Visit of General Shaw Clifton

A trip to Toronto came about to attend the first official visit of General Shaw Clifton. The afternoon event was Officers' Councils and so we gathered at Scarborough Citadel for a two hour meeting.

I should get to the main part of the meeting, which was Gen Clifton's message, which was based upon 2 Timothy 4:17 which reads:

But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion's mouth

His premise was that with all we do, God stands with us. We don't face anything alone, but He is there for us.

He took time to go through the entire chapter. He encouraged us to keep to the Word and give it out, he said the idea of in season and out was the fact that preaching should take place even when a person doesn't want to.

He gave an interesting illustration, it dealt with a Salvationists with the name Brumpton. He was with the Royal Navy and was also a member of the Navy and Military League of The Salvation Army. He served abroad a ship that was attacked by a U-Boat. It turned out that Brumpton and another sailor survived the attack and were staying afloat with a small piece of wood. Both tried to share it, however Brumpton realized the other sailor was getting weaker so he said: "For me to die is Christ, for you to die is hell, get on the wood", Brumpton swam away and was never seen. Now it could be asked how did people know of this, it is because the other aailor went, after he was rescued, to the nearest Salvation Army Corps and shared the story.

He gave a good message.

If there was any problem it was the Power Point Presentation, what a surprise.

We are staying with The Oldford's.

Canonical Launches Latest Ubuntu Desktop 7.04 | Ubuntu

Canonical Launches Latest Ubuntu Desktop 7.04 | Ubuntu: "Canonical Launches Latest Ubuntu Desktop 7.04"

I am so ready for the 19th of April, the release date of Ubuntu 7.04, aka Feisty Fawn. I did download the beta a few weeks ago and have enjoyed exploring it on the desktop. What has been impressive is the Beryl desktop accelerator. All the photos and videos you may have seen of Beryl in action are true, it is impressive. I mean you have the cube, the various ways to close, just fantastic. As well, there has been a number of improvements to Ubuntu, such as easier install and some new applications. The blog "Only Ubuntu Linux" has a great review of the beta and from what I understand there won't be that many difference between it and the stable version.

Some of the other programs I've used is the disk usage analyzer. It gives a good picture of what is happening on the hard drive. Other things is the sticky notes and Tommy Boy.

The article gives this comment:

I really Like Ubuntu festy Fawn and this will be the best release ever from ubuntu development team.This includes lots of desktop features includes network manager, Easy-to-install codec wizards,migration assistant,Kernel Virtual Machine,desktop effects like Beryl or Compiz get a more prominent place and and many more in this wonderful operating system

I have to agree, that's why on the 19th I'm going to the terminal and type in sudo update-manager -c -d and letting the magic happen.

Apple TV, Geek Brief TV and MacFan

I am not a Macfan, I am certainly not Apple fanboy. I don't bow when I see the Apple icon show up on anything. I do like the iPod, in fact I'm enjoying my new Nano, read a previous blog for the reason of the Nano.

I was watching Episode 149 of Geek Brief TV. In this episode, Cali Lewis sings the praises of watching the new Apple TV. It is the new attempt by Apple to integrate the home theatre with the computer and wireless networking. On the whole it sounds like a marvellous idea and certainly what you can do with it is amazing. This is especially true with vidcasts. Cali opens by saying we are watching Geek Brief through Apple TV. The feature is you can sync and download podcasts and vidcasts to watch and enjoy on High Definition TV. There is a lot of good to that, the thought of watching Diggnation or as she had on, TikiBar TV. Again a great idea.

What therefore is my problem. Well, first its the attitude of Macfan, they worship anything with the apple icon on it and to that end, they are quick to either ignore, dismiss or justify some of the weaknesses of an Apple product. Cali talks about the fact that words such as simplicity and elegance can be used to speak of Apple TV, yet as you hear her talk, you realize there are some other words. As I watched the vidcast I came up with a list of seven problems that are simply mentioned or stated something that will be improved in later generations.

Here are some of the weaknesses, that aren't mentioned as weakness:

1) Price- $299.00US
2) No Power Button. So here you go, you just purchased your Apple TV. You bring it out of the box and realize

3) No Cables. You have to go back to BestBuy and purchase the cables, so add another $40-100 to the price. Once you return and get all the wires connected. You grab your manual, you stare at the devise and you ask yourself this important question

4) "Where's the Power Button". I mentioned this already but to quote Kryten, it's such a biggie, it's worth mentioning twice. Yes, the question you ask is, "how do I turn it on". Which will be followed by "How do I turn the stupid thing off?". To answer the latter, you push a little button on the remote to put it in 'sleep'. As for turning it on, I have no idea.

5) Okay, you justify the fact you can't turn it off, this leads to the next problem. It overheats. This is simply stated as it gets warm. So you have an always on fire hazard. Good marketing.

6) videos purchased from iTunes doesn't look all that good on the television. So what looks good on your computer monitor, doesn't look good on the TV. You can encode to make it look good, however if you're not a tech geek, this could be a drawback. I suppose there's always piracy.

7) Small HardDrive, it's only 30 gigs. Yes that's a lot of music and videos. But still, 30Gigs, how long will it take to fill up?

All in all, a devise that will have a good future, so long as it gets away from fanboy and fangirl in the present.