The Coding Humanist

Blog Now Has Two Homes

2008-01-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

As you are probably aware, I am no longer blogging here. I now have two blogs:

1. Technical Blog: www.thecodinghumanist.com/blog/
2. Biblical Studies Blog: www.archaicchristianity.com/blog/

This Blog Has Moved...

2006-04-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

With great haste, turn your rss feed readers to the new blog:

www.thecodinghumanist.com/blog/

Please be patient as I customize...

And if you don't use a feed reader, that's where my tech and general blogging will happen now. So look there. Biblical studies blogging at the Christonomy site, as stated before.

P.S. There will also be little technical tidbits on the main coding humanist site, www.thecodinghumanist.com, as well as on the blog. Book reviews and links, and possibly code samples and articles some day.

Now With 50% More Geek!

2006-04-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know that all of you that actually know me think I can't get any more geeky, but that's just not true. Yesterday I passed the 70-536 exam, "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation". I r smart now.

Preparing and taking this was quite a bit different than taking my previous two certifications was, for two reasons. First, because the test is so new, there are no published study materials. No specialized certification books to help. But as it turns out, it didn't matter. Though, if you want to take the cert, I do recommend going here. It's just a bunch of links to the MSDN documentation on the topics of the test, but it should save you some time looking it up yourself. Second, no ADO.NET.

This last issue was one thing that made passing the other two much easier. One was the .NET 1.1 ASP.NET test, and the other was the 1.1 Windows Forms test. Close to 50% of both of those tests focused around ADO.NET, which is one of my stronger areas. That left only 50% to actually testing on the actual gui side of things as well as security, internationalization, COM interop, etc.

But, anyway, I passed. This means that I'm now...still an MCP. None of my three certs actually add up to anything, so I'll have to wait for one more test.

And, BTW, this test has been out for so little time that, as far as I know, there aren't even any brain dumps out there yet (I didn't look all that hard, though I bet some will be out pretty soon). I'm glad I can say that. It was just me, MSDN, and my coworker David (who also passed). Cheating is for losers!

We may take the ASP.NET test soon as well. No published materials for that either. But apparently it's doable anyway...

VS 2005, File Templates, Snippets

2006-03-21T22:11:00.000-08:00

So I FINALLY got my own copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional, and it was a good deal too (thanks to a friend). I got some free CTP drops a while back that I played with, and beta 2, but when the real thing came out I had to stick with the Express edition at home (it was pretty nice, actually). At work, however, I spend just about all day in VS 2005 Professional. Anyway, it's nice to have my own copy. And it even came with a pretty handy book.

One thing that I'm going to end up spending quite a bit of time on is customizing and extending VS. Doesn't that sound like fun? Today I spent time with file templates and snippets.

Ever want to edit the default file templates? Of course you do. I wanted to because I'm doing some 1.1 work using the 2.0 studio, so I had to write code that was backwards compatible. This means no generics. And, of course, what namespace shows up in the default class file template for C#? System.Collections.Generic. So I wanted to take that out.

You would think you would go to the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC#" area. That's where snippets are. Nope. You might also think that you go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates\CSharp\1033". Nope, but you're warmer. You actually go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplatesCache\CSharp\1033". You can change those files, and the changes should be applied next time you restart VS.

So, what about snippets? That's when you go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC#\Snippets\1033\Visual C#". Snippets are Xml based files, but it is pretty easy to understand what is going on. Edit those files, restart visual studio, and presto!

The hotkey combo for snippets in VS is pretty awkward, Ctrl+K, Ctrl-X. I'm trying to think of something a little easier on the fingers, because I am trying to snippet things more and more.

BTW, if you haven't used snippets in VS 2005, take a look at them. They can be useful.

Significantly Stressful Times...

2006-03-21T21:33:00.000-08:00

...lately. I have been so incredibly distracted. Back to making this my super-cool coding blog, now that I've made this split.

For those who haven't figured it out yet, I have split my blog. Biblical studies stuff goes here.

Can't...Move...Blog...

2006-03-17T20:05:00.000-08:00

Anybody else having trouble having blogger ftp your entire blog to another host? I finally registered www.thecodinghumanist.com. I want to move my blog there. Blogger keeps erroring out every time I try to publish the site to the new server. It always stops somewhere in the process (sometimes as low as 1%; the highest I've gotten is in the 70% range). I find this very annoying.

The new site is up, but incomplete. It will be my tech-geek home. Maybe I can get this to work. I don't want to shell out more cash for sql server hosting so I can setup community server there or something like it...

Mmmm...Steak...

2006-02-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I've posted on this blog. Sorry. I've been busy solving world hunger and inventing a cure for poison ivy.

My dad gave me some steak seasoning this weekend called "Reo's". I'm a die-hard Texjoy fan, but I thought I would try it anyway. So today I decided to grill.

I stopped by the meat counter at Albertson's to look at the goods. The Ribeye's were $7.99 a pound. I always go to the counter now, because the cuts are always thicker there than they are on the shelf. And usually the same price. I was eyeing the ribeye's and they looked pretty good. The butcher guy, however, pointed me to the bone-in ribeyes. They were only $5.49 a pound. Cheaper steak! But the best thing about it was the size...

Big, isn't it? But it's kindof hard to tell without some measurements. So here goes.

That's right...over two inches thick. Now that's a steak! It was over two pounds in weight, which means I had a really big steak to eat. No problem there...

So I put a healthy amount of steak seasoning on the thing and let it sit out about an hour and a half so I could get it to room temperature.

I actually put it on the pit longer than I do most of my steaks. I probably had it on there about 5 minutes (I like my steaks extremely rare). Unfortunately, because it was so thick, the center was still too cool, so I put it back on a few minutes later to warm it up a bit more. Of course, it was still incredibly rare.

Overall it was a great steak. Very tender. Very juicy. Very fatty. The seasoning tasted great. I don't think I like it quite as much as I like Texjoy, but I need to have a side-by-side comparison sometime. Regardless, it's a great seasoning and I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to get (fortunately, TexJoy is easy). According to my dad it's made in a metal building in Huntsville, and the label quality makes it clear that Reo's hasn't gotten much past the mom and pop production stage (or they have no money for marketing). But, despite its humble looks, its a great seasoning.

Did you notice how big that steak was?

Review of "The Last Word" by N. T. Wright

2006-02-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

Posted a review of one of Wright's latest books, The Last Word, at the Christonomy site.

North Dallas .NET User Group Meeting Wed Night

2006-01-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

If you're going to be there, let me know.

Oxyrhynchus Mini-Lexicon...I Wish

2006-01-30T22:40:00.000-08:00

You know what the world needs? More love? Yes. Peace? Yes. It also needs a mini-lexicon for the Oxyrhynchus papyri. There is a lot of text there and I think it could be very useful. Just taking the first bit of POxy 58 as an example, you've got στρατηγοις and ἐπιστρατηγιας. Those are districts in Egypt. Great. A little more info (that really would be inappropriate to LSJ) might be nice. Or how about ἑπτα νομων. Sure, you can see the translations in the published volume and in the Loeb translation (yes, I happened along some that even Loeb had) that the words should be understood as referring to a region named something like "Heptanomis", but a little explanation would be useful.

I really think this would be cool. Expanding it to other papyri might be a good idea too.

I've got too much on my plate at the moment. Anybody want to do that for me? :)

Purchasing Oxyrhynchus

2006-01-30T22:30:00.000-08:00

The other night I went and spent some time in the DTS library. It was like old times...except that I didn't have anything that was due. I spent a good bit of time looking for published papyri, mostly for kicks, but also for use in the class (though, yes, I know, some can be found online). Of course, the best stuff would be papyri that were published long enough ago that copyright would have expired so I could put them online with notes, vocabulary, and translations. At least that's the plan. Getting permission from publishers would be fine to, but I have no idea how hard that is to pull off. If anybody has any comments about this, let me know.

One set that I spent a good bit of time in was the published volumes of the Oxyrhynchus papyri. Some of them were recently published, though the publication of the series began with volume 1 in 1898. I was a little surprised on how useful these volumes were. I'm not sure what I expected, but I didn't expect them to be so useful...user friendly...something. Part of it is that I didn't really expect translations and discussions of the text (though the discussions and such are brief and sparse).

Of course, the volumes can be very expensive. However, I was very surprised to find that some go for sale for $10. They must have printed too many. Anyway, if you're interested, here's the website:

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/trade.cfm/Publisher/Egypt%20Exploration%20Society//Location/DBBC

Great Blond Joke

2006-01-24T19:37:00.000-08:00

This is a really funny blond joke.

Pantodapos - New Blog

2006-01-24T10:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, I realize it has been two and a half weeks since I've blogged. It has mostly been because I've been updating www.christonomy.com. Go check it out.

On that note, I have a new blog, called Pantodapos, there at Christonomy. Most of my biblical studies type stuff will go there, though some will be seen here. Greek stuff will be in both. Tech stuff will almost entirely be here, as well as random thoughts and personal notes.

Of course, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "He has two blogs now, so he'll probably blog half as much on both." Well...you're wrong! This just gives me twice the places to blog, which means you'll get twice as much stuff :)

Another Excellent Book...Boethius

2006-01-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

I went to a birthday party for an friend of college today. The drive was pretty long, but we had good food. By the Joe's Crab Shack there was a Half Price Books and we stopped by for a few minutes. Of course, we got the obligatory (these days, anyway) Thomas the train engine book. I also got a book that is really nice, and for a good price.

Ever heard of the Folio Society? If not, and you're a book lover, you should take a look. Here's a link to the book I bought. As you can see from the picture that cover is very colorful and ornate. The book has color images of pictures from illuminated manuscripts of the work, which is nice, and it comes in a nice red sleeve. Sweet!

The book itself is Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a 6th century work. Unforunately, it's not a diglot or just Latin, but it's useful to have an English copy, especially since my Latin is really rusty. The latin text is easy enough to get, however. Project Guttenberg has it.

Original price? $39.95. I got it for $12.95 :)

Tech News - Jan 7 2006

2006-01-07T18:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, some of this isn't really new. But this is the first time I've heard of it and/or checked it out.

First, anybody find the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe interesting? I'm actually glad to see it. Hopefully this will make them a stronger competitor to Microsoft. Of course, if you know me, you know that I like Microsoft's developer tools immensely. However, I am a strong believer in the existence of competition, and Microsoft needs stronger competition than it has in general. Of course, in the areas that Adobe and Macromedia cover, Microsoft does not have a really strong offering. They do have some products coming out that intend to take some of the space of Photoshop (Adobe), Dreamweaver (Macromedia), and Flash (Macromedia). So, I guess, in this case it's good that Adobe/Macromedia are actually getting some competition.

Second, anybody else notice the Google Reader? I took a look at it and, unlike a lot of Google's offerings, I'm not real impressed. Usability is not that great, and it is definitely not a replacement for my desktop rss feed reader.

Third, speaking of RSS feed readers, I'm about tired of RSS Bandit. I'm either going to switch back to Sharpreader or go with the new reader that's going to be in Community Server 2.0. RSS Bandit is a little buggy and incredibly slow compared to Sharpreader. The only benefit of RSS Bandit is that it is open source (and in C#), so I can fix it if I want to. However, fixing my issues would probably just take way too much time. And, I just don't have that much time.

