Pen & Ink

 I've always thoroughly enjoyed art in a variety of forms. As an adolescent, I would draw all kinds of pictures of animals, dinosaurs, cars, etc...it was how I passed the time when I felt like being alone and diving into something creative. As I got older and into high school, I selected art as my major and took it as an elective every year I was there. I also took drafting and architecture all four years as the two seemed directly correlating and I enjoyed both disciplines very much. Creativity and creative endeavors have always been at the core of my personality I suppose. Acknowledging what is in the world around me but also contemplating what "could be".

While each person will go through a variety of changes through their lifetime, art and creativity has always remained a foundation of my character. Before computers were capable of doing any real "considerable" artwork, we did everything with pencils, pens and brushes. As technology matured, new possibilities emerged and my attention got drawn in that direction. After years of leaning into the digital art arena, I find myself going back to the basics with a new passion. The classic, elegant, timeless soul inspiring pencil, pen and ink. There's something comfortable about it, mysterious about it, soothing about it, and inspiring about it. It's like rekindling the flame of your oldest and best friend who knows your very soul, quirks, good times, bad times, and loves you completely and without reserve. 

What stories we have to tell and so much time to catch up on! What mysteries have we solved and yet to resolve? What lies beyond the limitless sky, on the highest mountain or the deepest valley? Where do we go and what should we do when we get there? What secrets lie at the tip of my pen eagerly awaiting the stories told with each stroke? 

 

God Doesn't Know Color............and neither should we

The answer to racism has been written in the Bible for thousands of years, all we (as a people) have ever needed to do is pay attention. God created man in His image and from man, woman was created to be his companion. God did not define all the differences or intricacies of man nor woman but simply man and woman. We, as a society, should endeavor to do the same.

Below I have included the parable of "The Good Samaritan" from Luke 10, (edited) as an example. A "Christian" being a person who endeavors to follow the teachings of Christ.

The Parable of the Good (Christian)

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”

So he answered and said, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”

But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among (bad people), who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain (religious man) came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a (second man), when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain (Christian), as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the (bad people)?”

And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

The Old Days of SEO and Top Spot

I remember when....

Long ago when the internet was just coming into it's own and the battle for "top spot" in a Google search was the big thing to accomplish. People started companies selling their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) skills to companies for increased revenues. The idea being that when someone did a web search for a specific need, the first or "top" company to come up had a higher percentage chance of getting someone's business. Maybe this is still a thing, I don't know, but it was a decade ago.

Back then I was still learning to put together websites and learn all I could about how all the nuts and bolts of the internet worked. I read a lot of books and articles as well as a lot of long nights learning the HTTP code and all the nuances that went along with it. Hours, days, weeks...all spent learning how this whole system worked. I think about it now and it seems kinda funny how driven I was with all of it. It was a lot harder to build a site back then because many of the "instant" sites and platforms weren't available like they are now. We had to code from "scratch" and as new code types and capabilities were introduced, we stayed on top so we could implement them into our sites.

I'm writing this article not so much to reminisce, but to a memory of a photo I ran across digging through some old archives. Looking at it I remember the excitement of finally pushing enough traffic across my website to hit that "top spot" and then the immediate sigh of completion. I had done it. I finished what I had set out to do and have the photo to remind myself of all the work I put in. These are the kinds of accomplishments I like to share with my son and hopefully inspire him to go and make some of his own accomplishments. It's a good feeling to set one's mind on something and see it through to completion. However, I've also learned that all the credit goes to God for providing us with what we needed to accomplish our goals, whatever that may be.

Servers on Your Desktop

Many people think a technology server is an entirely separate machine or in modern cases, a web based addition to their home technology. While servers typically play a certain role for technology use, their operating functionality is actually quite basic in comparison to the average person's desktop (or laptop) computer; even the average smart phone processes more than many server machines do.

In regards to such, I wanted to touch on the basic installation of a web server stack on the average desktop environment. On a Windows machine I use XAMP for installing the basic necessities required to run a small web server with the functionality required for a development instance of Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal. On a Linux (or similar) machine, this stack might be referred to as a LAMP stack. The package "stack" is most typically comprised of Apache, MySQL and PHP packages which are used on most web servers for a variety of functionalities associated with websites providing a variety of user functionality.

Why install these things on my home use desktop or laptop? Well, many years ago when I was learning how to create websites of various types and for a variety of reasons, I found it best to do my editing and development in an "offline" setting rather than doing things "live" where nobody would notice the changes that were happening in the process while I was making them. Also, the website would stay live so people could visit without taking the site down for service. This "offline" work style is effective even with applications such as Wordpress once a person has learned how to copy over any writings into the MySQL tables.

