Mac OS X Leopard - 300+ New Features

Apple has announced that Oct. 26 they'll begin shipping the new Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) system software. I am excited about this release; and have been patiently waiting on its arrival to make some purchases.

Apple has a a nice list of new features on one page: Mac OS X Leopard - 300+ New Features

I am especially delighted about some Applescript enhancements. Unicode string improvements!!! Woo hoo!
• Scripting Bridge for integrating support for ObjC, Ruby and Python!
• Better Object models for referencing processes...
(I know none of this excites many of you, but we all have our own wish lists. :) And some of you will benefit from these additions down the road with better Quicksilver scripts and more.
I'm also looking forward to:

• Automator Recordabilty to see how robust it is.
• DVD Player's scratched disc recovery because I have little kids.
• Instant screen sharing among Macs to be able to access my Macs.
• Photo Booth Backdrops and Video record because, once again, I have little kids.
• Preview's Instant Alpha removal for quick work on graphics.
• CUPS 1.3 to improve use of printers at the office.
• Location aware printer selection for my MacBook the moves around.
• Guest Log-in Account that gets auto purged, which will be handy for the new iMac we're buying for our church library.
• Hot corner for Sleep Display, which I'll use alot.
• Automatic Backup of Time Machine, to improve my backup habits.
• Alex, whom I've heard sounds great. I write alot of little applications that let my kids play with the computer speaking what they type or click on, etc.

You'll notice I'm not interested in alot of the eye candy that's coming... coverflow in finder, Quickview, stacks, etc. But, some of them may surprise me.

The Church's Use of Technology

The denomination in which I serve, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is not the largest in the U.S. In some areas of the country you get one of those "What kind of church did you say?" when involved in the sometimes unavoidable small talk of the airplane ride or line at the store. And yet we're not what could be considered small. Despite this fact, I think we're guilty of small thinking in some areas... one of these has to do with our capacity to make use of emerging online technologies in indigenous ways. For example, the denominational web portal has gone through many manifestations. It is a good thing that it stays in flux, but some new technologies remain absent. The news service page is a reprint of a regular news email, but the site has no RSS/XML feed. This fact is an embarrassment. Another example is that they offer some graphic resources for congregations to use, but the graphics are full of flat images. Why not provide some production quality, shadowed images of real use? The web site has many strong points, though I can think of several examples where there is just real missed opportunity when it comes to the Web 2.0 generation. And this of course translates into other areas for our church... you should see how we were doing our "Search and Call" until this year.

I suppose this General level is really a mirror of the congregational level. Our churches, my congregation included, is still so far behind in how it makes use of technology, online and otherwise. Someone came in from the street today asking if we had a typewriter they could use to fill out an application he had. He assumed that the church would be behind the times enough to have a typewriter ready to hand.
Our secretary told him there was one right in our library he could use. But hey... we're installing a new iMac lab this month in our education wing with 7 new iMacs!

Individual ministers and leaders in our denomination have tried to stay on the edge of communication technologies over the years. There was ecunet, and a Disciples List-serv. I see that there is a seemingly dormant Blog-ring for Disciples. I think I'll explore a few of the sites on it, and then maybe go back to reading a bit [from an old fashioned book, with pages and all].

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Online Critical Pseudepigrapha Not Yet Mac Friendly

Original post (but see the recant below):

Jim Davila shares that an SBL Publications e-mail recently announce that the The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha now is more Mac-friendly.

Mac-Friendly Reader Interface
Mac users will be glad to hear that documents in the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha are now presented in an upgraded reader interface that is fully compatible with the Safari web browser as well as with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The project, if you're not familiar with it is one whose goal is "is to develop and publish electronic editions of the best critical texts of the "Old Testament" Pseudepigrapha and related literature."

However, as Ed Cook points out, the site still does not work with Safari. I normally use Firefox so did not notice this immediately. It is bad form for a misleading notice to have been released.

Update: Thanks to Ken Penner, who works on the project, and leaves a comment confirming what I had suspected. The project works in the public beta version of Safari 3. Good for them for making the efforts, but that version of Safari is in beta. The announcement that went out should not have mentioned working with Safari at all, perhaps unless it made quite clear that it only works with a new, buggy, beta version of Safari. In a month's time, though, we'll have the new OS and Safari 3 will be in release version and all will be well.

Minor Agreement of the Week: "You say that I am."

I'm not planning on an ongoing series (not even weekly but certainly not daily), but this is another fun agreement to point out.

When Jesus is asked at his interrogation before the chief priests whether or not he is the Christ, in Matthew Jesus says "You say [so]" and in Mark Jesus says "I am" while in Luke Jesus says "You say that I am!"

I suspect most would argue against calling this a minor agreement. But I will argue against the notion that Luke and Matthew both independently turn the question back on the interrogators, as Jesus does in all three gospels when interrogated later by Pilate.

Mark 14.62	Luke 22.70	Matt 26.64
σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ εὐλογητοῦ; ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· ἐγώ εἰμι	σὺ οὖν εἶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ; ὁ δὲ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἔφη· ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι.	ἡμῖν εἴπῃς εἰ σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ. λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· σὺ εἶπας.
"Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And Jesus said, "I am."	"Then are you the Son of God?" And he said to them "You say that I am."	"Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." Jesus said to him, "You said so."

Luke's context comes after first giving the elongated answer about "If I tell you, you will not believe it" (Can't you just hear Jack Nicholson hollering "You can't handle the truth!"?) I note that manuscript Θ does have Mark's response including Matthew's "You say".

I wonder if one might offer the simplistic solution that Luke combined Matthew's "You say" and Mark's "I am" to get "You say that I am."

Welcome to Decker's NT Resources Blog

I'd like to join Stephen Carlson in delighting in the new addition to the biblioblogosphere with Rodney Decker's new "NT Resources Blog". I have long respected Rodney Decker's use of technology in doing his biblical work and his prowess with some Macintosh technologies.