Fourth, back to Community Server 2.0. I'm playing with beta 2 now, changing the theme for use as a replacement for the christonomy site. No, I'm not putting a link because it hasn't been updated in over a year. Embarrasing. Anyway, on to another topic, it has a feed reader in this version. Only one feature is lacking, and I could probably add that in a few hours. They are planning on releasing it officially on Feb 17th. I'm very much looking forward to this. I will at that point be doing some blogging at the Christonomy site. I haven't decided what will the the difference between this one at blogger and that one exactly, but I'm sure I'll figure it out in the next few weeks and let you, my faithful readers, know.

Fifth, for all you hard-working programmers out there who have bosses that expect to much and may outsource your position in the near future, this is a song for you.

Terror Alert Level Addition

2006-01-06T12:50:00.000-08:00

I added the Homeland Security terror alert level indicator on my blog, but with a twist. Otherwise, it would be boring! Check it out...

Sick, But Back in Action

2006-01-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

Well, my trip to SE Texas got me sick, which is no surprise. But today I'm back at work, and in general, more functional than I've been in days. I owe a few people some emails and some comment responses on the blog. I'll get to it as soon as I can!

Christmas Goodies

2005-12-31T07:12:00.000-08:00

I got a few nice books for Christmas, two of which I asked for and one I didn't (though it looks interesting):

Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique, ed. by Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin.
The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture by N.T. Wright.
Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses by Theodore Dalrymple.

I also got some money, some from a gift, some from beating my dad and brother thoroughly at bowling (my highest score of the evening was 177, which might be my highest score ever). The first was a book I've had my eyes on for a while, having seen it in the DTS library at some point. A quick perusal aroused my interest:

Christ and Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr.

The rest I spent on some "classics". The only excellent bookstore in Beaumont is a Barnes & Noble. I saw a classics series that I hadn't seen before. The volumes are about 5 inches tall, mostly unabridged, have gold edges (I've always thought that was cool), are hardcover, and come with a nice built-in bookmark (something else I really dig in books). The size is nice because that makes them easily portable. Also nice is that they are only 5 or 6 bucks a piece. I got the following:

The Prince and The Art of War by Machiavelli.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by A. C. Doyle.
Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson.
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
Walden by Thoreau.

Not a bad catch. I've started reading The Prince. The advice in it will come in very useful when I try to subjugate a people under my sovereign thumb through force or deception (the term "Machiavellian" was aptly named after the author). Until then I'll just take pleasure in the fact that I'm reading a book that was at one point apparently rather influential.

There were a few books I read some of over the break, including The Last Word, mentioned above, and an introduction to the field of linguistics. The only book I actually started and finished over the break was Candide, by the infamous Voltaire. Very interesting book. I'll have more to say about that one in another post.

So, overall, not a bad catch.

More Info on the Complutensian Polyglot

2005-12-22T12:50:00.000-08:00

Rico reminded us on his blog that he posted about the Complutensian a few months ago here. He has some more useful information there if you're interested. He says he has book envy. It's really more like page envy!

I Have Some Old Paper Now - I Am SO Complutensian

2005-12-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

I turned the corner. It was dark in the alley, but I knew what I needed it. It was an addiction. I had to see my dealer.

Moving through the crowded alley, I saw the man I needed.

“Hey Reed. I need…you know…somethin’…”

“I got what you need,” he replied. “It’s a little pricey. It’ll cost you $450.”

“$450!,” I exclaimed. “ Look man, that’s a lot of dough.”

He said, “Look. This is good stuff. You just don’t pick this stuff up anywhere. Most people sell it for about $600. This is a good price, especially for what you’re getting.”

Not able to withstand it any more, I pulled out my wallet, forked over the money, and walked away with my leaf of a Complutensian Polyglot.

Okay, so it wasn’t really anything like that, though the dealer’s name is Reed, it did cost that much, and I did get a leaf of the Complutensian Polyglot. Actually, I got quite a bit more. Hope you like lots of pics. If you’re on dialup, I pity the time it will take you to download the images. Actually, they may all be downloaded by the time you read the following paragraphs. You’ll see a lot here. But first, a little explanation.

The fame for being the first to publish a Greek New Testament goes to the rather well-known Desiderius Erasmus, a feat he accomplished in 1516. It was an accomplishment, despite its flaws. Much less well known is the first printed (1514-1517), but not published (not distributed), Greek New Testament, done under the guidance of Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros of Alcala, Spain. The Latin name of the city was Complutum, and it in accordance with this name that the Complutensian Polyglot was named. The Complutensian Polyglot (hereafter CP) is actually quite a bit more than just another Greek New Testament. It was a significant work of scholarship that took a number of years to finish, spanning both the Old and New Testaments. In the New you get the Greek text and the Latin Vulgate side-by-side. In the Old you get the Hebrew (with notes about Hebrew roots in the margin), the Vulgate, and the Septuagint (the latter with interlinear Latin translation) side-by-side, with the text of the Targum Onkelos (an Aramaic commentary on the OT, essentially) at the bottom (only for the Penteteuch), which is also accompanied by notes on the roots of Aramaic words in the right margin. I hear that there are even other bells and whistles in other volumes. Anyway, getting back to the story, because they distributed their volumes after Erasmus, their work never achieved the prominence of Erasmus. This is particularly unfortunate because of the general belief that their work was far superior.

Quite a bit later, in 1966 to be exact, a volume of the CP was broken up into individual leaves, packaged very nicedly, and published for the members of the “Book Club of California.” Along with the leaf comes a very nice work called “The Great Polyglot Bibles,” describing the history of the CP and two other polyglots. 400 copies were published. This set is actually very excellent and classy. So here are the pics of not only the leaf, but of the set as a whole.

The leaf and book are kept in a box covered in purple cloth, just large enough to fit the folio book and leaf inside, whose dimensions are about 14” tall and 10” wide, so its pretty big as far as most books go these days.

Inside the box you see the materials, which enclosed in this cover, a rust-colored, thick, but flexible, protection for what’s inside. Inside the cover on the left is written, in pencil, the number 168. I’m taking that this is number 168 of the 400 published.

Inside that is a little note. Not significant, but I figured I’d put it up anyway.

Afterwards are a number of blank pages, then one that states the title of the set. This is not pictured.

Next is the part of the folio that actually contains the leaf. Here’s the cover of that:

Next is another publishing note, talking about the type of paper, fonts used, the press used (an 1830 hand press…interesting…), etc.

Next is a reproduction of the title page of the CP.

So. You want to see the actual leaf? Well, I guess so. Here is a pic of the first page, followed by the reverse side.

If you want to figure out what text this is from on your own, skip this paragraph. Do you…wait…wait…I guess not. This is from Genesis 32:31, about half way through, and following. The first page ends at 33:8. The other side picks up at the beginning of 33:9 and goes through almost the end of 33:19. Here are a few close up shots from the first page. Starting at the left (the inside), the Greek with interlinear Latin:

The Latin is above the Greek text, though don’t let that confuse you. I think the note above says something like “____ (don’t know the first word) Greek LXX (short for Septuagint) with interpretive Latin). My Latin is rusty, so please be nice :). The font is readable, though it is not as nice as the font used on leaves of the NT (Metzger’s “Text of the New Testament” has a picture, if you have it).

In the middle is the Latin Vulgate:

As you can see from the bigger pics, this is the most narrow column. The typeface is pretty readable.

On the outside of the leaf is the Hebrew:

The winner for best typeface easily goes to the Hebrew. That is an excellent printing job. very readable. On the right are some notes on roots. For example, you can see that the root for “face” is listed on the right. The consonant spelling is correct, though the voweling is a little off.

Next comes the bottom of the page on the left, Targum Onkelos.

Note that it is labeled above “Interp. chal.”, so it is called “Chaldee” and not “Aramaic.”

To its right is a Latin translation of the Chaldee/Aramaic.

The title is “Tranfla.Chal.” Note that the “f” is really modern “s”, so we can see that this is the translation of the Aramaic portion. To the right are some notes on the roots of some of the Aramaic words.

Next is a reproduction of the colophon page.

Next is the self-named treatise “The Great Polyglot Bibles.”

Next is the first page. Every page is lined with images like these, which I believe are from the CP.

So, that’s basically it. Now, for you textual critics who handle this kindof stuff frequently, I’d like to take the leaf out. Right now it is glued in. Any way of dealing with that without damaging either the leaf or its containing folio? If it helps, here’s a few pics of the glued edge.

First from the front (leaf is on the bottom).

Second from the back.

This, by the way, definitely falls in the category of “that would be cool,” rather than “that is necessary.” But, hey, it’s nice to do it occassionally. I can’t normally afford this kind of stuff, but I’ve been saving up Birthday money and got some Christmas money a little early.

If you want any higher resolution pics, let me know. I’ll email them.

Sophocles, Oh Sophocles

2005-12-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

I got an early Christmas present the other day from two of my Greek students, Edward and Nina. Looking at the package I could tell that it was probably a book, which is, of course, excellent. I opened it and saw that they had given me this:

Of course, I think "Cool, a very nicely bound English translation of Sophocles. And it even has a really nice case." Wrong. I opened it and find this:

Of course, now I'm really digging this. Apparently its an edition of the Greek text. Wrong again. It's better. It's a diglot!

And it has a pretty nice Greek font. Here's a close-up:

Here's the inside cover, just in case you want to track one down for yourself:

It's got lots of nice pics inside as well. Like

and

Thanks, Edward and Nina. Very nice gift!

On Greek Voice And The Ordering Of Subjects

2005-12-14T04:19:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a lot of reading in the last week on Greek voice. I find this whole "no deponency" argument very interesting that some like Conrad, Taylor, and Pennington are advancing. I was also surprised to learn that this really isn't a new idea, and that you can even find it in A.T. Robertson and Moulton.

Of course, it's way too early to have a real opinion on this. I'm still gathering data. And speaking of, anybody know of a critique of Carl Conrad's "New Observations on Voice in the Ancient Greek Verb" (found here)? I find his arguments very interesting, and would like to see if anyone has a rebuttal to make.

It is also very unfortunate that we've reached our discussion of voice in the class and that I don't have a satisfactory answer yet. That's a bummer. Maybe next year :)

As I've mentioned before, I'm writing the curriculum as we go in the class and am pulling translation assignments from the greater collection of Koine Greek instead of just NT Greek. Well, two more observations about how the process is going. First, I really think pulling in translations from outside the NT has been very valuable for them. I have heard statements about how this stuff outside the NT is much more difficult. I even got a statement the other day that the Greek of the Didache of very difficult. For those of you who have translated from the Didache, I'm sure you'll concur that it is actually relatively simple Greek to translate. The difference, I think, is the source, and that my students have never read the Didache and have no memory to draw on (consciously or subconsciously). This makes it more of a challenge to them and actually requires them to rely on their Greek skills, and not their memory of texts read. Excellent...

Second, I took a similar route to Mounce this time in that I covered all nouns first, leaving verbs for later. On the next revision I'm definitely NOT going to do it that way. I'm thinking that I'll probably cover second and first declension, then infinitives, then aorists, then presents, and then finish off nouns. Having earlier exposure to verbs , I think, will be very beneficial. Unfortunately, this is going to make me change a great deal of the instruction and assignments that have been prepared so far in the curriculum, but that's fine. I was going to make a lot of changes anyway!

