Old Testament Laws Pt. 2

Start with Part 1.

Suppose I establish a relationship with my local bank by taking out a mortgage with them on my house. I now have a contract with the bank that establishes a set of rules that I need to follow in order to maintain the integrity of the contract. Likewise, the bank has an analogous set of rules that it follows to maintain the contract.

If I decide to refinance my house, I will fulfill the obligations of the mortgage contract with my current lender and transfer my remaining debt to a new mortgage instrument. This new mortgage may in fact have different terms than that of the original mortgage. However, I am no longer bound by the terms of the original mortgage rules because that contract has been completed or fulfilled.

Likewise, if my neighbor establishes a relationship with the same bank, he may in fact have a different type of mortgage than I do (e.g. 30 year fixed vs. a 5-1 ARM). In such a case the rules he follows will be different than the ones I follow.

One fact is universal. We are all in debt and must have some type of mortgage. Therefore we are all bound by some type of covenant.

God's laws are nearly always based on covenants. A covenant is a type of contract. According to Easton's Bible dictionary,

All biblical laws are placed in the context of God's covenant with Israel. Covenant, not law-keeping, establishes a relationship, just as signing a contract, rather than the specified Job, establishes an employment relationship.

In order to understand God's laws for our lives we must first establish what our relationship with him is. When we discover that relationship we will be able to find out what type of covenant we have with him. Consequently we will know what laws he intends for us to follow.

Continue reading in part 3…

Old Testament Laws Pt. 1

As a former Seventh-day Adventist I have a fairly good understanding of Old Testament laws and how they relate to gentile Christians and post crucifixion Christians. Often I hear or see statements made by Christians (and even pastors) in regard to these laws that cause me to cringe. These Christians have the best intentions, but don't really understand the danger of advocating adherence to these laws.

Depending on reactions to this small series I'm going to do, I'd like to minimally cover the following issues:

• The Ten Commandments
• The Sabbath (the 4th commandment)
• Dietary restrictions
• Tithe

These laws are the most commonly talked about by mainstream Christians, and have the potential to lead unwary adherents into dialectical traps laid by legalistic and heretical denominations. I know many of the traps because I used to make them myself.

A sample anecdote I became aware of recently was a fellow Crossroader giving up pork because she had learned from a study of the patriarchs that "that is how God wants us to live." While this sounds mostly harmless, it can end up trapping people in a downward spiral of legalism.

During this series of posts I would like to offer readers a chance to interact and contribute to the direction of the dialog. If you have any questions, criticisms, or thoughts, please feel free to share them.

Continue reading in part 2… 

Blender Desktop Publishing

This is truly bizarre. Most people who have never used Blender find Blender's interface anything but intuitive. Those who have used it for a while tend to love it.

Now Alexander Ewering has forked Blender to create a desktop publishing application with a Blender style interface. It's called DTPBlender. Now that is truly cool. Sorry, no Mac version yet.

Immigration

I now have conclusive proof that President Bush's immigration plan is a bad idea – Jimmy Carter Backs Bush Immigration Plan.

Xara Xtreme LX

Xara Xtreme LX has really come a long way. The current recommended release is version 0.5, but the teams says it is much closer to a version 1.0 release than the version numbers would seem to indicate. It is actually a very usable program now.

I was going to try and use it for a project I'm working on, but unfortunately the color editor doesn't yet allow for using an eye dropper or putting in hex codes for colors – which is essential for what I'm currently working on.

You poor Windows saps will have to shuck out the $79 for this program, but it may very well be one of the best deals in graphics software around. No doubt someone will eventually do a Windows build of the open-source version. There will definitely be a Mac build in the future as well.

Blender Logo

Here's my latest Blender work based on an idea by Jason Ely.

Elephants Dream

I got my Elephants Dream DVD yesterday and watched it last night. As far as I know this is the very first open-source movie ever made.

The movie itself is about 11 minutes including credits. The DVD contains a making of feature and quite a bit of commentary. It also includes all the production materials used to create the movie. Since it's open-source under the Creative Commons license, you are free to use the materials in any way you see fit.

I'm not quite sure about the story. It seems to me to be an attempt at presenting some sort of profound, thought provoking concepts. I'm not quite sure I get it yet. I'll have to watch it a few more times. It ends rather abruptly.

On the whole, I am very impressed with the movie. It took 8 guys 7 months to pull this off – in addition to significant help from the community. It goes to show how much works goes into these productions. I am also impressed with the quality of the models, rendering, and animation. The animation, being the most difficult to get right, is not as smooth as most professional productions I've seen, but still very good. I'm very impressed at what can be done with purely open-source software. This movie was produced using primarily Blender and Gimp.

It would be cool if 8 Christians could pull a 7-monther like this and produce a movie that would present our message, and spread through the world virally as so many other movies do.

Where do Dead Mathematicians Go?

At Mathematical Reviews we review mathematical research papers. We sometimes invite authors of papers to become reviewers. It turns out that a dead author got invited to become a reviewer.

