openswitch

I actually got an email yesterday from Mike wondering how things were going with me since I haven’t been blogging much lately. Well, here’s your answer Mike, things are going very well.

For the past few years blogging has been a kind of game for me. A strategy game, to be exact. I loved the game (still do) but more than that I loved that the game brought social interaction into my otherwise church-entrenched life. In the game of blogging I always wanted to write interesting, well written essays, or at least link to them when they were written by others. My subscriber count and my Mint stats were how I knew whether I was winning at the game or not. You may think I’m kidding, but looking back at my years blogging that’s how I felt many times, like I was competing against other bloggers for page views.

Eventually, however, the game grew tiresome. Why? Because what I wrote about or linked to, or even the frequency at which I posted mattered little in my page views or subscriber count. For instance, we all know that last month and this month my posting has been paltry, yet my hits and readership have been utterly unaffected:

I was writing just to write, because, ya know, you gotta keep up the regular posts or else your readers will leave. And I got sick of writing just to write.

So now I write or link when I really want to. At my own pace. Blogging isn’t a game to me anymore. It’s still a passion of mine but I’m not “in it to win it.” I’m just in it ’cause it’s fun. Also, I’ve got a new game to play, World of Warcraft. But unlike blogging it’s meant to be a game and nothing more. WoW is a very fun game for me because, like blogging, I have interaction with other people.

Unfortunately many of the people I interact with in the virtual world of Azeroth are immature preteens. Still, many aren’t immature, nor preteen. I have found a guild where many members have families or are married without kids and all of them have at least graduated high school. In fact, one lady I play with has children that are in high school, she’s in her 40s. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. Another fella I met plays with his wife on a regular basis. I enjoy interacting with them because while we’re playing “the game” we’re chatting about real life things. But I digress.

My point is that I haven’t been blogging much because it’s no longer something I’m competing in, it’s just a casual, twice weekly distraction. The blogging game has been replaced by another game that’s just as fun and just as interactive for me. Now I just need to get my mom to play WoW.

That’s a question I’ve been asked, and have asked myself, a lot lately. Where the hell is Ben? No blogging in 2 weeks or more? Well, lots of stuff has been going on, and frankly, this is what I foresaw when I switched — permanently — from an essay style of blogging to a tumblelog style of blogging. One style takes decidedly less effort and time to maintain. I digress. Indeed, where the hell has Ben been?

Several weeks ago our church had Vacation Bible School which is another way of saying, “I put a lot of work, stress and time into an event that by definition has very little return.” I then had five days off. I say “off” when really I was in the office every day getting ready for our summer mission trip. I took the youth group to Greenville, South Carolina (beautiful city) for a nine day mission trip. We put roofs on homes, and I even remodeled a horse stable. Very tiring work. In fact, it made Vacation Bible School seem like an evening on the couch watching baseball (Cubs are still in 1^st place, BTW).

After The mission trip I came back and had 5 days off. I say “off” but I was coming to the office every day preparing for being out of town for 10 days on vacation. I went on vacation, had a wonderful, picture perfect week with my family in Chicago (well, Lombard, but no one really knows where that is, so I say Chicago) and then came back home. I had 2 days off. I say “off” but really I was dog sick and couldn’t find the will to get out of my computer chair. Then, yesterday I took the youth to Six Flags Over Georgia. We had a great 13 hours together, I really love those kids. And now here I am.

So, that’s where the hell Ben has been. Any questions?

And as such should be taxed. If you don’t believe that the church in America is big business then you’re either ignorant of the inner workings of the organization or you’re not facing the facts truthfully. Church IS big business (most of the time). And virtually all small churches have aspirations of becoming big businesses. Though their profit margins are smaller, they all virtually all of them long to be profit kings. Continue Reading »

I’ve recently had the privilege to read and review the book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. First, I want to thank the authors and their publishers for giving me the opportunity to read such a deeply thought provoking volume. Second, I want to tell you right up front that whether you’re a Christian or not, you owe it to yourself — and frankly, to your relationship with God — to read this book. Seriously, it’s that kind of a book. Continue Reading »

These are my two ex-cats. They were great until they started pooping and/or peeing and/or throwing up all over everything. My in-laws have since adopted them. I miss them sometimes. Other times I don’t.

It’s Wednesday and that means it’s time for me to take a little break from writing, and time for you to find some high quality entertainment elsewhere on the Internet.

For starters, have you ever wondered what advice a serial killer or Dick Cheney would give to a 10 year old? Wonder no more.

That’s a lot of Diet Coke.

Did you know that China makes flags that say ‘Free Tibet’? Ironic doesn’t even start to express.

Only in Saudi Arabia.

If you ever wondered whether or not Kobi Bryant can jump over a moving vehicle, here’s your answer.

I giggled like a school boy when I saw this.

I saw that the title said “What to do when Windows really messes up” and was waiting for a punch-line like “When Windows really messes up, install Ubuntu” but that joke never came .

I want. Just think of the possibilities . . .

After watching this video of Reggie Watts I instinctively bought some of his music from Amazon. Wow, just, wow.

If this guy were smart, he’d have written “Would we have allowed Soviet Russia to host the Olympics?” Oh . . . wait.

As if the shirt alone didn’t make you look goofy enough you had to open your mouth.

And for my next trick, I will make this rabbit disappear!

Atrocities! 22 year-old woman still not married?!

This video is a great way to sell your product. Wow.

And now, thanks to Texas, we have a benchmark for the word “stupid.”

I’m addicted to Twitter. And ever since Adobe released the alpha version of AIR for Linux I’ve been eager to try some of the Twitter desktop clients because, let’s face it, gtwitter and those other Linux-only Twitter clients suck. No offense to their developers, but they lack a certain polish that AIR clients possess.

