Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

We've come a long long way together,

through the hard times and the good,

I've got to clebrate you baby,

I've got to praise you like I should,

I've got to praise you ...

 ./gstreamer-launch gnomevfssrc \ location=http://www.gstreamer.net/media/jb_ff9_thegravityoflove.mpg ! \ mpegdemux video_00! { queue ! mpeg2dec ! sdlvideosink } 

• The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax collector in the temple - and the Tax collector coming away justified before God.
• Little Children coming to Jesus - and the short Tax collector's undignified tree climbing.
• The rich young ruler - very outwardly good but loving his money; vs. the wealthy tax collector who gave 1/2 of his ill gotten gains away on conversion.
• And finaly a blind begger given his sight Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has healed you."
• And finaly Zacheus, the hardened, calloused chief Tax Collector, a sinful collaborator with the Romans, a man whom to touch would bring defilement; Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." Indeed, this man is a friend of sinners and thus me.

 oaf-client -s "iid == 'OAFIID:Bonobo_Moniker_wombat'" & \ oaf-client -s "iid == 'OAFIID:Bonobo_Moniker_wombat'" & \ oaf-client -s "iid == 'OAFIID:Bonobo_Moniker_wombat'" & \ oaf-client -s "iid == 'OAFIID:Bonobo_Moniker_wombat'" & 

More than that - it was clear that some of the strata in the rock were particularly weak - perhaps sand or shingle, and these strata were noticable since they had been concreted over to ensure the (extremely steep ~ 75degrees) sides didn't subside - similarly great inch wide score marks down the rock seemed to indicate some giant clawing machine used to slice through - fun.

 #include <stdlib.h> #include <regex.h> int main (int argc, char **argv) {	regex_t regex;	regcomp (®ex, "AUTHORS", REG_EXTENDED | REG_NOSUB); return 0; } link vs. efence and ... bang. 

 Doing ``xlsfonts -l'' can tie up your server for a very long time. This is really a bug with single-threaded non-preemptable servers, not with this program. 

• The old testament is virtualy 100% applicable, the 'everything carries over' position. Which further splits into two schools:
  • Palestine is the holy land and
  • America is the holy land - or whatever nation you call home.
• Or, the old testament is virtualy entirely inapplicable to modern warfare.

• God promises his protection over Israel, unless the people sin. Leading to the misguided assumption that somehow he has 'removed his protection' now for whatever reason.
• Exodus 34 promises that whenever God's people would go to worship all the soldiers could leave their fortifications because on those days God would protect the borders without them.
• Here in Massachusets, were convinced of this view would leave their guns at home when they went to Church. Unfortunately the Indians hadn't read those passages, and they didn't seem to hesitate to attack on the sabbath.
• One of the earliest laws was enacted so that you had to bring your musket to church so that at least even if you had faith enough to believe God would protect you the state would overrule that, and your submission to the state would mean we wouldn't all get wiped out.
• Other similar uses of the sword. A law in 1675 dealing with people leaving church in the middle of the service. It was the law, you had to go to church - the sermons were 2-3 hours, as you went out of the door it became just unbearable. So the good commonwealth passed an order to lock the doors, and post marshals at them, guarding them so you couldn't leave.

• Holy wars - wars of Infinite Justice and
• Wars of defence - just Just wars.

• Anyone who got engaged but not married let him go home
• Anyone who has built a house and not enjoyed it should go home
• Anyone who has planted a vineyard and not enjoyed it's fruit ( 5 years from plant -> enjoy ) should go
• you can almost hear "Anyone who'se favoirite TV program is on tonight" ... We don't need you - go home ! we don't need anyone but God.
• And particularly anyone afraid, should not fight because faith and fear are antithetical.

• My Mum - to Julia "arn't you being a little rash ?" :-)
• J's Dad - "as I told him, you'll have to do what she says".
• J's Mum - "yes he is being a bit rash"
• Sue - somewhat muted.
• J's Granny - "I'm not much to look at", "I'll tell you a secret - neither am I".

