The Paurian Café

iPhone App Sites - Reviews, Price Charts and More

2010-01-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago my wife gave me an iTunes gift card and I went to town with the iTunes iPhone/iPod Touch app store. Even when I get a gift card, I try to stretch it out as much as possible by making purchases when items go on sale and by buying the best product for my needs. The question is how do you find out if something is on sale at the iTunes store and I discovered a few venues that help do just that.

iPhone apps that alert you when something is on sale.
- The apps:
  
  BargainBin With Push!
  I tend to favor this one because of its expandable/collapsible interface. It's somewhat clean and offers some nice features with its push technology. You can have the application alert you when a certain app you've been waiting to go on sale does so. Sometimes it's slow to use and there can be enough lag between its information updates that the app changes price in the store before you know about it.
  AppMiner (Save $$)
  This is a popular choice amongst these type of apps. It provides the app information and the first screenshot when you click on the app list. I find it a tad bit faster than BargainBin and it shows some apps that BargainBin misses.
  PandoraBox (Download Paid Apps for Free, now with Push)
  This app contains some other nice features missing in the other two. Namely, you can choose which categories to omit from its search. I don't care much for sports and the developers who write sports apps abuse the system by flooding the store, so I like to remove them from the list. This app also finds apps that the others miss.
  Free Apps - Find Paid Applications That Are On Sale - Powered By AppTrakr
  Haven't used this one yet. It's only been around for a couple of weeks.
- Considerations
  
  Floods
  This is my biggest peeve and it always happens with apps that I could care less about. A developer decides to write a program that shows sports scores, but instead of writing one application that has two-dozen in-app add ons, he releases two-dozen distinct programs. Not only is this inefficient, it's inconsiderate and unimaginative. This affects our sale apps by bumping other good apps off the list and making you scroll several pages to see what's available.
  Freebies
  One of the great things these sale apps provide is access to the knowledge of what's free. The apps that have proven themselves are usually only free for a day or two while introductory apps or apps that aren't selling might go free for more extended periods of time.
  iTunes store API changes
  It's happened at least once - Apple decided to change the way they provide information for these apps. More than one of them quit working for a few days. One of the three top sale apps usually get updated to work again within a day... but you won't know which one until it happens, which is why it's a good idea to have the top three installed.
  iTunes store price change discrepencies
  Occasionally a developer sets the price of his app to blitz these search engines then quickly raises up the price. This bait and switch process doesn't happen often, but you should be aware. Furthermore, these sale apps usually cache old data and could be showing yesterday's sale price. Just be aware of that when you go to the actual iTunes store to make the purchase.
  Why have all three?
  They share about 95% of the same product which means about 5% of the apps differ between them. I'll find an app or two, across each day, in each program that doesn't appear in the others. Also, as mentioned above, if Apple changes their API you might not be able to use any of these apps at all until one of their developers post an update, which could take anywhere from one day to one week.
iPhone websites that provide lists of products on sale.
148 Apps
They have an aesthetically pleasing site that's filled with icons, screen shots, reviews, lists of price drops and other niceties.
AppShopper
The clean interface and features on this site make it my favorite. I particularly like the App Activity box on each applications information page. This information is used to make purchase decisions in a timely manner to get the best price - I'll explain more later.
UQuery
This site offers a clean web-based search engine that ties to the iTunes app store. This is an area that iTunes lacks. Anyone who has searched for an application that fulfilled a purpose, say - "time management", on the iTunes app would know how valuable a good search engine can be. In this example the top 20 apps and 70% of the top 100 from an iTunes search returns games. In contrast, none of the top 20 apps and only 5% of the top 100 from UQuery are useless colorful drivel.
Other sites.
Websites are popping up all the time to help app developers gain exposure and users get good deals. free app a day, iPhone Application List, iPhone Promo Codes and Apptism are a few. Not all of these sites offer lists of price reduction, but they nearly all have some form of review board.
Getting into the mind of the developer - when apps go on sale.
Developers are after one of three things: money, fame and pride - but always pride.
It costs $100 a year to be a part of the iPhone app developer program so that your apps may appear in the store. Pride usually comes to play regardless of whether money and fame are the goal. Developers pride themselves in coming up with original ideas, or with a well executed design, or a pleasant interface. That means they want feedback. Positive feedback to stroke an ego, and constructive feedback to become better developers (hopefully). Keep that in mind and be respectful when you download an app that you're drawn to reuse (especially if it was given away for free).
When new updates come out that fix terrible problems.
If an application is decent but has a glaring technical issue (such as crashing the iPhone) it will suddenly drop in rating. Purchasers of the product wail and complain even if the app were free when they got it. A common practice is for the developer to quickly come out with a fix, but this isn't always possible before enough bad reviews tarnishes his reputation. As a result, he fixes that problem but needs to garner a new set of better reviews. To do this the developer usually drops the price to attract new customers. It's not uncommon to even see the app go out for free for 24 hours.
When a product isn't selling well.
If an app isn't doing well in sales, it could be because it's too expensive. That's business 101. Reduce the price or give it away for free for a day or two and after you garner a few dozen new users, put the new fixed price somewhere between the original and the sale price. This will allow the app to build some exposure. For paid apps that only go on sale, it even means a few dollars that wouldn't have otherwise come that way.
When a new product is introduced in a highly competitive market.
Supply and demand. Why would someone want "product A" at twice the price of "product B" that does practically the same thing? Walmart did it and so do developers - they lowball each other to gain market share then when the competition is slow they bring up the price.
Milestone Dates and Holidays
Special milestones such as anniversaries and holidays strike a special emotional chord which might make a developer feel charitable. Keep a close eye on the app store during special events such as Black Friday, Earth Day and the like.
A word about taxes.
- They exist even in the iTunes store. It's based off of your profile's mailing address. Mine is around 3 or 4% but I've heard some states don't have it.
How I decide on what apps to buy: Remember that AppShopper App Activity box feature I raved about? Here's where you use it.
Existing Features
If it does what I want, it's a no-brainer. Developers are people and even with the best of intentions there's a risk of promising a feature but not delivering. If you've been watching the developer's release notes and see a good track record, buy the app as soon as you hear mention of the feature you're aiming for. Otherwise, wait. Some awesome new app might come out tomorrow that blows this other out of the water.
Frequency of updates
If a developer updates frequently - say once a month or more - and it's an app that's been out for more than half a year, you've got a well supported app. If you see a developer that updates two or three times one month then skips a few months before applying another stream of updates, you still have a well supported app. If the developer updated the app one time or less and it's been out there for more than four months it's not well supported - check the reviews to see if people are complaining about unresolved bugs.
Last update date
If the app was just recently updated with features, prices could go up. Most developers don't raise the price but some do. If, however, the app was updated last month and activity or ranking is starting to taper off then the developer just might cut a break in the weeks ahead.
Last update features
Features are nice, but if they focus more on features than on fixes it could make an unstable product that you can't use. Look for a good mix of both. Lack of features shows a lack of understanding their market... there's always something to enhance.
Price and Popularity Timeline
Some of the app information pages - particularly of the more popular ones - at the AppShopper website contain a chart that shows how popular an app is in sales in both their category and overall. It also shows tick marks that identify updates and price changes. If its popularity is sliding down after being up for a while be prepared for a sale to happen.
Reviews that rate the app low (1 to 3 stars)
You're fishing for constructive criticism, not mindless bashing. Some people are just fat fingered or, well... a few fries short of a happy meal. When you see something constructive, check the version number of the app that was referenced. If it was fixed in a later version the developer is listening. That's a good sign.
Other apps the developer has made (is he too spread out?)
Most of the apps in the iTunes store are written by single white men who have limited time on their hands. Use your common sense to figure out if it's a company (like Electronic Arts) or a one-man business (like TLA Systems Ltd). If the developer is writing more than a few apps, he won't be able to maintain them all with updates and new features.
What products did I purchase and how much did I pay and why?
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition - $3.99 (regularly $7.99)
This 1990's adventure game has some of the best humor and play experience of any out there. Anyone who's played it knows what it means to fight like a dairy farmer.
Zombieville USA - $1.99
I enjoyed playing the lite version enough to pay for the full version. People are always picking my brain for real, so I thought having a virtual life would be entertaining.
Ramp Champ - Voyage Pack - $0.99
During the Christmas Season the wonderful Iconfactory gave away their $1.99 Ramp Champ game for free. I figured it would only be fair to patronize them by spending $1.99 in add-ons. This one allows you to hit Pirates and Aliens with skee balls. Good times!
Scrabble - $2.99 (regularly $4.99)
Electronic Arts had a great sale at the end of last year. This is one of the apps they reduced. I like scrabble and the Trivia Pursuit app was poorly supported (it seemed to charge users for useless add-ons) so I only bought this one.
PhotoBuddy - $1.99
I had dozens of photography utility apps to choose from. I wanted something that helped me calculate DOF, provide sunrise and sunset times and provide some guidelines when I'm in full manual mode. This one proved to be the most promising for the money. The other apps cost way too much more for the few extra features they offered. I enjoy the purchase so far.
Pano - $1.99 (regularly $2.99)
I like to use Hugin on the Mac or PC, but couldn't resist a tool that would let me play around with it on the iPhone. I've heard it works better on the first generation iPhones because they all have fixed focus while the newer second and third generation 3G iPhones have auto-focus, which could throw off the clarity of the stitching.
AutoStitch Panorama - $1.99
This program differs from Pano. Where Pano is akin to a Cinerama theater, AutoStitch is like an iMax. You can stitch multiple images to make a larger, more detailed flat scene. Although Hugin can also do this on the desktop computers, I don't expect Pano or AutoStitch to handle both types of stitching.
2Do - $6.99
This app shines like a polished shoe on a sunny day. There are features lacking, but the developer(s) on this project listen to users ideas and the app is well supported. I really didn't like how each revision meant another dollar mark-up. Within the month that I had my iTunes credit this app went up twice in price, meaning if I jumped in on it sooner I could have gotten it for $4.99 instead of $6.99. If they build in the features I want, it will be worth it. If they don't then it will be a lesson learned. It's a little gamble, but here's my reasoning. This developer group has a particular pricing style. They introduce an app at a price they think it will sell well for. If it doesn't sell like they expect then the price is lowered a dollar or two. Then with each update where features are added, the price goes up or stays the same depending on how extensive the features were and how many cumulative features have been added since the last price hike. Only if the app really stagnates does the price go back down. This app has been a hot item for over a month now, meaning it's not going to drop in popularity for some time, and that keeps the developers fat and happy. As a developer, myself, I think their efforts are worthy of being rewarded, though I still wish I paid less for it - but it's still worth the price.
Ramp Champ - Adventure Pack - $0.99
This is the last app/add-on I could buy because of the iTunes store taxes. It was too easy to solve because I've been playing one of their hardest packs. Still haven't solved all the points with the "Star Struck" level from their Adventure Pack. My advice would be to get easier packs, like this one, first and solve them before buying the harder Adventure Pack. It's still fun, though!