Infinitives. Starting with and basing everything off of infinitives has turned out to be quite a stretch for me. I am SO used to saying "that's the third principle part of λυω" that it is hard to consistently switch to "that's the third principle part of λυσαι, λυειν." Old habits die hard. I'm finding this at least as difficult as the switch from Erasmian to a more modern pronunciation of Greek. Of course, in this case the change is even more invasive. Basing everything off of the aorist infinitive requires more than just the reordering of chapters. It requires the reordering of how to approach verbs in general. We'll see how this turns out.

And finally, for all my billionaire friends (and I have so many!), will one of you please buy me this book?

UPDATE
Dr. Conrad has commented that there is a more up to date document, a sketch of his latest thinking. It can be found here.

Amazement...

2005-12-03T18:59:00.000-08:00

Yes, the pictures of the study were nice. But what is the reaction in person? Here are the first visitors who were neither family nor someone who helped me work on it:

That's right. Pure shock and awe. It's that cool. Glad you came by, Jeff and Jenni.

Greek Class Update: Starting Verbs

2005-12-01T22:50:00.000-08:00

We're finally starting verbs. It has been a seemingly long trek through nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, but it's over.

One of the negatives about 1) only having class once a week and 2) writing a grammar that works well on that schedule is dealing with subject matter areas that require a whole lot to really get what's going on. Case in point, an introduction to the Greek verb system. There's a lot there. Definitely the longest chapter so far. I'm going to help mitigate the damage to my students by keeping the homework and vocab memorization low, so I think they'll be ok. But this Monday I imagine several of them will feel like they're drinking from a fire house (which thinking of this makes me chuckle about that seen from "UHF" That was seriously funny). But, they're a smart group. I think they can handle it!

I'm A Hockey Fan

2005-12-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

I went to the Stars versus Sharks game last night because I wanted to hang out with my bud Mike. As it turns out, I not only enjoyed hanging out with him, but also thoroughly enjoyed the game. I think that I am officially a hockey fan now. And I even got to see a fight. I want to go again.

And the Stars won, btw...

Tire in the Morning, Stars at Night

2005-11-30T11:26:00.000-08:00

I missed half a day of work today because of significant and costly tire problems this morning. That was annoying.

Tonight I go watch the Dallas Stars defeat some other team that I know even less about. Mike from church had a free ticket and invited me along. Should be fun. I've never been to a hockey game before.

The Daily Show On the Rapture

2005-11-30T11:22:00.000-08:00

It was difficult to not laugh frequently while I watched this. Since I'm at work it would have been really odd for me to have laughed loudly, so I managed to hold back, with one exception. Thanks, Edward, for the link.

If you believe in that whole dispensational rapture thing, you may not like this. I recommend that you change your mind, then watch this video.

RSS Bandit

2005-11-29T05:25:00.000-08:00

I'm trying out a new feed reader, RSS Bandit.

Positives:
1. I can subscribe to invalid feeds. Why in the world would I want to do that? Well, for some reason I can't pull the posts from either Prophet Talk or kai euthus. This means I couldn't keep them in Sharpreader, the feedreader I've been using for a while. And I organize all my blog stuff through my feed reader, which meant I had no place to store the feeds in the hope that the feeds would clear up at some point/the reader would figure out how to parse them.
2. Tabbed interface for looking at the blog posts. For every blog post, I can click on a link and the post will show up in a tab, rendered and everything. That's nice.

Negatives:
1. Counting bugs. The count of unread posts is frequently wrong.
2. Slow... If you ever need to delete a large number of posts at one sitting, highlight them, click delete, and walk away for a while. Not a problem with Sharpreader.
3. Links in feed window aren't clickable. In other words, if bubba has a link to an external page that I want to visit, I can't just click on it in the regular feed display window. I have to use that feature mentioned above to open it in another window, and then click on it.

Yes, I'm still in search of the perfect feed reader. Haven't found an online one that I really like, though the one that will be built in to the next Community Server may be it.

Anybody use RSS Bandit? Thoughts?

VS 2005 - Love It, Despite Issues

2005-11-29T05:13:00.000-08:00

The new Visual Studio is a much feature-improved version over its predecessors. The integrated debugger improvements are worth the upgrade just by themselves, though it is the new language features that I like the most.

However, I'm already looking forward to the hotfix that is supposed to come out next year. A number of people have blogged about bugs they have found (most, if not all, are relatively minor). I'm also hoping they slip in some performance enhancements, especially in the realm of the visual designers.

I've only ran into two issues personally, and I can see why these were never really found. At work we're still developing for the 1.1 runtime. Though I've heard you can still target that runtime with the new studio, we have yet to officially convert our project files. We have a release that is going out soon, so I rolled back my project files from CVS and tried to open everything up and run it in VS 2003.

Nope. I was getting an internal compiler. That's one of those that you get not when you're code is necessarily buggy, but because the compiler is barfing on some text file or something. Ultimately I had to delete all the old .pdb (debug) files and that fixed that. So then it compiled.

But then I tried to run it. Nope. Somehow my 2005 breakpoints were still hanging around somewhere, and VS 2003 kept throwing exceptions because it could read some unknown type of breakpoint. Odd.

I solved it by checking out the code again from CVS in a different directory. Of course, I can see why this kindof stuff wasn't caught in testing. After all, most people won't be rolling back project files and such. But, it was still annoying.

Gentium License Loosened

2005-11-29T04:57:00.000-08:00

The unicode font that I just totally dig, Gentium, has been released under a free/open-source license. The groovy thing about this is that it can now be packaged commercially without having to go through the hassle of permissions and all that, it seems.

I totally dig both the English and Greek glyphs in this font. If you're not familiar with it, check it out. It's free!

The Joy of Papyri

2005-11-29T04:38:00.000-08:00

One of the difficulties of moving out of a world entirely concerned with NT Greek and into Koine Greek is the necessary readjustment of vocabulary. I'm currently reading selection 202 in the Select Papyri Loeb volume (though a fuller version can be found here). It's a document about penalties for assault. Words like τιμάω and δικ- root words take on different nuances and glosses, which, though kindof fun, is also a little frustrating, because I know those words! At least I knew them in the context of common NT usage. τιμάω, for example, often means "I honor" or something similar. However, in a legal context it can mean something like "estimate the amount of pnushment." Wow. That's quite a divergence. But, next time I run into the word I'll have more to think about when translating.

Another fun thing is mispelings. The second word listed in the Loeb portion is ἐπαντάσεως, though it should be ἐπανατάσεως. I won't tell you how long I looked for this word. Of course, the verb form of this root comes just a few words later, which would have given me a clue if I looked ahead.

And finally, strange idiom. This is the paragraph I just translated (note the lack of iota subscript):

Δούλωι ἐλεύθερον πατάξαντι. ἐὰν ὁ δοῦλος ἢ ἡ δούλη πατάξηι τὸν ἐλεύθερον ἢ τὴν ἐλευθέραν, μαστιγούσθω μὴ ἔλασσον ρ πληγῶν ἢ τὴν ζημίαν διπλασίαν ἀποτεισάτω ὁ δεσπότης ὑπὲρ τοῦ δούλου ἢ ἣν τὸν ἐλεύθερον γέγραπται ἀποτεῖσαι, ἐὰν ὁμολογῆι. ἐὰν δὲ ἀμφισβητῆι γραφέσθω μιᾶς πληγῆς δίκην ρ δραχμῶν, ἐὰν δὲ ὄφληι, τριπλοῦν ἀτίμητον ἀποτεισάτω, περὶ δὲ πλειόνων πληγῶν τιμησάμενος δικασάσθω, ὅ τι δ’ ἂν τὸ δικαστήριον τιμήσηι, τοῦτο τριπλοῦν ἀποτεισάτω.

The phrase I find particularly strange is "ἐὰν δὲ ἀμφισβητῆι γραφέσθω μιᾶς πληγῆς δίκην ρ δραχμῶν". Maybe I'll "get it" when I've spent more time in papyric legal terminology. We'll see.

Ah, the joy of papyri!

Stopping Virus Emails from the CIA and FBI

2005-11-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

There was an anonymous question on the FBI and CIA virus post that asked how to block them, since he/she is apparently getting like 1000 an hour. That's a lot.

In the case of most spam this just won't work, but in this case it might. When you get annoying email from the same address (or in this case somewhere between one and three addresses), you can setup you email program to automatically delete them. If I were getting thousands a day, that's what I would do. How to do that? Depends on your email client. I use Outlook and GMail, and both have ways of setting up rules. Figure out how to do that, and send all email from those address to the deleted folder. Voila! Problem solved.

You could also do this based on the text in the message or the subject line. Any of those ways should work.

Virus From the CIA?

2005-11-27T19:37:00.000-08:00

Hopefully you know better than to ever open an attachment from a strange email address. If you don't, listen...don't ever ever EVER do that. There is a pretty decent chance you'll get a virus if you do.

Just in case, though, I figured I would mention some emails I got over the last three days. Over that period of time I got an email from mail@fbi.gov, department@cia.gov, and office@fbi.gov. All of them say the same thing, that I had visited over 30 illegal websites and that I needed to fill out the attached information.

Of course, getting anything from any government agency like this is a little intimidating, but being the good cyber-dude that I am I looked up the email address of one on Google and voila, they carry known viruses!

Just in case you didn't know, the "from" address on your email is not necessarily where the email address is from. I don't know how these virus and spam dudes do it exactly, but I know from a programming perspective it is very easy to send email from an address that is not your own. I get emails from addresses like maria@lexelsoftware.com or frank@christonomy.com occassionally. I have those domains reserved, and I know that we don't have those setup on our mail servers. Well, others can send emails that say that they are the originating addresses. Unfortunate.

So, the moral of this story is, don't trust the "from" address on potential spam and virus emails. Be very wary of opening strange attachments.

Enjoyed the Interview, Stephen

2005-11-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Mark Goodacre, I was able to catch a lot of Stephen Carlson's interview on "Keepin' the Faith" about his newly published book on the Secret Mark hoax. Very interesting. I think they keep archives at the station, so check it out when it gets put up online (go here: http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/ktf/default.htm for the archives).

Enjoyed the interview, Stephen!

Rico And The Correlatives

2005-11-27T05:54:00.000-08:00

Yes, I intentionally tried to make the title sound like the name of a band.

This is actually a response to Rico at his blog and his pastoral epistles blog. Read those posts for context.

Perhaps you are seeing something that I am not, but I'm not sure the correlative και...και construction here is anything unusual or noteworthy. Different correlatives have different meanings, but this one seems to imply a slightly closer coupling between the items in the correlative than just a straight και joining them might give you. Any exegetical significance to this? Not that I can see, but who knows.

As for the further examples, as noted some are the same pattern and some are not. I would think the τε...και constructions would be the closest structural parallel, rather than the ου/μη μονον...αλλα και and other constructions, though those are at least semantically somewhat parallel.

If you want more examples of a και...και correlative construction, BDAG has a very brief entry on it. See page 495, entry 1.f.

So what does the passage mean? It means that Timothy needs to persevere in true teaching, otherwise the salvation of himself and his hearers is in jeapordy. For Paul here, for a teacher to teach error he endagers himself. In such a case the listener has no access to truth, and so they too are put in danger.

Pictures of the Study...Finally!

2005-11-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

I've been working on this thing for two months now. It has been very close for a while. It's finished now...really. It has been so long that for some of you this mythical uber-study may be as real as "Secret Mark" is to Stephen Carlson (for those who don't get the reference, Stephen thinks SM is a hoax), but here is the proof. But first, where did it all start...

