Subscribe
Jason Barker is Currently...
Archive for February 2007
Free Software for OS X
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 10:59 AM by Jason Barker
In an earlier post I mentioned - as I've done a number of times in the past - my reliance on free and open source software (FOSS) in my work on Orthodox Christian Bible Studies. Below is a list of the FOSS applications I use on my MAC.
I should first note that, despite my dedication to FOSS, my primary tools for creating graphics and applications are not free: advanced, stable and widely used applications are a necessary expense for professional work. Thus, in OS X I currently use Director MX 2004 for creating the Shockwave applications themselves. Until my new software - Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Flash Studio 8 - arrives for my Mac, I use Creative Suite 1 and Flash MX (and Director MX for specific legacy work) in Windows. There are simply no FOSS equivalents for these applications: the closest thing to an equivalent would be replacing Photoshop with GIMP, and Photoshop is simply too powerful - and too much the standard - to replace it for professional work, although if I didn't have Photoshop GIMP would be acceptable for personal projects or small projects that do not need to be sent to outside collaborators or printers.
Nonetheless, there are a number of FOSS applications for OS X that I use heavily and recommend:
- Word Processor: I use NeoOffice, which is a Mac-specific port of OpenOffice.
- Script Editor: I use Smultron.
- Tree Information Manager: I use Jreepad for recording information - such as sprite locations, dimensions, and colors - related to each frame of the Director file. It records in plain text - rather than the more useful rich text of the Windows-only Keynote - but otherwise meets my basic needs for such records.
- FTP - I use Cyberduck.
- Clipboard Enhancement - I use iClip Lite to allow access to an array of items that I regularly need to paste (particularly Lingo scripts).
- Browser - Web browsers have been the biggest - and most surprising - disappointment for me in switching to a Mac. Opera - which is my favorite browser in Windows - is rather unstable in OS X, and has serious problems in the way it handles Flash. I debated between Camino and Firefox, and finally went with Firefox (which I used for a couple of years in Windows, from when it was called Phoenix to when I switched to Opera over a year ago): I heavily use several add-ons - particularly Copy Plain Text, MeasureIt, text/plain, and View Source Chart - for which there are not equivalent features in Camino, and I preferred to simply copy my Firefox password files from Windows instead of needing to add each password to Keychain in Camino.
- Email - As I have since it was in version 0.3, I use Thunderbird.
- Audio Recorder - I use Audacity.
- Phone - Because we cannot get a good mobile phone connection from our house, I use Skype for much of my long distance calling. The connection is sometimes problematic - a lot like a bad mobile phone signal - but it is usually usable, and free calls to friends and family who use Skype, as well as paying only $15 dollars for a year of calling landline phones in North America, was irresistable.
- Blogging - I create this blog using Thingamablog.
I use a number of other free applications for such things as media viewing and computer maintenance, but these are the FOSS applications I use in OS X that are directly related to my work for the Department of Youth Ministry.
Posted in Online Resources
Luke Preview
Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 1:32 AM by Jason Barker
Development for the Luke Bible study is progressing, but problems prevented me from uploading the completed first chapter last week: the graphics software for my Mac has still not arrived, forcing me to laboriously go back and forth between operating systems for almost every task. Combining this with learning some of the different ways in which I need to use Director in the Mac - as well as simpy the vagaries of life - and the launch for the Luke application has been pushed back to this week.
To give you an idea of what the Luke application will be like, I've uploaded a couple of screenshots of a typical article page (in this case, the biblical text of Luke chapter one). These are shots of the same page: the difference is that in the first the main navigational menus are closed, whereas in the second shot they are open. Click on the graphics to open a full-size version of the picture:
Image 1: Screenshot with navigational menus closed.
Image 2: Screenshot with navigational menus open.
The title of the application is "The Journey: Travel with Jesus Through the Gospel According to St. Luke," and the graphic design theme is travel related. Thus, the elements on each screen are designed to look like travel-related paraphernalia: tickets, postcards, stationary, maps, Polaroid snapshots, etc.
At the top of the screen you will see two things: a compass (which is there simply as a decoration) and the main navigational menu, which is designed to look somewhat like an airplane ticket. The main navigational menu links to six indices: Bible chapters, main commentaries, the commentaries of St. Cyril of Alexandria on the Gospel, articles about Orthodoxy, life application articles, and handouts.