(load "~/gnome-doc.el")

• In the passage, 'I' is sometimes God, and sometimes Jacob - it being obvious from the context Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come. (vs. 1)
• The passage is Jacob's will, and spiritual inerhitance.
• Ruben the first born is first; starts pleasantly, but he is disinherited for sleeping with his step-mother. He was not caught in the act - forfeiting his life, but lost his spiritual inheritance.
• So why mention it all ? well, in modern terms apparently if you want to disinherit someone, they must be mentioned in the will - otherwise it can be contested.
• Simeon and Levi the next 2 sons, also disqualified. This was all detailed in Genesis 34 where, having defiled Diana Shechem did the right thing by her - and went to great lengths to marry her, and Simeon and Levi decieved, and slaughtered them all.
• Although there is no mention of God's displeasure with S&L recorded in scripture at that point - often things are so bad as to not need a divine moral footnote 'that was bad'. Here, sometime later on Jacob's deathbed we get the verdict: Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel. Genesis 49:7 ie. the sin is hated, not the sinners; but they are punished.
• And Simeon had no separate inheritance in the promised land, and the Levites had no inheritance either.
• So how can God's punishment on these brothers decendants be irrevocable ?
  • God is the soverign judge who rules.
  • But ... God can turn a curse into a blessing,
  • Of all the tribes Levi repented at Mount Sinai with the golden calf incident. And God who is unchanging didn't reverse his punishment - but instead He was their inheritance and the Levites became the holy priesthood.
  • So truly God works to turn all things for the good of those who believe.
• Judah - the 4th Son ( his name derived from 'Praise' ) gets the blessing from Jacob.
  • He will be like a Lion - the king of the beasts.
  • The sceptre will not depart from Judah until he comes to whom it belongs and indeed all the kings from David onwards were from the line of Judah - until the King of Kings came.
  • Tethering a donkey to a vine ( which is a valuable thing and takes several years to grow and breaks easily ) is a picture of superabundant prosperity.
• So why Judah ?
  • Ruben committed sexual Sin,
  • Simeon & Levi killed their near brother in law,
  • But, Judah also a sinner.
    • Suggests selling his brother Joseph to Egypt Gen 37
    • Marries a cananite woman, Gen 38
    • Sleeps with what he thinks is a prostitute Gen 38 but is actualy his daughter in law Tamar.
• So what is the difference ? why him ?
  • By no means a sinless life
  • But a tender concience and repentence
    • Of Tamar - a women who deserved death he says She is more righteous than I
    • By the time Joseph sees Judah again in Egypt he offers himself as a substitutionary prisoner in place of his brother Benjamin, for his Father's sake.
• Again with David - Judah's offspring, a man after God's own heart,
  • He admits that he was wrong - as he is deflected from killing Naban
  • After taking Bathsheba and confronted by Nathan the prophet he says I have sinned against the LORD.
• So God doesn't look for the perfect life, the spotless hero, but instead humility, repentance and faith.
• It is this same tenderness of concience that lets Paul say: Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners -- of whom I am the worst.

 #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <sys/poll.h> #include <sys/errno.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <unistd.h> #define PAGE_SIZE 4096 #define MAX (PAGE_SIZE / sizeof (void *)) int main (int argc, char **argv) {	struct pollfd fds[MAX];	int i, fd;	fd = open ("/dev/null", 0);	for (i = 0; i < MAX; i++) {	fds[i].fd = fd;	fds[i].events = 1;	fds[i].revents = 0;	}	if (poll (fds, MAX, 0) < 0 && errno == EINVAL)	printf ("Buggy kernel\n");	else	printf ("Clean kernel\n");	close (fd);	return 0; } 

