Happy Easter -- Christ is risen indeed!

What a wonderful time of the year for us, as Christians, to remember the glorious resurrection! We worship on Sundays because this was the day of Christ's resurrection from the dead, but it's also, in my mind, important to set time aside on the anniversary of our blessed hope.

I've been thinking about the resurrection more this past year, and I have a thought: one of the strongest proofs of Christ's resurrection lies in the changes the Holy Spirit wrought in the lives of His disciples and those who lived in the ancient world.

At the time of Christ's death, His disciples had fled. The oligarchical religious authorities had, it seemed, succeeded in squelching what they viewed as a blasphemous trend and an affront to their authority. Jesus' friends had abandoned Him immediately after His arrest, and, on that Sunday so long ago, were in hiding. They feared the reprisal of the authorities against those Jesus had taken into His "inner circle," so they sat in their rooms, cowardly and afraid for their own lives.

Don't get me wrong -- I would have done the same...we all would have.

But, within a very short amount of time, these men swept through Israel, Palestine, Asia Minor and to even farther reaches of the known world, spreading the glorious news of Christ's death and resurrection and forgiveness for sin. They baptized and made disciples wherever they went, turning the Jewish society completely on its head. Those who had lived and breathed a fiercely xenophobic and merit-based religious lifestyle were now proclaiming the forgiveness of sins fully apart from works to those outside their respective society. Faith and belief were no longer restricted to a few select practitioners, men, women, soldiers, etc. Instead, all, even small children, were welcomed into the Church.

For those who would purport the existence of explicit "misogynism" in the early church, I would ask they read the New Testament and consider the words of Christ, Who, in a strictly patristic society, reached out to women with His teachings; as well as the apostle Paul, who, though recognizing the difference in role and responsibility between the sexes, also acclaims specific women working alongside men in the church. I would also encourage them to compare Christianity in its day to the other religious institutions at the time: it stands apart in its acceptance of all from different walks of life, and its claims of the abject uselessness of meritorious acts.

In a very short amount of time, the world was drastically and fundamentally changed. No longer basing their religious standing on their capacity to keep Law, give charitably, or act in accordance with goodness, Christians were, rather, displaying chartity and good deeds stemming from an inward change. Rather than working to earn merit, their focus was on being thankful for a gift given while they were still sinners (Romans 3:8), and spreading this good news to everyone they came near.

Christianity spread like a wild fire in its early days, in the face of the most perverse and grotesque persecution and opposition known to man. Under the reign of Domitian, Christian persecution became a matter of state policy; under the reign of Nero, Christians were tortured and ravished as a matter of entertainment. The Jewish religious authorities persecuted and murdered early leaders of the Christian church, casting others into jail.

We know the tomb is empty. Christ rose from the grave (halleluiah!) and we in Him we have a blessed hope. But we need remember one thing: no explanation, no physical evidence, no arguments are sufficient to explain this unprecedented phenomenon. It's not enough for the world to present Jesus' bones and say, "here he is!" Such an occurrence falls drastically short of the historical evidence we have of such a massive personal transformation on behalf of His followers.

What more can we ask for? The proof of Jesus' resurrection and His sending the Holy Spirit need not lie in manifestations of "spiritual gifts;" it need not be sought in an "experience" or a "feeling" or emotion; it need not be based upon the display of miraculous "healings" during televangelist gatherings. Though I don't discount gifts, feelings, or the power of the Lord to heal, we far too often seek for reassurance of His reality in things which focus us inward:

1. I have this gift
2. I feel this feeling/sensation
3. I was healed

Instead, let us turn to the real and historical Jesus as our reassurance and hope. We have the ultimate proof of His resurrection: an empty grave, a missing body, 500+ witnesses, and the greatest spiritual conversion mankind could ever witness.

He has risen indeed!! Happy Easter!!

Issues Etc -- Does Satan Exist?

I listened to a great review of the ABC Panel which discussed the existence of Satan. It's in two parts:






These are well worth listening to.

A few Ofelia Pics

Ok, I wanted to post a few pictures of my kiddo:

She's just so friggin' cute!















She's trying to read like her daddy. Her mommy is also now reading too!















We had a little date to the library on Saturday--she was ready for the blustery weather:















Here she is, trying to distract her daddy while he's sick and working from home:

Musings on Palm Sunday

I had a thought this morning while at church.

Today's the day the Christian church remembers Christ's entrance into Jerusalem, the week before He was crucified by the Romans and rose again from the grave. His entrance into the city was marked by excitement, rejoicing, and (wait for it...) people waving palm branches ().