The main section of the screen has five objects, four of which are active. On the left you will see a yellow stickie note, and below that a Polaroid-looking graphic of St. Luke. The stickie note is where brief explanatory notes about the text will appear: for example, clicking a hyperlink about Herod in Luke 1 will bring up a brief note like you see here (there will not be hyperlinks in the biblical text itself; I simply included the explanatory note for this preview so that you can see what will appear there). The Polaroid-looking graphic is where photographs and illustrations will appear: clicking the arrows at the bottom of the "photo" will allow you to scroll through the photos for that page. When reading the main commentary, these images will be illustrations of the scenes depicted in the text, as well as photos or illustrations of locations mentioned in the text. When reading life application articles, these images will primarily be photos of members of Teen SOYO.
In the center of the screen is the main document for that page (in this case, the biblical text of Luke 1). The document is intended to look like hotel stationary: "The Journey" logo appears in the left corner, while the standard street address is replaced with identifying information for the chapter and a link back to the Orthodox Christian Bible Studies homepage.
On the right side of the screen you will see a postcard, and below that a map. The map is simply there as decoration. The postcard, however, contains important buttons related to that document. The top button will enable you to return to the home screen for the application. The second button will enable you to return to the homepage for that particular chapter of Luke (in this case, the homepage for Luke chapter 1). The third button will enable you to return to the previous page you viewed. The fourth button (which for copyright reasons will not actually appear on pages containing the biblical text; I simply included the button in this screenshot so that you could see it) will take you from the application to a simple HTML copy of the article for printing.
On the bottom of the screen you will see a wallet with a stickie note protruding from it: it is intended to look like a wallet carrying an array of tickets or slips with travel info. This is the navigation for the articles for that chapter. Thus, clicking the "Bible Chapter" button in this case would take you to the biblical text of Luke chapter 1, etc.
This gives you a glimpse of a somewhat typical page in the Luke application. Keep reading this blog, because the Luke application REALLY IS COMING!
Posted in Bible Studies
Residential Broadband Adoption to Increase
Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 8:48 AM by Jason Barker
CNet reports that, according to Parks Associates, more than 60 million U.S. households - approximately 55 percent - will be have a broadband Internet connection by the end of 2007. This follows a 20 percent growth in 2006, to approximately 50 million U.S. households.
I wrote a couple of months ago about the significance of increased broadband penetration for Orthodox Christian Bible studies:
Statistics such as this have a significant impact on the development of online Orthodox Christian Bible studies. The relatively high penetration of broadband means that it is reasonable to develop multimedia Bible studies, which require a higher bandwidth than simple text-based articles alone. At the same time, a reasonable percentage of users continue to use dialup connections (even though that percentage is continually dropping). I address this issue by offering the majority of the textual content from our Bible studies in two formats: incorporated into the multimedia applications themselves for broadband users, and available separately as HTML documents for dialup users.
At the same time, there are limitations - excluding such previously referenced limitations as our lack of resources to create such materials - on the amount and quality of audio/video material I can incorporate into these studies. As broadband speeds increase, the amount and quality of audio/video materials online can increase.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Orthodoxy and Youtube
Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:32 PM by Jason Barker
I read an article this morning from the Rocky Mountain News about a Hassidic Jewish rabbi who uses Youtube to transmit religious messages and promote his programs. This prompted me to think about ways in which Orthodox groups could use Youtube. The Church is not entirely absent from Youtube (for example, St. Luke the Evangelist Orthodox Church in Palos Hills, IL, has uploaded a number of videos about Orthodoxy to Youtube), but there is little Orthodox content created by or for teens.
A September 2006 study by Nielsen/Netratings found that teens spend an average of 26 hours and 48 minutes online each week, and a recent study by JupiterResearch states that 22 percent of online teens watch streaming video at least once per week (and, according to another study 76 percent of males regularly view online video): this means that online video provides a significant - and, as the Rocky Mountain News article shows, relatively inexpensive - way for Orthodox Christians to reach young people.
Christian teens creating Youtube videos isn't an unprecedented activity: a number of teens have participated in a Challenge Blasphemy project in response to the aggressive atheist Blasphemy Challenge. What is largely missing are distintively Orthodox Youtube videos: creating and uploading such videos could conceivably be a popular project for Orthodox youth groups, and would require little more than a video camera and broadband Internet access.
