How to build a better web browser

How to build a better web browser

I am sure this has been linked by a whole bunch of other people, not to mention slashdot. But who could miss the ranting of an Ex Internet Explorer Developer?

James

Jesus' Names

Jesus has a lot of names, It has always fascinated me to hear all the names, and what they all mean. Koinania house's recent newsletter had this article on Jesus names. I thought I'd share it with you:

THE NAMES OF JESUS CHRIST

Throughout the next few weeks we will be focusing on several different aspects of the Christmas season, including the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, the history of Christmas, and the origin of many of our Christmas traditions. This week we would like to take a look at the Names of Jesus Christ and their meaning.

Names have great significance in the Bible. A name was not just the label that differentiated one person from another, but often described something about the person. The name Abraham is translated "Father of a multitude", Jacob means "supplanter" and David "beloved". The most important names in the Bible, however, describe God Himself. Through His names, God expresses the reality of who He is. God does not cloak His identity and distance Himself from His creation. Instead, we have a God who desires to be known:

... But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.
-Jeremiah 9:24

As we rush through the Christmas season burdened with busy schedules, may we take time to seek the man whose birth Christmas celebrates. Who is Jesus Christ? Was he simply a good man, a teacher, or a revolutionary? Through his names, the Bible gives us great insight into the identity of the baby that was born in Bethlehem in Judea over 2000 years ago;

Jesus
: >From the name Joshua, or Yehoshua, which means "Yahweh is salvation".

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins
. -Matthew 1:21

Emmanuel
: From the Hebrew words Immanu: "with us" and El "God".

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us
. - Matthew 1:22,23

The Word
: Logos in the Greek - God's living, breathing message of who He is, by whom He created all things.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made -John 1:1,3

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
- John 1:14

Son of David
: The Messiah the King, the rightful heir to the throne.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
-Isaiah 9:7

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
- Luke 1:32

And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.
- Matthew 21:9

The Lamb of God
: Innocent and pure, and sent to die in our place.

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world
. - John 1:29

But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world...
- 1 Peter 1:19,20a

I AM
: The very name of the God of Moses, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Creator:

Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
- Exodus 3:14

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I Am.
- John 8:58

He is the Son of Man and the Son of God. He is the Rock, The Good Shepherd, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. May God be blessed for his goodness toward us, for "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." (John 3:17)

That is who Jesus is.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace
. -Isaiah 9:6

'My King' - Koinoinia House

No More PDF's

I used to hate PDF files, more recently I have started to appreciate them a little bit more. Mainly as we now tend to have faster internet, and computers that can display the files with out too much delay. It's interesting to see that others still have issues with PDF's too.
Contentious - No PDF Press Releases


Another Surprising issue that I have come across is the number of people who don't know what a PDF is, and don't even realize that the Acrobat (aka PDF) file they read inside their web browser is any different to the other webpages they have viewed. I'll bet this is great for Adobe, but because of its wide spread use, every windows user is forced to install Acrobat reader on their computers! This does not give us much freedom of choice.

James

Where do car names come from?

Heres a excerpt from todays AWAD:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The very first car I owned was a black hatchback Volkswagen Scirocco.
Before I plonked down my hard-earned graduate-school allowance for this secondhand (euphemistically also called pre-owned or pre-loved) automobile, I made sure its air-conditioning was A-OK. With a name like Scirocco (hot, dry wind), I felt I just had to.

How do automakers come up with names for their cars? Some christen their models with feminine sounding names (Ford Festiva, Chevrolet Lumina), probably following the traditional way of naming boats, while others go for macho names (Mitsubishi Galant, Nissan Armada).

Some prefer animal names, as a way of ascribing those qualities to their cars (Mercury Cougar, Dodge Viper, Ford Bronco). Others name their cars after cities (Dodge Daytona, Chevrolet Corsica, GMC Yukon). Still others take the easy way out and use what appears to be a jumble of letters and numbers though these often indicate engine capacity or some such characteristics.

Here are some interesting auto tidbits:

o Camry is an anagram of "My car".
o "A TOYOTA" is a palindrome, and forms a mirror image.
o Chevrolet named a car Nova. In Spanish "No va" means "It doesn't go."
o Then there was the unreliable Yugo which earned the nickname "You no go."
o Saab is an acronym for Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (Swedish Aircraft
Company Ltd); BMW is Bayerische Motoren-Werke (Bavarian Motor Works).
---------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought it might make interesting Reading (and I haven't posted in a while :)

Have a great week,

James

Linguistic Articles

Hi Everyone,
I stumbled across a couple of articles that might be of interest to you all :

Changing Places

This article talks about the "black" language in that US of A. I don't profess to know much of the cultural issues around this, but I think it is interesting our own indigenous people, the Maori, also have dialect to themselves. As with all such languages there are some white who speak "Maori" and many Maori who's accent is the same as mine...

Political Slang

This article might be usefull to figure out what all those politicians are going on about in the US right now :)

And finally...