Essentially, all changes, modifications or updates are done at the convenience of the admin then verified through the localhost (127.0.0.1) web address which gives a sudo-live representation of how the site changes will look before copying the files to the live server for the world to see. The packages to do this aren't very large but the benefit is. Whether doing one's own production or providing services for someone else, work can be checked and verified before being sent live to the operating site.

I should also note that the XAMP admin panel makes those services easy to turn on and off so they are not needlessly burdening our memory or processor when we don't need them to be.

Programming Revisited

After my first couple of posts I spent some time thinking about some of the things I might want to write about. My mind wandered in all sorts of directions including things I would want to make a record of now that my son is getting to that exploratory stage in his life. I think for my own sake, it's in some way beneficial to me to record some of the things I've done and experienced so that he can have a lasting understanding of his dad that he can read or turn back to anytime he wishes. I've done so much in my life so far and I've gotten kind of worn on the social media thing that blogging seems to just make more sense.

Today I was thinking about going through some of my old college programming projects and see if I can capture those results in a form that might make some sense to him or maybe even inspire him to learn to program on his own. As I flipped through my old class files, I came across the Visual Basic programs I wrote. It took me a while to remember that I used Visual Studio IDE to create them. To collect the screenshots for the code, I had to install the program which, thankfully, is free.

I haven't done any serious programming since college for a variety of reasons but primarily because it consumes a lot of time and I haven't felt inspired to spend that much time indoors tied to a computer like I used to. For some odd reason though, God has moved me to revisit those skills I once spent so much time developing. Maybe He wants me to look back on the things I have accomplished or maybe He has some other reason for me to be going in this direction? Either way, this is not something I've really planned out for anything but something I felt compelled to revisit at an entirely new point in my life.

This program is actually very simple. It includes a drop-down menu that allows for selection of an appliance. Then, input the values in the provided fields and it calculates the cost to run that unit. Add the calculation to the sum field to the right and it totals everything together. It can also throw errors for improper input as well as clear the fields to start over. Not overly complicated, but a good exercise program for learning how to use the IDE and developing program structure and flow.

Pause and Think

Found these snippets among my arsenal of research and felt them worthy of sharing. Basic concepts for consideration when interacting with others on a personal level.
   
Ask Yourself What This Person is Really About?

   Some people are really good at projecting a confident, sexy, fun-loving
   spirit or making you feel really attractive and important.  But, if you
   take a step back, you may want to ask yourself how well you actually know
   this person?  And how much are they really into you?  Do their eyes wander
   around the room, looking for their next conquest or who is admiring them?
    How do they treat regular people like the waitress or cab driver? If you
   listen carefully to what they say, what are the underlying values?  Are
   they critical and contemptuous of others?  Do they remember what you tell
   them?  How considerate and thoughtful are they?  Do they have close
   friends or are they close to their family?  Asking yourself these
   questions can help you move beyond superficial aspects of the person, to
   consider qualities that are more important in the long-run.

   
Use Your Wise Mind

   Psychologist Marsha Linehan coined the concept of "wise mind" to describe
   a state of mind that integrates logical thinking with emotional awareness.
   It is a mindful state in which you make decisions by integrating different
   ways of knowing and don't cut off parts of your experience. If you feel an
   instant connection with somebody, take this into account, but don't make
   it the whole basis of your decision.  In wise mind, we don't ignore
   emotions, but we also don't get so caught up in them that we see what we
   want to see, not what is actually there. In brain terms, wise mind means
   integrating our amygdala's intuitive reactions with the wisdom of
   past experience and knowledge about the world.


About the Author

   Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. is a Psychologist in Mill Valley, California, and
   expert on mindfulness, emotions, neuroscience, and behavior, Dr
   Greenberg provides workshops and speaking engagements for
   organizations, life coaching, and psychotherapy for individuals
   and couples. She regularly appears on radio shows, and as an expert source
   in national media.

Delete or Update?

Today I spent some time going back and reading some of the old posts in the How-To blog I was working on 7 or 8 years ago. In reading, I was rather embarrassed with the negative language I used to use and the fact that I included it in my blog. Those were some really dark times for me back then and when I got home from work I was considering deleting the whole thing. As I logged in and went to the "delete" option of the admin panel, I paused and stopped, then looked at the number of views on the posts I had gotten.

Rather than scrub the entire thing, maybe it would be worth it to just clean up those old posts and keep them around for posterity sake? I hadn't written any new posts for years but then I think about my son and how it might be interesting for him to be able to read some of those old posts. Either way, it's probably a good idea to clean them up since I've created a backup of them all already and who knows? I may end up adding to it sometime in the future.