I was charged with modifying the application that allows our editors to invite authors to become reviewers. I looked through our data dictionary trying to find a flag or something that would indicate whether an author is dead or not. I couldn’t find it. So I asked our resident expert on these things where I could find that information.

It turns out that when an author dies, they are assigned a new institution (instead of say, the University of Michigan). The institution is called DCD for Deceased. We’re still contemplating if the “Deceased” institution for mathematicians is in a hot place, or somewhere much better…

Brick Film

Mike Gallardo is doing some amazing work with stop-motion animation. His recent short film, Tom's Fun Day, made it to the registry on BrickFilms.com.

Mike is a student at Crossroads and has really stepped up to bat with his involvement with Crossroads' Student Ministry. It's very cool to see students like Mike growing into a strong relationship with Christ and becoming leaders in ministry.

Accountants Created Open Source

Why do people use and create open-source software? Because they don't want to deal with the hassles that come with accounting.

Suppose I want to acquire a package that does X. The traditional method would be to shop around for packages that do X and then order one. Of course that requires a long approval process by managers and the accounting department. And if you don't have it in the budget this year you have to wait till next year.

Systems people are an impatient lot and by the time the whole process has been followed, these guys have either already written the package themselves, or they've found an open-source package that does X without the red tape.

In many cases, open-source is simply the path of least resistance.

Good Patent, Evil Patent

Apple recently filed for 2 new patents.

The first patent is for a multi-point touchscreen. This sounds like a really innovative and cool technology. If Apple can implement this, then Apple deserves to reap the rewards of the hard work that went into research and development for this technology.

The second patent is for the ability to embed marketing meta-data in media files. So for instance, you could embed information on where to buy a full version of a quicktime trailer right in the .mov file. This patent is not innovative, is trivial to implement, and does not deserve a patent. It is evil. (Are advertisements on DVDs covered under this patent? Doesn't that constitute prior art?)

The patent system was created to ensure that people who innovate are justly compensated for their ingenuity and hard work. The first patent fits into this model very well. The second does not. Apple simply wants to make sure that nobody else can do this.

*SINGSONG VOICE ON*

"We did it first and you can't do it. Naa, na, na, naa, na. Thpppt Thpppt."

*SINGSONG VOICE OFF*

Something needs to be done about the patent system. It is out of control. Patents have enabled a patent cold war among software companies. Apple isn't the only one. It's just a current example.

Desktop Pet Peeves

It's Friday so…

1. Full-screen windows – Why have windows if you're going to make all your applications full screen. DOS was good enough. Most average users I know do this the instant they sit down at a computer. Arggghhhh!
2. Low resolution – I've had many people request that I change their monitors back to 800×600 – "The fonts are too small." Why have a nice monitor if you're going to waste it. You can read small type on paper, why not on the screen?
3. Really big fonts – if you need really big fonts it's time to get some glasses. Stop wasting screen real-estate. You can't be productive with only one application on your desktop (unless it's Blender ;)
4. Icons on the desktop – the desktop is a temporary workspace. Don't leave stuff on it. A trash-can is the most I want to see. Use menus for applications.
5. Click-to-focus – I want the window focus to follow my mouse without having to click on the window. Linux Window managers have settings for this. I think Microsoft had a program called TweakUI to make this happen.
6. Systems with out virtual desktops – Most Linux window managers come with these out of the box. Even when I used Windows I had Vern. It looks like Mac has one too (and another). You're not productive until you have virtual desktops.

User Interfaces Pt. 2

I've had a lot of reactions to my previous post on user interfaces so I thought it would be appropriate to continue the discussion. Perhaps I came across a bit extreme in my first post, but that is because I wanted to get your attention.

In previous posts I have made it quite clear that I am very keenly interested in finding software that is easy to use because I've learned over the years that if software isn't convenient and easy, people simply won't use it no matter what is decreed from on high.

However, I think we're in the middle of a "simplicity" fad. Take for instance this article by Don Norman (Mr. Usability) about Yahoo actually being more "use-able" than Google. Google's site is the epitome of simplicity, and yet according to Don, it is far less usable than Yahoo because in order to do anything slightly out of the ordinary you really have to dig.

The current fad is to have big happy fonts, clean lines, and as little as possible on the page. Sometimes this is detrimental to usability rather then beneficial.

I think there is a happy medium somewhere, and that medium is dependant on the application. For a 3D modeling tool like Blender, the needle swings far to the complex end of the spectrum – very appropriately. For a brochure-ware style church website, things probably need to be quite a bit simpler.

My point is, don't go ultra-simple just because it's trendy.

Alfresco 100% Open-Source

Alfresco is now 100% open-source. All the "enterprise" class features are now available in the open-source version. Commercial support is still available as well.

Though Alfresco isn't perfect, it seems to be the best open-source document management solution out there. I've been using it to store all my Crossroads related files for the last couple months and it works well. It's not as fast as I'd like, but I think that will be ironed out over time. It looks like full web content management features will be available later this year to make Alfresco a very versatile and comprehensive system.