Reflections

Reflections on "Engineering Expressiveness". Does all our new technology really help us to be come more effective communicators, or do will we just fall into uniformity?

James

First Site I am Hosting

JAMBE has just started hosting websites, the first being, Good Samaritan Inn (from tonga)

If you want to host a website, just email us and we will give you a free quote.

English in anyone's Language

Heres another article worth reading (especially if you understand australian)
Humorously highlighting the diversity of the English language:

English in anyone's language

James

A bit of linguistics for your day?

TIME Europe - On language changes in Germany

I found this article very interesting, its talking about how the German government has changed its spelling system, hoping to provide a system that is easier to learn...
Already countries like Switzerland have attempted similar changes, It basically means that everyone needs to learn two languages. The current "proper" Spellings and the old style so that you can still communicate with everyone...

Anyway read the article,

James

John The Baptists Cave?

I thought this was an interesting discovery, even John the Baptist never went their, it is interesting that the Biblical Stories of John the Baptist are depicted on the walls...

Cave linked to John the Baptist

Google + Nutch Blogs

As the Blog revolution continues to expand, we are starting to see both companies and individuals, blogging about their work. Athough this is probably just an attempt to show how smart they are, It can make informative reading :)
Here are two blogs I have enjoyed reading:

Google Blog
- Google is a Search engine (you might have heard of it?). Their Blog seems to feature various examples of their cleverness, as well as other "Google Life" commentary.

Nutch Blog
- Nutch is an Open Source Project that is developing Search Software that aims to equal to google in quality. The Blog is written by Doug Cutting Nutch's Lead Developer.

AWAW Begins

For a while I have been thinking about starting "A Word A Week" email. Although there are many good "A Word A Day" emails, Recieving an email every day if often too much for a busy Schedule. I also want to focus my attention of useful words, but ones that aren't used very often.

I have started A new blog for this venture, go check it out at http://awaw.blogspot.com

Updated Gmail Program Policies

I just finished writing the short article (below) about gmail when I noticed the they had updated the Program Policies.
The change is very small just a few added words, that don't affect me.

But how do I know you say?
What I really thought was worth noteing is the "view changes" button Which just puts a line through and colors red things that have been deleted, and underlines in green text that has been added.
I assume that it is automated, and I like the simplicity of it.
Some thing to "borrow" for your own web site :)

See : Gmail Program Policies

Gmail, Tips and Suggestions

Gmail

I thought I'd wait a little bit before talking about Gmail.
As a lot of bloggers got free Gmail accounts they all talked about it at once. So I thought I'd wait :)

I have been using gmail for a while now, and really really like it. I don't even notice the ads, and I don't talk about anything sensitive enough
That I really care about google analyzing it. The best features are labels, and searching.

Labels

Labels are a little bit like folders, they help you sort and categorize your email. The advantage of labels is that the same email can have more than one label.
Labels work very well with Gmail's archive feature. They way I have been using them is to apply labels to emails I might want to find again, and then archiving them.
The emails stay under the label, and are very easy to find. If you were a very busy user who had enough email that you wanted to remove things from under you label, but still be able to find them, It would be good to be able to archive with label attached. Perhaps an archive from label button...

Searching

Normally when you want to search for an email it takes ages for the program sort through the data, but as Gmail indexes all your emails, It can instantly recall anything you want.
Also it searches all your email an once, no longer do you have to rerun searches in different folders to find the right thing. Of course you can restrict your searches to certain labels, and to key words in the subject vs. the body etc.
I have heard people talk about a theoretical filesystem where you don't store files in directories you just attach meta data, and search for it.
Having seen gmail, I not only think that it is possible I really wish to had it.

Suggestions

Although I love Gmail, I do have some Ideas for improvements.
I have submitted most of these to the gmail team so It will be interesting to see if any show up soon.

1) Spam/Not Spam marking in filters. If Gmail's spam filter decides an email is spam, it puts it in the spam folder.
Emails in the spam folder can have labels attached, but they don't show up under the label buttons. The spam folder doesn't give you any indication
that you have received any new spam, therefore if a message is misclassified it might go unnoticed. I think the best way to get around this problem would
be to allow filters to mark email as Spam, or as not spam. Thus you could make sure the important emails didn't get missed.
An indication somewhere of how many new "spam" messages have arrived (since last login?) would be useful.

2) I am sure everyone has talked about this, and the gmail team is working on it, but it would be nice to be able to merge conversations that gmail has missed.
They could also use this information to improve the automatic conversation merging feature.

3) Altogether the search function is brilliant, I often find my search results are cluttered up with emails that I have sent. It would be nice to be able to search just the received mail.
In the meantime, you can get around this by typing in your gmail address in to field, as all the received email comes to you :) However your email might have been in the cc or bcc fields, and you will get any emails that you sent your self. (yes I do send my self emails :)

4) Even though gmail focuses on searching not sorting, sometimes its good to be able to sort search results. You might like to reverse sort the arrival time, or sort by senders name so that you can easily access the different emails from that person. You could add that person's name to your search, but it's easier to just click 1 button. And if you are anything like you probably can't spell their name.

