As Archchancellor of the Unseen University, you are the most sensiblely pig-headed wizard on campus. And what is perhaps more remarkable than being able to summon fireballs whenever you want them, you're even usually right. You have Rincewind's luck without any of his pathetic everyman-ness. After all, you *are* Archchancellor.

Take The Which Discworld Character Am I Test at HelloQuizzy

My life is complete...

I recently discovered a Z-code interpreter for iPhone - Frotz - and my life is complete! Z-code is the way of coding those text based interactive adventure games which were the basis for my love of computers in the early 80's. There are any number of Z-code adventures which can be played on any Z-code interpreter, including several versions of the classic Will Crowther Colossal Cave/Adventure. But in particular Z-code was used by the company Infocom to produce some classic games of all time.

As well as the popular Zork series, my personal favourites included a quirky 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy' game as well as the hilarious comedic outing 'Leather Goddess of Phobos'. If you have original versions of these games you can use the original Z-code data file for an interpreter like Frotz (which has been ported to many platforms). If you don't own the original games, then for the enterprising there may be other sources (*cough* *cough* *torrents*) for the z-code files. Once you've obtained the files, you need to put them on a server somewhere, then Frotz iPhone can browse to the appropriate URL and can download the z-code files.

Anyway I'm going to stop blogging now and get down to it! Ahhhhhh, memories...

"You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it, which you can't.

It is pitch black."

A couple of really interesting posts...

... by nakedpastor (and the second one). I really resonate with some of the feelings in this post (although I'm actually pretty happy in my own non-parish job at the moment). More than just a personal thing though, this kind of feeling about the institutional church is something I'm picking up more and more from friends and colleagues from my own and other denominations.

I feel like something is going to come together in my mind soon and I'm looking forward to the aha! moment.

Entourage and iPhone

I have been having a very annoying issue where messages sent from my iPhone (via my work Exchange server) show up as goobledygook in Entourage, though they are fine on the phone and indeed fine if I go into Windows Outlook. Apparently this is a long standing bug in Activesync for Exchange server 2003 (but not 2007). Anyway, short of persuading IT to upgrade to exchange server 2007 (yeah right, they're going to do that for a mac user they don't want to support anyway!) there doesn't appear to be a good workaround but I did find an Applescript that will let you look at the message and then save it to the desktop and then you can drag it back into Entourage and delete the original. Clunky but better than nothing. The script is found here. If I ever have time I might look at further automating the process of saving, re-adding and deleting via mods to the AppleScript or automator.

From my iPhone

Well, I held out a week and a half...

White, 16gb, Telstra for anyone interested :-)

DO IT NOW!!!

Run, don't walk to watch Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog.

NOW!

MobileMe and Safari 4 Developer Preview

Apple's replacement for .Mac - MobileMe has (after a slightly rocky start) now launched and it looks pretty cool. It consists of a number of very polished webapps to do Calendering, Contacts, Email and Photo galleries, but more importantly it uses push technology to make sure that all your information stays up to date on any Macs you use, your iPhone etc. Linked with ActiveSync support, push mail makes MobileMe very cool for business people on the go.

Unfortunately, when I logged in to MobileMe, I found that a lot of the Ajax-y goodness wasn't working for me. In particular many of the icons weren't responding to mouse-clicks (though a right/control-click could be used ok and the desired option could be opened in a new Tab or Window - marginally workable but very annoying). Everything worked ok in Firefox so I eventually tracked the issue down (via a helpful Wikipedia article) to my use of Safari 4 Developer Preview. That left me with a real problem! You see Safari 4 has one killer feature I can't do without - full page zooming, rather than just changing font sizes. For an oldie like me who often needs a larger font size, the old zoom feature was a pain - only the text changed so the whole page layout and design was killed and overlapping boxes and controls often made readability a problem. But Safari 4 zooms the whole page, graphics and all to give an excellent result - layout intact and fonts large enough to read! If it came down to MobileMe vs Safari 4 I knew which would win!

Luckily a quick visit to the Apple Developer Connection revealed a version of Safari 4 Developers Preview with a date from a few days ago and I (correctly) surmised that this might solve the problem. So now things have settled down in the Cullen household, full page zooming intact, new MobileMe apps to check out, and continued lust for the iPhone 3G unabated...

P.S. I'm writing this in MarsEdit, having previously written it (or a nearly similar post) in ecto 3beta only to have it disappear when I tried to change from rich text to HTML mode. Sadly this isn't the first (or even second or third) time this has happened but it was the last time. Ecto development seems to have stalled and I'm leaving.

P.P.S. I then updated the Wikipedia article ;-)

10 Little Pieces of Advice to Take or Leave

I loved this list of advice from nakedpastor :

Lead leaderlessly. That is, lead in a non-leading kind of way. Serve. Step out of the leadership position continually. Perpetually. Create the vacuum for others to lead and serve.

Don’t go anywhere. No goal. No destiny. No vision. Keep it real and keep it present. You either serve the vision or you serve the people.

