YouTube is addictive!

This week has been all about YouTube.

First of all, an amazing collection of Nova Scotian film has been uploaded to YouTube which includes fascinating footage dating from 1917-1957. One of my favourite films is the 1928 footage of the Cherry Carnival in Bear River. But there's hours and hours of film footage I've yet to see.

Speaking of hours and hours, if you have that much time, you should also check out a BBC series on YouTube called "The Supersizers Go....". It's all about food and it's completely addictive. Once you start watching, you won't be able to stop. Each episode focusses on a different era in British history, from Ancient Roman times to the 1980s, and everything in between. But the episodes aren't more specifically focusses on the food and the culture of eating from each of these eras. It's fascinating and hilarious as the two leads (a food critic and a comic) act the part and find out for themselves what life was like in that week's time period. Oh, and at times it's revolting - sooo many pigs heads were eaten, and grotesque fish dishes, and so much gross concoctions! Each episode is 60 minutes, but broken up into 10 minute segments on YouTube and I challenge you to watch just one episode! When I discovered this, I was glued to my computer for hours!

A few thoughts on studying the Bible.

I had an occasion, recently, to enter into a theological discussion about a "hot topic" in some of the more conservative churches. I have no intention in getting into the meat of the matter here, but I did come to some interesting conclusions.

First of all, we make a lot of assumptions. We assume the translations are accurate. We assume that what we are taught is right. And we assume we understand everything. We tend to let things we're taught go without challenging them, or without finding out for ourselves. We get confortable with what we understand and resist being unsettled.

So this discussion I mentioned before, it unsettled me. It challenged a my understanding of the Bible in a way I'd never been challenged before. My reaction? Find out the truth for myself by going back to the source, in it's original form in as much as I can. The problem is, the original form of the New Testament is Ancient Greek, which I've never studied. HOWEVER, I just discovered a fantastic resource available online, that does just that - it takes each and every word from the Bible back to it's original Greek or Hebrew origins. Not only that but each word is linked to its reference in Strong's Concordance; AND it also shows the passage in comparison with the various English translations. In case you're wondering, the website I'm referring to is: bible.cc. If you're the Bible-studying type, you'll want to check it out!

While I realise it's incredibly geeky to confess that I've spent hours doing this kind of study lately, I'm not ashamed to admit that it's been incredibly rewarding. If there's ambiguity in the translation, the original text can provide some clarity. This kind of study is really much richer and deepr than I had ever expected. I've learned so much! For example, in many cases, the gender-neutral pronoun used in the original text is replaced by masculine pronouns by Bible translators. Or, when a pronoun could have more than one meaning (gender-neutral or masculine), masculine becomes the default for translators. Interesting, eh? Ha. Or maybe it's not interesting at all. But it certainly has been enlightening for me.

The resources we have at our disposal in these post-modern times is unfathomable. And it's all at our finger-tips! We should consider ouselves privleged not only to have access to these reources, but also to have the freedom to use them.
...And that will be the final conclusion I leave you with tonight.

(B)logging a complaint

About Halifax.InfoMonkey.net, and here's why:

Edward of InfoMonkey, commented on my last blog entry to let me know that he posted my blog entry on his website. Now, I can't really stop this. My blog is publicly available, it's not password protected and until now, I've not really made any attempt to indicate that the contents of my blog are my own (more on this later).

What really got my knickers in a knot, was that, according to his website, the blog entry was "submitted by Inspired By Hope" (that's me!). See for your self - look at the right of the screenshot. See it?! I'd like to make it known that I did NOT submit that entry. In fact what he did was basically lift the entry straight from my blog right into his website, without any form of permission, just a notice that this is what he did. The guy contacted me before (here) when he was trying to get InfoMonkey started - and I must admit, I didn't respond because I'm not interested in publicizing my blog. He also indicated that in order to submit a blog entry to his website you have to be logged into InfoMonkey. I haven't logged in, nor will I.

But here again, I can't really stop the sharing of my blog unless I password protect it (which at this point I'm not interested in doing). And nor do I really want to discourage the sharing - afterall, I follow several blogs with great interest, and hope this same is true with mine. But this is a relatively anonymous online journal-type of a blog. I'm not really interested increasing my site stats, or by getting more traffic. I post when I want about what I want and if anyone is interested - good! So feel free to link to my blog or share it or get RSS feeds, all that I ask is that you don't misrepresent me!