I hope you've learned a few things in this post - apps and sites that can save you money and how to save a few dollars when buying that four-star app. If you found this post helpful, please give a comment to let me know about it.

BTW - if you want to make cool links from your blog that point to the iTunes store, this is where I did mine: http://apple.com/itunes/linkmaker/

Cheers!

Why I don't write poetry anymore

2009-12-29T14:32:00.001-08:00

Absent from the likeness of God,
some piece of myself whittled away
by my own hands in a moment.

What a shame, they might say.
Something in me demands;
it makes demands for
reconcealiation.

There's passion and hope,
rage and remorse,
then grief when it's lost
but the feelings will expire.

I hold onto things
old coupons that have no worth
a few cards from a misplaced deck
wishing for the time I lost.

Where's the meaning without the worth?
Time will whittle me away anyway.
Why not give myself, even in pieces.
Each of us - meaningless unless given away.

But life is an offer,
a limited time
a time that will expire.

Happy Morning

2009-11-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

In 2006, Folgers made what I consider to be one of the best commercials of all time. It was originally going to be featured during the Superbowl but rumor has it that upper management felt the commercial too annoyingly happy to do well. After all, the point of the commercial was that joyous morning sunshine is so intolerable that only through the consumption of Folgers coffee might someone bear it. Hence the campaign slogan "Tolerate Mornings."

The commercial was met with mixed criticism from viewers. Some found the happy golden dancing people and their intentionally obnoxious singing so annoying that they associated the Folgers brand with that annoyance rather than the intended way to get around it. Others met the commercial with optimism and found the song humorous and memorable. Each chorus was met with an increase of volume and the commercial song even featured a bridge with a rising key-change: both musical qualities emphasize the rising sun rays getting stronger and more invasive. It's a beautiful example of music-psychology.

As for the video, imagine Ned Flanders dancing around, playing the kazoo in a blond wig, basking in morning sunlight as the Sun's rays force through the curtains of Homer's window. It's quite frankly what every parent with young children have to face on a daily basis.

Sadly, the http://toleratemornings.com/ website and all its goodness is no more, and it doesn't ever last on YouTube for more than a few months before being removed. I think Folgers insistence of wiping the commercial from existence on all the video boards shows some backward thinking. After all, this is a commercial that they payed television stations to air and these fans are posting it up on the internet for people to watch without Folgers having to pay another dime. It's a good commercial and they should have made more. Maybe showing the ramifications of a dry dessert that can be overcome by the dark brown richness from a hot cup of Folgers coffee.

Well... here are the lyrics to the best of my knowledge:

[Think Jimmy Durante]
Hah cha cha chahhh
Hah cha cha chahhh

Hello World, we're shining so bright.
A new day's here, it's really dynamite.
Feel the love. Savor the door.
There's a rainbow for each girl and boy.

On this [clap clap] happy morning! (Rise and shine!)
[clap clap] happy morning! (We're doin' fine!)
Get up, get out of bed. You can sleep when you are dead.

Partied hard; stayed up real late.
It's time for work and you can hardly wait.
Scrub-a-dub-dub. Doodily-doo.
Spread the sunshine inside of you.

'Cause it's a [clap clap] happy morning! (Happy day!)
[clap clap] happy morning! (It's nice today!)
Wake up you sleepy head. You can sleep when you are dead ...

You can sleep when you are ... [very bad Yamaha recorder instrumental]

La la la laaa
La la la laaa

[key change - rises like the sun]

Chahhhhh! Happy morning. (Rise and shine!)
Happy morning. (It's wake-up time!)
Wake up you sleepy head, you can sleep when you are ...
[clap clap]
Happy morning. (Happy day!)
Happy morning. (Feel right today!)
Wake up you sleepy head ... [fade]

I loved the song so much that I made it into a ringtone (or more appropriately, a wake-up alarm on my iPhone). The audio had to be stripped out of the commercial then carefully amplified and cut to produce the result. Audacity was used for the editing. I can't remember what was used to pull the audio out of the video file.

Happy Morning Short Edit.m4r for the iPhone.

happy_morning_short_edit.mp3 for other devices.

Science's marriage to law

2009-11-11T19:53:00.000-08:00

Science apart from law doesn't exist.

We have irrefutable laws of math, physics, chemistry and biology from which all other genres of science stem. How is it, then, that any so-called "science" could exist without laws?

Founding fathers of scientific principles believed strongly in a law-giving God. If the God that created the universe provided laws for the most obscure segments, such as the human soul, then He would certainly also provide laws for the more obvious parts of nature. Believing that there is a solid law is what led Louis Pasteur to also believe there is no such thing as spontaneous generation. This belief guided him into being the founder of modern day microbiology against the competition of his pagan predecessors and coleagues who supported an untested belief that spontaneous generation acts as the mechanism for evolution.

Galileo had plenty of difficulties because of the Catholic Church, but he addressed his difficulties as coming from people's blindness both in what the Bible said and in what the Bible didn't say. He's quoted as saying "The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go." But he held that observation reveals an order and law in the heavens that supports scripture, and that it's dangerous to blindly accept what politicians tell people to accept as truth since the "truth" of politics can change.

Kelvin, one of the founders of modern day physics and entreated other scientists to design an absolute thermometric scale. His understanding of absolute properties stemmed from his understanding of God: "Do not be afraid of being free thinkers. If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion." From this, we infer that he considered a belief in God, and hence religion, to have a foundation that branches out to science and for science to be the process of gathering evidence of God. This only leads to one conclusion: "I cannot admit that, with regard to the origin of life, science neither affirms nor denies Creative Power. Science positively affirms Creative Power. It is not in dead matter that we live and move and have our being, but in the creating and directing Power which science compels us to accept as an article of belief."

I'll close with some thoughts from Isaac Newton. He defined science as the "frame of the world" that isn't random or complex, but as simple as the other laws handed down by God. "It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. Therefore ... they [that] would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity." In other words, the key to the perfect works of a master craftsman is to have perfect adherance to simple rules. Since God's scripture outlines simple rules for living, all other aspects of life must also adhere to simple rules.

Parenting Magazine's 25 iPhone Apps For Kids

2009-10-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, Parenting.com released an article listing 25 iPhone Apps for Kids. Most are paid-for apps, though some are free.

Although it's understandable that they would make you sift through 25 pages to see the entire list, I found it quite annoying and took the liberty of constructing a simplified list below. Furthermore, some of the links they provided were flat-out wrong or don't work and at least one of the apps they suggested was pulled from the iTunes store.

The prices mentioned were taken from the iTunes store. Some prices changed since they posted their article.

Click on the icon to go to the iTunes store.