Don’t ever think of the “church” as some kind of entity ASIDE from the real flesh and blood people that constitute it. The church isn’t the entity, even though it wants to be and constantly endeavors to be.

Allow worship and expression of all sorts to be indigenous. Never think of worship as instruction. It is God-ward, not human-ward.

If prayer is always in the form of a song and never said or read, so be it.

Allow freedom of expression, even if it’s going to be weird, uncomfortable, and questionable. Judge it afterwards. Yes, when done with mutual respect, we do get used to this honest and authentic form of dialog and learning.

Let sinners play too.

Question everything.

Never be overly impressed with another person. No one is good but God alone.

Don’t be afraid to kill the mood. Always be honest and free, no matter how uncomfortable you might cause others to feel.

I especially liked number's 1, 6 and 8. As for 2, I agree that I'm over the vision thing, but I do think it's important to hold to 'values' and it may well be that some of those values are future-focussed. I also worry a bit about the 'serve the people' line since I think that's what too many churches do and become big clubs for members. Of course if you take the broadest possible approach to 'the people' then that's better , although I still think our values need to include an orientation toward serving the 'non-people' parts of creation too.

Perhaps it will work...

Emboldened by the fact that my endorsement of Kevin 07 seemed to do the trick, let me nail my (non-American) colours to the mast concerning the upcoming Presidential election...

Make love not warcraft

The Australian iTunes store now has TV programs, so as a test I downloaded a copy of the South Park episode, "Make love not Warcraft". It's hilarious, especially for a player, although I was just a little concerned at the fact that the evil character looks just a little like moi (but with the baldness...).

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

My favourite sequence is:

Cartman: Ok, hit him with pyroblast, Kyle.

Kyle: Casting... there's an 8 second cast time.

Cartman: Aren't you specced to reduce cast time?

Kyle: No, I'm an arcane fire mage.

Cartman: (Disgusted) Christ...

Family Trip to the new Sydney Apple Store

Ok, so I didn't camp out waiting in line, or even visit on the opening day, but I think that a visit within 48 hours of the opening "shows willing". The store was still pretty crowded (I'd say about 100 - 150) on each of the three floors, and it was exciting to be there. (The bagpiper busking directly opposite the Store just added to the vibe!)

See the rest of the pics (shot from my NON-iPhone, till 11th July) at Flickr.

Suzie is in the middle of a fine arts course which includes 2D imaging and digital photography, and the G5 is getting a bit long in the tooth, so we may return in the next few weeks to look at the 24" iMacs.

Flee to the Desert

I'm now taking a new blog, nakedpastor (Darren put me onto ASBO Jesus, which in turn took me to nakedpastor). And this morning's post clicked with me, following my anti-institutional rantings of the other day.

Every once in a while I come to the realization that I don’t believe in church as it is. I don’t wish to support it. I don’t want to perpetuate its existence. I don’t want to reinforce its rules, its politics, its agendas, its programs. I want to get out of it altogether. I yearn to remove myself from this game completely and forever. I want, like the earliest hermits such as St. Anthony in Egypt, to retreat to the remotest desert and weave baskets. And I would do this not only as a way to get back in touch with raw simplicity and truth, but also as a demonstration of protest against the ecclesiastical system and its managers. Within, I’m done with it. When, oh when, will we ever ever realize that all we are doing with all of our ideas, visions, agendas, revolutions and reforms is tweaking that which imprisons us? We are the captains of modification. The result: people come along, take one look at the dolled-up corpse of our refined church, and say, “My, it looks really good!” just before we close the casket!

[From Flee to the Desert]

That story

Stephen Garner's comment drove me to do some exploring - first via the net, then on my own bookshelves (ah, the inexpressible joy of having ALL my books out of boxes and on shelves!!!). The story referred to in my last post is by Harry Harrison and is titled, "The Streets of Ashkelon" (1961). The hero is an athiest Trader, John Garth, dismayed when a Catholic priest is delivered to the world on which he lives, a world populated by uniformly well-behaved beings who have never been 'lured' by any form of superstition and as a result are "happier and sane because of it." However the priest stays and following much discussion and reading of the Bible, the beings decide that they would like to believe, but need the help of a miracle - the kind of miracle which brings a whole world to belief. And so in eager anticipation they crucify the priest and bury him (having bound the Trader so he would not interfere), waiting for the miracle of resurrection to take place. Afterwards, Itin, a questioning alien asks the Trader whether they had done the right thing - whether the priest would be raised, to which the Trader answers negatively.

"Then we will not be saved? We will not become pure?" [asks Itin]

"You were pure," Garth said, in a voice somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "That's the horrible, ugly, dirty part of it. You were pure. Now you are..."

"Murderers," Itin said, and the water ran down from his lowered head and streamed away into the darkness.

God could have created aliens too: Vatican

The search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God, the pope's chief astronomer said on Tuesday, adding that some aliens might even be innocent of the original sin. [From God could have created aliens too: Vatican]

How bizzare. Wasn't there a Sci-fi story about just this issue? IIRC it's about a priest who ends up being crucified by the aliens who expect him to be resurrected and discover their sin when he hangs there dead?