It all started pink. Horribly pink. Where the walls aren't pink, they have walpaper on them which is white, light blue, and pink. Spend enough time thinking in this room and you start to feel your ability to be a man seep away from you...

This is from the door to the study, looking at the back of the house. It is a 20' by 22' room. Notice the hint of pink.

The wall on the left side is covered with bookshelves, mostly white but partially pink.

A view from the back wall back towards the opening into the house. Notice the subtle pink coloring.

The back-right corner. Still lots of pink here. Surprisingly, the blinds are also pink.

...but then I came to the rescue. I had to. There is no way I could concentrate with that much pink surrounding me. So what did we do? Let's start with the door. What a nice door. My friend Lou put it in. This is a view of the door from the living room, looking into the study.

Well, of course you open the door and go in. This is what you see:

Better? Unless you're a girl, if you don't agree there is something wrong with you. Things to notice. First, the carpet is gone and replaced with wood (laminite, I'm not rich) flooring. Second, the walls are no longer pink. They are now parisian taupe, which is a lot like normal taupe. Third, the trim is no longer pink. It is the color innocence, which is like an ivory. Fourth, the wall behind the built-in bookshelves is winsdor haze, a grayish-blue color. Fifth, the wall lights are gone, replaced by...nothing at all. Learned a lot about drywall repair patching those holes...

Here is another look of the bookshelves visible immediately in front of the door (though about 12 foot from it). This is where we currently keep our general non-fiction and our fiction stuff. There is the window as well, and an empty bookshelf. I must need more books.

Turning to the left we see my desk. Behind my desk are my most commonly used reference works and my diplomas. On the wall on the left behind the desk are my Greek books. To the left is...

...where I have my biblical studies books. This includes philosophy, history, and foreign languages as well. Notice the ample space for more books.

Another look from the front of the room. There is a section in the back that is walled off by bookshelves. This is a nice place for storing random stuff and for putting my servers.

Now from the back of the room looking towards the front. This is taken from behind the desk. That space in front of hte desk is about 12 foot long and 20 foot wide. I'm thinking of putting an area rug there and a reading chair. I also want to get into painting as a new hobby (not that I have time...). If I do that, my first subjects will be large maps of Greek, the Mediterranean, and Israel for that large, blank wall.

Looking left we get another look at that sectioned-off area. Those books are my programming books.

And, finally, another view of the desk, but from the back.

And here's me at my desk. I have disheveled hair and smug look on my face because my new study enlighted me to the extent where I simultaneously solved the Synoptic Problem and came up with a new law of thermodynamics.

So that's it! I'm very pleased. The massive amount of bookshelf space that remains is nothing less than a mandate to buy more books, I think. Actually, this is the first time since early in college that I actually have room for all my books. Woohoo!

So, two months of work, but it's over. What do you think? Any suggestions?

Age of Empires III

2005-11-25T06:12:00.000-08:00

I finally got my copy of Ensemble Studio's Age of Empires III. I have two friends who work there now, which means that it is twice as easy to get a free copy! I met one of them for lunch Friday. Being the very nice individual that he is, he gave me a copy of the collector's edition, which comes with an artwork book, soundtrack, some extra guides, and a "making of" DVD. Excellent!

I installed it Friday night and played it a little then and a little yesterday. Nice graphics. The gameplay is very similar to the last, so it didn't take long to get up and running, but it has some interesting new features. You are going to need decent hardware to run it, and really excellent hardware to get the graphics that you see in the online screenshots. Though my processor and memory is up to snuff, my graphics card isn't, so I have to lump my home PC into the "decent" category for a game like this.

Haven't played it enough to really get addicted, or to have a strong opinion about the game. But, my first impressions are good.

Doom : Could Have Been A Lot Worse

2005-11-25T05:59:00.000-08:00

Saw Doom last night with my brother-in-law. There are positives and negatives, though I guess the title described my main feeling about the movie.

The Negatives: Quite a bit of foul language. The acting was not always superb, but wasn't all that bad. Given the game it came from, you would have expected more shooting and exploding monsters.

The Positives: There was a decent bit of action, which made for a good action flick. The special effects were good. They did a good job of keeping it dark and creepy the whole movie and there were a number of times that I noticed that I was pretty intensely waiting for the next monster to pop out. The plot and explanation for how the monsters got there was a little far-fetched, but wasn't too bad.

All in all, if you don't mind the language, like action movies, and can turn off your brain just to have a little fun, you might just enjoy it.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire : Excellent

2005-11-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

Saw the new Harry Potter movie the other night. Excellent flick! I've been trying to decide if it was better than the last movie because both are excellent. Still can't decide.

The last movie was significantly less kiddy than the previous two. This one continues the trend. This is certainly not a movie for small children.

The story was good. Acting was good. Special effects were good. Nothing went badly, in my opinion, in this movie. I highly recommend it.

Cache of 200 Ancient Papyri Found In My Study

2005-11-25T05:45:00.000-08:00

I've been missing it for about 3 months now. I've needed it to pull practice sentences from for my Greek class. I finally found my Loeb Select Papyri volume 2! Woohoo!

So far I've pulled texts to translate from the NT, the LXX (including the apocrypha), the Apostolic Fathers, the Pseudepigrapha, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Roman Antiquities. Most of what I own that would be considered Koine is either Christian or Jewish; Dionysius is the only thing in the list that isn't. Having this papyri gets me another more secular source of material, which will be good for the class.

Upset That I Didn't Go to SBL :(

2005-11-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

I'm really quite upset that I didn't get to go to SBL this year. The book sales, discussions till 1:00 in the morning, the lectures, the panel discussions...I really missed out.

I would have loved to have been at the panel discussion (which was apparently on inspiration and textual criticism) with Ehrman, Wright, Crossan, and Martin. I didn't know about the Ehrman book referenced in the blog post on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog, but I have seen Wright's (though don't yet have it). Looks like I have more books to buy...

There's no way I'm going to miss next year.

Finishing Study and A Game

2005-11-18T06:56:00.000-08:00

What do I get to do this weekend? Well, we finish the study! Woohoo! At least it should be finished. I'll post pictures.

Also, my parents are coming into town. We're going to the zoo tomorrow.

In leau of anything profound, how about a game? The boss at my first full time job started blocking webpages (ones that shouldn't have been blocked). If you went to a webpage that was unauthorized, you got an "access denied" page. This irked some of us. So, we in the developers group came up with an idea and it was on the intranet for a few hours. One of my coworkers was nice enough to save it. Here is the Flash game I made for the occassion:

The Robby Game

Not much, but it was a fun joke. And yes, that is his picture :). Here's to the old times...

How Microsoft Can Compete with Open Source

2005-11-12T19:24:00.000-08:00

Found this interesting post on Scoble's blog. His ideas on the topic boil down to 1) focus on how desktop windows stuff beats the pants off of open source(which is obviously does MOST of the time, though not all) and 2) hire open source developers to pull them away from their world, and harness their skills against the open source world.

The first is a mediocre idea, because I think most know this. And MS is already winning here anyway, and they have no competition on the horizon AFAIK. That is, unless the Mac user base actually takes off. I heard it's growing because of the iPod, but we'll see. I actually wish MS had a competitor in this space, because competition is healthy.

The second idea is spectacular. Though some open source developers would not be bought because of ideological reasons, I think most probably could be. Take away those with the brains and the ideas, and you've killed serious competition there. And MS would also get some top notch developers, which is always a good deal.

My thoughts.

2.0 For CodeSmith Users

2005-11-12T05:23:00.000-08:00

Note to users of CodeSmith and .NET 2.0. There's a little you'll need to do to get it working right.

1. Go to your application directory.
2. Open the config files.
3. Note the (probably commented out) supportedRuntime node for 2.0. Change the build number to a shortened form of the final RTM build number, v2.0.50727.

The trick is to use that number, not v2.0.50727.42, the real build number. For some reason CodeSmith will not recognize your dll.

On Starting Greek Verbs with Infinitives

2005-11-11T05:03:00.000-08:00

I think Greek as it has been taught is somewhat pedagogically challenged. That's one reason why I decided to write my own curriculum for my class. It has been a very time consuming experience, but very fun.

One of the things that has seemed odd to me for a while is the way that verb forms are taught. Why is the present stem learned first? It is actually kind of an odd-ball stem and has unique characteristics all of its own. Take, for example, the verb "Ballo", "I throw/am throwing." It is only in the present stem that two lambdas appear. The present tense stem will frequently have unique features like this. Some of the other stems might be more useful to start with, such as the aorist, because their stems more closely resemble the "true" root of the word. I've thought that something needed to change in this respect, but wasn't sure what I was going to do about it.

Then I read the chapter "Verbs of Perception and Aspect: Greek Lexicography and Grammar" by Randall Buth in the book Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography, edited by Taylor, Lee, Burton, and Whitaker. The volume is a collection of essays in honor of Danker, the main editor of BDAG. In his article he argues that the form to start with is the infinitive, and that the accusative infinitive is the best choice. His basic reasons (at least as I interpret them) are as follows:

1. The present tense forms of a word have a continuative aspect, like "I am throwing" instead "I throw" or something similar. The latter is more of a natural idea to start with. When we learn verbs in other languages we'll generally start with the idea of "to throw," not "to be throwing."
2. Aorist tense verbs are more common than any other tense form.
3. When non-indicative, aorist forms are much more commonly used.

His suggestion is to memorize the aorist infinitive. He also says "While the aorist infinitive should probably be our point of reference to a verb, it would help to have the continuative (present) infinitive listed with this." I dig that.

So that's the way I'm going to approach verbs in my curriculum. I'm not sure if he would have his students memorize both forms (that seems to be the case, but I'm not sure), but that's my current plan. Vocab listings of verbs will include both the aorist and the present active infinitive forms.

Will it work? I expect it to. I'll give a report later on after we've spent some time in verbs. There's a little more to this as well (both positives and difficulties), but since I have to leave for work in 10 minutes, I better stop now :)

Visual Studio 2005 Rocks!

2005-11-11T04:55:00.000-08:00

The second most important event of this year has recently passed, the release of Visual Studio 2005. I say second, because I really have to put the birth of my second child above it.

Anyway, I've been using Beta 2 at home for a while, and was really looking forward to this. I started using it some at work about a week and a half ago. I dig it! Lots of nice features. Most importantly, we get generics in C#, and that is something I've been looking for ever since I heard about C# 2.0. Woohoo!

For most people in the world this is a non-event. But, for those of us who spend 8-12 hours a day using Visual Studio, any feature improvements are a plus.

Still Not Dead

2005-11-08T05:11:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am not dead. Just really busy. Here's a summary what's going on, and why I'm so busy:

1. Still not finished with the study. But, give me a week...so close...
2. Greek class. Going great, just very time consuming.
3. Job. I wish I could spend 50 hours a week doing Lexel stuff and studying. Nope. I have to have a regular old job. However, as far as jobs go, this one is great. Still really like the people and the work, and they gave me a super cool laptop.

That's mostly it. I PROMISE to start blogging again. REALLY!

Why Muslims Hate Us

2005-10-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

My brother is always posting interesting stuff about middle-eastern politics, but I thought this one was especially good. Want to know why Muslims hate America? Read here.

The whole thing is interestings, though the part on anti-Americanism is at the bottom.

Justice

2005-10-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

Something has been hanging around in my brain since jury duty a couple months ago. It is time to get it out.

