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synapticflame

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Posts posted by synapticflame


  1. The Bible, despite being written by a whole bunch of diverse authors, is consistent in its messages. The verses I mentioned in my post aren't considered as isolated verses, like if I quoted Matthew 27:5 "...Judas went and hung himself" and then Luke 10:37 "...Go and do likewise." The ideas I am getting from those verses are supported by the surrounding verses. Feel free to read the verses and verify for yourself that they are relevant, and that I am not reading anything into them.As you said spawn, it is very nice to see people talking about what they believe.


  2. Toyclergy,
    It sounds like your stance is a reaction to the misunderstandings around you.
    God is invisible, and since he's omniscient, he always hears what we tell him. But he's more than just an invisible pal.
    Taking some things from the Bible:
    God does have the role for us of father, since we are his children and we can turn to him for protection and support (matthew 7:11). But he's not like earthly fathers, who are imperfect, and as a result end up wounding their children's hearts. God cares for his people (Hosea 11).
    God wants us to pray to him. But he doesn't want us to come boasting about how great we are (Luke 18:9-14), he wants us to come to him with our needs.
    Since God created the universe and all that is in it (Colossians 1:16), he is the origin of the order that we observe around us. He preserves this order actively (Acts 17:28).
    God does speak to us (John 10:27), and his workings can be plainly seen (Romans 1:20).

    There are two ways to let someone else shape your beliefs: one is to dumbly believe what they tell you to believe. The other is to reject everything they claim, without saving the valid parts.


  3. As mentioned in this thread, often when I attack someone and win, I "gain" a large negative quantity of money... and the person who lost gets that money. I think Thunder in particular has this happen when he is attacked, as well as some other users. It is *not cool* as the amount lost is always huge, and the only way I have found to get rid of the debt "dishonestly" is to convert the debt to weapon damage by trying to repair my swords.

    This is clearly not how the system was intended to work.

    Thanks for all the hard work going into making the upgrade - spies are awesome :)

    You mods and admins rock :D


  4. I see some people (COUGHlyonCOUGH) starting threads like mad... it seems to me that maybe we could have a thread or a folder called "free stuff" and put these sorts of things in there? I always hesitate before starting a new thread... I want my threads to promote discussion and thought, and if all I have to offer is a link, or a bunch of links... I'll find some place on the forum where someone already needs that resource, and post it as a reply to that person's question.

    Is this an isolated opinion of mine, or do others feel the same way about starting threads?

    How do you feel about starting new threads?

     

    (Please note, I am not bashing Lyon. If you want to do some bashing, PM Lyon yourself :D )

     

    Edit: Now I feel pretty dumb. I started this thread in the wrong place. :)


  5. DISCLAIMER: I hold no animosity towards blondes per se. These are not my opinions, but are only included for your enjoyment :)Q. How does a psychic refer to a blonde?A. Light reading.Q. How do you make a blonde laugh on Saturday?A. Tell her a joke on Wednesday.Q. Why do blondes put their hair in ponytails?A. To cover up the valve stem.Two blondes were walking through the woods when one looked down and said "Oh, look at the deer tracks." The other blonde looks and says "Those aren't deer tracks, those are wolf tracks." "No. Those are deer tracks." They keep arguing, and arguing, and one half hour later they were both killed by a train.


  6. Rowita has hit the nail on the head folks... this program is on my thumbdrive wherever I go :D

    The things that make so awesome for me are:

    It's a very small program

    It opens pretty much any image format

    It's free!

    You can run it without installing it (handy for use on other people's computers)

    It has tons of keyboard shortcuts for advanced usage

    It can acquire images from a TWAIN scanner... so no more funky scanning interfaces (yay!)

    This is one of my must-have softwares. Thanks for mentioning it Rowita :)

  7. I'd have to come up with something really unique... there's so many good names for programming languages already:

    Ruby

    Basic

    Scheme

    Lisp

    Python

    Perl

    Maybe I'd call my language "twiddle", and design it to be an extremely laconic scripting language, with a heavy focus on operators and operator overloading. With of course a special purpose in mind for the twiddle character itself: ~.

     

    But then I might not ever get around to writing my own programming language anyway. Meh.


  8. I have been playing with the idea of constructing a grammar for a language out of a large body of valid examples of the language in use... for example constructing a C grammar out of the source to a compiler or something.

    Now I know this has already been done with (Fortran?) - I found someone's thesis with Google and they did this. I am interested in seeing if this approach can be applied to spoken languages. Any input?


  9. There is currently no super-browser that can emulate all the quirks and issues of other main browsers.

    Your simplest solution would be to actually install the browsers you find people using on your site. If you need a separate computer for all that, try asking someone who works at a big company if they have access to discarded company computers - often these make great testing platforms, routers, or servers. :)

    For your reference you can install multiple versions of Internet Explorer on the same computer: see this link to skyzyx.com's downloads page for more information.