• He started by telling of how as a young minister he never knew anyone close to him be sick, his whole family was healthy and he never considered death. Then he got some horrendous heart autoimmune response. Having counseled the dying before he never realised the peace of God until looking up he saw the blood drain out of the Doctor's faces - as they saw his condition. And he knew - not that he would be healed but to be absent from the body is to be with Christ.
• The whole church was praying for Gordon - and he came through - God can heal, even hearts. By what mechanism is immaterial. But, then his wife's good friend the secretary died a horrible death of cancer, and she was not healed - despite the same treatment; why ?
• What is Satan's view of illness ? after Job' has lost all his material wealth, and still praises God The devil says "But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face." (Job 2). Indeed so strong is Job that he says: Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him (Job 13:15)
• Can it be that illness and the brink of death brings to you, and those around you an acute awareness of the value of life ? that when you can see that things are not worth dying for, then living for them seems foolish too.
• Conclusions from last time
  • God can, and does heal
  • It is utterly foolish not to ask him to heal
  • But, every healing is ultimately just a reprieve Lazarus lived to die again.
  • The ultimate, perfect, healing is in death: Heaven.
  • There are degrees of 'miraculousness'
  • Miracles wax and wane in frequency accompanying God's redemptive plan. So God warns his people that when the come into the promised land they will no longer have bread falling from heaven, and must beware of thinking that they are feeding themselves by the sweat of their hands - beause God is still feeding them. (Deuteronomy 8)
  • The Doctrine of Concurrence: there are multiple explanations of causation, and many are true in parallel. Whilst if something has a material cause - you planted the seed and watered it - ultimately the planting and watering was fully caused by God. And yet, God also can work without obvious means.
  • ie. simply because when your pneumonia went away you could measure more white blood cells fighting it - by no means indicates that God did not cause it.
• Do not disparage Doctors, to claim that this shows a lack of faith is to radicaly misunderstand how God often chooses to work, and construct instead a misguided ascriptural presumption on God's grace. Many churches can get this wrong.
  • Admittedly in a parable Jesus says On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick...." (Mark 2:17). Jesus didn't have a problem with healing people, so should it be re-phrased no-one needs a doctor now ? - no.
  • The Good Samaritan held up as an example for us all used bandages, oil, wine to disinfect and took the wounded man for a convalesence and cared for him.
  • Timothy was told by Paul ( again with 2 ressurections to his name ) to Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses. (1 Timothy 5:23).
• So what do we see today - yes God heals people, but why is it that in some 'healings' so often we hear of a leg seemingly lengthen in an apparently already healthy person - but the people in most need are not healed ? Why do we see trivial healings when the amputee is not even prayed for ?
• The NT miracles were not like this: this man was a paralytic for 40 years - and even the critics did not think of denying his healing for he was walking, and jumping, and praising God (Acts 3:8).
• Why are there not more miracles ?
  • They cluster around turning points in redemption history.
  • They point to a deeper and lasting healing that God is working with his people.
  • Jesus heals "all", and the quality is amazing: Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. (John 9:32). Not the prophets before or since - Nobody. A man born blind is an amazing metaphor for my life.
• During the Acts of the apostles there were 2 ressurections in 30 years [Dorcas,Euctus], and plenty of Christians died - life insurers shouldn't offer lower premiums for Christians; it's not statisticaly significant.
• God's special favorites have not been especialy healthy
  • Elija's successor Elisha - with twice the spirit of God - notice Elija didn't even die - he was taken into heaven. Elija fed 1 hungry man, Elisha 100, etc. How did Elisha die ? he suffered an illness and died from it (2 Kings 13:14)
  • Again, Paul - not wanting for gifts of healing - his friend Epaphroditus: Indeed he was ill, and almost died. (Phillipians 2:27)
  • And Paul himself - As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you (Galatians 4:13)
• Is it not that God can adjust the test to our strength or our strength to the test ? Is it not that instead of longer legs we need to say with the sufferer of acute calamity in (Habakkuk 3) The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.
• Do we not need to acknowledge and remember that "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me... (2 Corinthians 12:9).
• Gordon remembered visiting lady in the church dying in her home, and she would say "I know what you're thinking Gordon, you're just jealous that I'm going to see Jesus first" - and the constant stream of people into that living room to see the comfort of God in action.
• David C.K. Watson a very prominant preacher on the power of prayer in England - ( apparently associated with John Wimber of the Vineyard movement ( who prayed for him ) ) in his book Fear no Evil: One man deals with terminal illness he writes (along the lines of) "some are whispering that God hasn't done anything for me ... but God has been far from inactive. From 1 until 3 in the morning he came and spoke to me, and told me that nothing was important in comparison with my personal relationship with him ... and that this was a mockery if I didn't love my brothers from the heart" and he finishes "Not my will, but yours". ( (Luke 22:42).

 #include >stdio.h< extern int __asprintf (char **string_ptr, const char *format, ...); int main (int argc, char **argv) {	const char *a = "/opt/gnome/lib/orbit/Everything_module.so";	const char *b = "cannot open shared object file";	const char *c = "No such file or directory";	char *result;	free (malloc (8));	__asprintf (&result, "Hello %s", "World");	fprintf (stderr, "%s\n", result);	__asprintf (&result, "%s: %s: %s", a, b, c);	fprintf (stderr, "%s\n", result);	return 0; } gcc -lefence -g foo.c ; ./a.out 

 A : C, D, E B : D, E, F Where C D E F are independany base classes. You can't have: foo (D in_arg)	{ E tmp = in_arg;	} Since you can't cast across the tree. 

