On Thanksgiving Day I drove to Tennessee to spend the holiday with my mom. It was just the two of us, as Eugene and Heidi were visiting other family in another state. Mom made a great meal: vegetarian stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, lima beans, and homemade cranberry bread and apple pie. It was all very good.

The next day we went to the Northgate mall near Chattanooga to take advantage of the some of the Black Friday sales. I picked up some clothes and other items. I got a new modem for my mom's beleaguered eMachine, since the previous modem was having hardware and/or driver problems that kept causing the whole machine to crash sooner or later after every boot, without exception. On a good day it might run for a number of hours before going down, but sometimes it wouldn't last even one minute. If you've ever had a computer that would crash 30 seconds after booting, 10 times in a row, you can understand the frustration of this predicament. After installing the new U.S.Robotics modem it seemed to work fine. But I then had about a year's worth of Microsoft patches (including the whole SP2) and virus updates to finish downloading and installing over a dial-up connection. (I wish I had bought her a Mac instead. Did I mention there are no viruses for the Mac?)

On Sabbath we went to church in Dunlap. However, my mom wasn't feeling well, so we only stayed for Sabbath school. Later we went for a walk at Burgess Falls State Park. Neither of us had been there before, and it was fun to explore.

It wasn't the best time of year to visit Burgess Falls, though. The fall colors were long gone, and so it was a bit dismal looking. However, I imagine that in the spring, summer, or early fall it is extraordinarily beautiful.

The lower falls:





I was experimenting with the slow shutter speed effect, since it is a popular technique used to photograph waterfalls. I don't think I've quite mastered it, but I did get some nice pictures. In case you are wondering what difference the shutter speed makes, here is an example (the numbers are the shutter speeds used — they are all fractions of a second). As you can see, at 1/80th of a second and faster, the water appears as crisp drops. Many cameras shoot at least this fast by default. At a slower 1/20th of a second (4x slower), the water has a more natural blur. And at 1/10th (8x slower), it has a somewhat dreamy feel to it.



This is the middle falls:



From the observation area near the third falls, you can see this deep-cut canyon (this photo is a composite of two; my camera lens was simply unable to take it all in):



The third falls (lower falls, great falls) as seen from above:



Stair-step falls near the top of the third falls:



The third falls as seen from below:



More slow shutter photography (really happy with how this one turned out!), taken at the base of these falls:



Adding to the difficulty of trying a new technique was the fact that we arrived late in the afternoon, about an hour before dusk. That didn't give me a lot of light to work with, but it may have helped indirectly. I had trouble with severe over-exposurers, because slow shutter speeds admit more light. I figured the camera would automatically compensate somehow, but it didn't. Even with a -2 stop manual adjustment, some of the pictures were "burned up" beyond recovery. Still, I think I improved my skills and got some nice shots in the process.

While I like the program I've used to redesign and maintain this site (RapidWeaver), it is starting to become a bit cumbersome, something I thought might eventually happen from the get-go. RapidWeaver uploads static pages only — no dynamic web apps involved — and consequently at least once a month it is necessary to re-upload the entire collection of blog pages to keep their indexes current. After nearly eight months, this is becoming a little taxing on my dial-up connection (although it still usually takes less than five minutes to complete). Besides the upload burden, it is not possible to maintain the blog from multiple computers, due to the way RapidWeaver works (everything needs to be managed from a single computer). I would really like to break free of that.

At the moment WordPress seems one of the better options. I don't want a remote hosted blogging service (like Blogger), nor do I want a gargantuan content management system (like Drupal). I just want something simple and easy to use, with a pretty GUI, that I can host on my own site, and that is preferably free, open source, standards compliant, and actively developed. There are a few other interesting options besides WordPress, but I've heard so many good things about that one that I'm leaning heavily towards it.

I suppose it takes a certain mind to appreciate Haiku Error Messages. First, a little explanation for the uninitiated of what haiku is: Haiku is a Japanese method of writing poetry. In its modern English form, it usually consists of three lines: the first 5 syllabels in length, the second 7 syllabels, and the final 5 again. It is nearly always free verse, which is to say it does not rhyme. These three lines form the complete poem. (This is a very important point, because if you go to the Haiku Error Messages page linked above, and read it as one long poem, it will make absolutely no sense. Each three lines is a complete, independent poem in itself.)

I learned haiku in elementary school, where it is often introduced as a way for children to get their feet wet in poetry. I may have enountered it later in high school as well. I find haiku fascinating, in part because of the discipline required to create a beautiful (or, in this case, witty) poem within such tight constraints.

Even if you have no interest in haiku or poetry per se, you might enjoy the clever wit expressed in these short verses. For example, perhaps you can identify with the writer of this haiku:

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

In place of the plain old "This page cannot be found" website errors often seen, what if you were greeted with this?

The website you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist

Some of the poems require a little inside knowledge, and may not make a lot of sense to everyone. But they're all very clever.