I remember past Palm Sundays in several churches, watching palm-branch-bearing children parade up and down the sanctuary aisles, while proud parents beamed from their pews, and music and songs rose up from the music team. All in all, they were somewhat emotionally-overcharged services ().

The situation in Jerusalem, however, is pretty hard to understand. During the Triumphal Entry (Palm Sunday), the crowds were ecstatic. They were energetic, excited, and generally overjoyed to welcome Jesus into their city. He entered the gates riding a donkey while they shouted praises (Mark 11).

Less than a week later, they chose a known murderer and insurrectionist over Christ, while shouting "Crucify Him!" (Mark 15). He was sentenced to death by the Romans in accordance with their collective will.

Why the difference?

From what I've learned in my short (and quite inadequate) studies, the nation of Israel (in Christ's day) were not looking for a Savior Who, in sacrificing Himself, would pay the penalty for the sins of God's chosen people. They were awaiting a conquering Messiah who would take his place on David's throne, cast out their Roman invaders, and set Israel in their rightful place. They wanted glorification for their nation-state, and freedom from the Roman government. Christ's entry into Jerusalem sparked off this "revolutionary" mentality. The people were, I believe, looking to Jesus as this Messiah, and their reaction, though ignorant, was based on a self-serving and inadequate understanding of His purpose.

So...with this in mind, why do churches have children parading up and down the aisles on this Sunday, waving palm branches in a [potentially] misguided remembrance of sinful ignorance? Is this a correct observance and remembrance of Christ fulfilling prophecy foretold hundreds of years before? Should we not, perhaps, spend this Sunday reflecting on how we, as fallen human beings, will try to change Christ's purpose into something other than the incredible, and most amazing gift we could ever be given? The nation of Israel wanted Him to free them from the Romans; He was sent to free us from our sin and bridge the chasm between us and the Holy Lord. Their purposes and the Will of the Lord were at odds, and it behoves us to remember this and reflect upon Who Christ IS, and not Who we want Him to be.

Edit: My good buddy Kyle brought up a few good points to consider. Here are some passages to think through as I further ponder the discussion (emphasis mine, obviously):

Luke 19:41-44: 'And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation."'

This would, if nothing else, support the idea that the masses were praising out of expectation of something other than the truth. But...(again, emphasis mine)...

Luke 19:37-40: As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out."

It seems, even though they were praising out of ignorance, they were still praising. This is certainly something to consider, and perhaps have a level of understanding for them. Heck, even the disciples didn't understand why Christ had come. They were likewise expecting Him to take His place on the throne of Israel as their conquering Messiah. But...

I think the primary concern I have is the re-enactment itself. I'm not questioning the act of worship itself, but rather the context in which it is taking place. We worship in truth because God has revealed it to us. They worshipped in ignorance because God had not yet revealed it to them.

Of course, I could be making a lot of nothing, and I certainly don't condemn those churches in the past... :-)

Flex, Emacs, Linux, and Irony

I don't like Adobe. Their software is overpriced, bloated, and often difficult to for me to use. I wouldn't be able to derive $999 of worth from Photoshop, though there are pieces in it I would enjoy working with. Flash has made a lot of bad websites worse, while helping the Browser community ignore some of their past glaring inadequacies in adhering to standardization.

This said, I love working with Flex.

This also said, I refuse to pay for Flex Builder. Though it's not a bad IDE (hey, it's built on Eclipse, my personal favorite), it has a few glaring flaws which I won't go into (for those curious, they lie mostly in the debugger and profiler). I also don't like how little support there is for Linux. I spend 95% of my time at home working in Linux, and I don't particularly appreciate their dumbed-down version of the IDE. It's lacking many of the features I do enjoy (e.g. their WYSIWYG for rapid prototyping), while making certain tasks harder. It took me several hours to get a project assembled, after which I still couldn't create anything but .as files (it kept complaining about the project association).

So, I decided to see if I could create a customized Emacs environment for Flex in Linux. I haven't been too worried about certain features (e.g. debugging, file browsing, and intense code-completion). My primary focus is on syntax-highlighting, template generation, and easy compilation. Obviously, I'm keeping my expectations low for now. Hey, it's either this or log into Windows and use FlashDevelop which is really good, but not good enough to log into Windows.

Anyway, I found two great .el files for integration with Emacs, providing some level of syntax-highlighting and code-completion. Both can be found here: EmacsWiki. The two files are as follows:
1. actionscript-mode: provides a custom ActionScript mode (as it says)
2. nxml-mode: a bundle of files which provide extensive XML support (including MXML)

I was also able to integrate a third .el file which provides customizable templates using hotkey-esque strings: snippet.el.