During the closing arguments, the district attorney made an appeal to us that went something like the following: "The defendant has committed a horrible crime. Show the world that we do not take this kind of offense lightly and give him the maximum allowable sentence." That is a serious paraphrase, but you get the idea. As for the comment, in some ways he is so very right, but yet his statement is entirely inappropriate.

In some ways he is right. The justice system does need to show the criminal that crime is not tolerated, and thus deter some would-be criminals from becoming actual criminals. After all, such is one of government's ordained roles according to Paul in Romans 13.

On the other hand, appeals of that nature can, and I'm sure do at times, encourage injustice. This sounds a little absurd, but I promise, it makes total sense. Here is an absurd example, but it should get my point across.

A guy named Bubba breaks into a store and steals some bread from a shop owner. The man is caught and tried. The prosecuting makes a convincing case that he did in fact steal the bread, and appeals to the jury to show the world that theft is taken seriously, and to give Bubba the death sentence. The jury agrees and Bubba is put to death.

Of course, this wouldn't work because a reasonable jury wouldn't do that and I'm pretty sure theft isn't even punishable by death in our law. However, you should get the point. Sure, this would show the world that they took theft seriously, but a question remains. Is it just? Of course not. Theft isn't good, but stealing a loaf of bread is hardly worthy of death.

As is sometimes said, the punishment needs to fit the crime. The idea of a range of punishment for a given crime in the justice system is based partially upon this idea; the range of possible punishment would be limited to the degree to which the offense is offensive.

But how does deterring crime fit in with this idea of range of punishment? This is the way I've formulated it to my greatest satisfaction: the proper and just punishment for crime IS the deterrent. To give less of a punishment is to not deter enough, and is unjust, because justice requires a proper punishment. On the other hand, to give a greater punishment is unjust, because it is by definition not what they deserve, even though it may deter more. This is why the juror should not be thinking "what can we do to deter crime?" but "what is the just punishment, no more, no less, for this crime?". To punish someone more than they deserve is injustice, it is wrong.

Of course, the prosecuting attorney sees himself as one who needs to push for that. To him that seems like his job. The the same is true for the defense attorney, where he pushes for the minimum. But this bothers me. Justice is what matters. I know, they have clients they are working for. But, still, this bothers me. Justice is what is needed, not lesser or greater punishment.

Proper punishment for crime is the deterrent. It is not the jury's responsibility to over-punish a man to deter evil. I, like many, believe that the criminal justice system is not as harsh as it should be and therefore not the deterrent that it should be, but that is no excuse to over-punish.

In New House, Comments Back On

2005-10-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

Well, we're finally in the new house. Comcast ended up being very quick about getting me setup again for my cable internet, so I'm up and running. Unfortunately, I'm still in a temporary study in the children's playroom. My playroom, the soon to be amazing-awesome-rockin-bad-cool study, is still in the works. It was painted a horrible pink color, and it took me three coats of primer to cover that up. Now it is painting time (anyone want to volunteer? -- just kidding). I've learned a lot about sheetrock repair recently, and will soon learn about leveling a cement floor and how to lay lamimite (sp?) wood flooring.

Comments are back on. I turned on some of the comment protection stuff that blogger provides. I'm hoping this will help my blog comment spam problem.

New House, No Internet, No Comments

2005-10-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

We are in the new house, finally! I've been painting, sanding, and fixing drywall for days. This will continue. But in the end, my study will be awesome...

No internet at home until my service gets hooked up. That means less email and blog reading. If you do want to get ahold of me, only send email to my gmail account.

And finally I'm sick of comment spam. Unless I can figure out how to stop it, comments are gone. 30 spam messages on my blog in just a few days is not something I can accept at the moment. If you have a comment, please email me.

House and Disaster Update

2005-09-27T06:13:00.000-07:00

We will be closing on our new house today. Yay! This doesn't mean we'll be moving in today, though. We're going to take a few days to paint and prep. But we'll be in Thurs or Fri night. I am so very happy. Of course, today is the day I pay closing costs, so I get to see several thousand dollars flushed down the drain. How frustrating!

On another happy note, the house I grew up in was relatively unscathed by hurricane Rita. About 30 trees were knocked down by the storm, but none of them hit the house. They don't expect power to be back on for three to four weeks, so I think I'll probably be keeping some family in the new house for a little while. I'm not sure if anyone other than my mom is coming, but we'll see. My grandmother's house also escaped damage, so she was fortunate as well.

My other relative's houses did not fare so well, however. And a tree fell on my uncle's truck, and a limb knocked a whole in his roof. Another Aunt lost her kitchen to a tree or two as well.

But, as far as I know, there were no family fatalities or injuries, though I haven't heard from one cousin. But hopefully all is well.

Most Important Consideration When Teaching Greek

2005-09-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

Here is my fundamental philosophy when it comes to teaching first year Greek. It can apply to lots of other things as well, but this is most readily apparent when studying subjects that take a long time to master. And is there any better example than Greek of this?

So here it is. Here's what you need to keep in mind when you lead a group of students through a course of study in Greek. The most significant thing for their success, by a very huge margin, is their desire to learn the language. It's that simple.

You can put a really horrible Greek textbook in front of their face and they can learn a lot of Greek if they want it bad enough. Sure, they would learn better with a really good textbook. No one would deny that. But if the textbook at least conveys the basics, a person can make it through and go on to learn how to translate by the sheer force of their determination. This is something I learned working through my first year Hebrew textbook. At the time it was the worst foreign language textbook I had ever read, and is second now only to one for Khmer that I have. Despite that book, I made it through first year with enough Hebrew to intelligently handle some of my later Hebrew classwork (though I could have been better off!).

You can be a really horrible teacher, and if they want it bad enough, they will learn the language despite your inability. This was true of me in one of my classes as well. But despite the teacher's complete lack of sense when it comes to teaching a language course, I still made it through (this was made much easier because the first semester teacher was super excellent, but it was still a hard semester). Obviously, if you are a teacher, you want to be capable. But, if they want it bad enough, they'll learn it despite your mistakes.

The student can even have a low degree of intelligence. I think that there are very few people who just couldn't learn the language. Brilliant people will learn it faster than less gifted people, but the average or below average of intelligence can succeed and exceed in language learning if they want it bad enough. Brilliance is very helpful, but not necessary.

What this tells me is that if I want my students to learn, I need to do whatever I can to make the material interesting, to make it as enjoyable as possible. Of course, I'll try to create a good text/use a good text and be a good teacher. But much of those two things will be focused on increasing the student's desire to learn the language.

One thing I'm doing to help with this is following an approach similar to Athenaze. Every chapter begins with translation, and I introduce the ideas in the chapter through that translation, and explain it afterwards. Though I think this had pedagogical benefits in general, specifically it is the psychological benefit that I'm primarily looking for.

When I've taken Greek and Hebrew foreign language classes especially, it always felt like one big exercise in paradigm, pattern, rule, and vocab memorization. Translation seemed to be (though it wasn't) an afterthought. That, frankly, is not fun. It is the use of the language that really makes it interesting.

Starting a lesson off with translation, basing the discussion on it, and ending it with more translation, gives a completely different feel to the material. I think it makes it a lot more interesting. Even though my students are going to learn just about all the rules and paradigms that all the other first year students have to learn, they shouldn't feel the bashing that most of them do. If I can maintain this, and they can keep their desire, I know we will succeed. Thanks for the idea, Maurice and Gilbert.

It's about the cultivation of desire. If the student has that, he will rarely fail.

My Parent's House Is Going To Be Leveled

2005-09-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I hope that's not the case, but it is possible. The storm is headed straight for Beaumont, and my home town is Vidor, about 5 minutes east. It will likely get pounded.

Fortunately, most of my relatives have already left. At least, all those with sense have. My dad had to stay behind, unfortunately, but he should be just fine. He's a prison guard in Dallas and will be staying in a large cement and steel building, so he could probably ride out hurricanes and tornadoes there with no problem. You'd probably actually have to bomb the place to take it apart. But most of the others are on their way out, are about to be gone, or are already a safe distance away.

Hopefully all will turn out well.

A Developer Leaves MPower, And A Surprise

2005-09-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

Often the exodus of employees from a company will mean that the company is doing something wrong. Not always though. The guy leaving here is a contractor, and his contract is up. It is a bummer that he's leaving since he seems pretty talented. Here is what he said in an email, and I don't think he was being insincere:

"As I’ve said before to some of you, I’ve worked on roughly 16 client sites since I’ve been in Dallas and MPower is by far the best place I’ve been in terms of the people and team work."

I've never heard that from someone leaving the companies that I have worked for. See, I'm not the only one who likes it here at MPower. This says a lot about this company, because programmers are really good at complaining :)

Greek Class #2

2005-09-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

We had our second Greek class last night. It went well, though I need to get more feedback on the particulars of the grammar and how it is working for the students. I'll have to talk to them about that more in the future.

There are two things that hit me pretty strongly this week about why I'm really glad I'm writing this grammar. It has two really nice advantages.

First and foremost, I can pace the material better. When I taught the class last time using Mounce I frequently had to combine chapters every week because we only met once a week. Sometimes this worked very well, sometimes it was a bad combination, either having too little or too much material. But now I'm not contrained to this, and I like that a great deal.

Second, I like being able to organically weave various elements together into the text. Though the chapters are still focused on particular topics (second declension nouns, present verbs, etc.), I am able to introduce extra material that is important but does not itself warrant a separate chapter.

All in all, I'm enjoying, despite the vast amount of time it takes.

Conservative Protestant Monasticism - Commentary On Homeschooling

2005-09-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

Though I am out of touch in general to the happenings in the biblioblogosphere, I did catch an interesting post (as many of his posts are) from Jim West. Today With Zwingli- Or, Why Homseschooling is the New Monasticism is a blast from the past about Zwingli (no surprise coming from Jim), where Zwingli's criticisms of monasticism are applied to the modern homeschool movement. Also note his own comment attached to the entry. Given both, I heartily agree.

But as another commentator on the entry, Ben, said, this is just one outlet or expression of "an entire lifestyle of withdrawal from the world." I generally think of it in terms of separatism, and my general rule is that Christians should be separatist in their practice only when absolutely necessary, and this is incredibly rare. This is one reason why I stopped listening to Christian music years ago. It is a Christian subculture that encourages separatist tendencies, non-communication with the world of art/music and thus non-influence, a false standard of godliness (I've heard comments that would equate wearing a Christian t-shirt as a great act of obedience or something), an inferior sensitivity to good art, etc. A withdrawal of children from public schooling for the purpose of withdrawal from the world is just another form of retreat, and is not the best way to engage the world.

But, as was also said in the comments, there are valid reasons for homeschooling. Kathryn and I intend to homeschool the kids for a number of years, though they will rejoin the general school population somewhere in the middle of their schooling (around 5th grade. We haven't decided on that yet). These reasons are entirely educational. First, there is no way our children will grow up without a great deal of experience to foreign languages. I'm not sure what we'll end up teaching them, but they'll likely hit at least two of Greek, French, German, and Spanish. I didn't get any until High School French, and this is not going to be the case for my children. Second, my wife was an elementary school teacher, as was my mom. They are very limited in the effect that they can have on the children, and this has nothing to do with their skill. It is very difficult for a teacher to really educate a classroom of 23 kids at one time, especially if discipline is lax, which is usually the case. One of the most important things that we can control as parents is the education of our children early in life. It is very important to me that they get a better education than I did.