5) If gmail could add in a google style spell checker to the search it would be helpful.

Try it out

I still have a couple of gmail invitations if you want to try it out. Just send an email to james.brunskill@gmail.com and ask for one. First come first served...
Well I just published my gmail address on the net, so It should be interesting to see how the spam checker holds out :)

I am still using my other email address to most of my mail, so if you want to ask me a question, make a suggestion, or anything else please send it to james@jambe.cjb.net.


James

Picsearch: map isreal

I guess a lot of you will know about google's image search, but I just found out that they have competitor, picsearch.
Example search : Picsearch: map isreal

It seems to be very fast (probably due to low load :) and very accurate. It has built in family friendly features which is a bonus.

James

UPDATE: lots of people seem to be finding this page when searching for "map isreal", just so you know the correct spelling is 'Israel'.

Best of Crypto Gram

As usual I have been reading cryptogram, and found some stories you might like to read...

Penetration Testing Using Social Engineering (Part 1) | Lineman.Net

Why Windows is a security Nightmare

Rebuilding a 1960 code breaking machine

All worth reading...

Search: avg grisoft.com

MSN Search: avg grisoft.com
I just saw in my logs that someone visited my site from that site.
Suprisingly my site is number 2, for a search avg grisoft.com!

I wonder if I could get avg to sponser me...

James

WorldNetDaily: Sustainable oil?

WorldNetDaily: Sustainable oil?

This is an Interesting Article suggesting an alternative to the current theory of where oil came from.

This is in contrast to the latest National Geographic,
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/index_19.html
which predicts a shortage of oil soon...

James

Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring

Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring

No doubt thousands of bloggers around the world have already commented on this. If you have a few minutes spare for a laugh you should take a look. I am applying today!

Howstuffworks "How Power Grids Work"

Howstuffworks "How Power Grids Work"

I have just spent a few minutes browsing about the howstuffworks site. It is fascinating to find out thing from how to pick a lock to how GPS works. If you have a couple of hours spare you should check it out. www.howstuffworks.com

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

I have moved my entire site over to my new server and my old pages now point to the new site.
Now that I have the extra space the bible pages are now on the server as well.
Online KJV Bible

Now I just have to start updating it more often and doing a redesign...

James

www.jambe.co.nz : DNS Issues

I am having a few teething problems as you might has found out with my DNS. Two of my dns servers are resolveing to the wrong address for somereason...

Should be fixed shortly

James

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

JAMBE Enterprises HQ - www.jambe.co.nz

Hey Everyone,
I just wanted to tell you all about my new domain. www.jambe.co.nz
I have a new server from rimuhosting (who I now work for)

The site is still that same, but expect some changes soon.

James

Bens Homepage

Hey Everyone,
I just thought I'd let you all know that my brother has just reopened his websiter. Check it out on http://www.bbrunskill.cjb.net/

Soviets and Venus

Just stumbled across this website today. http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus
It talks all about the Soviet missions to Venus, mars, and the dark side of the moon. It looks to me like they often had better technology than NASA!
I find it Interesting that you never hear about it... Is it some kind of left over from western propaganda?

Anyway It's very interesting reading,

Mars Again

Less than half an hour ago, nasa got its first pictures back from the opportunity lander sitting on Mars. It was amazing to hear the shouts and cheers as each new image came through.
And what an amazing site! The landing spot looks totally different from anything seen before on mars, as can see in this photo HERE as opposed to the other lander HERE

It appears to have some kind of fine dust floor, and there is an outcrop of bedrock on the horizon!
The people in the port landing nasa briefing discribed the location as better than what they imagined in their wildest dreams.
Finding a place that is wildly different to the other lander is extreamly significant as it lets the scientists compare and contrast the data.(as they both have indentical instruments)
Also Bedrock is very useful because its anchored in place, unlike smaller rockst that could be moved about or thrown from a crater.

Well thats it from me.

James
PS : Check out http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/ for all the information.

NASA TV - Opportunity has Landed

For the past couple of days I have been watching NASA TV, and following the progress of nasa's latest mission, landing 2 rovers on mars. (Yes I know I should be doing other work!)
If you have been following it at all you will know that nasa has had trouble contacting/controlling its first Rover "Spirit".
Just today they have started to make progress with diagnosed the fault. Putting the errors down to some type of flash memory issue.
But perhaps more exiting is that just recently the second rover "Opportunity" landed, and it was all covered on NASA TV live! Unfortunately I missed it as I was helping with sound at my church. (if you are interested a band called Iron + Clay were playing).
despite missing the live event, there are a lot of briefings happening, where mars rover technicians talk about what has happened and answer questions from the media.
Highly worth listening to...

Its also interesting from a personal perspective, as you hear reporter ask questions, and then can go on the internet (eg Space.com) and read the stories they wrote. This is goes to prove how truely revolutionary the internet is. Never in the history of Man has this sort of thing been possible.

Anyway I'm going back to watch more!

James