Running Fedora 15 from a live CD

Gnome 3 looks really interesting!

It's a quite different take on a desktop and I rather like it! Icons are good, ditto screen fonts compared to previous offerings. I might actually give this a go as a dual boot sometime soon.

Customer service

On Thursday I wanted a haircut.

The hair dresser I've been using pretty much for the last 20 years is called 'Men Only' and is a little shop in Dean's court just of the high street. It's changed hands a couple of times, but without changing the character of the business - until recently.

I got to the shop around 4.45pm, and although the 'closed' sign was up, the door was unlocked and there was someone in the chair having a haircut. So I went in, only to be told "we're closed". :p

There's a shiny new hair dresser on the high street, right by the passage to the first shop, and as I wandered past they had 4 chairs, fully occupied and a queue.

So I went in.

I felt like a traitor - the other shop has been hurt by the new hair dressers, and I talked to the proprietor about it a few months back, just before she emigrated. However it's a hassle to go into Bicester just for a haircut, and I wanted to get it done there and then.

So in the new hair dressers they were quick, polite and really made it obvious that they wanted your business and were prepared to work for it. It lacked the 'personal touch', and there was no way you could have a personal conversation in a busy room, but at the same time there was a continual emphasis on service. They even finished off with a brief scalp massage (effective after a number 3 cut!).

Where will I go next time? Good question.

An African viewpoint on false prophets.

This article from the beeb is well worth reading and considering, both the obvious aspects and also how those who see religion as a source of income are perceived by others, and what it does for real Christianity.

One of the more interesting aspects of running Sabayon.

Is that it's a little like having someone else tweak you computer when you're not away.

Someone with cool ideas, and a sense of style.

Who also finds and installs new, better drivers for graphics.

A person who occasionally gets it wrong too, but fixes it next time round.


Last night there was a major update waiting to install - about 1.3Gb worth to be exact. So I let it run and went to bed - came down this morning and shut the system down immediately before making breakfast and leaving for Fleet at 6.28am.

Tonight I can see there's been a major face-lift, and I'd guess an update to the latest revision of KDE desktop. As well as new splash screens on start up some folders that were on the old desktop have been moved to home directory, there are 'border' scroll bars on the desktop, an extra 'vividness' to the colours and some new icons too. I wonder what else has been updated?

I'm running firefox with about 25 or 30 tabs open, and it's smooth and crisp. Boot times aren't the fastest, but it certainly hasn't slowed down over the months like openSUSE did, and it copes comfortably with manipulating image files in Digikam while I have several other apps running.

If I could run Microsoft office in Sabayon then I'd SERIOUSLY consider replacing OSX on the Macbook with it - just so much cleaner, quicker (on a lower spec machine) and better laid out.

Edit

It seems I've been updated to Sabayon 6 (from 5.5).

To use a colloquialism, sometimes the internet is full of win.

Birds with arms.

A bit more 'God' stuff.

One of the interesting things about the bible is how you can read it again and again and again and find different things every time. I've read it cover to cover at least 3 times now, in linear fashion, as well as continuously reading at semi-random.

I've been working through Exodus recently, and there's a whole bunch of subtle stuff tucked away in there that you'd miss so easily. Take Ex25 v9-11:

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

OK - get this - these guys SAW God. And it's the OT, there was no special clothing, no exclusivity to Moses or Aaron, and they even ate & drank - presumably in His presence.

And yet 10 chapters on they're making the tabernacle, and 15 chapters on they're describing the Holy of Holies where the high priest alone could enter once a year, and where there was a risk of him dying if he did not enter righteously - and God wasn't even visibly present there!

What! Why?

I'm trying to understand this by seeing it through their eyes to see what really happened, rather than just take a historical record of perceived events that's been translated several times since original recording. I'm also trying to get my head around why God would direct these people to put in place religious stuff when He would meet with a fairly ordinary bunch of guys at the top of their present political tree.

A subtly different perspective comes woven into this.

Moses met face to face with God - God 'knew his name'. But for Aaron to come before God as high priest he has to wear all kinds of symbolic and protective clothing. I know that in a sense he was there to represent the people before God, a reason for much of the stuff tacked onto the clothing, but at the same time Moses met God face to face while Aaron was in serious danger of death if he didn't get it right (and one of his sons died for getting it wrong). Now the difference was probably God 'knowing Moses name' but what does that really mean, and how is it that Moses was 'known' and Aaron wasn't? They had both gone before Pharoh in Egypt just a little while before, with Aaron performing miraculous signs too.