Contact me at the email address in the left sidebar if you know of any Youtube - or similar site - videos for Orthodox teens.
Posted in Online Resources
Quotation from Cicero
Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 8:44 AM by Jason Barker
This morning I once again came across a quotation from Cicero, the great Roman statesman and orator, that is applicable to an Orthodox approach to Bible study: "Who knows only his own generation remains always a child."
In order to grow to spiritual maturity, youth need to interact with the faithful servants of God through the millennia, both in the Bible itself and in the subsequent centuries of Christian life and teaching.
Posted in Miscellaneous
A Free Software Site
Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 3:45 PM by Jason Barker
After reading my earlier post on free and open source software, Fr. Thomas Soroka (host of The Path podcast) pointed me to Software for Starving Students, which has free downloads of disc images of free and open source software for Windows and OS X.
You will need a broadband connection to download the disc images.
Posted in Online Resources
What Young Adults Want
Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 11:41 AM by Jason Barker
Terry Mattingly recently wrote a column about the efforts of some churches to create special "singles ministries" where it is possible for post-college singles to mingle and - at least potentially - find spouses. The column itself is at most tangential to my Bible studies for teens, but there is a quote at the end of the column from Dawn Eden that I believe is equally applicable to teens, and is quite applicable to this ministry:
What congregations should do is rally single adults around worship, prayer, books, the arts and service to others, she said. Then friendships and relationships can develop out of activities that strengthen the faith of those that choose to participate.
"You really don't have to dumb things down for us," said Eden. "There are plenty of ways for single adults to get less church if that is what they really want. Why not talk to some of your young adults and ask them what they really want. They may want more church _ more faith _ not less."
I am deeply concerned with ensuring that Orthodox Christian Bible studies do not "dumb down" the content for teens. It is obvious that the content must be somewhat basic and general - the target audience is in junior high through early college, not seminary or graduate school - but I strive to provide a relatively full approach to the material, rather than merely making it entertaining or removing any difficult passages. Teens need - and, as many studies indicate, increasingly want - biblical studies that, in Eden's words, gives them "more church _ more faith _ not less."
Posted in Miscellaneous
New Orthodox Podcasts
Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 2:34 PM by Jason Barker
In addition to the Ancient Faith Radio's excellent The Path (which features the daily Epistle and Gospel readings, with commentary by Fr. Tom Soroka) and Our Life in Christ (an MP3 recording of Steven Robinson and Bill Gould's radio program), as well as Annunciation Cathedral's Orthodox Word podcast (featuring the daily readings, as well as biographies and hymns for the saints of the day), there are a couple of new podcast feeds that may be of interest to readers.
First, Ancient Faith Radio has a new podcast. The Illumined Heart interviews Orthodox speakers and personalities. Since one of the hosts of the podcast is Steve McMeans, director of the Orthodox Speaker's Bureau, and the first guest to be interviewed is Frederica Mathewes-Green - who is a speaker with the OSB - I assume the interviews for awhile will be with individuals affiliated with the OSB.
Second, the Orthodox Christian Network has created a new feed for Come Receive the Light.
Posted in Online Resources
Quizzes Uploaded
Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 3:39 PM by Jason Barker
I apologize for the recent delay in updates to both this blog and Orthodox Christian Bible Studies - medical problems (from which I will spare you the details) have stopped cold my productivity this week.
I have uploaded the remainder of the quizzes on the Gospel according to St. Luke. My recent problems have prevented me from completing the elements for chapter one of the Luke application that would have enabled me to upload the chapter this week, but - God willing - I should have the chapter uploaded next week. I'll announce on this blog when the first chapter is actually available for use.
Posted in Bible Studies
Free Software
Posted on Friday, February 09, 2007 at 12:57 PM by Jason Barker
I earlier mentioned my heavy use of freeware and open source software: many of the applications are of a high (or at least perfectly reasonable and useable) quality, and using such software is a good way - and, with my budget, a truly essential way - of stretching ministry resources.
PC Magazine's current issue features a list of recommended freeware and open source applications; I used many of these - such as Avast, Notepad++, FileZilla, Audacity, and Skype - on my old PC (and still use Skype on my Mac to make the majority of my long-distance calls).