App 1 - Pianist by Moo Cow Music, $3.99

App 2 - Scribble Lite by Zintin, Free

App 3 - iPlayPhone by Ryan Neudorf, $0.99

App 4 - Wooo! Button by TightApps, Free

App 5 - Airport Mania: First Flight Lite by Reflexive Entertainment, Free

App 6 - Toddler Teasers Shapes by Toddler Teasers, Free

App 7 - Jirbo Match : Child Development Edition by Jirbo, Inc, $1.99

App 8 - Penguin Whacker by workavoidance.net, Free

App 9 - Toddler Flashcards by iTot Apps, $0.99

App 10 - The Pool by MarkJ.net (webapp), Free
Point your iPhone Safari Browser to http://www.markj.net/pool/

App 11 - Snowman 3D by G.A.M.E.S., $0.99

App 12 - Alphabet Animals - Talking ABC Cards for Kids by Innovative Language Learning, LLC, $0.99

App 13 - Reversi by Kiss The Machine, $1.99

App 14 - Checkers Free by Optime Software, Free

App 15 - FreshWater Aquarium, $0.99

App 16 - Mad Libs Lite by Penguin Group USA, Free

App 17 - Push The Button by Mi Mundo iPhone SL, Free

App 18 - iSign Alphabet by USA-Links.com, Free
Point your iPhone Safari Browser to http://www.usa-links.com/isign/

App 19 - Peanut Butter Jelly Time - Not Available In The U.S.
Removed
Just go to the YouTube app and search for "Peanut Butter Jelly Time". Select the one from AlbinoBlackSheep.

App 20 - WordSearch Kids by AFKSoft, $0.99

App 21 - Tic Tac Toe Free by Optime Software, Free

App 22 - Infinite Maze by Exact Magic Software, LLC, $0.99

App 23 - Wacky Safari by Earblast, $0.99

App 24 - Pegs by Samir, Free

App 25 - Kids Bingo by MathSlice (webapp), Free
Point your iPhone Safari Browser to http://m.mathslice.com

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - The Red Horse

2009-10-27T16:55:00.001-07:00

Apparently, I'm in good company when it comes to conspiracy theories colliding with Judaeo-Christian beliefs. Former president Hoover mentioned in a 1954 Time interview that he figured the Red Horseman to represent pestilence. Specifically, a revolution. Today the largest political threats also ironically don the red color. Are we in for a communist take-over soon?

Despite what we might have been taught in school, the United States wasn't entirely born in 1776. We were still at war 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed, signifying the end of the American Revolutionary War. The Constitution of the United States of America was ratified by most states in 1788. We didn't have a President until 1789. In 1790 the last of the 13 original colonies, Rhode Island, ratified the Constitution. This is why the following chart shows America starting in 1790.

The antagonizing acts of the British went on for ten years from 1764 to 1774, spurring revolts, outcries and vexation across the North American territory. From that point a congress convened and war began against the British, lasting from 1775 to 1781 with the Declaration of Independence written in 1776.

This chart that follows was gathered from a blog that's been spread around the internet by Chuck Baldwin titled "U.S. To Break Up Soon?"

Assyria (859-612 B.C.): a 247-year reign.
Persia (538-330 B.C.): a 208-year reign.
Greece (331-100 B.C.): a 231-year reign.
The Roman Republic (260-27 B.C.): a 233-year reign.
The Roman Empire (27 B.C.-180 A.D.): a 207-year reign.
The Arab Empire (634-880 A.D.): a 246-year reign.
The Mameluke Empire (1250-1517 A.D.): a 267-year reign.
The Ottoman Empire (1320-1570 A.D.): a 250-year reign.
Spain (1500-1750 A.D.): a 250-year reign.
Romanov Russia (1682-1916 A.D.): a 234-year reign.
Great Britain (1700-1950 A.D.): a 250-year reign.
The USA (1790-2009 A.D.): 219 years and counting.

According to this chart, most major world empires in history only lasted an average of 238 years. That means we're statistically due for a political collapse.

According to the Time article

Hoover admits that revolutions may be good or bad, "but St. John's horseman had no good purpose ... We do not allow our imaginations to extend to the idea that St. John was prophesying Communism, even though one is tempted, partly because of the prophetic statement that power was given to the horseman 'to take peace from the world.' "

In 1954, when this article had been written, China had just finished turning over to a Communist government in 1959 and was considered more of a casualty of Communism than a superpower. The main threats to the U.S. were Russia and Japan. Korea was considered a middle domino between China and Japan, hence the Korean war, which ended in 1953. America and its media were hopeful like an arrogant teenage boy, thinking our nation was impervious to death.

Machiavellian politics seem to always ring true. Over time many factors worked at decaying the United States from the inside out, and that greed went as far as the people of the republic. Debt spending went to record highs and in an emotional climax the President was allowed to sign many of the freedoms that represented our sovereignty over in a "Patriot" act. Our current President claimed that we needed to increase debt spending to support our nation. The conclusion is obvious. People are angry with the government. I've been hearing it for years. Anti-American and pro-communistic ideas have been feed to me and my peers all through school and college. Stories of Robin Hood were twisted into a communist slant rather than a true representation of a revolt that happened in Ireland centuries ago.

If China were to call their debt on us, we'd have to concede and pay restitution. Other countries would want their piece of the American soil, too. In a feeble move, the President would have to pull our armed forces out of the Middle East and bring them back to native soil to fight. Many Americans would become civilian minute-men to fight for our President and our country. Other Americans would become revolutionaries and fight for a new order. While we're out of the Middle East, a revolutionary war breaks out there. Israel somehow gains back the holy mound in Jerusalem. Ultimately the Red Horse wins.

From what I understand, Russia is supposed to gain incredible power over the nations south of it, west of it and of some special land elsewhere. Eventually the world powers in Europe, possibly Greece, rise up a leader who mocks God. We know the drill ... 666 and more tribulation. Thus begins the period of the abomination of desolation.

Now comes the question on what to do when the New World Order arises. Fight politically, not physically, and accept captivity into a new Babylon. According to scripture the Jews believed they could get away from their terrible behavior without consequences... they believed they had a right to fight to stay on their land while Babylon conquered them. Even though prophets warned them to just go and not resist, many of them fought and died anyway. If God's chosen ones couldn't stave off their punishment, what makes us think we can do better? Still - before world-wide revolution, there will be the four governments. Before that will be world-wide economic collapse. According to Scripture the end is near but we've got a few years to go.

Stockpiling

2009-10-16T05:25:00.000-07:00

So I guess we should begin talking about stockpiling and how it's different than hording. Those who have collecting skills or miserly qualities should easily move well with this skill provided they have a prepared heart. As God's Word states, only those who are righteous, industrious and good stewards will end well: Proverbs 10:3, 11:1, 11:24-26.

Proverbs 10:3 - The LORD will not allow the righteous soul to famish.
We need to hold ourselves to high integrity and standards in the beginning of these dark times. Be honest and truthful with our words and actions, courageous and dogmatic about what's right, loyal and faithful to God at all costs.
There's nothing righteous in being angry, inconsiderate, jealous or rude. Righteousness starts by being ready to admit we're wrong, and by acknowledging natural laws that govern us as being universal with accountability.

Proverbs 11:1 - Dishonest scales are an abomination of the LORD, but a just weight is His delight.
I.E. Don't clock in time you didn't work. Don't say you did something if you didn't. If the United States economy collapses and bartering becomes a popular way of life, remember that God's law states that any cheater pays back seven fold what he stole.

Proverbs 11:24-26 - There is one who scatters, yet increases more; and there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty. The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself. The people will curse him who withholds grain, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.
Any man who doesn't provide for his family's needs first is a twisted dung heap. After providing for your family, see how you can further sustain your need and others with what you have remaining. Although God blesses those who bless the poor, we need to be industrious in how we help others. Remember the parable of the maids with the oil lamps in Matthew 25:1-13. Although the parable is intended to demonstrate our spiritual preparedness for the tribulation (perhaps even acceptance of the rapture itself) it holds wisdom for other aspects in life. In short, it's the boyscout motto: be prepared.

What should we stockpile? Nonperishable Consumables. These are items that last long on the shelf that everyone uses: Daily necessities such as toilet paper, shaving cream, razors, toothpaste; Cans or packages of food with more than two or three years of shelf-life such as beans, peanut butter and ramen noodles; Extra batteries; Bottled water and water purifiers; "sinful" pleasures such as cigarettes, wine, bottles of rum.

You might not have interests in these items, but others will in a couple of years.

Usefulness

2009-10-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

Today I have to admit that many of my blog posts aren't useful. Instead of providing information to help others deal with serious, personal issues ... and rather than giving some level of relief or insight, I've bantered about notions and ideas that don't encourage or support people in these difficult times.

The Paurian Cafe started out as a sounding board, but as time passes, and as I supposedly mature, it becomes more apparent that personal sounding boards and web journals generally don't help the public who have an actual and realized need.

What do people need? What do they want? Where are we heading from this point?

Irresponsible people in government have an idealistically optimist outlook. They have for years. A politically influential man told me in June 2008 that we had eight more years before our nation would collapse. That in eight years, we would no longer be "America". He didn't say we wouldn't be "America as we know it," but that we would no longer be American soil. I wish I had started investing in gold then. I thought of doing it last spring, but decided to put that money towards refinancing our house to lower the monthly payments. We're living in times where every decision we make is invariably a bad one depending on who you listen to.

Cold Hard Cash

2009-09-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

Just for being in our family the children get approximately $1 per year of age (after reaching 5 years old) each month. It gets divided into fourths and divvied out weekly. For example, one child is 9 years old. I take 9, divide it by 4 and come up with 2.25 a week. I could have used a more accurate monthly-allowance formula: age * 12 / 52. That would, however, come up to $2.076923 for the same 9-year-old. I don't mind the extra 18 cents a week to nicely round up the allowance payments into quarters. And having all those quarters turns out to be important as you'll see.