To me, trying to understand this is all about trying to know who God is more, and why He does what He does.


At some stage I'll think about sovereignty, authority and politics on here, but that's for another post. Right now I need to go cut down a tree.

Chris has gone to the Splendour* women's conference in Cheltenham.

We were talking about it in the car last night, and she was really hoping for some decent teaching (she's getting desperate for something with a bit of depth to it). The one thing she was really dreading was it being like all the other women's conferences she's been to, where they try to find some hurt in the past that they can poke and then weep over (her words in the conversation). And it's all about affirmation, because as a woman you're insecure, unvalued and need to be told that you're good enough.

(cough) BS (cough)

Maybe this one will be different? I hope so for her sake.

Now here's a thought - actually teach them the truth, never mind stirring all the emotions so it seems 'real' (the conference equivalent of a Cello solo - all dark, miserable emotions and sobbing). Give them something aspirational, something which will make them stronger in Jesus and able to step up in faith. All the time you just tweak emotions you're making them dependent one the conference presenters and vulnerable, and to me, that's a form of control.

I hope this time is better.

* It should be sponsored by the makers of a certain low calorie sweetener - 'cos slim women are more attractive, right? But I suspect this is just coincidence.

Mr. Grumpy says.....

All kinds of things.

Having a difficult day, because I'm feeling down and that makes me self-centred which makes me feel down etc in a big, self-feeding loop. And the emotions are flapping in the breeze. Hard enough to leave me literally gasping at times, and sweating. And I want to hide from the things to do or wish they would just resolve themselves as I told them to. And I'm using this place as somewhere to let off steam so that I might move forward.

I wasn't kind to Chris this morning - because of the self absorption - and that hasn't helped the day. I'm sick of nepotism and being ignored/shelved and that hasn't helped the day, and I don't like my reaction to it, and THAT hasn't helped the day either. And people posting stuff about Father's day on facebook adds to the poo that seems to be around neck-level in emotional terms.

So back to depression city for a bit I guess.

And I'd like to poke in the eye the manipulator of the next image I see who used tilt-shift to make a city scene look like a model. iPhone 4 users, you are ALL guilty of lacking good taste (and not just in phone selection) - take 1 step forward and face me!

HTC cameras aren't too bad

Although these needed a little help. Images taken for a 'competition' with the theme of Broken.

This is my wallpaper at the moment

Weighs in just below 1Mb - 1680 X 1050

.

It looks like

Something exciting may happen.

But I can't say what yet - we'll just have to wait and see.

Chris's pictures from Bosnia Herzegovina

Can be found here if anyone is interested.

Do others have a theology of suffering?

This is an area I'm still trying to understand and become clear about.

Some have an understanding that if you believe 100% in the power of Jesus to heal and are walking with Him then nothing will touch you except for your own good. Others seem to think that God doesn't heal any more.

The thing that makes all this tricky is that we know that God heals people, having seen at various times healings and people becoming well. Yet at the same time, I've prayed, fasted, laid hands on for healing - and not seen it.

What about those who suffer slings and arrows at the hands of others? Is it for their good (and the good of the persecutors)?

I can find plenty of scriptures to back up a variety of different perspectives, but what I want is an understanding that integrates all of it, rather than just pushes me to one or other pole. A different theology is, I think, incomplete and will always say the wrong things about who Jesus is.

Theology is always coloured by our experiences and understandings. A theology of suffering 200 or 2000 years ago would not look like a theology of suffering now. So I want to understand suffering as it relates to 20th (and to an extent, 21st) century man. How does one reconcile suffering as a Christian in a culture that places personal comfort before all else, and demands relief from modern medicine. Also how can my understanding of suffering be 'true' in cultures that do not know comfort and care for normal people?

One of the things I constantly pray is that I might say what is right about God. Not that the things I say may be entertaining or funny or stirring, but that I can describe God as He truly is, albeit in naturally limited fashion. It seems this is another area that needs exploration.

We are 3

Again.

Which is good.