Google Wave

Sorry to those who follow my blog and are relatively normal... this is another geek post!

So I've discovered Google Wave and managed to get myself an invite (just like when Gmail started, this is still invite only). To sum it up really simply, this is a combination of E-mail, IM, Wiki and social networking. Basically you start a conversation (a wave) with other people and the content of that conversation changes - every member of the conversation can edit every part of that conversation!

It's pretty exciting, useful for communication and collaboration (provided, of course, that it takes off).

The thing is, I have 18 invites remaining and it's a bit boring (and pointless) if I have no one to talk to, so I'm looking to get some of my friends on board - especially people who are likely to use it to communicate a lot. If you want an invite, just let me know!

Sword drills and SAYsoaps

So a couple of days ago I said how I was going to engage in training and spiritual exercise, in an attempt to build myself up and prepare myself for what's ahead.

To be honest the knee drills have been easier. Although I've only actually been on my knees once, I have been making an effort to spend some time praying every morning to varying levels of success - in the words of most of my teachers: "Could do better!"

However I've really struggled with the Sword Drills. I know it's vitally important that I don't just dip into the bible but actually bite huge chunks out of it - that's why I picked the SAYsoaps stuff. It's online and I can look at it whenever, plus it has other peoples observations, applications and prayers attached. However I've been struggling a little because the passages are so long!

So today my brain actually kicked into gear and I had a think. It became quite obvious eventually - SAYsoaps includes a link to BibleGateway, BibleGateway includes a "listen to this passage" feature et voila, listen to the passage whilst I do other stuff! Yay! I tried it today and got through Proverbs 4-7 quite painlessly (I'll be blogging about this shortly). So pretty good really!

Tech meets holiness!

I love it when I can combine my two loves, technology and Christianity! As I've said lots of times before, I'm trying to get myself trained up as a warrior. Recently, however, I've been a bit lax. I've let myself go!!

So here was my plan over a year ago now: morning and evening knee and sword drills - a good combination of exercise and discipline. The situation now? Unfortunately I haven't continued any one of those four exercises... oh dear!

It strikes me that perhaps God has postponed our engagement in the battlefront in Looe until we are properly focused on Him (especially me). I'm now working from "home" for the same company, and the joy of this situation is that they told me that as long as I was available 10-4, I could pretty much work whenever I wanted. The last few days I've been waking up at 9:30 and still having to rush to work... what's that about?

So, anyway, it's time to recommit myself and get a little bit more disciplined!! As part of that, I've been really impressed with SAYsoaps - it's an interactive daily reading guide provided by the Youth Department of The Salvation Army USA Western Territory (SOAP stands for Scripture, Observation, Application & Prayer). I wanted a way to view it on my phone and use it in the morning, so I played around with the site a little bit and I've managed to develop an RSS feed of yesterdays, todays and tomorrows readings.

The feed (built using Yahoo! Pipes) can be seen at http://pipes.yahoo.com/dave_lumm/saysoap and the RSS feed is there (or here).

In order to build the feed, I had to start with the yearly outline and build from there. It takes the list of daily readings and uses those for the item titles, the link points to the specific record on the SAYsoaps site and the "description" (or body) of each item is captured from the BibleGateway.com mobile website.

This means I can read on my phone and then comment on the site if I so wish. Good eh? I really love playing around with Yahoo! Pipes, they're brilliant!

OK, finally, what's the plan for my spiritual exercise and training?
Morning Sword Drill - SAYsoaps - Something big to wrestle with to get me going for the day (hopefully you can expect to see some output from these morning sessions on here)
Morning Knee Drill - Literally get down on my knees and thank God for another day, pray for people, situations and places, pray through issues of the day

Spiritual food/snacks (important to match exercise with a healthy diet ;-) ) - A few daily readings to provide extra bits of spiritual nourishment

Evening Sword Drill - Specific study of passages as led
Evening Knee Drill - Praise God for the day, pray through issues of the day

At least once a week Lucy and I will also spend some time studying, praying and worshipping together, something that we haven't done regularly for a little too long!

Cheerio for now!

Dave

Practical Holiness

I've re-started following Captain Andrew Bale's blog after a time of neglect - in fact, I've neglected to follow any blogs for sometime until discovering the incredible usefulness of Google Reader!