Why don't we give them a dollar per age per week like the "average" American family? Well... we don't want to give them too much because learning to save and plan for specific "goal" purchases while developing the behavior to fight off impulse purchases work best on smaller allowances. If they could get away with buying impulse items and still get their "goal" item in a short period of time it wouldn't have the same effect.

Here's the "catch":

1. Necessities come from Mom and Dad. Splurges come from your allowance. They were good about not asking for extras before, but now they are ready to learn to ask themselves the value of what they want to purchase.

2. 20% is put in a savings account. 10% is donated and 70% is for whatever the child decides. We help the child learn about saving up their 70% for the toys they want.

3. Chores that aren't finished by a given deadline go up to the lowest bidder who has already finished all his/her chores. The person who was supposed to perform the duty must pay the lowest bidder. For example, if child A doesn't want to wash the dishes, children B, C and D offer their bids to do it. Child A then has to pay the lowest bidder their asking price. It's capped according to the chore and immediate need.

We first tried giving them all the money up front at the beginning of the month. All the excitement fizzled out by the end of the first week.

That's why we divided their age by fourths, then hand out that amount each week (they make a little more money that way, but I don't care as long as they learn good lessons with it).

They can occasionally get paid bonuses for chores that Mom or Dad forgo, provided they have already done their chores. This further motivates them to be done so they have that availability.

Using this method they learn about saving, spending, earning, preparedness, frugality and charity. So far it's working well. We adapted the idea from Jim Fay's Love and Logic.

The Gender Gap, aka Where's My Sex?

2009-09-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

Last February, Family Life posted an article about why women need sex in their marriage. Many responses from women are either chiming in with a pity party or degrading men. These are typical responses from people who don't take responsibility for their actions. When a child misbehaves he or she either tries to divert the conversation to how they were hurt (sometimes as if it were a good excuse for their misbehavior) or they point the finger to someone else.

Somewhere between junior high and college I was given the strong impression that women don't like or want sex. Thinking back, this advice seemed to always come from the lips of very liberal women who despised having any man open the door for them. If women don't like or want sex, why isn't there a movement of women towards celibacy instead of towards lesbianism? Women have been manipulated into a mass exodus from their natural character into rebellion, mutiny and abomination masked in political "rights" to express a hatred towards God and men. Through women "liberation", America has mutated from the moral and Christian principality it was founded upon into a dark shroud of blood-lust mafias, infant holocaust, racist eugenics, Godless schools, sexual disease, diminished parental rights and large Orwellian socialist government. This is not an attack against women. It is an affront to the feminist movement.

Votes for prohibition, which brought about our history's worst criminals and the need for the FBI, was largely in the hands of women. Without the FBI we wouldn't have had McCarthyism go to the extents that it had. Prohibition is the only constitutional amendment that was repealed through another amendment. No other federal law can claim such anarchy to our society.

In Roe vs. Wade, it was a woman who, having consensual unprotected sex, decided she didn't want to live with the consequences of her actions (having to care for a baby). With the help of two female attorneys who exploited the 9th Amendment, she made a legendary case that has caused the death of millions of innocent children who have no choice in the matter ("pro-choice", indeed!).

The woman who founded Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, held a world view stewing with socialism, racism and Nazism so strong that it formed a belief in supportive of eugenics (euthanasia). She originally designed the organization to control the population of lower class and minority citizens - in her own racist words she degraded blacks as being "just a step higher than the chimpanzee" and stated that "the lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find." In other words, the abortions and contraceptives provided by Planned Parenthood were originally intended to reduce the population of those driven by lust and ignorance since it was thought that both lust and ignorance were inherited traits passed down from generation to generation. The black community held quite a few uproars about this woman, and rightfully so. She was calling for a silent self-genocide of their population.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair is singularly given the reputation of stopping prayer in schools. When she filed a case against the school board of Baltimore, the local court judge, J. Gilbert Pendergast, mentioned "It is abundantly clear that the petitioners' real objective is to drive every concept of religion out of the public school system."

Katherine McCormick was a devout fan of Margaret Sanger and felt that women - particularly hookers (again, we're talking about lower-class) - should have control over birth control. This meant taking the condom out of the picture since that was traditionally taken care of by the man. Katherine used the excuse of her husband's schizophrenia, claiming it was an inheritable disease, to donate a large amount of money to the research that founded the birth control pill. Because of the birth control pill, a large concern of sexual impurity - the responsibility of having a child - was taken out of the picture. Control and power without responsibility always results in abuse and neglect. In this case the abuse is widespread sexual promiscuity and the neglect is the condom. The result is a continual rise in AIDs and other STDs.

In more recent times, Charlene Nguon is an out-of-the-closet lesbian who sued her school because the principle "violated" her privacy by telling her parents she was expelled for inappropriate sexual behavior (fondling another girl on campus). She claims her parent's didn't have a right to know and her principle didn't have a right to tell them. At home she hid her sexual alignment while at school she uninhibitedly expressed it. Although she lost the case, it was a landmark moment that used the government to pit against the parents.

Most states don't require parental consent for an abortion and those few that still do are close enough to the states that don't require them that it almost becomes a mute point. Hillary Clinton's "It Takes A Village" campaign still goes on, though it's been quite widely rejected. Nobody can take better care of a child than his or her own parent because no other human will love that child more. Do you think the government will love a child as well as the parent? Ask Sally Lieber. Her "never spank a child" campaign and stripped parental rights agenda is leading towards a society of unruly children who grow up to be criminals. The whole "it takes a village" campaign wasn't about people stepping up to take care of other children who aren't their own, it was about big government.

I'm not saying that these women acted out alone, nor am I saying that all immorality comes from women. I'm merely pointing out what advances to moral decline the feminist movement has generated during the past 90 years.

Women decided over a century ago to be "equal" to men. It started under the guise of voting rights. It was a large political campaign pushed largely by feminists who would be better called female supremacists since they believed women to be largely more capable than men. Before that time, voting issues were often discussed amongst women and to their husbands. Husbands held the weighty responsibility to make political decisions that would be best for his family. When women gained their voting rights they stripped men of that responsibility and the culture started moving towards an ever more feminist slant.

It wasn't voting women that ruined American morality or family values. It was the feminist spirit behind it. What many people don't know about the history of "liberation" and "suffrage" is that its core feminist goal was not the 19th Amendment, and not even equality with men, but superiority and dominance above men. Some of that superiority is realized today. For example, it's the woman's legal "choice," not the man's, to abort a child. This upsets the authoritative nature that God placed in society - specifically in the family. God intended for men to be the head of the household. The dad and husband is accountable for the family's well being; even in cases where he doesn't marry the women he impregnates, the government holds him financially responsible. When men are stripped of that authority, they are also stripped of the means - and more importantly, the motivation or desire - to uphold that responsibility, which creates a society of dead-beat and estranged dads.

A conductor of an orchestra can't bring forth any music unless everyone in the orchestra agrees to follow the conductor's lead. That's how the very meaning of "orchestration" came about. When a family isn't orchestrated it becomes chaotic. A chaotic family is not a Godly one. Womankind figuratively yanked the baton from the husband figure when she demanded a right to vote - it wasn't equality, it was rebellion. That was the first step of the feminist movement.

The next step was mutiny, though it's difficult to call it "mutiny" since in the end men became lazy and pretty much just handed over their role to women. Men like William Marston didn't help. He preached a psychology that handing authority over to women demonstrated a higher evolution of society (he lived with two women simultaneously - his wife and his secretary - if you need a moral reference). Men definitely had their hand in the bowl this entire time by promoting, allowing or exploiting the immoral changes to society and the degrading of their own roles. I'm just tired of liberal women arguing with me about how only good has come from "suffrage" and hearing how chauvinistic they think I am. As the Bible commands men to take care of women as the "weaker vessel", it's obvious to any man that you don't carry around a weaker vessel unless there is special value to it - meaning that men should treat women kindly and take care of them like a treasure. Women who wish to be equal with men deserve to be given hardships that were traditionally reserved for men, such as being put on the draft board and stuck fighting a war... such as having to work to provide for a houseful of children; not being able to spend more than a few hours a week with them... such as not being treated with the chivalry or manners due to a lady. That's what women asked for when they signed up to be seperated from their husbands in that fateful 19th amendment. I think men saw the opportunity to find a political excuse to bow out of this sacrificial role and voted for it out of selfishness or constant nagging from a contemptuous wife!

I've been told by very old and scholarly gentleman that this constant sin of women pushing towards individuality away from relationships is the cardinal sin that separates marriages. He specifically pointed a finger at the 19th amendment, stating that it marked the beginning of the destruction. I don't have anything against women voting, but I do have plenty against feminism and I firmly believe that feminism has continually plotted to destroy families; at its core, feminism considers motherhood as the height of enslavement.