All of these are searchable on the Emacs Wiki.

Anyway, I got these libraries integrated into Emacs (I also setup ECB, but I haven't used it much yet) and used this great tutorial for creating a "Makefile" for a project: . After this, the coding was pretty easy.

I attached a few screenshots for the basic view of the Bible verse memorization tool I'm developing. It's rudimentary at best, but this mock-up should show a decent view.


This first shot is a simple login screen:


The second is the main GUI with a left-side Accordion control for displaying verse references associated with different Leitner piles (I call them "buckets").


Interestingly, I wrote a similar GUI using PyQT4, which took me about 3 days. The Flex GUI shown in the screenshots took about 20 minutes. I wrote it while watching a movie on TV with my wife, and I bet her I could have it pounded out before a commercial break.

Anyway, I have the data-retrieval code written in Python. I'd like to use the ESV Web Service site as the data-source. I haven't heard back from them on licensing. We'll see how that goes.

So, here's the irony. As I mentioned before, I'm terrible at memorizing verses. Hence, I'm writing this app. Unfortunately, the application is taking more of my time away from memorizing verses...

Go figure...

New Project in the Making

I'm starting a new project based on some concepts I learned in the flashcard program.

That program is still in beta testing. The basic feature set is ready, but I'm trying to decide if I should delay the 1.0 release to move everything into a database (rather than files).

Anyway, this one will be a memorization tool for Bible verses. I'm terrible at memorizing Scripture, and I really want to improve. Therefore, I'm working on a new utility which will help with my ability to remember.

Instead of randomization and probabilistic weighting for short-term learning (like the previous flashcard system), this one will feature a long-term memorization technique, much closer to the original Leitner algorithm. A GUI (web-based Flex, or desktop AIR, or desktop QT) will be used to select and display verses in a list, associated with a user. The verses being displayed will be weighted according to the user's ability to remember and repeat them. As users are better able to remember, they'll see them less often every day. I have some investigation to do regarding how to do the time calculations (e.g. I guessed a verse right, when should I be asked again), but that's another post altogether.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Flex and RIA development

I had a project at work to complete. Our automated testing infrastructure has aged beyond the point of usability, and no money has existed for upgrading to a more recent version, or investing in a different system for automated and manual test deployment, tracking, and maintaining.

One of my coworkers began (several years ago) piecing together a web-based automation utility which would allow us to quickly configure and execute test servers with automated tests. The solution was, conceptually, a combination of Javascript, CSS, and Ajax, in which users could add machines to a table, drag&drop test configurations to each machine, edit the test configurations (e.g. modify the command-line parameters passed to each test), and execute the overall config by sending it to the test automation system as a single CSV string.

His work lasted about 3 months, and resulted in the drag&drop interface.

Shortly after this, another coworker extended upon this work by adding the test config storage and retrieval via Ajax. Users could [in theory] add tests to each machine, edit their respective parameters, and execute said tests. They could also quickly create test configurations which would map directly to their respective automated tests in the version control repository.

The result was pretty good, but fell short in several ways: Ajax calls only worked 70% of the time, resulting in failures to execute tests, save configurations, and retrieve various pieces of information. Each test config was stored as a Javascript file on the web server, which required users to understand Javascript syntax if they wanted to manually add or edit existing configs. It also refused to work in IE.

His work lasted several months as well before he moved on to bigger and better things. I inherited it and took on the work to make it work more consistently with our test infrastructure. This lasted for about 3 months on the system before I decided to investigate other solutions.

Enter Flex.

The original interface put together was quite sound: dragging and dropping test configs to various machines is a great idea, though difficult to implement. I wanted to keep the use model of the system, but move away from pure Javascript.

After hearing some buzz regarding Flex around the office, I decided to take a look and see if it could offer a better solution.

Frankly, I was amazed. Within 3 weeks of starting, and without any prior exposure to Flex and ActionScript, I had completely reproduced all interface functionality, and even added several extensions. Rather than relying on Javascript for test configurations, I was able to introduce XML (a more logical choice, in my opinion) for configuration storage and retrieval. Relying on the Flash player resolved the issues between IE and Firefox (and other browsers which support the issues with storing and retrieving information from the web server.

In short, Flex is a fantastic solution for developing "Rich Internet Applications." The presence of a standardized API (*cough -- javascript!*) and a full-fledged object-oriented language quickly and easily resolved all issues I had with prior implementations.

In essence, though I'm impressed with the usability and functionality of Javascript and CSS, for web apps I'm likely going to stick with Flex and potentially Cappuccino if it's as cool as it looks.