Now as for the whole monasticism issue, I really do see this as a huge problem in American culture. Christians have very little positive effect on culture as a whole, and the effect is declining as people are polarized ideologically and politically. What can we do about this? Well, that's a whole other discussion, and I certainly don't know all the answers.

I Look Pretty

2005-09-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

"You look pretty." This is what a fortune cookie told me yesterday. I don't normally pay attention to those, but in this case I will.

Back In Action

2005-09-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

Yay! I have my temporary study set up here at the in-laws. That means I actually have email access for all my email addresses, my feed reader, most of my code, etc. Tonight is night 2 at their house and all is going well. Still anxious about the new house though...

First Greek Class

2005-09-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

The first session of our Greek class was last night. Fun times. I'm really looking forward to next week, where we start digging in to translation and morphology stuff. Fun!

Want to know what it is like to take my Greek class? Well, here's the reaction of one of my students:

http://themilitantpacifist.blogspot.com/2005/09/militant-pacifist-greeks-out.html

Yes...this could have happened to you.

I'm now living in my in-laws house. Finished moving in about 3:30 yesterday morning. I was dead a lot of the workday yesterday. I don't have my temporary study setup yet, so I can't even check all my email and my feed reader is on my desktop. Doh!

I'm About to Be Homeless

2005-09-11T05:29:00.000-07:00

But, I'll still be better of than 90% of the world. We closed on our house this last Friday and are leasing it back from the new owner. We will be out today. We are moving in with Kathryn's parents for 3-4 weeks as we wait for the soon-to-be-former owner of our new house to move out. We will probably get in during the first week of October.

I'm glad this house is working out. It is cheaper than the last house we actually had a contract on, and it doesn't have foundation problems! I will also get my super-duper-humongous-amazing-fabulous-stupendous study. It is a converted 2-car garage, so I have about 400 square feet of study, a 20x20 room. One wall has shelves built into it already, so that will be nice, but I need to figure out what I'm going to do with the other three walls. I'll need a few more bookshelves, I'm sure, but I am going to have lots of wallspace. And I will be putting in wood floors, so my study is going to be super-cool looking!

Yes, there are other nice features about the house. It is in great shape and big enough for two kids and a wife, and room for more. But it is this study that I find most exciting personally.

But, for 3-4 weeks I'll have my 40-50 books to give me what I need for basic study and for the Greek class (which starts this Monday).

New Blog Friend - The Militant Pacifist

2005-09-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

A buddy of mine, and deacon at my church, Edward Cook, is blogging now. His blog is The Militant Pacifist. Edward...say something else! And welcome to the blogosphere.

Two Days at MPower

2005-09-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

I have finished my first two days of work at MPower Systems. Here are a few signs that make me think that I'll like working there:

1. Free drinks! No, none are alchoholic, but free Coke, Sprite, and bottled water is groovy!
2. The people are very friendly. Nuff' said.
3. The people like to have fun, and it shows at work. That's very nice.
4. There is a super-amazing-powerful Starbucks coffee brewer in the break room. It will take beans, grind them, and create you a single serving of Starbucks in about a minute. So groovy...
5. I'm right next to a window. That's kindof nice.
6. The biggest thing, the company is in the middle of taking 40 days off to do bug fixes. No enhancements...zero. Ideally all bugs would be fixed as discovered. But, this is so much better than what I am used to, an environment in which enhancements are constantly being added, and bugs are constantly piling up, and no-one is doing anything about it. If you're a programmer, you know what I mean, and you know how good this is.
7. We had a testing night last night to test a hotfix. The upper management was there testing with us. How odd...and encouraging.

So, the first two days have been pretty groovy. These are some signs of a good software development company. I'm glad I'm there and I'm looking forward to getting to know the place even better. Hopefully this will continue...

Last Week at Work, Blogging Slowdown to Continue

2005-09-01T05:13:00.000-07:00

This is my last week as an employee of RealPage. I've got about a day and a half left of work. Next week I'll start at MPower. Woohoo!

Blogging will continue to be sporadic till my life settles down a bit, though I'll pop in occassionally to make a note.

Feeling Illiterate

2005-09-01T05:08:00.000-07:00

I have no books, at least that is how it feels. Just about all of my books are in boxes now for the move, and I won't be surrounded by my bookshelves for several weeks it seems. I've got the 44 books around me that I wanted to use as resources for writing the Greek curriculum (my main time expense at the moment), a few German books, and a few other random books. I haven't had this few books available to me since high school. But, Lord willing, this hiatus from intelligence won't last too long.

Greek Class Update

2005-09-01T04:54:00.000-07:00

The class begins in a week and a half. I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm developing the curriculum/text for the class so there's going to be quite a bit of preparation involved in this. This is a lot of work, but it will pay off in the end.

If you are still interested in the class, let me know. You need to sign up soon if you are. If you live too far north to take my class, but still want to learn Greek, Eric Weiss is teaching a class at Denton Bible Church. For more info, check out the churches calendar (http://www.dentonbible.org/index.php?pfile=calendar). Click on the class link on the Monday after labor day. That will give you contact information.

No New House... :(

2005-09-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

Well, the house that we had our eyes on fell through. And it is for the better. First, because of Garland building codes for that subdivision, I wasn't going to get as large a study as I was hoping for. Now I get another chance! But more importantly, there were foundation problems that the owner didn't want to fix. Sorry, not going to pay for that for a house I don't even own yet!

So, we're off to find another one. We're closing on our house next week. We'll either be leasing this house back from the future owner to fill in the gap between houses, renting an apartment, or temporarily living with Kat's parents. Regardless, it will work out.

New House, Baby...

2005-08-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

Things are moving right along in regard to house buying and selling. We are closing on our house on the 8th of September. We just learned this morning that those selling the house we wanted to buy accepted our first offer, and we will be closing on it the 9th. Woohoo!

This weekend I pack. We rented one of those pod moving things (www.pods.com). It is 8 foot wide and tall, and 16 foot in length. Should be able to put lots of stuff in it. Today I'm packing the study, which is a very slow process. You've got to be very meticulous when it comes to packing your books. Otherwise they'll get damaged in transit, and you can't have that!

The best thing about this new house (and you would get a very different answer from my wife) is that my study is going to be about four times as big as my current study, maybe even a little bigger. That, frankly, just rocks. This should give me more than enough bookshelf wall space for quite a while. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to make it a super-cool study room. Thoughts are welcome.

The room itself will be a converted two-car garage. It is about 20'x20' (I thought it was bigger...it sure looked like it), so that's the size I get to deal with. I'm thinking wood floors of some type. Hopefully I'll have half of the walls covered with bookshelves. That leaves me with two walls. What to do with those? If you think you have a really cool study, and if you don't mind, post your picture on your blog or email it to me. I need inspiration!

This whole process has been incredibly time consuming. Hopefully things will slow down a little soon. And hopefully we won't find something wrong with the house during the option period.

Greek Class Signup

2005-08-23T04:26:00.000-07:00

I am still taking applications for the Greek class we'll be having in Parker, a suburb of Dallas, this next year. I have four people signed up now and am expecting at least a few more from the church. That will leave about five slots for anyone who is interested. If you are, send me an email. The first class time will be the monday after labor day.

MPower Systems - New Job

2005-08-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that I am leaving my current employer, RealPage, to go work for MPower Systems. They do donor management software for non-profit religious organizations. This is another .NET programming job, which is great.

Though this gets me back under the more general umbrella of religious stuff, that actually has zero to do with the job change. If I were going to make a change for that reason, I certainly would not have picked that subject area (no offense). I'm going because my conversations with the programming manager gave me a great deal of confidence in her ability, and my time with the development team made me think that they were both capable and pleasant. I'm looking for a really good programming environment, and it seems that they have it. I will start there the week after labor day weekend, so I've got two weeks to finish out at RealPage.

Jury Duty Over

2005-08-23T04:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, that was long. Took an entire 5 days. I finished with a greater confidence in the criminal justice system, despite its flaws. The case turned out to be incredibly complex, and I don't think I'll repeat it all on my blog. That would take a while. The case was one of aggravated sexual assault, so it was pretty serious. This was my first jury experience, and it was an interesting one. Serious crime, insanity defense, stupid lawyers on both sides, having to deal with foreign cultures (both victim and defendant were Indian), conflicting testimonies, DNA, etc. Lots of wierd things in this trial. This really could have been an episode on Law and Order SVU.

Jury Duty Rocks!

2005-08-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

Silence...

...from me, anyway, for a few days. I've either been in jury duty or at meetings all day and night this week save one. Though the criminal trial in which I am serving is a weighty duty since our decisions affect a life quite drastically, I am enjoying the experience quite a bit. I am learning our judicial process first hand to a much greater degree, and I'm glad I get the opportunity to participate in a very important function in our government. At the moment I cannot speak of any specifics of the case, so I won't. When it is over and it is a matter of public record I can say more. It is a very unique case...or at least one that I could not have imagined occurring.

Why Learn Greek

2005-08-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

As I've said before on the blog, I'm going to be teaching a Greek class this Fall here in the Dallas area. And I'm still open for applications. Of course, the question of "why" has popped up. That's reasonable. Here is why I really think Greek is a very useful thing to know when studying the NT, and some thoughts on what we ought not to be using it for. And I present this in the manner of Paul. Sorry, this is going to be very long...

What shall we say then, that those who don't know Greek cannot understand their New Testament? Certainly not! For there are many things in the New Testament that we don't need to know Greek to deal with. That being said, there are some issues where a knowledge of Greek is very useful, even on a practical level. Say a Jehovah's Witness person comes to your door and wants to talk about John 1:1 and how everyone else has translated the text wrongly. Being able to say "I know it shouldn't be translated that way because of 'x'" is a much better argument than "so and so told me it shouldn't be translated that way". Very useful in debate.

What then? Is the only reason to have a good argument with heretics? Certainly not! Sometimes it is useful in determining the meanings of passages, for many interpretations hinge on rightly understanding the syntax. It is not just a tool for defending your favorite doctrines, whether they are true or not. It is a generally useful interpretive tool. The previous is mentioned because it is a very obvious case for the benefit of Greek knowledge in conversation.

What shall we say then? Shall we learn Greek so we can solve all of our interpretational problems and know all things? May it never be! The understanding of Greek is but one tool in the interpretive arsenal. Knowing Greek but having no knowledge of the historical backdrop of the first century will still leave you high and dry when it comes to some matters of interpretation. It ONE of many useful tools of interpretation. It is not the key to all knowledge. And besides, on the level of Greek studies there are lots of unresolved issues.

So let us learn a little Greek, just enough to use some new tools. Certainly not! Don't you know that lots of people learn just enough Greek to be able to talk over their own heads? In doing so they deceive themselves and others into thinking some thing when in fact it is as faulty as their lack of discipline to learn. Learn it not as a bag of tricks to use in an argument. Most don't know enough Greek to know such a person is an idiot rather than a learned person. This is unfair, untrue, and dishonoring to God. Learn it not just for the ability to say "I know Greek". Learn it, and learn it well. Only when you know it well can you use it with proficiency and accuracy.

So then, if someone does not know Greek well, he will always be unable to understand the Scriptures. No! But his knowledge will be much more limited than those who do know it. It is the same with not understanding the life of a shepherd and understanding Jesus' parables. Or how could we claim that we understand Paul's arguments in Galatians if we don't understand the historical backdrop of the thinking of Judaism at the time? How can we hope to understand Revelation if we do not understand the historical circumstances and theological backdrop behind the symbols. Salvation can come to those who do not have full knowledge, and indeed that is the case for everyone. But understanding the New Testament will always be more difficult for those who do not study the languages, the writings that are contemporaneous to those who lived at the time, and the backdrop of the Old Testament.