There's an old Jewish legend that isn't written in the Torah or the Bible. The legend of Lilith. According to the legend, God made a woman for Adam who was completely separate from him - no rib needed. At first this woman wanted to be completely equal in the marriage on all terms... then she decided she wanted to dominate mankind. In the paradise of Eden there would be no need to have someone provide for you or protect you. The only sign of dominance would then be specific to the act of sex. Lilith demanded to be on top. Adam insisted that it was his role. God was dismayed over the ordeal and banished Lilith to the wilderness where she still lives to this day as a demon who accepts scapegoats (as she considers herself one). God then took one of Adam's ribs to create the next woman who was then not separate from Adam by every nature. Because she was taken from Adam she looked to Adam for some level of guidance and authority. I won't go into whether or not this story is valid in this post, but want to point out that this issue is thought to be as old as time itself. If there's any truth to this story then it marks the first act of sin even before eating the forbidden fruit.

Eve went away from Adam's and God's protection and instruction when she wandered off to the forbidden tree. Ever since then, women have had to fight sinful urges to be more like men in physique (such as wearing short hair and masculine clothing), sexual dominance (such as in pornography and in marriage - like Lilith), and authority (as in taking control over the household and gaining dominant roles in politics).

This movement of women becoming like men has degendered society. Men have lost their role as men. As a society led by feminist undertones presses onward by stripping God out of schools, forcing equality (such as the school-lego-socialist-scandal of 2007 (video)) and pushing a "please yourself" mentality, it was only a matter of a generation - the children of the baby boomers, and many baby boomers themselves - before marriages, once thought of as a sanctified covenant, would crumble around us.

Both genders are players in this problem. Women have chosen to be like men - to strip away those aspects that made men distinct. Men have chosen to be passive and take the easier path. In the same way that the many skills which used to be handed down from one generation to the next somehow became lost in the 1970's, the character of a Man was lost as well.

I believe God placed a natural desire in men to fight the good fight, which includes the right to win the fair maiden. Men want to dominate and become king over their family. Whether they are a harsh tyrant of a ruler or a loving Christ-like figure is a matter of their character and their relationship with God. In a society where this role doesn't exist as a reality, it leaves men with only fantasy to toy with. I think deep down, every woman can only truthfully admit that she wants to be rescued by a knight in shining armor or saved from the clutches of despair by a handsome prince. These natural desires of man to protect and provide for women, and for women to desire being protected and provided for are stemmed from our spiritual needs. When society plants itself against the very laws of nature it only has allusion to look forward to.

In short, harlequin romance novels and soap operas are to women what pornography and video gaming are to men. They are both symptoms and causes of failing roles in marriages. They build up fanciful and unspoken expectations. Women can't get the real thing anymore because they killed it, so they put themselves in stories where men value women above all costs and watch soaps wishing to live out certain roles. Men can't be the real thing anymore because they allowed it to die, so they role play in hours upon hours of video games or watch another beautiful woman submit to him in pictures. This causes men and women to separate spiritually, socially and sexually within their marriages. Eventually, if not addressed, it ends with physical and marital separation as well.

I suggest re-learning our roles as scripture points out. Play out these roles both fancifully and seriously in our marriages. For example, dress up as a couple for a Renaissance festival as a damsel in distress and a valiant knight. Go camping and have the man fish and prepare his catch for the woman to cook. Define "manly" and "womanly" household chores. Have the man pull back the chair at the dinner table and open the door for the woman. Learn chivalry and manners as a history lesson - the reason for some of these customs gives insight to the heart and place of the manly role back in the mid to late 1800's.

On stage not all parts are equal. In politics not every one plays president. God created tiers of authority and responsibilities to each role. Why have people stripped these natural boundaries from family and marriage? Put them back where they belong.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

2009-08-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a pushover for kids. Especially if the child has some type of disease or disorder that puts him or her at a higher risk for being teased and abused by peers. This sympathy probably stems from personal experience, but admittedly, I choke back tears when watching Hallmark commercials.

Twenty months ago when visiting friends at the corporate office, there were some jokes and remarks about the owner, the VP of production and some other guys growing out their hair long. I took up the challenge for vain purposes at first, to fit in as one of the guys.

A few months later an opportunity to help others through this silly endeavor became evident. Children undergoing chemo treatment or suffering Alopecia could use a wig or hair extensions. Ironically, one of the younger stars on Flickr that I've come to admire (for her willingness to humble herself and her professional, yet fanciful style) has Alopecia and uses hair extensions.

So it was decided to grow out my hair the required length for donation. It hasn't been without it's sacrifices. And as I've come to even like having long hair it will be another sacrifice to cut it back. Still, there's good with each season in life and the satisfaction of knowing how the past 20 months of minimal effort will bring peace to a child or young-adult's life brings a great satisfaction.

What I've learned over these past 20 months:

Hair doesn't grow out at the rate of an inch per month. It's more like 3/8 of an inch permonth.

As a long haired man, I've "frightened" many grown-ups... until I started looking more like a smiling Jesus hippy.

The younger the child, the less affected they are to seeing long hair on a man.

Each inch of long hair from the forehead causes another annoyance until it reaches about 7 inches long.
- First it gets in the eyes
- Six weeks later it's into the nose
- another six weeks and it curls into the mouth
- Yet another six weeks it tickles the chin
This is probably why so many long-haired women have short bangs.

Nearly all shampoo has lauryl sulfate in it. This chemical weakens the hair and over-strips the protective oils from it. (Great site about shampoo ingredients.)

When doing any type of physical labor that requires you look down, any hair that isn't tied back obstructs your view.

It's difficult to pull back all your long hair and the one strand that isn't bound with the rest will find its way into your face when you roll down the car window to let in the outside breeze.

Long braided pig-tails and a bandanna doesn't make me look as cool as it does for Willie Nelson.

Long haired men that walk with confidence are stereotyped as successful photographer/musician/artist.

Women who brandish well-kept natural long hair have garnered my respect.

Jelly time again

2009-08-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. I love the sound of canned jar lids popping through the night as their vacuum seal takes effect after their hot canning bath.

This year I've already canned a delicious apple-orange jelly. Apples tend to have so much pectin in them that only a little acidic fruit is needed to make them congeal. Of course, that tends to make the jelly juice a little bitter. A generous 2.25 cups of sugar for each 2.33 cups of juice makes the jelly sweet and preserves the jelly for up to two years after canning. (The sugar acts as an anti-bacterial agent. It's yeast that likes sugar, not bacteria.)

Making jelly involves a two-step cooking process. The first step is cooking raw fruit to draw out their juices. The juices are then strained into a pot. The second step involves adding sugar and sometimes pectin to the juice then cooking it for an additional period to set the jelly. After this comes the canning stage.

The following form is used to calculate the number of cups of juice within a cylindrical container based on the inner dimensions of that container. This is helpful for jelly making when juice has been strained into a pot for the second stage. If you know the ratio of sugar to juice, it can calculate the number of cups of sugar to add, too.

Open the Popup Jelly Making Sugar Calculator

Next time I'm going to use an industrial juicer to draw out that delicious golden liquid from the apples. I figure it will take less time initially, but I'll need to heat it up a little longer in the second stage to kill the enzymes that are usually killed in the first stage.

Enzymes are a primary cause for the break-down of fruit after it's dead. If you don't kill those proteins before canning the jelly, your product would only last a few weeks at best.

Oh - and that apple-orange jelly recipe?

Software

3 lb cooking apples
3 medium or 2 large oranges
5 cups of water
approximately 5 1/2 cups of sugar

Hardware

Juice Bag or a Stainless-Steel Chinois Set or a 2' Square of Clean, Never-dyed, Prewashed, Coarse Cotton Muslin with Butchers Twine
Cheesecloth and Butchers Twine (optional)
4 qt Stainless-Steel Pot or Larger To heat The Fruit And Jelly
2 qt Glass bowl or 2 qt Measuring Cup or 2+ qt Pot/Pan To Capture Juice
8 16-oz Canning Jars With Lids and Rims To Keep The Jelly
Canner with Jar Rack To Preserve The Jelly
Canning Kit With Thongs To Keep From Burning Your Fingers
Wooden Spoon To Stir The Juice Since Wood Doesn't Change The Jelly's Temperature
Slotted Stainless-Steel Spoon To Scoop Off The Tart Scum
Paring Knife To Cut The Fruit
A Refrigerated Saucer To Test The Jelly
Clean Towels And a Very Clean Counter

You want a large wooden spoon since it doesn't change the temperature of your jelly mixture. Making jelly is akin to making candy. Sudden drops in temperature can cause nasty results. If you're making this at high altitudes, like I do, make sure you boil your jars an extra 6 minutes and watch your jelly very carefully. It will burn and make a nasty mess if you're not careful. Watch your barometric pressure, too. I'm not joking. If there's a storm coming in, do your jelly making another day. At sea level, watching the weather and adding time to sterilizing your jars and making the jelly isn't necessary.

