdom but only want the status of being thought wise, the question is a challenge; James's answer will expose them for what they are. For those who honestly aspire to being wise, the question is an invitation; James's answer will divulge the way to attain their aspirations. James is saying, "I am about to tell you the nature of true wisdom; treasure this." Let all readers, then, first examine their own hearts before reading beyond the question posed in 3:13. Do you really want to be wise?

Then we must submit to James's answer about the requirement of true wisdom. Consistent with his previous instructions, James again requires actions that authenticate words. Who claims to be wise? Let him show it by his good life. Today the phrase good life has taken a connotation of a prosperous, pleasurable life. James, of course, is talking about quite another matter: moral goodness. His phrase is kales anastrophes, "good conduct" or "good behavior." He elaborates: Let him show it . . . by deeds. James is thinking with the same verb deiknymi and noun ergon as in 2:18; his point must be very close to that earlier verse. Genuine wisdom, like faith, is a practical matter; it shows up in how one lives. Literally James says, "Let him show by good behavior his deeds in the humility of wisdom." Wisdom, then, is not something I will merely possess in my head; if I am wise at all, it is something I will demonstrate in my conduct.

Finally, the personality of wisdom should be taken to heart: the wise deeds will be done in humility. Humility is the character trait underlying the Christian behavior described in the entire letter; this is the trait to cultivate if one would take James's teaching deeply into one's life. James would have approved of what Calvin wrote quoting Augustine, "When a certain rhetorician was asked what was the chief rule in eloquence, he replied, `Delivery'; what was the second rule, `Delivery'; what was the third rule, `Delivery'; so if you ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion, first, second, third, and always I would answer, `Humility' " (Institutes 2. 2. 11).

Therefore James's notion of humility is worth exploring. His term praytes is variously translated as "meekness" (KJV) and "gentleness" (NASB), but the NIV's "humility" is much to be preferred. "Meekness" today connotes a touch of weakness and passivity, which are not at all true in James's requirement of active obedience. "Gentleness" is appropriate in reference to our relationships with each other (and should be brought out in an exposition of 3:17-18); but James has a larger concept in mind as humility.

The terms prays and praytes ("humble" and "humility") do not occur in the Gospel of Mark, in Luke's Gospel or Acts, in Hebrews, or in the Johannine writings of the New Testament. This reflects the Christology of those writers, who place their emphasis on Christ as powerful Son and Lord. In Matthew the adjective prays is used three times, as a significant, characteristic trait of Jesus himself and of his followers. In Matthew 5:5, when Jesus pronounces the "meek" to be blessed, he is calling people to enter his kingdom with this stance of humility. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus invites people to come and learn from him specifically because he is himself "gentle." In Matthew 21:5, Matthew identifies Jesus as the "gentle" messianic king promised in Zechariah 9:9. Paul uses the noun praytes several times, notably as a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:23) and a trait of Christ (2 Cor 10:1) to be exhibited by all Christians toward other people (Eph 4:2; Col 3:12; Tit 3:2). This Christian virtue of humility is modeled after the ministry of Christ, who served others, sacrificed himself and placed himself wholly at the Father's disposal in perfect trust and obedience.

This seems to be very much James's own concept of humility, as observed in three applications within his letter. Humility is, first, the teachability by which we are to accept "humbly" the word of God in 1:21. But James emphasizes there that humbly accepting God's word entails doing the word. Therefore humility is, second, a submissive readiness to do what the word says with deeds done in . . . humility. Third, James shows in our current passage that in humility toward God we will become humble (and gentle) to live at peace with each other. The opposite of humility is an unwillingness to learn and a refusal to yield: the bitter envy and selfish ambition that will result in disorder. For James, humility is a yielding of oneself in ready teachability and responsiveness to God's word, resulting in a good and unselfish life of peace with other people.

Compare the two terms James employs when talking about humility. In 1:9-10 he used tapeinos to refer to the poor person's "humble circumstances" and tapeinosis to mention the rich person's reduction to a "low position." James used that term when thinking of circumstantial station in life. When speaking of the spiritual stance of teachability before God (as in 1:21 and here in 3:13), however, James uses praytes. Davids explains the awkwardness of the phrase "in the humility that comes from wisdom" as due to "a preference for the Semitic-influenced genitive construction" (1982:150). But the phrase is prompted by more than a grammatical preference. James is talking about a foundational element in a person of faith.

The problem James is addressing, then, is not that there are teachers spreading false doctrine (as would often be the concern in Paul's letters). James is addressing the problem of arrogance, which can be present even when correct doctrine is being taught. His warning should bring all teachers to an abrupt halt for self-examination. I can be correct in my doctrine down to the most esoteric details; I can attain a consistency in my orthodoxy which surpasses others'; I can gain a reputation for my thorough grasp of theology and be regarded as a protector of the faith; and my teaching may still be earthly, unspiritual, of the devil, resulting in disorder and every evil practice by stirring up suspicion, slander, distrust and contention within the Christian community.

