Archive for September, 2005
Sunday, September 25th, 2005
You shaped me first inside, then out;
You formed me in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139: 13 The Message
In this chapter Rick Warren helps us work through our unique shape, using the A, P and E of SHAPE: Abilities, Personality and Experience.
Abilities
Rick distinguishes between spiritual gifts and other God-given abilities by the fact that our abilities are given at birth. He says that each of hus have dozens, probably hundreds, of untapped, unrecognized, and unused abilities that are lying dormant inside us.
Rick starts with the thousands of abilities inherent in living in a body. The capacity to remember facts. The ability to smell and distinguish odours. The capacity to touch and hold. To taste. To hear.
I took my son for a driving lesson today. At this point he’s just learning. He’s only now developing a skill that has been latent. I’m sure he’ll discover many more abilities over his life. But he’ll need to practice with perserverance.
I’m reminded of a colleague who is considered by all who know him to be gifted musically. Incredibly gifted. But he reminds his friends that all the giftedness in the world would not have taken him to what he is as a performer. It was hours and hours of practice that honed those skills.
Rick says that every ability can be used for God’s glory, drawing on Paul’s encouragement to do whatever we do for the glory of God. Rick points to Biblical examples of artistic ability, architectural ability, administering, baking, boat making, candy making, debating, designing and so on. He says that God has a place in his church where our specialties can shine and we can make a difference. “Whatever you’re good at, you should be doing for your church.”
This is of great encouragement to action-oriented people who sometimes wonder if the church has any connection with their abilities. I’ve noticed that most worship services require two major skills: the capacity to sing in public, and the capacity to sit and listen attentively. Surely there are forms of being church that go far beyond that. I would say that God may well call us to use our abilities in areas where the organised church has no involvement. And so the church can shine and make a difference through our everyday skills.
I appreciate Rick’s encouragement for people to be aware of their assets and liablities. “God doesn’t waste abilities; he matches our calling and our capabilities.”
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Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Aging Hipsters: The Baby Boomer Generation is a source for trends, research, comment and discussion of and by people born from 1946 - 1964. The site covers issues on the Boomer Generation including original Boomer content, bulletin boards, user comments, Sixties and Seventies music, Baby Boomer culture, health and coverage of issues for “Aging Hipsters.”
The site started as a portal for Boomer chatback in 1996, with the title, “Baby Boomer Homepage”. The editors are Jan Reisen and Peter Kooiker, residents of New Jersey, USA. The name, “Aging Hipsters”, a line from Austin Powers, was used to describe the site in 1999. In 2003 Jan and Peter moved all the articles over to a blog format to make it possible for several writers to work together.
Together Jan and Peter run Perfect i Site, a web development company.
Posted in Generations, Worth Reading | No Comments »
Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Today I was looking at a few sites relating to places and people referred to in Dan Brown’s book, “The Da Vinci Code”. I thought about posting them here on Pacific Highlander but thought better of it. I started a new blog instead.
It’s The Da Vinci Code Online.
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Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Microsoft have their satellite equivalent to Google Earth: MSN Virtual Earth. Included on the site is Katrina Flyover, a birds eye view of the impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. As expected, there’s not much detail for Australia or New Zealand at this point.
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Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Just tried out Singing Fish, a search engine for audio and video files. Not bad, even for early days. A search for Coldplay uncovers a few video clips:
Moses: Burning Bush, burning passion at ifilm.
Clocks: Chilled-out Arena Rock Around the ‘Clocks’ also at www.ifilm.com
Interviews at www.roomedia.com
Yellow at Realguide.real.com
The Singing Fish search engine has the capacity to specify formats: mp3, Real, Windows and Quicktime.
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Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Another post at Duncan’s TV Adland today features this month’s television commercial from McDonalds, “Release Your Inner Child”. The ad shows children crawling out of trapdoors in the front of frozen adults. All the children gather together, dressed in adult clothes, at an ambient McDonalds cafe/restaurant. It just goes to show that McDonalds have been around long enough to be appealing to adults who were patrons as children.
Not me though. I would have been in my mid twenties when I first turned up at the fast food chain of the future, 1986 in Tauranga.
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Saturday, September 24th, 2005
I posted on the AAPT “Tell it like it is” advertisements over at Duncan’s TV Ad Land tonight. The campaign features people wearing their self assessments on T-shirts.