Peeling and coring the apples helps them break down faster, but keep the peels and the cores, as they add to the pectin. Chop, but don't peel, the oranges. If you want to have an easier time straining the fruit, tie up the the peels and seeds in a cheesecloth before you toss it in the pot with the rest of the fruit. After all the fruit is chopped up and prepared, put all the chunks in a large pot and add the water. Bring this up to a rapid boil then turn it down to a heavy simmer for about an hour. If the pot is uncovered, you might want to add an additional 1/4 cup of water to offset the evaporation.

While the fruit is boiling, prepare your straining method. Pour boiling hot water over the jelly straining bag, chinois, or Muslin. If you're using the muslin cloth, get some twine ready to tie the pulp into a ball and find some place to hang it where juice will drip into your juice-holding vessel.

After about an hour the apples should be practically disintegrated. If not, squish them with your slotted or wooden spoon. (Temperature is more important in the next phase, so it doesn't matter if the liquid in the pot cools a few degrees while you're squishing the fruit.) Take out the cheesecloth if you did that and carefully pour the juicy pulp into the bag/chinois/muslin while the device is over your 2-quart bowl/pan. Set it up so that the dripping can occur overnight. Now get some sleep and dream of warm home-made buttermilk biscuits coated with dripping butter and delicious apple-orange jelly.

At this point you should have about 5 cups of juice, but you need to know exactly. Calculate the diameter of your juice-holding vessel. Now calculate how high the juice is in that vessel and type some numbers into the calculator. Also put in 2.25 for the sugar and 2.33 for the juice ratios. The calculator will tell you how much sugar to add. Don't skimp or you'll be sorry.

Get out your canner. Fill it with water set it to boiling on the stove-top. Once the water is at a hard boil, carefully insert clean jars for them to sterilize over the course of 12-18 minutes. Sterilize the rims, too, but not the lids until the last 2-5 minutes because they have a wax seal that needs delicate treatment. Set out your sterilized jars, lids and rims on a clean towel drawn over the counter but keep the canner boiling. You'll need it again in about 15 minutes.

Pour the sugar in the 4-qt pot and put it in the oven at 170 degrees for 15 minutes. Warming the sugar will help it dissolve. Now pour the juice into the pot containing the warmed sugar and place it on the stove-top. Start stirring and turn the burner on high to bring this to a rapid boil. You must dissolve all the sugar and you want to do so as quickly as possible to keep it from burning. This is where you'll use that long-handled wooden spoon. Now stir like a madman!

Once the sugar is well dissolved, stop stirring and watch. This next step takes about 10 minutes but is vital to the success of your jelly. If it starts to over-boil, turn down the heat only slightly and gently stir the mixture with the wooden spoon, but only if you have to. It's better not to stir this at all.

You'll see some foam on the top that looks like a dreamsicle. This foam needs to be scraped off the top of the jelly, but you can save it in a bowl for making tarts later as it makes a fantastic tart filling. Carefully spoon this foam (sometimes called scum) from the top of the pot into a bowl. It's okay to use a metal spoon at the top of the jelly, just not inside. Keep scooping out that froth until all you see in the pot is a clear amber color.

Now test to see if the jelly has set. Spoon a little of the jelly onto a cold saucer. Wait a few seconds then push with your finger. If it clumps in front of your finger, it's ready. The harder it clumps or ripples, the harder the jelly will set. For other ways to check if the jelly has set - consult Google.

Ladle out the hot golden jelly into jars, wipe off the rims, gently place the lids over the top and lightly tighten the rims. Don't tighten them too hard or the canning process won't create the vacuum seal.

Place the jelly-filled, gently-lidded jars in the canner for 8-14 minutes. You should see small bubbles come up from the jars. This is normal and good. The air pressure inside the jars is building up as heat causes it to expand. This pressure will counter that of the water in the canner to keep the jars free of seepage.

Once time is up, pull out the jars and set them on the counter. Don't tighten the rings just yet. In time you'll hear metal popping. That's the beautiful sound of vacuum pressure sealing and protecting your jelly for up to two years. If the lid doesn't do this the jelly must be stored in the fridge and consumed within the next few weeks.

An hour after pulling the jars from the canner, tighten the rims and decorate with labels and ribbon. Hey - I might be a man, but I've got to make things pretty for the ladies!

who am i?

2009-07-10T06:39:00.001-07:00

I notice myself being drawn to that question - particularly in lyrics and music. The question raises serious naval-staring moments. I'm really nobody; nothing important; dust or vapor in the wind; a shadow before sunrise.

What makes me so important to others? I'm not special or particularly good looking. If there was anti-charisma, you'd certainly attribute that to my character. I'm not being humble here, just honest. So why would anyone find me special?

I think Antoine de Saint-Exupery stated it well in "The Little Prince"

"Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.... It's the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.... People have forgotten this truth," the fox said, "But you mustn't forget it. You become responsible for what you've tamed. You're responsible for your rose...."

I suppose I'm a little wild, like the fox or the rose and people who have personally spent time chipping away at that to tame me has also acquired a special sense of responsibility and uniqueness for me.

There's a proverb that states "Where your treasure is, your heart is also." The more we work at something, the more of our personal selves are put into it and the more it's treasured. It's what we choose to treasure that alters the world around us and changes other people - and not necessarily because they've changed, but more because of a change in our perception.

Thoreau Was Wrong

2009-07-07T12:30:00.001-07:00

One of the famous signature quotes from Thoreau is "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." However, he was mistaken. It's when men don't lead that they end up in these moments of desperation and if they become complacent in it they ultimately live their lives in quiet - maybe a grunt here or there at the water cooler, but they ultimately die out quietly and unnoticed.

So it's not that most men lead lives of quiet desperation; it's that what they follow leads to it.

In Proverbs 7, King Solomon talks about what happens when we follow our heart rather than lead it. Emotions change; sometimes emotions change as quickly as weather in the mountains. Since our hearts are so indecisive, they can't really be trusted.

I'm not saying our hearts shouldn't be heard. The poetry and beauty that mankind has added to this world depends on the heart, soul and mind down to its core. However, directing life on a series of decisions based on what feels good has a proven track record of causing destruction.

It's like that scene in The Incredibles with the cape discussion. Bob (Mr. Incredible) wants a cape because it appeals to his feeling of a superhero. Edna has to go on a lengthy monologue that explains how capes spelled the demise of one superhero after another. After all that, Bob decides he doesn't really want a new suit.

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the cape on Superman was little more than his baby blanket bound around his neck. You could even say that Superman was the first security-blanket-loving-Linus character.

Back to the point - bright men come up with ideas but often seek bad counsel. They give up and feel hopelessness choke out their creativity. In their shame and reluctance they remain quiet when new ideas come to mind which makes them feel their desperation even more. They followed the wrong counsel - the wrong advice - the insecure heart. So shed that cape, turn off the TV, pick up a good book and change the way you think. Let wisdom and understanding guide you and you won't end up quiet or in desperation.

Cave Photography

2009-07-03T20:24:00.001-07:00

Cave photography is tricky for several reasons. This is especially true if you're trying to use the "natural" lighting that cave tours provide.

I tend to like the orange red glow of incandescent lighting, and taking pictures without a flash emphasizes my personal memory of the experience. While using a flash yields better sharpness, it also changes the lighting to something other than what you remembered seeing. However, it does show the true nature of the rock which tends to be browns and tans. Flash is nice if you're wanting to study the geological formations, but not as nice if you're wanting the feel of that memory.

1. Come Prepared

Make sure you have a crisp-just-recharged battery or even two. These batteries take a beating in darkly lit areas - whether it's to power a flash or to power the sensor that's being exposed for hundreds of times longer than usual. Also put the largest, fastest card you've got in your camera. In those dark caverns, fumbling around with your cards is a quick way to get them lost! You don't want to open up your camera unless you really have to. What lens you use is up to you. I used a moderately slow zoom lens which took me from 3.4 to around 5. The 50mm f/1.8 might have been better, but many of those formations are so far out of reach that to close in on them you must zoom. Switching lenses during the tour increases your risk of dropping one.

2. Expect Grain

Push your ISO to the highest setting your camera allows and disable the flash unit if you have one built in. Even if you wanted to use a lower ISO, the long exposure time will create artificial grain and distortion on digital sensors so you're going to get grain one way or another. Also expect a shallow depth of field. Push your lens to as fast as it can go by opening up to as wide an aperture as your lens allows. (Make that little f-number as low as it can get.)

3. Set To Burst

Set your camera to take a flow of shots instead of just one while you press the shutter button. In this setting, when you take a picture (remember to be perfectly still) hold down the shutter instead of just pressing it to take two or three shots of the exact same thing. This gives you a greater chance of capturing shots like the one you see here (this was the middle shot from a stream of three).

Camera shake isn't as severely noticed in long exposures, but hand-holding a camera means it's shots will be based on your overall stability on those slippery floors. The general rule is anything longer than 1/60 of a second should be on a tripod. Of the four different caves I've gone to, you couldn't bring those in unless you have special permission. Somehow the flow of shots or burst shooting helps improve these odds.

4. Be Polite And Trail Behind

Our guide was rather miffed at anyone who wanted to stick around to admire the view. I think she was paid by the inverse of the hour by the comments she made and the way she wanted to cattle the fifty of us through so quickly. That's another thing. These are usually large tour groups. Most people want to pay their $20 to walk through a cave quickly, learn a couple of things then spend another $20 on a T-Shirt that says they did it. They're not interested in sticking around for an hour to fully appreciate the actual geological formations. What does this mean to you as the photographer? Stay at the end of the group.