Freeware and open source applications are a good way for parishes and ministries to obtain useable software.
Posted in Online Resources
Spiritual Accountability and Bible Study
Posted on Friday, February 09, 2007 at 11:25 AM by Jason Barker
I read an article in Inside Higher Ed about ways in which Christian colleges assess and measure spiritual growth (Ted Olsen of Christianity Today correctly states, "Inside Higher Ed is a little late on the story, but it's encouraging to see them doing it at all"). I have no real opinion about the practices described, or insight into their efficacy (Orthodox psychologists like Fr. George Morelli and Fr. Gregory Jensen would be far ask about these things), but the article did make me think again about the importance of Orthodox Bible study as a communal activity.
Spiritual accountability is a central part of the Orthodox life: Orthodox Christians regularly engage in intense reflection upon our lives (in the Bible study on the Epistle to the Romans I included an article providing a spiritual checklist), which assists us in being aware of our spiritual development, and our practice of confession and direction provides some of the accountability we greatly need. While these things are at the heart of spiritual accountability, they are not the entirety of such accountability: the way in which Orthodox Christians study the Bible is also an exercise in spiritual accountability.
In an earlier post on developing credibility I wrote:
Because Orthodox Bible study is never an exclusively individual and private activity, but instead is always conducted within the Orthodox community, our Bible study applications are designed to be used in conjunction with group Bible studies in local parishes (for example, the applications contain PDF handouts designed primarily for use in these group studies). By supporting and encouraging the use of these Bible studies to the youth with whom they have a personal relationship, youth workers can go a long ways toward establishing the credibility of these studies with Orthodox youth.
Orthodox Bible study is not an isolated activity, but instead is one that intricately relates the individual to all other Christians - past, present and future - who have engaged or will engage in the study of Holy Scripture. A individual Christian teen's spiritual development must be understood and promoted within a community of peers and leaders who know and love this person, and can support and guide this person in his or her life. It is for this reason that I regularly encourage teens to not rely solely on my Bible study applications as personal tools, but also to take this material and discuss it in an Orthodox youth group. I further encourage adults to participate in these groups, both for the good of the teens and for their own growth.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Article on Print Publishers Creating MP3s
Posted on Wednesday, February 07, 2007 at 11:10 AM by Jason Barker
CNN published an article about publishers - in this case, particularly textbook publishers - creating MP3 versions of books. The statistics given for MP3 and podcast usage are similar to those I cited in an earlier post - over 50 percent of teens own an iPod, but less than five percent of their MP3 listening consists of podcasts or audio books - but the article also notes that the use of non-music MP3s is steadily increasing.
This increase can be noticed in the increased interest in - and availability of - Orthodox podcasts. I noted in a previous post that Ancient Faith Radio now has a podcast called The Path which focuses on daily scriptural reading (as does Annunciation Orthodox Church's Orthodox Word podcast), and both Ancient Faith Radio and the Orthodox Christian Network syndicate podcasts of radio programs (AFR makes available Our Life in Christ, and OCN produces Come Receive the Light, although Come Receive the Light's MP3 version has been unavailable since OCN launched its new website). Furthermore, this blog's stats show that a surprising number of people visit this blog while searching for Orthodox podcasts: at least two have done so in the last eighteen hours.
This again raises the issue of producing a podcast for Orthodox youth. I have not implemented an MP3 feature into the upcoming study of Luke (which I promise will start soon), but it may be possible to create another podcast, or to implement a podcast into the study of the Pauline epistle(s) that will be the subject of the 2008 Bible Bowl. Would you listen to a podcast for Orthodox youth, and if so, what type of podcast would you like to receive?
You can send me your feedback at the email address in the left sidebar.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Software is Hard
Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 at 5:42 AM by Jason Barker
Salon published over the weekend an interesting interview with Scott Rosenberg, the author of a new book on Mitch Kapor's Chandler. The book - which I haven't read, but sounds like it has something in common with Fred Moody's fascinating (but out-of-print) I Sing the Body Electronic - details the three years (and counting) of development of a new PIM application. The interview makes clear that a focus of the book is more than Chandler itself:
The story of Chandler is also a platform for Rosenberg to explore much larger questions about the nature of software. Such as, why is it so hard to pull off a big project on deadline? What is it that software developers actually do? How is the art of writing software different from other forms of creative endeavor or technological construction?