For my comparison I’ve taken four of the most popular Twitter desktop clients for AIR, installed them on Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 and made some general, but revealing, observations. Below is a screen grab of the four clients side by side just so you can see what they look like (click on the image to see larger).

OK, on to the interesting part. Reviews will follow the order presented in the screen grab from left to right.

Spaz

IMHO Spaz is the best looking Twitter client for AIR. Then again, that’s just an opinion. It has a super useful growl-like notifier of new tweets. Works great at retrieving and sending Twitterings. Unfortunately it doesn’t remember my password, even though I save it in the preferences. Also, and this is just a minor annoyance, I select the option to “minimize to systray” but it doesn’t. It just minimized to its place on my application bar just like every other program does. Though to be fair, none of the clients reviewed actually minimized to the systray like Amarok or Banshee do.

Conclusion for Spaz: Very usable on Linux.

Snitter

On Windows or Mac I absolutely love Snitter. But on Linux it’s crap and I don’t know why. For starters, you can’t close the application by clicking the close button. Nor can you close it by right-clicking anything. Attempting to close Snitter only results in some obscure error and you end up having to force quit every time via the System Monitor. Also, when Snitter is minimized it doesn’t go to the application panel like other programs do, it disappears completely. To make matters worse it has a lot of lag when typing. It’s usually 3 or 4 letters behind my fingers which gets very annoying very quickly. Other than those three issues it works just like it should.

P.S. – lack of those growl-like notifications is a bummer.

Conclusion for Snitter: Unusable on Linux.

Tweetr

Tweetr was the only AIR Twitter client tested that didn’t restyle the window decorator (in my case, Emerald). That’s neither a positive nor a negative, just an observation. It works flawlessly. It minimizes just fine, it closes without a glitch, updates quickly and looks good doing it. And like Spaz it has that super useful growl-like notifier of new tweets. This is definitely my favorite AIR Twitter client on Linux. It was also the only client tested that succeeded at remembering my username and password. The biggest negative for Tweetr is that it has no word count, and that’s kind of important when you’re limited to 140 characters. The word count for Tweetr is found in the title bar once you start typing. I guess that means there are no obvious negatives for Tweetr.

Conclusion for Tweetr: Very usable on Linux.

Twhirl

Last on my list of AIR Twitter clients to review is Twhirl. The design looks fruity to me, but that’s just my opinion. Also, there are way too many options surrounding the input box. But again, that’s just my opinion. Functionally Twhirl does just fine as a Twitter client. It retrieves updates, it sends my Twitterings and even makes itself opaque when it’s not in focus. Unfortunately it suffers from the problem of not remembering my password even when I check the box labeled “remember password?” Lack of growl-like notifications was also a let down.

Conclusion for Twhirl: Very usable on Linux.

Conclusion

All the clients with the exception of Snitter would make fine AIR Twitter clients for Linux. The only reason I would prefer Tweetr is because it actually remembers my username and password. Then again, Spaz is really great too and it even has a word count feature which Tweetr lacks.

The great failing of Christianity for the past millennium (at least) hasn’t been lack of legislating Biblical morality. We’ve had plenty of that. It would be easy to find instances in history where virtually every one of the Ten Commandments has been illegal.

Similarly, the great failing of Christianity has had nothing to do with evangelism, preaching (in its modern understanding), or “conversions.” Thanks in no small part to the revivalist movement and the Roman Catholic church we’ve had plenty of this as well.

Christians have mastered the art of beating, smashing and generally devastating anyone who lives a “sinful” life . . . whatever that is. The definition of “sinful life” changes throughout history you know. Today we see homosexuals and supporters of legalized abortion taking the brunt of the Christian beating all for “biblical” reasons, of course.

We make blanket statements, distance ourselves from them and then judge them to Hell. In the past we’ve seen the same thing happen to most minorities including, but not limited to, rock ‘n roll and mixed-race marriage. But I’m not here to talk about race and sexual orientation.

No, I’m here to point out that the great failing of Christianity for the past millennium has been the seeming inability of its adherents to use their smallest bones. As any middle grade student can tell you, some of the smallest bones in the human body are found in the feet and the inner ear. What an enormous thing it is to walk with someone and listen to them.

If you’re an Ubuntu Linux user and you’re still using that old GTK theme that came with your OS then you’re really missing out on a great visual experience: Emerald. To the right is a screen grab of my current desktop setup (click it for a full view). As you can see, gone are the choppy corners and the ho-hum colors. With Emerald you have hundreds, if not thousands, of choices for a really great looking desktop.

To install Emerald just open your Synaptic Package Manager, do a search for “emerald” and install it. You should see it appear under your system menu under System > Preferences > Emerald Theme Manager.

To use an Emerald theme on your desktop you first need to download one from Gnome Look and then install it via the Emerald Theme Manager. All that should be somewhat self-explanatory.

However, getting Emerald to work with Hardy is not self-explanatory. In Hardy the default window decorator is not Emerald, so getting it to work with 8.04 is as simple as changing the default window decorator. Here’s how you do it.

First, install Compiz Config Manager

You do this via Synaptic Package Manager. I simply did a search for “compiz config.”

Second, go to your Compiz Settings

Third, edit your Windows Decoration setting

When looking at the Compiz Config Settings Manager you will need to scroll down a bit and find the “Window Decoration” setting. Click on the icon (as opposed to the check box) to edit its settings. In the “Command” field delete whatever is in there and put this in its place: emerald --replace

Restart your X session by holding down Ctrl + Alt and pressing Backspace. In certain instances you may have to reboot. Everything should be working now. Enjoy a delightfully pleasant desktop experience that, in my opinion, rivals the looks of OS X.