------

Okay, so that may be annoying to you. So here's some simple prose.

Does this greatly benefit the devotional life? Not in the way you might think. You're not going to get through a first year Greek class and be oo-ing and ahh-ing over every word you read because you get so much more nuance or something. I've heard people say that, and I think they're just being wierd or are reading in a bunch more than they should. Greek is not a magical tool to find multiple levels of nuance in every word you read. Devotionally it is valuable, though, because it is an aid in interpretation. And that is definitely valuable devotionally.

It is also useful in light of the insufficient nature of translation. Sometimes there really is more nuance in the Greek than there is in most English translations simply because making readable English means not emphasizing certain aspects of the original and perhaps overemphasizing others. This is the nature of the work. I've read attempts to translate the "full Greek meaning" and they turn out to be absolutely pitiful translations that are only of dubious value when it comes to interpretation. Some study Bibles try to make up for this by using notes, like the NET Bible, but this still has its limits.

I really, truly, completely, utterly, detest attempts to learn Greek just to defend certain points of view, like the Trinity (which I believe in), Calvinism (also believe that), Arminianism (obviously don't believe that), Dispensationalism (really annoyed by that), etc. Don't learn Greek for that. Learn Greek to understand the NT better. Sure, there will be times where it will be useful in a discussion about the nature of God. Sure it will be useful sometimes in understanding passages about predestination. But please, PLEASE, don't learn Greek as something for your bag of tricks when talking to people you don't agree with.

I'll end on two personal notes. I spend a lot of time in the New Testament. Because of that, I personally could not fathom trying to interpret some of this stuff without knowing Greek. Sure, there's lots of passages where the typical English translations are just fine, but there are a number of issues where they are simply not sufficient. So give me some Greek!

And, finally, I just really get some satisfaction over being able to read some great literature in its original language. I know that won't appeal to many, but I like it quite a bit.

So why do I value knowledge of Greek? Because it helps me understand the New Testament better. And I'll take all the help I can get.

Greek Class Update

2005-08-14T05:41:00.000-07:00

Today is our first informational meeting about the Greek class that we'll be having at FBC Parker this year. It will occur right after our afternoon service, which ends about 2:00.

Alternatively, there will be one more tomorrow night at the same location, at 6:30.

If you are interested in taking the class, please come to one of the meetings. If you are not able to come to either, let me know. I know this is really short notice for todays, but I figured most who would come to this would be church members.

For directions, go to maps.google.com and use the following address:

5304 East Parker Road
Parker, Texas 75002

[Update]
If you cannot attend either meeting, send my an email and I'll send you more information.

CodeSmith 3.1

2005-08-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got my license key from the NDDNUG meeting the other day. Woohoo!

And, if you've heard that 3.1 was about to come out and were waiting for it to be announced, well, don't wait. The website says 3.0, but it is really 3.1.

Digin' it.

Woot!

NDDNUG - Rob Howard on CodeSmith 3.0

2005-08-08T20:48:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday we had a real treat at the North Dallas .NET User Group. Rob Howard did a how-to and tips and tricks presentation on CodeSmith 3.0. There were about 250 people there, probably because of the fact that they were giving away free license keys. They said they were going to mail them out. I hope I get mine soon...

Anyway, the presentation was great. Rob's a good speaker. And the software is phenomenal. I've been using it since 2.x and it has been a tremendous help to me. If you're a .net coder, I highly recommend checking it out.

http://www.codesmithtools.com/

Mystic River

2005-08-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

I heard the movie was great, so now I finally got a chance to watch it. And it was a great movie. The movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, got a number of Oscar nominations, and deserved them. The writing and acting was phenomenal.

If you like a good cop and bad guy movie, this may be a good one for you. There is a good bit of language, so if that offends, do not watch it. Otherwise, take a look.

I still need to see Eastwood's more recent movie, "Million Dollar Baby". Maybe I'll get to see that soon.

Zadig. Short but Sweet.

2005-08-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

After hearing numerous positive comments by my pastor over the last few years about Voltaire's writings, I decided to actually read some. A few months ago I picked up a small volume in the Konemann classics series that had Voltaire's Zadig and Candide. So, I pulled it out and read Zadig (only because it came first in the book before Candide).

The book is set back in ancient Babylonia. It is fiction about a very wise fellow named Zadig, who experience a great deal of misfortune but some blessing. I won't say any more so as not to spoil the plot.

Perhaps the strangest thing is how it is laid out. The entire story is done in very short chunks. The 21 chapters of this less than 100 page book average about 3-4 a chapter, with each chapter being its own discrete little unit. I wonder if Voltaire did this to give it the air of ancient literature, since the chapters of most ancient literature seem to be chopped up fairly small by modern editors. I'm interested in any other theories about this that anyone has to offer.

All in all, I very much enjoyed it. It was a very fast read, or it seemed to be. This might be because of all the little chapters. Anyway, I recommend it.

Pure Design

2005-08-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a coder. There's no way you could mistake my work with that of a real designer. I don't mix and match colors easily. I don't create awesome layouts that make people ooh and ah. Sometimes I make something and it just looks crummy. But, hey, if you want me to build something that does something, whether or not it looks good...that I can do.

Nevertheless, I do occassionally try to work on this design deficiency. One such attempt was the purchase of pure design by Mario Garcia. Mario has been involved in the redesign of multiple newspapers, and seems to have done well for himself in this design arena. So, I decided to buy the book on a whim.

It wasn't too expensive, only $24.95, but I'm not sure if I would recommend buying it. It's not that it was worthless. It just didn't seem incredibly helpful, though I really found some things he said useful. Of course, this is a review coming from someone who isn't particularly graphically talented. Instead of buying it, try to find it at a local library or something. It is a quick read, so it won't take up too much of your time.

Epic of Gilgamesh

2005-08-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

A couple months back I talked to Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers and they were nice enough to give me a copy of a book they published if I reviewed it. I gladly accepted, and this book was no mistake to read.

The book is a translation of the "Epic of Gilgamesh", translated by Danny P. Jackson. There are a number of things about the book that I found appealing:

1. Most of all, the translation was very well done. Not in the sense of accuracy, because I cannot judge that, but in the case of style. It was very readable and read more like ancient poetry than literal translation. Best feature.
2. Short but informative introduction covering issues such as translation practice, historical background, and literary sources.
3. Photographs of various archaeological bits like statues, carvings, tablets, etc.
4. Also included were illustrations of various bits of the story. Not necessary, but a nice feature.

This is not an extensive critical edition of the work, but if you want to have a copy to peruse, this is a very good volume. The only thing I would have liked to see is it in hardcover. But who cares. Good volume. Good book. I recommend it for those interested in early literature.

Don't know what it is? It is an ancient near eastern tale of a mighty man named Gilgamesh. It is mostly known for its connection/relationship to the biblical flood narrative. Though there are some serious differences between the flood stories in both works, there are a few clear parallels (the most striking I found to be the sending out of the birds after the rain stopped) between the two that make it obvious one was depending on the other, or at least both had a common source. I'll leave it up to the reader how to handle that issue :)

Reading...reading...reading...etc.

2005-08-08T13:01:00.000-07:00

Wow, I haven't blogged since July. It's because I've been too busy reading! Or coding, or whatever. Today I'll put up three book reviews, one lecture review, and one for a movie. It's reviewing time!

The Most Boring Thing In The World

2005-07-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, well that's exagerating...

I really like Microsoft's development tools. But they have the WORST names for them. For example, project "Indigo" (a pretty cool name) has officially been given a new boring name, "Windows Communication Foundation." Zzzzzzz...sorry. I'm awake again. Anyway, they really need to find someone to come up with better names for their technology. The new "Vista" name for Longhorn didn't seem like too great of a name either, but it is much better than this.

Of course, my non-programming friends who read my blog thing all my programming posts are similarly boring. Oh well.

OCP

2005-07-29T04:54:00.000-07:00

Here's something that I've posted about before, but I just thought I would do so again. I think this site totally and completely rocks. It is the site for the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha. The site is directed by Ken Penner (whom I have met...he is a very nice fellow), David Miller, and Ian Scott.

The purpose of the site is to put up critical texts of the pseudepigrapha. Rock on. Dig it. One thing I absolutely love about it is that the data is all xml. Looks like html in the browser...but it's not. Rock on. Keep up the good work.

Sharpreader - Update!

2005-07-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

Do you know what a feed reader is? If you do, skip to the next paragraph. If you don't, read this one. A feed reader is a program that helps you organize and keep up with changes happening on any site that has an RSS feed, like most blogs and some sites. Sound useful? It is. Say you've got two sites that have RSS feeds that you watch but you don't use a feed reader. You have to visit those sites any time you want to see if something new has come out. With two sites this isn't very tedious. But what about ten sites? Or fifty? If there are a number of sites that syndicate their content via RSS that you care about, you can subscribe to their feeds and your feed reader can keep you updated in regard to new material.

My favorite feed reader is Sharpreader. I have only had one problem with it, which I emailed him about, but according to his release notes he seems to have fixed it. That means I like everything about this program. If you're a windows user and you're not running a really old OS like Windows 98, check it out.

Busy

2005-07-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry, everyone, but I've been very busy lately. Not much time to blog. But, I'm back for a moment. Anything interesting happen in the world?

Twice the MCP I Used to Be...

2005-07-25T20:25:00.000-07:00

That's right, baby...I'm now an MCPx2. Technically, that's not really true. There is no MCPx2 title or anything. I'm going to have to get another test completed before I can actually change those letters to MCAD. But, back to the subject at hand...

I passed the developing ASP.NET applications certification test from Microsoft! Woohoo! As far as difficulty is concerned, it was about as difficult as the Windows Forms programming test. And just as fun :)

So, what is the best way to study for this test? Here are my suggestions:

1. Start building ASP.NET websites. Definitely the place to start. Build a lot of them, and do a lot of database interaction through ADO.NET. The test is full of questions on that subject (as is the Winforms).
2. Get some really good books and learn from the best. Here are my personal favorite ASP.NET books (i.e., the ones I use most):

a. Programming .NET by Prosise. I cut my teach on ASP.NET programming with this book right after I learned the basics of C# from SAMS. Great, great, book. Covers more than ASP.NET too. Good introduction to Xml and ADO.NET programming as well.
b. ASP.NET Coding Strategies with the Microsoft ASP.NET Team by Matthew Gibbs and Rob Howard. A great place to get into some of the more advanced topics. Dig it.
c. ASP.NET Setup and Configuration by James Avery. Useful little handbook.
d. Developing ASP.NET Server Controls and Components by Kothari and Datye. I haven't even read this whole thing, but I have thoroughly enjoyed what I did read. Packed with lots of useful information.

And if you want to know ADO.NET, I recommend reading Prosise's book, and then pick up Pragmatic ADO.NET by Shawn Wildermuth. Best book on ADO.NET I have seen.

3. And finally, after you've done all that, pick up some books to help you with the test. I recommend the Que press series. I have never liked MS Press's certification books.

That's it for now. Rock on...