In fact, I was so far back that the tour group behind us was just a few feet away - these tours were in 15 minute intervals. I wouldn't suggest this if you were in the last tour of the day. Zoiks! Getting locked in one of these caves with all the lights out would be terrifying!

5. Seek Sensible Stability

If there's a handrail nearby, lean on it with as much of your body as you can, and I mean squat down to the point that your arms, side and back are resting firmly on it. However, don't lean on the walls. Let me say that again ... DO NOT lean on the walls. You can be terribly fined for destroying the cave "life" by doing so.

We emit oils and acids that create a water barrier on these stones. That means the water won't settle on these spots anymore to deposit the minerals that keep these formations "alive". I think the fine here was around $15,000!

6. Protect Your Assets

Did I mention slippery floors? That camera strap better be around your neck. I usually have a small padded camera bag that fits around my shoulder at just the right height for the camera to rest in between shots while it's still strapped to my neck. That way if I fall on my camera, it's protected. I forgot that case on this visit, but it's still good advice.

7. Remember Variety

Take pictures of formations up close and far back. The popcorn photo shows so much detail because I was zoomed into it and only 18 inches from it. Those things are small. Formations often look different looking back. Look up. Look down. Look behind you. Each of these are often missed photo opportunities and in most caves you'll notice differentiations in the lighting that could make wonderfully appealing shots that would otherwise be missed.

8. Be Liberal With Your Photography

Be patient and take lots of pictures and at the highest resolution your camera allows. Out of about 200 pictures, only 20 of them came out with a decent level of sharpness. That's only a 10% success rate. Some great formations could be discerned from the multiple identical shots of them, but not appreciated because of their blurriness.

9. Last words of wisdom? Hmmm...

Deep in the cave where the wind doesn't blow, it's hot. Dress cool. Wear good tennis shoes.

If I were to do this again, it would be by myself instead of with a family of kids and relatives. It's an inconvenience to them. I'd warn the tour guide that I'm a shutterbug so I lag behind, then offer a small tip - like $5 or $10 in advance. In American Indian tours, they usually take a $20 - but a good Indian guide is easily worth that ... some of the great shots in my Antelope Canyon trip were a direct result of advice from the guide! I would also ask the manager what types of accommodations could be made or if there were any special photography tours.

10. Final Words and Thanks

My mother in law was very gracious in buying our tickets. It was an expense she didn't need to take, but it also created some great memories with the kids that they'll talk about for years to come. I wanted to take some good pictures for the challenge and so that years down the road they could see them and recall that first whiff of cool cave air when they were still young.

New Textures - Two Introductory Sets

2009-07-02T19:52:00.001-07:00

When I was young I just wanted to make stuff for the pleasure of it. When I got older I was told that wasn't a way to make a living.

I disagree. God made things for a living so I guess those people's attempts to civilize me into a common worker bee never quite stuck because of my higher childlike "ideals".

My parents were pretty good with supporting me through it. Mom is an excellent painter and Dad is a great musician. They weren't like the other grown ups who usually attended school board council meetings. That is, they weren't looking for a way to build a society - just looking for a way to raise great kids.

If more people took up their personal responsibility to raise their kids instead of handing their kids off to the village (idiots) to raise them, I think they would discover that children are important... they're a joy... they bring back those squishy playdough, colored in fingerpaint, bruised knees from playing in the rocks moments. That imagination is never really lost - not completely, anyway - it's just suppressed. And like a good expectorant, when you have kids that creativity just spits right back up!

Enjoy the free cave and art textures:
Cave Textures
Art Textures

Sour Apples

2009-06-21T05:40:00.000-07:00

Eighteen months old. That's the age of my wife's laptop - the MacBook Pro that we were going to bring with us on vacation. Turns out the day before we leave, all video output ceases. Kaput.

Interestingly, one of the symptoms (we've been told) of this NVidia processor is the computer randomly shutting down. We had that happen a couple of months ago. Something Apple did (or maybe it was just pure luck on their part) made the random shutdowns occur so infrequently (it only happened twice after getting it back) that we felt it was worth the occasional trouble compared to the hassle of the Apple store and their "genius" bar.

I have a feeling that unless you press the issue (and you know you're affected - see the KB article) that they will try to delay it in hopes that they don't have to pay for the repairs that they already publicly admitted the need for.

So we're out a laptop for this trip. Maybe that's for the best. More time with friends and family - less time blogging and flickring. I'll still use my iPhone for tweets, though.

-- UPDATE --

Apple accepted full responsibility for the defective manufacturing and repaired the laptop's motherboard. They even replaced the DVD drive that had been acting wonky since we got the laptop! Because of the problems we had experienced with the laptop and because it has been essentially replaced we offered to buy the extended apple warranty. They refused, saying that if we didn't buy it before the one-year deadline then we can't buy it at all. Too bad. They could have made some extra money.

Resolutions

2009-06-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

I was looking for the top three most used monitor resolutions - pixel width and height - for making desktop wallpapers in my flickr stream. It dawned on me that knowing the three most used pixel counts weren't as important as moderately high resolution images in the correct format ratios.

Here are the top three as of June 2009.

1024x768 ( 1:1.33)

1280x1024 ( 1:1.25 )

1280x800 ( 1:1.6 )

For example, the MacBook Pro supports 1440x900, which is the same dimensions as the 1280x800. Although there will be some scaling, the 26% difference of area between the two shouldn't cause enough stretching to make the image unpleasant as a desktop background.

The Internet Paradox

2009-06-18T22:02:00.001-07:00

The Internet is a paradox. All technology is, but to keep from generalized statements - the Internet is a paradox. I've been told that any element's strength is also its weakness, so I'm prepared to look through this at both angles.

1. The internet draws the world closer together. I have a friend at work who is able to communicate with his friends in Jordan through Skype. Like the Jetsons they can video chat from thousands of miles away. I know another couple who's separated by leagues of ocean between the United States and the United Kingdom.

The paradox: The internet pushes away human interaction.Thirty years ago it was unheard of for psychologically healthy citizens to lock themselves up in a room alone for fifteen hours without physical human interaction ... even without food - they would be called hermits. Some people have noticed this problem and created sites to help people regain their physical humanity through what's called a meet-up.

2. The Internet drives the market towards greater global business opportunities. I have no idea how international business interactions took place before the Internet without plenty of money and an interpreter. Today I could open a web store, tie in a free interpreter and start selling product to Sweden in less than a week.

The Paradox: People have learned to be skeptical of businesses and the consumerist is actually empowered to drive the market down. Where the big business practice was to treat the customer as good as the cow, viral videos (such as "Supersize Me") has provided a means by which businesses suffer consequences for their parasitic actions. This in turn backfires because big government, lobbied by these large businesses, create regulation that kills off all the smaller ones.

3. The Internet makes information more readily available. At no other time in history has there been such a wealth of information across the globe - readily available - instantly available.

The Paradox: Lies spread faster than truth. Pages like Snopes have become a mainstay and students who think Wikipedia has the same credability as the Encyclopedia Britannica are sadly mistaken.

4. The Internet is my friend. You meet people who are friendly, and you open up to them with your life story because of the anonymity you think it provides.

The Paradox: On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Neither do you know if the person you're talking to is one... or worse! Internet perverts and stalkers are literally out to get our children by the throat. The lure has never been so pervasive or perverted.

5. Internet based education! I can get my college degree in communications without leaving my home!

The Paradox: Think about it ... a communications degree ... without face-to-face physical interaction with your professor. Hope you can speak "woof" (see #4).

Don't get me wrong. I love the internet and the wealth it provides - but something it can't provide amidst all that knowledge is wisdom. And wisdom demands direct interaction between man and God - then with man and his fellow men. Noah, through his fear and respect of God's authority, was obedient. The interaction he had with his family saved their lives as well. Noah didn't build the ark completely by himself, either.

Our world is decaying in moral stature and compassion. In the 1920's great depression, people housed strangers because they understood the power of many working as a unit. They struggled, but they made it through. Today, our mantra of looking out for "number one" drives people to desperation and daycare houses turn into meth labs. It's no surprise that the sudden singleness and single-mindedness that the Internet meme has caused leads to people trying to find way to care for themselves without asking others for help ... or just as bad ... being denied help from others because everyone is so wrapped up in themselves to see the larger picture.

Just as much as the Internet represents one of the greatest feats of mankind - a modern day tower of Babel, it also represents one of the precursors to the greatest downfall of the human race.

iPhone 3.0 Update Woes and Work Arounds

2009-06-18T10:32:00.001-07:00

It shouldn't take nearly 6 hours to update your iPhone to the 3.0 OS, but it did for me.

It started downloading the update and seemed to receive that just fine, and it claimed to have backed up my iPhone before installing the update, but somewhere in that mix the iPhone became completely deactivated and insisted on being connected to iTunes. You know - that annoying screen on the iPhone where it shows a USB plug.