I have to give Edward credit though - I did ask for my blog entry to be removed and it was, almost immediately. Thanks Ed!

So in response, I've been checking out the Creative Commons. You can license your work through the CC to indicate what exactly people can do (or can't do) with your blog. Check out my front page to see the license I chose, and if you have a blog, consider getting your own.

Making progress!

It's been awhile since I've posted a knitting update. So here you go:

I've been juggling two projects - the Chevron scarf and the baby sweater - and making some progress on each.
My priority is the baby sweater because I want it done well before the baby is born, and because I also want to try to knit something else to go with it (baby booties and a toy). I pick up the Chevron when I'm frustrated with the sweater - a dropped stitch, or a lost stitch, or a technique I don't know how to tackle (anyone know how to increase on a purl row??).

Tonight I started and finished a sleeve. I'm hoping I can be finished the sweater in a week or so.
My biggest challenge with both projects is the counting! For some reason I have to count, recount and recount again. Hopefully my counting skills (or concentration skills) will improve over time and practice.

I've also been adding to my stash. During my visit to Toronto, Charlotte and I checked out a couple lovely wool shops. I restrained myself from spending a lot, but didn't want to leave empty handed either. Of course, it didn't help that I went into the shops without any projects in mind so I didn't have anything to shop for. All I could do was fondle the yarn and ooh and aah over the beautiful eye-catching colours. I came away with only 4 balls of wool that were very reasonably priced. Yay me! Millie approves.See! My stash is building. This is about half of it. The other half is tucked away out of sight.

And since I'm talking about knitting, I might as well tell you I've finally been invited into Ravelry. I signed up on Jan. 26, and it took 10 days of waiting before I got (and accepted!) the invitation. Yes, I was getting antsy and made many visits to the impatient alpaca to see where I was in the queue.
And I'd like to say the wait was worth it, but unfortunately for me, I've decided that Ravelry is classed in the same group with Facebook - a high potential to be a monumental time-sucker. So I've decided to add it to my Lenten sacrifice. No Facebook or Ravelry for me for 39 days.

When Easter comes I will feast upon all Ravelry has to offer!
(I realise I'm allowed to cheat on Sundays, so I may take a peak to see what it's all about then - we'll see.)

For those of you unfamiliar to Ravelry, it's a social network for those who knit and crochet. You can find photos and patterns and forums for asking questions; you can add friends just like on Facebook and you can log your own projects (works in progress, finished objects or those in the queue), you can keep an inventory of your stash and see what other people are doing with their stash. I've been warned it's highly addictive, and fascinating, and engrossing......which is why I'm staying away from it for the remainder of Lent.

More time to put towards other things .... which are in the works as I type (again, more on this later!).

A little bit of silliness

Apparently I have too much time on my hands because I've just spent well over an hour watching YouTube videos. But then again, what else do you do on a stormy Saturday morning.

Here's what I've been watching:

Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager, episodes 1 to 8
John Dunham & Company (Walter, Achmed the dead terrorist, Peanuts & Jose Jalepeno*)

*some of the humour is in bad taste, but the rest is hilarious!

3 websites of interest (to me, anyway)

I thought I'd share a few sites I've been visiting regularly (okay, okay, obsessively).
1. www.facebook.com - For most of you, if not all, this is old news. But I thought I'd share it anyway since it's become an addiction of sorts for me. I've also had the chance to reconnect with several people from high school, from undergrad, etc. who I've lost touch with over the years. It's been really good.

2. www.spiralfrog.com - This one is probably new to all of you. I heard about it a couple years ago on CBC, bookmarked the page when they were still developing the service, and have been checking back periodically to see if the service has gone live. It's only been in the last little while that the site has been activated. The principle of the site is to offer free music downloads with the caveat that you have to be willing to watch/listen an advertisement first. I'm cool with that. I'm not tempted one bit by web-advertising so go ahead show me a promo. Now, I haven't actually done any downloading yet (partly because my silly laptop is very uncooperative!), but I've done quite a bit of searching in their music downloads, and they seem to have quite a variety. Go ahead - check it out.

3. www.archivistontheedge.com - I thought I'd share one of the blogs I've been reading for the past year or so. I'll admit, it's a little strange to be following someone else's life, but I found I was quickly drawn into her blog. It actually has very little to do with archives, and more to do with knitting, but just the sheer fact that she does both had me hooked (crocheted?). Not to mention I identify with a lot of her "about me" points...which alone is a little weird.