Anyway, fitting in perfectly with what I've been thinking recently came this post on his blog http://beyondthebrook.blogspot.com/2009/06/one-way.html. It includes his manifesto for practical holiness (my description, not his):

I believe that the following lifestyle manifesto is a gift from God, it is not an attempt to earn God's blessing but is a response to blessings already received, it is not an attempt to win 'salvation by works' it is a commitment to see God's words reflected in my actions. This manifesto is an extension of my Articles of War, and is from now on a sacred part of my Salvationist covenant. I would encourage others to sign up.

• As long as people are hungry I will only eat the minimum required to remain healthy.
  
• As long as people go thirsty I will only drink water.
  
• I will not waste or mince my words while there are people who remain deaf to God's word.
  
• I will not abuse my freedom in Christ but will use it to release those who are bound by sin and addiction.
  
• In a world of increasing leisure and dubious entertainment I surrender all my spare time to God to reach the distracted.
  
• In a world of increasing materialism and consumerism I will embrace poverty (as much as I practically can) and surrender my money to God to reach the dissatisfied and sell all personal possessions which are not essential to my mission.
  
• In a fragmented world of broken relationships, where individuals are increasingly marginalised, I will not forget my own family in my enthusiastic efforts to welcome the excluded.
  
• I will remember that rest is a command and obey it even though to do so is against the grain.
  
• In an environment damaged through the apathy of greedy industry and lazy humanity I will use the minimum of both natural resources and energy. Practically, I will wash only with cold water, walk (where possible instead of drive) and where I can travel by public transport.
  
• In a world of political, economic and social oppression I will fight for social justice, champion the cause of the forgotten and bring those out of sight into mind. I will make myself aware of, and join in, campaigns for social justice, I will use any purchasing power that comes my way to shop ethically.
  
• In a world of political correctness and Christian hypocrisy I will hate and oppose the sin but adamantly refuse to hate the sinner - I will love the unloved as Christ loves me.
  
• I am a resource in God's hands made freely available for him to spend as he wishes. I give myself totally and without any reservation to God and the Salvation War.
  
• I am dead long live Jesus

Definitely inspiring stuff, I think I'll have to spend some time getting to grips with how this would affect my life and what steps I need to take to make my life more in-line with what I profess. I guess I may spend some time addressing these points one by one over the next few weeks.

The problem with consistency

Followers of my gorgeous wife's blog will know that we're trying to live an organic and ethical life - she sums it up perfectly as SOLES (Seasonal, Organic, Local, Ethical and Sustainable). As Christians we believe we should do no less (it's part of our holiness), and would encourage the rest of you to give it a try.

There's only one problem with making a statement like this, only one problem with making this stand: consistency. Now that we have made this decision we cannot go back on it and we really shouldn't compromise.

At the moment we're going through a bit of a financial crisis. Ho hum, it happens. We're trying to work it all out. In the meantime, we're buying more expensive stuff, because of our rules. Normally in this situation, I would have downgraded as much as possible to ASDA Smartprice, not this time (and never again). So what do we do?

We're trying to eat less, waste less and make more of what we have. We're trying to buy the minimum we can. It's tough, but people used to live like this all the time. For instance, the other week we had quite a lot of our vegetable box left over, so I made stew out of it and froze them. Minimal waste. Perfect!

Look out for tips on saving and making your ethical produce go as far as possible on Lucy's blog.

Robot to create Facebook profile

From the BBC:

Facebook could soon be helping bridge the divide between humans and robots.
Researchers are giving a robot its own Facebook profile page to help foster meaningful relationships with people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8034190.stm

Researchers are constantly trying to get normal humans to interact with robots, it's the best way for them to learn. This might be an interesting turning point in the interactivity of robots.

Cool stuff!

Moral Code for Military Robots?

Just read an interesting article on Times Online about some research being undertaken by the US Navy regarding AI in field robots. Interesting stuff, although it's all been talked about for quite a while now.

Two key questions come up:
1. How do you stop the robots from going all Skynet on you?
2. Who's responsible when the robots go wrong?

You can see the article here: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5741334.ece

AI to help you get to work

I'm catching up on some of my e-mails, I have something like 30 e-mails from Google News alerts relating to Artificial Intelligence. Even though I've sort of left that behind, I like to keep myself up-to-date. Anyway, more point is, I may make a few posts on my findings from those e-mails...

This one relates to the use of AI (fuzzy-logic) to aid a GPS navigation system. It's called CADRE and you can see more here (Science Daily).