I'm a Verizon customer, in part because Verizon is about the only game in town where I live. Other services just don't work reliably out in the sticks where 3ABN is located. I am also a member of their "New Every 2" program (get $100 towards a new phone every two years). Since I was well past the conclusion of my 2-year contract, I decided to upgrade to something bigger and better.

As you may know, cell phone choice is based on your service provider, and further limited by your geographical location. The kind of phone I wanted, namely one that is natively iSync compatible, is just not available. So I settled for the next best thing: the Samsung SCH-a930. After the $100 credit and $50 rebate, it was free. Besides all the usual stuff, it supports broadband internet, Bluetooth, taking photos and recording video, and assorted other bells and whistles. It has a nice feel in the hand, and the buttons are very responsive. You can add a memory card to store more of your pics and other stuff.

My only significant complaint so far is that the audio quality is a little lacking — a rather significant shortcoming for a cell phone. Voice calls tend to break up frequently out here regardless, and something about this phone makes the quality even worse; it's sounds like audio that's been extremely digitally compressed, or like talking though a CB. I get tired of repeatedly asking the other party to repeat themselves, so I sometimes catch myself saying "Huh, wow," even though I have no clue what the other person just said. But it bothers me, knowing I may miss a critical piece of the conversation. The other two annoyances are the built-in anntenae, which is coverd by a label at the top back side of the phone which says, in short, "Don't touch this space," requiring me to hold the phone awkwardly by its sides; and the built-in connector covers which are made of a rubbery material and seem liable to tear off at some point.

Not to overstate the case, in the few days that I've had this phone, I've managed to get through the calls without missing too much — a syllable here, a word or two there. And it does have some really great features: using the broadband internet capability in conjunction with Bluetooth (wireless technology), I am able to access the internet on my laptop at 100-120 kbps from anywhere. The laptop connects to the internet through a wireless connection to the phone. It does use airtime minutes, but during evenings and weekends it's essentially free. And it's faster than my dial-up connection. I probably won't use it much, but in cases where I need to download a large file or access the internet away from home it could be a life-saver. I've been told that in urban areas the connection speed is much faster, almost as fast as cable.

The built-in camera is nice. It takes fairly decent pictures, and the lens swivels around so it can either face the user when the lid is flipped open, or it can spin around to face the outside world. It will even capture 20 seconds or so of video. Both photos and video can be sent to users with compatible phones.

I was a bit miffed that, even though the phone supports Bluetooth, it is not iSync compatible. This may be because Verizon has deliberately disabled the necessary features, something they are prone to do when phone features compete with their own "extra" services. Of course, savvy users can hack the phone to re-enable features, although Verizon takes a very dim view of such activity. There is an open source program called BitPim that makes it easy to access closed features on many different cell phone models, but it requires a USB cable connection to the phone, which I don't have yet.

What it looks like when closed (camera is at top center, with flash southeast of it; the display is on constantly, but seems to use little power; the three buttons centered below are music player controls):



I've saved my old phone. It occurred to me that a person can get by without cell phone insurance just by hanging on to his or her old phone, so long as he or she is not accident prone or dependent on a particular model. Correction: Apparently you cannot use two cell phones for a single number, even if you switch off whichever one you are not using. Bummer. (And even if for some reason the old phone is disabled, it could always be reactivated if the new one is lost or damaged.)

I first saw this picture in an online photo gallery, but the source was not credited, and it was combined with lots of other images, some photos and others clearly imaginary. It seemed too good to be true, so I dismissed it. But later I saw it again, with a proper credit and description. Turns out it is the waterfalls at Plitvicka Jezera National Park in Croatia. You can view the full size, uncropped picture by clicking here. It is amazing.

On November 6, Adam Dean joined my department at 3ABN as a graphic design assistant. Adam is the third person I've brought on board, although one of those, Steve (our webmaster), was later moved to the IT department, so that now there are three of us in the Publishing Department altogether. Adam previously worked as a graphic designer for Wal-Mart in Arkansas.

Adam seems to enjoy working here, and I believe he will be a great asset to the ministry. I look forward to getting better acquainted, and seeing what his gifts and skills can do.

Adam at his workstation:

On Thursday, October 26, my new Mac Pro arrived. Below is a picture of it, along with my new 24-inch Cinema display (replacing a 20-inch Formac display). A Wacom tablet and MS mouse can be seen as well.

I am quite happy with this machine. It runs noticeably faster than my previous PowerMac G5, thanks to two dual-core (quad core) 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon processors and 2 MB RAM. Because it is Intel based, it can also run Windows at full speed; but I have not yet installed Windows on it. I also added a second hard drive, yielding over 400 GB of storage combined. Like its predecessor, the Mac Pro is beautiful inside and out (if you've ever seen the tangle of wires and mess of components in a typical computer box, the sleek and organized inside of a Mac Pro looks like a work of art). Adding the second drive was a breeze thanks to the slide-in drive bays.

There have been a few minor bumps due to PowerPC applications that did not work on the Intel Mac. However, most of those have since been resolved through free updates. And the remainder are not mission-critical apps for me. My most-used applications, including Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Microsoft Office 2004, run perfectly fine.