“It’s a crazy idea but wouldn’t it be great if we were all straight up with each other - if we were honest and open and told it like it is.”
Well, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. There are times when we need to be careful who we’re revealing ourselves to. However describing ourselves is a better alternative to labelling others.
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Saturday, September 24th, 2005
Just received an email from a friend today, with some amazing photographs. The email has been sent around the world with the subject: “Pictures Before Katrina hit New Orleans”.
Well, after a bit of investigation I tracked the photos to a Flickr account, and eventually to the photographer himself. They are photos taken by storm chaser, Mike Hollingshead, in Nebraska and Kansas in the summer months of 2002 and 2004. Strictly speaking we could say that they were taken before Katrina hit New Orleans. Just between one and three years before! They can be seen on his web site at www.extremeinstability.com
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Saturday, September 24th, 2005
I’ve just finished the third book for the week: Alexander McCall Smith’s novel, “44 Scotland Street”. The novel was serialised over 110 episodes in the Scotsman newspaper in the first half of 2004. The story follows the exploits of Pat McGregor, a twenty year old Edinburgh woman who has a second go at a gap year. She moves into the flat of Bruce Anderson, a narcissistic body building surveyor, and takes up a job as gallery assistant to ineffectual Matthew. In the process she meets anthropologist neighbour Domenica Macdonald and portrait painter Angus Lordie. There’s Irene, the obsessive mother of Bertie, Italian-speaking five-year-old saxophonist. And Stuart her husband.
It’s a gentle read - with an almost tongue in cheek account of life in Edinburgh. I’ve never been there but Douglas, the chap who gave us the book earlier this year, says McCall Smith has done an excellent job.
Alexander McCall Smith is better known for his series, The No. 1 Ladies’s Detective Agency, featuring Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s leading, and only, female private detective. He has a web site, www.mccallsmith.com with news on his books and an audio extract from the audiobook, “In the Company of Cheerful Ladies”. He has also started a couple of other series: the Sunday Philosophy Club, featuring Edinburgh sleuth Isabel Dalhousie, and the von Igelfeld series, starring Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfield.
According to The Scotsman, McCall Smith is about to release his second Scotland Street novel, Espresso Tales, and may well go on to start a third series of episodes. He has been here in Australia recently, putting in an appearance in Brisbane this last month. McCall Smith’s books are published by Polygon, an imprint of Scottish publishing company Birlinn.
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Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Novel Two this week was William Gibson’s Neuromancer, first published in 1984. I was lent the Tenth Anniversary Special Edition by Jon Broadbent, a friend here on the Gold Coast. Finally I had more than 15 minutes a night to read it.
The novel tells the story of Case, an out-of-work cowboy (computer hacker) who is hired to take part in an online crime. The novel starts in Chiba City, a sprawling city in Japan. Case joins a team made up of Armitage, a reconstructed war veteran, Molly, an enhanced warrior who could have inspired Dark Angel, Peter Riviera, a drug-addicted imagination projector, and Dixie Flatline, the personality construct of a now-dead hacker. Along the way they team up with a couple of Rasta space pilots to travel to Straylight where they’ll hack into the system of Tessier-Ashpool, one of the richest corporations in the world.
It took a while to get into the lingo…
Coffin Hotel - building rentoung out cheap sleep space not much bigger than a coffin
Sarariman - Japanese for white-collar worker (Salary man)
Gaijin - Japanese for white foreigner
Hosaka - a computer and microchip manufacturer
Microsoft - a software accessory
Neuromancer won Gibson the Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Seiun and Ditmar (Australian) awards. He went on to write “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”. William Gibson wrote the script for Johnny Mnemonic, a cyber-punk movie released in 1995, starring no other than Keanu Reeves. The story first featured in Gibson’s collection of short fiction, Burning Chrome. Gibson also has written Virtual Light (1994), Idoru (1996), Tomorrow’s Parties (1999), and Pattern Recognition (2004).
Gibson is known as the father of ‘CyberPunk’. His books inspired novelists (such as Neil Stephenson), film directors (Wachowski Brothers Matrix Trilogy), and comics (The Invisibles). The Cyberpunk Project is a useful guide to works in this genre.
Gibson lives in Vancouver, has his own web site, www.williamgibsonbooks.com and writes regularly on his blog.
Posted in Worth Reading | 3 Comments »
Postkiwi Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
