Problem Attic. Insert witty tagline here.

12th Dec 03

Today John took me for a walk around the district. As maybe mentioned before, where I was staying is on the edge of one of the world’s largest, nastiest red light districts. Today, I wasn’t on the edge…

First, we walked up the main road, up to the river. Along the river banks was a small city of houses made of bamboo and black plastic. All on crazy angles—architecture is obviously not a priority when you’re building a shack in the mud on a riverbank.

Along the way we got accosted by a boy who must have been about 14 or 15, and who kept saying “you want a girl, mister? Mister, I got girls, you want a girl?� I was kinda expecting this, but it still hit like a ton of bricks. John told me later that it was probably his sisters he was trying to sell off on us.

Read it all…

Apple has just previewed Mac OS X Tiger. And unfortunately, I once again find myself sucked into “oooh, I need it.”

I’m interested to see that they are carrying on their [not-so-]fine tradition of making the most popular third-party apps part of the OS—this time around it’s RSS Reading in Safari (although I don’t think it’s going to be as convenient as NetNewsWire) and a desktop widgets engine called Dashboard (think Konfabulator). I’m not quite sure where I stand on this. It sucks that they are making the massive efforts of a lot of third-party developers totally redundant, but hey, now I don’t have to pay for even more software, and it’s business after all.

Also, looks have changed slightly—less pinstripes (again), but also less metal, and more shiny, by the looks of it. Mm mmm. I’ll be upgrading at the end of the year…

So, uh, tomorrow I’m heading down South for my break. I’ll be in the area for 2-3 weeks I believe, so hopefully I’ll manage to catch up with a bunch of people :)

Heh, apparently some of my ‘friends’ are going to take me to Queenstown and make me bungy-jump. Yay!

I found this interview, courtesy of Phil Baker’s Blog. (Phil Baker was one of the speakers at ‘chute this year.)

Anyway, the guy interviewed is a vicar who wrote a book which is currently sitting in 2nd place in the British book charts, behind Harry Potter and whichever Blah Blah Blah.

Choice quote, from the author, about the film deal:

“I’ve even been told that it’s going to rival Left Behind. I’m not sure what Left Behind is, but whatever Left Behind is, apparently we’re going to rival it.�

It’s cool to see someone with their head screwed on getting into the whole magic/apocalypse/witchcraft/fantasy genres, and writing something that’s not preachy, but still shows God. (It’s a “secular� book)

The link again (in case you missed it): The Dick Staub Interview: G.P. Taylor, Dracula’s Former Vicar - Christianity Today Magazine

Thanks to Nathan’s link to these implicit association tests, I wasted valuable assignment time discovering:

• I have no implicit bias between young and old people.
• I have a “Moderate automatic association between male and science.â€? (ouch. Somebody slap me)
• I have a slight automatic preference for Black relative to White. (see below)

Anyway, I stopped there because it was time to get some sleep, but I found them fascinating and scary at the same time. Particularly the last one, I was thinking “oh no, what if I’m subconsciously racist?â€?. I wonder if that skewed the results at all? Also, just doing the tests was quite an experience; associating words and images, and catching yourself nearly making errors, and wondering “why did I do that?â€?

Entertainment link for the day: The Indian Shankar Drum Ganesh Machine. (And hi Dave!)

The following song titles were suggested to us by our Christology lecturer earlier in the semester:

• I surrender some
• Oh, how I like Jesus
• He’s quite a bit to me
• I love to talk about telling the story
• Take my life and let me be
• There is scattered cloudiness in my soul today
• Where he leads me I will consider following
• Sit up, sit up, for Jesus
• A comfy mattress is our God
• Self esteem to the world, the Lord is come
• Amazing grace, how interesting the sound
• Special, special, special
• Lord, keep us loosely connected to your word
• Praise God from whom all affirmations flow
• My hope is built on nothing much
• O God, our Enabler in ages past
• I lay my inappropriate behaviours in Jesus
• All hail the influence of Jesus’ name
• What an acquaintance we have in Jesus
• Above average is thy faithfulness
• We are milling around in the light of God
• Spirit of the Living God, fall somewhere near me
• Blest be the tie that doesn’t cramp my style