I am always interested in examinations of software development projects. I am in no way a programmer: I design the applications for my Bible studies using Director and Flash (and before these I used Opus), and am dependent on the Lingo and ActionScript created by others to modify for use in my projects (at the same time, modifying and implementing these scripts is itself a complicated task). Nonetheless, because a significant part of the work I do is at least related to the type of work done by a typical development team, I always benefit from reading about the work of others.
Creating any type of interactive project is a monumental task. To use my Bible study applications as an example, creating the content - namely, the articles themselves - is only one part of the process. I must design the interface so that everything maintains a look that is attractive, consistent (this is vital), easy-to-use, and yet also does not distract from the focus on the Bible and biblical study. The design process itself is extremely complicated, as I realize that elements that seemed simple and clear in my mind are in fact quite complicated, and in the end must frequently be replaced with a different type of element (or jettisoned altogether). Scripts must be developed for each element so that it functions properly; this is often made more difficult by the fact that scripts frequently simply will not work, and thus must be debugged, and then must be extensively tested to ensure that they do not conflict with the hundreds of other scripts in the application. As the articles are placed into the application, I must go through each one to make sure that the format remains correct, and I must add hyperlinks where needed: the process of adding hyperlinks necessitates going back through earlier articles to add new hyperlinks to articles that have since been written, and testing every hyperlink to ensure that the links are not broken. Each article must also be added to the appropriate index.
There are more steps than these in the process of creating each chapter of an application (Luke will have 24 chapters), but this gives you a general idea of the workload in creating such application.
This process is complicated by the fact that almost all development teams struggle to obtain the necessary resources for their project. In my case, I am the sole worker on these projects, and thus must do all the work that would otherwise be delegated to several people in a development team. I love doing all these different tasks, but it adds greatly to the development time for a Bible study: furthermore, because I am the sole worker on these Bible study projects (as well as a number of others), any outside delay (sickness, family responsibilities, etc) completely delays a project's development. Limited financial resources further lengthens the production time, since I must find or develop free alternatives for resources that could otherwise be easily obtained if funding were available.
Thus, when you are tempted to ask, "What is the holdup in releasing chapters of the Bible study of Luke," you can already see my answer: "Software is hard!"
Posted in Miscellaneous
Fr. Stephen Freeman on Reading Scripture
Posted on Friday, February 02, 2007 at 11:25 AM by Jason Barker
In a recent post about the Orthodox approach to Scripture, Fr. Stephen Freeman makes several statements that underscore the approach I take in creating Orthodox Christian Bible studies. A representative statement:
The reading of Scripture is as important for the Church today as it has ever been. But it is vitally important that Scripture be read within the Tradition of the Church and not within the grips of those who would wrest it to some other use. The bottom line of both strains of historical methodology, is a claim that the Scriptures can be read by anyone as they would any historical document. This is not the claim of the Fathers. The Scriptures, of course, can be read in such a manner and will yield any amount of information - but they will not yield Christ in such a manner.
Examining the historical context of the biblical writings is a valuable activity, and I attempt to provide a reasonable amount of such information in my studies. Such information, however, must not be the primary - and certainly not the exclusive - focus of biblical studies: the focus must always be God, and our relationship with Him and His Church.
I recommend reading the post in its entirety.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Listening to The Ark in OS X and Linux
Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 at 5:43 PM by Jason Barker
I wrote last month about the Orthodox Christian Network launching The Ark, their new 24-hour Orthodox Internet radio station.
The streaming service used by The Ark incorporates an embedded media player, meaning that The Ark's page loads the Windows Media Player into a small webpage in your browser. This creates a problem for people using OS X or Linux rather than Windows, because embedding the Windows Media Player into a page requires Active X, which is only present in Windows. Thus, potential listeners who use OS X or Linux may have found themselves unable to listen to the station.
By looking at the code for the page for the high-speed web stream, I was able to find the direct URL for The Ark's stream:
http://63.247.194.178:7475/SAM_WMA_1O
Opening that link directly in your WMA-capable media player will enable you to listen to The Ark without having Active X. You will lose the artist and title listings - and the promotional graphics - that are part of The Ark's player page, but you will now be able to listen to the stream if you are using something other than Windows.
Posted in Online Resources