Greek Class Update

2005-07-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

We've decided on the second weekend of August to have our information meetings for the beginning Greek class I'll be teaching this Fall. One will be Sunday, probably around 2:15. The other will be the following Monday at 6:30. If you plan on attending, please send me an email to let me know. The class is available for anyone who lives close enough to drive (the class will be held at FBC Parker, which is a suburb on the east side of Dallas) and of age junior high or older. More on what is required will be said at the meetings, so if you are interested, show up.

New Book and Current Reading

2005-07-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

I picked up a new book this last Friday, and I am very pleased, though I can't read it yet. The book is Programming Indigo by David Pallmann. Before I can read it, I need to finish the books I am currently in the middle of.

The first is Danny P Jackson's translation of "The Epic of Gilgamesh". This book was kindly given to me by Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers as a review copy. The translation is pleasant to read and the introduction good, but that's all I have to say for now. I'll be saying more when I'm finished.

I also need to finish a book entitled microserfs by Douglas Coupland that I borrowed from my friend Mike. It is a fictional narrative about some employees of Microsoft. Still too early on in that one to give much of a review, though I'm enjoying it so far.

Then the Indigo book, or at least not till I've finished one of the others.

New Team System Site

2005-07-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

New Team System site built on Community Server, http://teamsystemrocks.com. The coolest thing? They have over 40 windows media video tutorials on how to use Team System. Yep. That rocks. Thanks to Omar Villarreal for the link.

Cert News

2005-07-13T05:20:00.000-07:00

And now news from the world of Microsoft certifications...

I just saw on Lorenzo Barbieri's blog that MS will be rolling out a new scheme of certification this Fall with the release of VS 2005 and Sql Server 2005. Here's the article. Interesting...

ASP.NET Beta 2 Install Issue

2005-07-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

This is certainly no huge deal, but I found that installing Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005 flipped the runtime for all my IIS applications from 1.1 to 2.0. This is, of course, easy to change. I found it when I tried to attach to the aspnet process in VS 2003. It would not attach, which is not terribly surprising. So, I checked the settings and voila! Wrong framework.

This happened to me also a while back when I installed the C# express edition. I guess I'll go on the MS forums and alert them about the issue since it isn't fixed yet. I bet others have had this experience, but I don't guess it hurts.

The fix, obviously, is to just change the version of the runtime in IIS.

Almost Sold Our House...Again

2005-07-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

Well, last week we got our second contract on our house. Today they officially backed out. Reason? She heard there was crime in the area. Yep, that's right folks. There is crime in Dallas. I'm shocked!

Wider Blog...Aesthetically Problematic?

2005-07-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

On my last post I had to lower the size of my xml to an incredibly low point size to get it to fit in my blogger template. That wasn't cool. So, I went into my template and figured out how to widen everything.

The only real problem with that is the rounded corners are done through images, and to widen the blog either meant removing the images or redoing them. I chose the former.

The negative effect of this is that some elements on the page have rounded corners and some do not. Since most of my million+ readership (yes...that was serious hyperbole) probably use rss aggregators, they won't notice. Those of you who don't might. So, if you find this aesthetically distasteful to the point of a strong desire to throw up, let me know. I might find time then to deal with it.

Since the change I have, of course, enlarged the xml in my last post.

Indigo Configuration and Intellisense

2005-07-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

With Indigo, important service information is held in config files. Like, for example, the following:

1 xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

2 <configuration 
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0">

3  <system.serviceModel>

4   <services>

5    <service serviceType="BookServiceWinform.BookService">

6      <endpoint address="http://localhost:8000/BookService/"

7             bindingSectionName="basicProfileBinding"

8             contractType="BookServiceWinform.IBookServiceContract" />

9    <service>

10  <services>

11 <system.serviceModel>

12 <configuration>

There you've got some pretty important stuff which ends up defining your service and its enpoints. So I'm thinking that I want intellisense support for this in my config file. But how to do it?

First, how is xml intellisense handled by VS2005? It is all done through xsd files. These documents around found here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Xml\Schemas (if vs is installed on your c drive, of course). You can add intellisense support to your app.config files by modifying the DotNetConfig.xsd file located in that directory. This works very well with any xml file, really. Create your xsd, give it a namespace, reference that namespace in your xml file (like you see above), and you've got intellisense.

Ideally I would like to put two config files in my project, one for the regular configuration stuff and the other for my Indigo configuration. Well, I couldn't figure out how to get that to work. When I had two config files my Indigo code was looking for the new config information in App.config, not my new Indigo.config. How to point it there...dunno yet.

So, what I'm doing now is just adding further schema definition to the DotNetConfig.xsd file. Seems to work just fine.

Another option, which I will probably move to, is to create another xml file to define my Indigo configuration, read that, and setup endpoints and such though code. That should work fine as well.

If anyone has any thoughts on the matter I would love to hear them, especially if anyone knows of any xsd's already created for Indigo configuration.

Cinderella Man - Do We Have An Oscar Winner Here?

2005-07-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

The last post reminded me that I never said anything about "Cinderella Man". I saw it last week with my my friend Johnnie.

Excellent...excellent...excellent. Ron Howard + Russell Crow = Excellent Movie. Though I don't believe it is good as their "A Beautiful Mind", it is close. Howard is a great directory, and Crow, in my opinion, is the best male actor around these days. Once again these stellar movie dudes pull off an excellent film.

The movie is about boxing. If you don't like boxing, though, still go see it. There's not a ton of fighting. It's like 90% drama and 10% boxing, if that. Excellent film. Have I said that already?

[Updated]
Not that this really matters, but I actually saw it with my friend Johnnie last week. Oops.

Fantastic Four - Good But Not Fantastic

2005-07-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing Fantastic Four. If I were to compare it to Batman I would be disappointed. But, if I just wanted to rate it based on general qualities like acting, plot, special effects, etc, I would say it is good. No, it is not a knock-your-socks-off kind of movie. But it is entertaining. As far as recent comic movies, here's my heirarchy, and how it fits, starting form best to worst.

Batman Begins
Spiderman 2
Spiderman 1
X-Men 2
X-Men 1
Fantastic Four
Punisher
Daredevil
Hulk

Now, the gulf between X1 and FF is pretty big, because X1 was really good. But FF is definitely better than some of the other comic movies, in my opinion.

Thesis Topics

2005-07-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

Over at Euangelion Michael called for some fake thesis topics to throw out when somebody asks you about yours. I figured I would contribute. At the moment I am not in school, though at some point I'll go back for my PhD. Right now I'm too busy having fun programming :)

Back in college my roomate (Ragan) and I used to practice being random in conversation. Perhaps that would be relevant here. Actually, I've seen a number of theses and dissertations in my time that looked pretty random. So here are a few responses:

1. "My topic is on how the raising of the Nephilim was a thematic precursor to the idea behind the modern elevator."
2. "In my graduate study I found studying the tactics of religious and political groups interesting, so I'm doing a comparison between the tactics of the "Left Behind" series and movements in 17th century France."
3. "My topic is about the post-exilic understanding of demonic influence on banking in the pre-exilic period."
4. "Jude 2:6's influence on the most recent 'Batman' movie."
5. "My dissertation is going to argue for a common source, which I call 'F', for the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' and the biblical flood story."

Which ones are more believable? I would say numbers 3 and 5 maybe are, though they would each be better for different types of people. The first isn't going to really pique the interest of anyone, though you'll get more eyebrows raised with the second when talking to most modern evangelicals. The fifth would be useful for flustering conservative/fundamentalistic types. Third and fourth would be best for random encounters, I suppose.

My 2 cents.

Rebuilt Box...Top 10 Programs

2005-07-08T05:10:00.000-07:00

Fry's had a great sale the other day on a 60 gig SATA drive. Only $40. I couldn't resist. So I bought one and rebuilt my box. Afterwards I had to install everything again, which got me thinking about the crucial stuff that needs to be installed. So, here's my top 10 list, in no particular order.

1. Firefox (gotta have my browser)
2. Visual Studio 2003 (definitely spent more of my lifetime sitting with this open than any other program)
3. Sql Server 2000
4. Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2
5. Sql Server 2005 Beta 2
6. Office (yes, I'm just going to treat this as one program)
7. BibleWorks 6
8. Unreal Tournament 2004 (all work and no play makes Eric a dull boy)
9. SharpReader (can't live without my RSS feeds)
10. iTunes (gotta be able to manage my iPod podcasts)

I've had the betas of the 2005 development tools on my laptop for a while and they haven't really affected my 2003 environment, so I figured it was safe to go ahead and install them on my desktop. Of course, this means that I'll be rebuilding again come the week of Nov 7th when the real versions are released. Oh well.

July NDDNUG Meeting

2005-07-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

Last night we had another meeting of the North Dallas .NET User Group. A certain Stephen Swienton showed us some of the user management and profile stuff built into ASP.NET 2.0. I thought .NET 1.0 was awesome. .NET 2.o is even cooler. This is why I like being a Microsoft technology programmer.

This time they gave out 5 licenses to Sql Server 2005, standard edition. That's major cool. Unfortunately, I didn't get one :(

The Coding Humanist

Blog Now Has Two Homes

This Blog Has Moved...

Now With 50% More Geek!

VS 2005, File Templates, Snippets

Significantly Stressful Times...

Can't...Move...Blog...

Mmmm...Steak...

Review of "The Last Word" by N. T. Wright

North Dallas .NET User Group Meeting Wed Night

Oxyrhynchus Mini-Lexicon...I Wish

Purchasing Oxyrhynchus

Great Blond Joke

Pantodapos - New Blog

Another Excellent Book...Boethius

Tech News - Jan 7 2006

Terror Alert Level Addition

Sick, But Back in Action

Christmas Goodies

More Info on the Complutensian Polyglot

I Have Some Old Paper Now - I Am SO Complutensian

Sophocles, Oh Sophocles

On Greek Voice And The Ordering Of Subjects

Amazement...

Greek Class Update: Starting Verbs

I'm A Hockey Fan

Tire in the Morning, Stars at Night

The Daily Show On the Rapture

RSS Bandit

VS 2005 - Love It, Despite Issues

Gentium License Loosened

The Joy of Papyri

Stopping Virus Emails from the CIA and FBI

Virus From the CIA?

Enjoyed the Interview, Stephen

Rico And The Correlatives

Pictures of the Study...Finally!

Age of Empires III

Doom : Could Have Been A Lot Worse

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire : Excellent

Cache of 200 Ancient Papyri Found In My Study

Upset That I Didn't Go to SBL :(

Finishing Study and A Game

How Microsoft Can Compete with Open Source

2.0 For CodeSmith Users

On Starting Greek Verbs with Infinitives

Visual Studio 2005 Rocks!

Still Not Dead

Why Muslims Hate Us

Justice

In New House, Comments Back On

New House, No Internet, No Comments

House and Disaster Update

Most Important Consideration When Teaching Greek

My Parent's House Is Going To Be Leveled

A Developer Leaves MPower, And A Surprise

Greek Class #2

Conservative Protestant Monasticism - Commentary On Homeschooling

I Look Pretty

Back In Action

First Greek Class

I'm About to Be Homeless

New Blog Friend - The Militant Pacifist

Two Days at MPower

Last Week at Work, Blogging Slowdown to Continue

Feeling Illiterate

Greek Class Update

No New House... :(

New House, Baby...

Greek Class Signup

MPower Systems - New Job

Jury Duty Over

Jury Duty Rocks!

Why Learn Greek

Greek Class Update

CodeSmith 3.1

More Reading...

NDDNUG - Rob Howard on CodeSmith 3.0

Mystic River

Zadig. Short but Sweet.