    Remember that the annoyance users get from using outdated or broken browsers is not seeing the Web in its full glory, and this annoyance can push them towards a better browser. Consider putting a conditionally visible note on your site's main page encouraging visitors to get a better browser. :D


  10. I recently finished Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman. Here is an excerpt from the publisher's summary of the book

    Postman makes two important observations:

    First, that technologies are not neutral?the inventor of the stirrup did not know it would change the nature of warfare, Gutenberg did not know his printing press would fuel the Reformation, Samuel Morse did not know his telegraph would turn our concept of useful information upside down?and when employed without considering these possibilities, a technology will have its way.

     

     

    Second, Postman observes that society has gone from employing technology to do the jobs it wants done, to pursuing technology for its own sake in the hope that benefits will result, to establishing technology as the standard by which all good things are measured. Technologies used to be our tools, employed or ignored as we saw fit. Now they have become our gods, and we serve their goals.

    Postman offers a lot of critique in this book but not so much in the way of solutions. As a result, I have been doing a lot of thinking lately :) .

    If you don't mind thinking, and aren't reading anything at the moment, I would recommend this book highly. It's as relevant today as it was when it was written (12 years ago if I remember correctly).


  11. I have a friend who likes to say (out loud, in person)

    OMG OMG LOL!! Exclamation mark one one one one one!

    Arghhhhhhh! It really bothers me when people say stuff like that.... in real life conversations! We should have a life that is more than just worthless meaningless internet chat. I mean, at that point it's just sad! Now my friend is highly intelligent. He will probably get a PHD eventually. But his adoption of chat slang severely decreases his appeal to other people.

    I hope he's able to find a job after he graduates. 'Cause if he can't... he'll be saying OMG OMG LOL I am a bum!!!11111111!

     

    :)


  12. I choose you, GIMP!

    [please excuse the cheesy Pokemon reference <_< ]

    It's free.

    It has community support.

    It works on many platforms.

    It's (pretty) stable.

    It's free!

    If you've ever seen cooltext.org you know that Gimp has a whole bunch of filters and preassembled tools. If you're a fan of the functional language Scheme, go for Gimp since that's the basis of it's Script-Fu filters. And if you like free things (and who doesn't), Gimp's your tool.

    Granted, the community support isn't as great as that of Photoshop or PSP, but it's still there. Give it a try! You might be surprised...


  13. Here is a map of the US with each state sized by the number of electoral votes is has. The map is colored in with the current predictions, and it looks like Iowa and Ohio, and New Mexico are the only two remaining.
    This map helps me visualize the distribution of votes and the nearness of the election a little better, since I can just compare the amounts of red and blue.
    But it does looks like Bush will win! By a small margin!


  14. Get yer fresh hot Gee-mail invites right here, folks! Step right up, step right up, get yer invites right here...

     

    If anyone wants invites, you could use the isnoop.net Gmail Invite Spooler from isnoop.net. I got mine there, and they don't seem to have sold my email address (the old one or the gmail one). Enjoy!!

     

    Note: You might have to wait a day or so after entering your address, since the demand is higher than the supply.


  15. What is it about you that separates you from the people around you?

    My strengths are patience and an aptitude for teaching. I have a talent for explaining things without making people feel dumb or insulted <_<

    What makes it worth getting up in the morning?

    Coming here? :) Really though... I am motivated by being with other people and by the thought of doing something new.

    What is the compliment you would really love to hear?

    "We couldn't have done it without you."

     

    But I wish my motivations etc were more based around my faith in Christ... because I know I will eventually fail, but He never will.


  16. A friend of mine has made some glowing recommendations for an Open Source program called ABC. It avoids the hassles associated with a complex GUI by working instead with markup. My friend has used several other graphical notation editors and he claims that this has reduced his work and improved his experience when editing musical notation. It also has tools to automatically convert from ABC notation into MIDI <_< Something for everyone I guess.


  17. I have two guys my own age who I would tell anything... who I would take a bullet for. They are much more than just friends to me - more like brothers. Speaking of which, I have three younger brothers, who I get along with more or less well.
    I have probably a dozen people who would happily tag along to a movie or dinner or something, and who I consider my friends. And on top of that maybe another 2 dozen who I talk to maybe a couple times a year, but rarely see in person.

    I think there are many loner people nowadays. What do you think? 

    There really are. Our reliance on technology, our culture, our problems - they all tend to isolate us. Depression is more of a problem than ever before <_< People need something they can rely on that's not centered around themselves.

  18. Here in the US (this is likely true elsewhere too) the media and culture have set impossible physical standards for women to live up to. I am a guy, so I don't feel quite as much pressure, but just think of the grocery store checkout aisle. The half of the magazines that aren't tabloids have a beautiful woman on the front, promising you "50 ways to a more radiant you" and "20 secrets for perfect hair" and whatever else. I am not saying that beauty isn't important, just that it's somewhat overrated. I want a woman who's wise.


  19. Firefox for me too... except I browse Xisto with Opera - my Firefox seems to have some problems under XP with a slow dial-up connection. If the bits aren't coming in Firefox hangs. <_< Firefox has the most solid feel to it, and it seems to have less funky behavior than Opera sometimes. Except maybe how flash content anywhere on a page sometimes keeps me from scrolling with the mouse button? My issues with Firefox are probably not universal problems, but it would be nice to have little funny bugs like that worked out. But in terms of value for money, it's all about Firefox.
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