Chronicle Lite is nearly a week overdue for release, legitimizing the v1.2 version. I think the code is done, its just polish. I’m going to tackle it at the weekend - assuming that Im not in the office all the time.
I was thinking about VLI though - some September - if I choose to do it, I’ll virtually cut out my coding time at home in lieu of studying. Its going to be tough, but I think I can do it. They say “its a sacrifice” and I believe them!

I just learned something new! I love it when that happens. Did you know that HTML has an acronym tag - - which most of the modern browsers support by giving a popup definition when you float your mouse over an acronym? A longer description can be found online in Dive Into Accessibility - 30 days to a more accessible web site.

I’ve looked at a number of bible colleges, seminaries and the like over the last 5 years with the idle thought of getting some more training. Notable among them was Vineyard Leadership Institute - to quote from their site:

Vineyard Leadership Institute is a two year program that offers serious courses in biblical studies and theology taught by professors qualified and experienced to teach at university and graduate levels. Our practical courses in interpreting scripture, church planting, leadership, preaching and teaching, power ministry, counseling, spirituality, etc. are distinctive, cutting-edge, and empowering.

One of the areas in which VLI is unique from some seminary and Bible colleges is the practical hands-on ministry training taught partially though the mentoring part of the VLI curriculum.

First year students will rotate to different areas of mentoring each quarter. This is to expose the students to different key areas of ministry. One quarter will be “Preaching/Teaching;” another quarter, “Evangelism/Assimilation;” and a third quarter on an area of Pastoral Care. Second-year students will work out a mentoring plan with their pastor-mentor to either grow towards mastery of what they were exposed to in their first year mentoring or to apprentice in one area of ministry.

I really like what I have read about the theological content of the course and its emphasis on keeping people real - in their home environment even for the distance learning program - by providing the real world ministry experience. My major concern, of course, is the time commitment. The brochure suggested that about 20 hours a week would be consumed by the distance program, and I am certainly not going to be able to travel, live and study in Columbus OH for 2 years to be part of the main training. Still, well worth looking at.

Although I took a ¹/₂ day off work on Thursday it didnt really feel like it: had a business lunch with another consultant and followed that with going and waiting in line to get into The Matrix Reloaded. Even though I got there and hour and fifteen minutes early I was still about 10th in line!

For some reason I felt detached from the film - I wasnt drawn into things. It was almost like I knew it wasnt real. Plans are to see the film again this Sunday at an afternoon showing. I’ll write some more once I fully assimilate things.

Everyone talks about how philosophical the movie is though. The first one had clear mythological links to a number of faiths - Gnostic, Buddhist, Christian - and that carried through to the second. However there was also a slap-in-the-face obvious question to be answered, in the first, “What is the Matrix?” and in the second “What is controll?” Neo is offered choices. In the first is he really “The One”, and in the second what is his role now that he’s accepted that he really is “The One”?

The second film pushes the envelope on special effects. It lurches from large portions of dialog - almost monologues from some characters - into another large fight scene.

Karaoke n

1. A music entertainment system providing prerecorded accompaniment to popular songs that a performer sings live, usually by following the words on a video screen.
2. The performance of such music.

Perhaps we should also add a third definition along the lines of

1. Method of ritual humiliation for drunk people at the office party

Or, would that be revealing too much about my whereabouts last night?

The Princess Bride has to be one of the most memorable (and quoted) movies, short of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When I walked into the office this morning a co-worker was reading his email. He muttered “beautiful” and “this is a thing of beauty” as he was reading the text. I caught the eye of another co-worker and a Princess Bride quote jumped to our lips:

Vizzini: HE DIDN’T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Of course with come modification (Vizzini: this is a thing of beauty! … )

Quoting from Code the Unit Test First:

Creating a unit test helps a developer to really consider what needs to be done. Requirements are nailed down firmly by tests. There can be no misunderstanding a specification written in the form of executable code.

Writing a test first limits the amount of over-engineering that you can get away with; when the test passes, you’re done, the feature is complete and that the simplest thing that could possibly work is what was done. However, writing the test first acts in a much more important way to guard against engineering waste: it captures the requirements in such a way as can prove scope creep is occurring. When the scope of the job drifts sufficiently from the encoded requirement, its obvious that something is very wrong. In that way it stops the software itself from bloating and the requirements themselves from getting out of hand.

When there is a well definted specification an executable test suite ensures compliance. Writing this suite after the code hurts in ways too numerous to mention - I know, I took my own free software project offline until there was reasonable test coverage across the application. From now on all new features will be created test-first. Compliance test suites can be easily created when there is a specification. For example, the specification of RSS - versions 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 1.0, 2.0 and beyond. An automated test suite removes the ambiguity over whether some software implements the spec or not. A simple red or green bar will communicate that fact in a moment