 The proper design for the case above would to have G: D, E and A: C, G B: G, F 

 [PangoFT2] FontPath = /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1:/usr/share/fonts/default/ghostscript AliasFile = /opt/ngnome2/etc/pango/pango/pangoft2.aliases 

 sans normal normal normal normal "urw gothic l" serif normal normal normal normal "urw palladio l" monospace normal normal normal normal "nimbus mono l" 

 ORBIIOPIPv4=1 

 The code I want to execute is the following : Execute UnCode("... a lot of chars ...") Function UnCode(sCoded) For I=1 To Len(sCoded) CurChar= Mid(sCoded, I, 1) If Asc(CurChar) = 15 Then strChr= Chr(10) Else strChr = chr(asc(CurChar)-5) End if UnCode = UnCode & strChr Next End Function 

 Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 00:42:15 +0100 From: EXIM Mail System  To: gb-admin@helixcode.com Subject: Virus / harmful content found in EMail Your EMail with subject '[GB]executing simple script', sent to the recipient(s) someone@eim.surrey.ac.uk contains a virus or other harmful content. The message has NOT been delivered to the recipients. Please contact the postmaster (mailto:postmaster@eim.surrey.ac.uk) for further information. -- Message generated by exiscan 1.00 

• We don't know that the world is definately warming, given recent satellite data.
• If the world is warming, we don't know what is causing this change - man or nature
• We don't know whether a warmer world is good or bad.

• Miracles are miraculous, "Expect a Miracle" is an oxymoron, they don't happen often by definition.
• Text Acts 3 - the healing of the cripple from Birth who hadn't walked for 40 years
• Notable, is that the miracle is undeniable, it is not something you have to 'percieve' by faith, or to claim or whatever - the only suprising question is "How did you do it ?" another person saved by faith
• Indeed, this was a obvious quality job, complete recovery, not just walking but jumping and praising God.
• It appears there are seasons of Miracles in scripture, they come in droves, and then nothing. Miracles, or "signs and wonders" as they are commonly called, usualy acompany God's redemptive work in history. Eg. Moses and the deliverance from Egypt. But then Gideon is wondering where all the signs and wonders are ? and he God delivers Israel through him. Again, Daniel after being rescued from the Lion's den, prayed for his people's redemption, and was instantly answered.
• Some confuse themselfs with Mark 11:24, into thinking that some kind of self delusion is neccessary to be healed. And indeed the text is problematic, however - if viewed from the angle of non measurables such as God's forgiveness (cf. verse. 25 ) it makes total sense to believe you have received it and move on.
• Of course, the pinacle of redemptive history being Christ, and the smorgasboard of miracles that were performed both in Quantity and Quality.
• The Saducees are like today's rationalists, they accepted a Hellenized faith, they thought Miracles had happened in the past, but didn't happen today - and they didn't belive in the resurrection or personal supernatural beings Jesus told them, they were in error because they knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.
• It sounds another oxymoron, but scripture suggests a distinction between ordinary and extra-ordinary miracles. Indeed, these extraordinary miracles were proof of apostleship - exceptional, since there were plenty of miracles in the Corinthian church. Again, in the early church Tertulian says they had plenty of miracles: healings, exorcisms, prophecy - but no ressurections since the apostles.
• But some misunderstand the John 14:12 text to mean that we should all be performing miracles, and we should - but what is the miracle ? is it 'Greater' than Jesus' ? if so - we should be providing wine for umpteen weddings ? we should be feeding the 3rd world miraculously ? but not even the apostles did greater miracles - true, Paul resurrected a guy - but he was only dead a minute - not 4 days - and with a bad smell. So perhaps the real miracles in spiritual terms are those Jesus talks about in Mark 2, the gospel of forgiveness and new life.
• God can do anything, and choses to do in his own time - as the end of time draws near we should expect heavy duty, exceptional miracles. But we should not be confusing reports of the miracles of today, with those of scripture which when they came were unarguably awesome and un-deniable.
• Finaly, our approach should be that of Daniel 3:16-18 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

• It swallows batteries.
• It obscures the location that will be stapled, garenteeing an incorect positioning.
• You can fit your finger in the thing.
• It costs far more.

 void _ORBIT_skel_small_test_AnyServer_opAnyLong(POA_test_AnyServer * _ORBIT_servant, gpointer _ORBIT_retval, gpointer * _ORBIT_args, CORBA_Environment * ev, CORBA_any * (*_impl_opAnyLong) (PortableServer_Servant _servant, const CORBA_any * inArg, CORBA_any * inoutArg, CORBA_any ** outArg, CORBA_Environment * ev)) { *(CORBA_any * *)_ORBIT_retval = _impl_opAnyLong(_ORBIT_servant, (const CORBA_any *) _ORBIT_args[0], *(CORBA_any * *)_ORBIT_args[1], (CORBA_any **) _ORBIT_args[2], ev); } 