James puts the critical issue to me: Am I teaching from humility or from selfish ambition? If it is the latter, then I am even failing in the matter about which I am most proud: my grasp of truth. For then my claim to be wise is itself a falsehood. That is the sense of James's conclusion, Do not boast about it or deny the truth.

Follow the link to read more on this topic. It is a great life lesson that is easy to lose sight of.

Something that I think is interesting is the way in which Bible verses are used in media. I see and read verses in a variety of places, and it is about time I started recording some of them.

This verse, Ezekiel 25:17, was painfully glorified in the movie Pulp Fiction. There is more to it, but for me this first portion speaks volumes.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the Valley of Darkness; for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the finder of lost children.

UPDATE: I've since come to realize that this isn't a direct quote from the Bible, but rather a conglomeration of verses. Best forget I ever said anything about it...

I've been wanting to share these photographs that my friend Neal (above) sent me some time ago. They are of the ship that goes from port to port on the Great Lakes delivering... I'm not sure what it delivers. Looks like it might be a container ship so it could be just about anything.

Neal is studying to be an nautical engineer in order to settle into life as a mechanic-of-the-seas, if he'll allow me to phrase it in that manner. Not long ago he emailed from Spain as his ship had just put in there. So he's experienced what us air-going folk probably never will -- what it was like to traverse the ocean by ship. I'm sure it isn't as romantic as it sounds, or as the first hour of the movie Titantic made it out to be. Of course, Neal is on a ship full of men, so let's hope it isn't romantic at all!

Sail on, Neal. May the wind always be at your back.

A little about the law -- a lot about the characters. That's how I would describe The Last Juror by John Grisham.

Of course there is a trip to the courtroom, albeit a short one. Willie Traynor is a young man with his sights set on making a comfortable life as an owner of a small-town newspaper. Shortly after he takes over the paper, there is a murder for which his paper is a sounding board for gossip and (all but) accusation. But the murder, and subsequently the trial are secondary in this novel to the different characters that emerge from this small Mississippi town.

My purveyor of Grisham novels (my father-in-law Bud) said that in his opinion, this is one of the author's best. And I can't disagree that it is a good tale -- BUT, when I pick up one of Grisham's books, I expect to read about courtroom drama and wise-or-weasel lawyers finding loops in the law to drive their clients through. The Last Juror had none of this.

Kevin says: One read and back on the shelf
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (February 3, 2004)
Read other reviews at Amazon.com

[UPDATE: I also added the EntryIfComments plugin. This lets me encourage comments when none have been added yet.

Also, for reference: a handy sheet of HTML equivalents.]

Well, things are finally starting to look put-back-together here. I'll continue to play around, I'm sure, as time permits. Also, just for fun I added related entries (idea) to the bottom of the individual entry pages. This just brings up other recent entries from categories like the one you are reading.

And I've gone back and closed comments on all entries more a month old -- this is just to be proactive against comment spam. Since 348NORTH is backed by a MySQL database, I just used this SQL command (errorred idea that I fixed below):

UPDATE mt_entry SET entry_allow_comments = 0 WHERE entry_blog_id = 1 AND entry_created_on < DATE_SUB(NOW(), INTERVAL 31 DAY);

That's it for now!

I've been struggling to find a color scheme that I'm happy with on this latest site redesign. For anyone who has visited in the last week or so, that's been obvious.

That's when I remembered a fundamental trick that had been forgotten: when in doubt, find a picture that you love the colors in and use some of those colors. This picture of Wiley and our Christmas tree -- while not "springy" -- is easily one of my favorites. As I look back on our home at 348 North Line Street, it makes me sad sometimes. That house had a real warmth to it. I think it's obvious by looking at this picture that it did.

Anyway, back on track: I opened the picture up in the GIMP and started searching for just the right colors. The Palette Editor and the teardrop color-picker make the process easy. The card below shows you what I came up with.

I ended up with 8 colors after picking and clicking for about 5 minutes. I think these will serve us well. I want to use more accent colors, so that's why there are so many. We'll see how it works.

As for the site itself, the floating box in the middle of the page is just not where my heart is. So, in the next few days you'll see things move back toward a more left-side aligned layout. The new menu at the top of the pages will have to stay, though, for obvious reasons. It is really handy.

Thanks for sticking around to see what it turns out like!

UPDATE: Here's a picture of what the website looks like after the colors were integrated. I like the look a lot.

This won't happen again until next year, so I though I'd mention that today is the 4th day of the 4th month of a century with 4 years in the books. If you were up at a little past 4am this morning, then I feel sorry for you. BUT, you would have been able to add a few more 4's to the occasion.

Apparently, the word for 4 in Japanese is pronounced the same as the word for death, so... well, that kind of ruins the fun.

As for me, I'm not too superstitious about numbers, dates, or times other than 11:11. I always make a wish when I see it on a digital clock. I highly recommend it, if only just for fun.

Short and simple -- when you have just won a lawsuit worth $1.6 B[ig ones], things might just start to look your way.

Pardon the mess as we switch the site around a little. In the mean time, I'm taking votes on what colors would look good in a "springy" motif. Go here to do your part in helping find the best colors.

When you get a few that you like, just comment and leave the #000000 type numbers so we can all check 'em out.