It wouldn't give me the restore from backup option, either. It was a core restore to the "original settings". To me that means complete data loss without even the benefit of the 3.0 OS.

So I did what any other person who's sipped from the Pierian spring does... I pressed ALT-CTRL-Shift while clicking the Restore button. Voila! A file dialog box asking me which firmware file to use. I pointed it to the update that just downloaded and it seemed to go well ... except during this process it neglected to restore all my 3rd party apps and their data.

I was furious, then I tweeted, then I denied it, then I tweeted, then I cried (I didn't tweet that)... but you get the point. I looked long and hard and the only restore point that iTunes offered was right before this happened even though I did manual backups a couple of weeks ago.

After a bit of research, I came across a tidbit that said the restore only restores data involving Apple's iPhone apps. You have to restore songs and video clips separately. That got me to thinking ... what if 3rd party apps somehow bind their data to the app during a sync in such a way that syncing the apps would also restore their data.

So I began that process ... and iTunes decided to do a freaking backup! I'm thinking this would take no time at all - it's only 300 megs... but it took nearly an hour. Suspiciously the same amount of time it would take when my iPhone was 4 gigs full. So maybe when the firmware installs, and when we do a restore, the data is present but not accessible until the application that calls it is installed on the iPhone.

I don't know exactly what happened to fix it, but I have nearly all my data back.

Again, the steps - not recommended, but if something goes wrong for you, who knows...

1) Downloaded new Firmware Update
2) Installed new Firmware on iPhone (first generation)
3) iPhone went wonky
4) Restored the last available backup (this surprisingly did *not* revert to the prior iPhone OS)
5) Resync'd the iPhone apps
6) Waited two hours until I got sick of the whole ordeal.
7) Slid the "Slide to Cancel" switch on the iPhone
8) Like magic, the apps were there with their data.

Hope this helps someone else out there. Better yet - hope you don't have to go through the same ridiculous install.

Cheers!

Let's Meditate on Chamad

2009-06-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

In a recent brief facebook encounter with Rabbi Daniel Lapin, he addressed the issue of IQ.

Rabbi: Fortunately, ancient Jewish wisdom rates Wisdom as far more important than IQ, as our IQ is fixed but our wisdom can be increased. No word for "intelligence" in Torah. Wisdom is "chochmah". Increase wisdom? Sure, see tomorrow's Thought Tool.

I then asked about skill, since some people equate skill or talent with IQ:

Me: What about the word for skill? I know artisans were called by their skill to build the Ark. And I noticed more than one hebrew word for skill. What's the difference between "biyn" or "yada"?

He then kindly addressed, not the issue of skill, but of meditation!

Rabbi: There are three terms in descending order chochmah, bina, and da'at (the etymological root of data). Bezalel is spoken of as having chochmah for building the tabernacle. There's much more I'll treat in future Thought Tools which I hope you receive. Otherwise go to www.RabbiDanielLapin.com

The Rabbi is careful not to say anything without much forethought. He had to have a purpose in his answer, and I think it's starting to gel together. Skill is not based on experience as much as it's based on wisdom and meditation.

Wikipedia isn't the best source to get ancient Jewish wisdom, but I wanted some answers and needed to start somewhere.

Wikipedia: Chochma (lit. wisdom) is the mind's ability to come up with a new insight into a concept that one did not know before. Binah (lit. understanding) is the mind's ability to take a new insight (from Chochma), analyze all of its implications and simplify the concept so it is understood well. Daat (lit.knowledge), the third stage, is the mind's ability to focus and hold its attention on the Chochma and the Binah.

Oy! My brain pretty much stops mid Binah. No wonder I hardly ever gain focus and meander from one thought to another! Perhaps this is also the key to a good memory since my Binah is so short term.

So let's see what the actual Hebrew words are:

Chochma - חכמה

Binah - בינה

Daat - דעת

It will be interesting to read what Rabbi Lapin has to say about these words and how they identify the potential of man.

Paurian Elevator Pitch

2009-06-17T22:56:00.001-07:00

Great ideas come scribbled on paper cafe napkins. That's when our souls aren't stiff with starch or choked with a tie. That's when we relax with our friends and a cocktail drink. That's when we don't care how stupid the idea seems. There's magic when the logic is gone.

This spot on the web is my paper napkin in hopes to find that great idea; at least in hope to discover myself. This journey will help to define partly who I am, and in that there is hope to glimpse the meaning of life and what lies beyond.

Music, code, love, food, philosophy, paranoia, responsibility, passion, art, faith, desire, fear: they pull my life into every which way, often times at conflict with each other. It's a bumpy napkin and rips are bound to happen.

Million Dollar Napkin Idea

The Looking Glass Zoo

2009-06-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

During my time in high school doodles were constantly being drawn on the side margins of the class notes. This wasn't unusual; many people doodled on their notes. However, a teacher saw the doodles and felt disturbed enough by them to call in a meeting with my parents. The doodles eventually stopped.

They weren't doodles of any teachers, but rather of myself. More often than not the images resembled Edvard Munch's "The Scream." Why it's considered art on a canvas and a psychological concern on notepaper is beyond me, but there you have it.

A few years later, at the university, these drawings started popping up again. This time I would cut them out of my notes and paste them or tape them in my diaries, which I kept for nearly ten years, and labeled them "The Looking Glass Zoo".

Ignore the words in those years of entries. There might be a tidbit of wisdom here and there, but most of the words in the diaries aren't really worth repeating. That's a part of my past better left buried, only to be exhumed after my death when people can then discover how much of a jerk I was before I matured.

Since I've been getting back into art and drawing, I've gained an interest in looking back through these drawings and sketches - particularly for some raw ideas that never developed back then. I hope to document these images over time and improve upon them. The journaling is more reserved and in this digital form (the blog), which helps to keep me from writing some of the more libel thoughts and gives me a chance to edit the few I do post. I miss the handwriting, though. That's something lacking on the web - too much type and too little personal handwriting.

It Takes Too Long

2009-06-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

An Inguinal Hernia is a medical condition where the intestines seep through a natural between the lower lateral abdominal muscles called the inguinal canal. This can happen naturally, as in from birth, and can happen through sedentary lifestyle, where the muscles aren't being properly exercised. See gratuitous medical gross-out images if you'd like.

I'm an impatient man. Perhaps through being spoiled by the invention of microwave ovens, cell phones and the internet I've come to expect the natural forces of nature to work with the same punctual immediacy.

But I've been learning something lately that God's Word says on the matter: "... let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." (James 1:4). It goes on to talk about asking in faith to receive wisdom, endurance and eventually healing. It mentions that faith without works is dead. It parallels the patience we need to have to that of a farmer, who does his work and waits for the garden to grow. "You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand." (James 5:8).

I have a strong feeling that James is writing to the Jews during the time of Shavuot, known as the feast of first fruits. That's a season when we reflect on God's goodness. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above...". We receive at the feast of first fruits the implanted produce that God brought to fullness. Similar farming allegorical references are made throughout the book of James, which is why Shavout comes to mind.

Back to patience - When a farmer starts he doesn't stop working. He's pulling out weeds, protecting the plants from hail and bugs, and warding off other animals that might devour his hard efforts. Patience takes action, and isn't entirely about waiting.

I've been warned by two different people that this will take at least six months to naturally heal. Poetic that a growing season lasts six to eight months.

There's plenty to do ... and plenty to *not* do. As a farmer, you don't look out at the crop a month after planting it and, not satisfied with how quickly the plant is growing uproot it. I have to remember this stuff - I'm not a farmer, so thinking this way doesn't come naturally. Exercises, meditation, prayer, diet, supplements, rest, acupuncture, and reflexology seem to all play a part in this. Not overexerting myself, not lifting items more than five pounds, not overeating, not eating junk food, not getting upset.

That last one - not getting upset - is the most difficult for me, and one of the greatest causes of my hernia flaring out. I can't explain it other than maybe by getting tense and upset my muscles down there tighten (like stiffening my neck when I get angry) which pushes the hernia, rather than pulls it. Excessive coughing fits have been known to create inguinal hernias where the "patient" hadn't had one before, so this seems feasible.

So to heal, I need to be patient. That seems to mean I don't get angry or upset when healing isn't happening fast enough to my liking. It also means that I take action in belief that this can be cured in time.

As a side note, I am not being foolish about this. I have educated myself on the dangers of this condition and am prepared to move towards surgery in the event that it heads towards a life threatening condition. I also have regular check ups with a doctor. "Watchful waiting" is being practiced intelligently.

The Wanderer

2009-05-30T01:02:00.001-07:00

I've gotten a few comments on Flickr that I must be a great dad. Although it's true that I love my children and relish the good times I share with them, I am equally irritable and harsh with the criticism. I keep flipping from one extreme to the other, always gauging my mileage from the overall health and happiness of my family.

Most of my irritability comes from being medically challenged with a condition that keeps me from being able to play freely and uninhibited. Unfortunately, my anger with myself for getting into this condition turns out with harsh tones and bitter expressions that my children take personally.

I wish I could wander to some remote island and deposit the whole illness - not just medically, but psychologically as well. And return whole and happy and better humored with life.