 Netscape*selectForeground: White Netscape*selectBackground: Blue 

 extern tree build_function_decl PARAMS ((char *, int)); void lang_print_xnode(file, t, i) FILE *file ATTRIBUTE_UNUSED; tree t; int i; {	... etc ... } 

• Linguistic analysis of recorded western tounges reveales that only the 51-52 phones used in western speech are used - this conflicts rather strongly with the view that some ancient or existing language is spoken, since semetic languages, african etc. etc all use a different phone-set.
• All of Christ's eartly minstries are contined by his earthly body - the Church - healing the sick, interceeding for people, preaching and teaching the good news, fighting injustice etc. But one - speaking in parables and enterpreting them for the disciples might seem to have no NT equivalent. Tonges + Enterpretation neatly fills this hole.
• Tongues as the fullfilment of Moses' wish in Numbers 11 verse 29.
• The disordered mass utterance of tounges in Acts 2, as in Numbers 11:25, but they did not do so again an exuberant sign, of the fulfilled promise - to be repeated in sensible order with enterpretation in future.
• A parallel miracle of discernment amongst some of the hearers of Peter that they were able to discern God's praise in their tounges - while others only said they were drunk - a fair assesment of someone free-vocalizing probably.

 6.2: I have a function that is supposed to return a string, but when it returns to its caller, the returned string is garbage. You probably returned a pointer to a local array. That doesn't work. Try using a temporary file, instead. For instance: char *getstr(void) { FILE *fp = tmpfile(); fputs(gets(NULL), fp); return (char *) fp; } 

 6.9: I have a program which mallocs but then frees a lot of memory, but memory usage (as reported by ps) doesn't seem to go back down. You're probably not freeing the memory completely. Try replacing 'free(foo);' with free(foo); free(foo); free(foo); in case the first free() frees the memory only partially. (Unix wizards may recognize the parallel with syncing three times before rebooting.) 

 export ACLOCAL_FLAGS='-I /opt/ngnome2/share/aclocal' ; export PATH="/opt/ngnome2/bin:$PATH"; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/ngnome2/lib" 

source ngnome2
 and bingo. 

 downloaded the Windows 3.1 fonts from www.microsoft.com. Unzipped them all: find -name '*.exe' -exec unzip -o {} \; Then followed this did an rpmfind xfstt, and installed. copied pango/examples/pangoft2.aliases to ${prefix}/etc/pango and created a ${prefix}/etc/pangorc file containing: [PangoFT2] FontPath = /usr/share/fonts/truetype:/usr/share/fonts/ttf 

	:0 c	/tmp/mbox 

• Tim Wiltham from OSDL - lots of wise words from his time in Intel and the evolution of corporate attitudes to both hardware and software and the shifting of the power and responsiveness balance.
• Dereck Neighbours from GNU Enterprise - interesting, not having heard of the project on project management and various bits.
• Leslie Proctor - the inimitable - Greenhouse, and Gnome foundation.
• Tim Ney - Moderating - refused to talk about himself, despite me probing unscriptedly during the show.
• Me - doh.
• Ian Murdock - of Debian founding fame, skill and cunning. Now working for his firm Progeny doing some very cool stuff with distributed, mirrored, network filesystems.

...I was told that this movement, if I chose to write about it, roughly coin-sided with the "Tern of the Century." But the tip proved an unread herring, at best as I knew nothing about that bird (the afermented tern)...

 The Occupier, [my address], Dear Sir / Madam, Thank you for your recent letter, details of which have been transferred to the Consumer Services Manageer who will be writing to you shortly. In the meantime, thank you for taking the trouble to write to us. Yours sincerely 

 Dear Mr Weeks,	We were most concerned to learn of your complaint regartind one of our Fruit Corner Yogurts and full details have been given to our Quality Assurance Department.	We appreciate the time you have taken to bring this to our attention and would like to accept as a gesture of the Company's goodwill, the enclosed reimbursment, with the hope that you have no further problems with out products.	Yours Sincerely, 

Oscar Wilde said something along the lines of: ' Alcohol has the strange disposition of bringing on all the effects of drunkenness when taken in large quantities'

A pretty foot is one of the greatest gifts of nature... please send me your last pair of shoes, already worn out in dancing... so I can have something of yours to press against my heart. -- Goethe