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Saturday,
July 29,
2006 - Christopher
M.
HPDA...
Originally posted on October 25, 2005
I almost always have a stack of index cards sitting on my desk.
I usually use them to jot down quick reminders or messages I might have to relay on to other members of the family. But that's pretty much it. I've rarely used them to make flash cards, or address cards, or recipe cards or any such thing. At least, that was pretty much it until about a year ago, when I discovered the
Hipster PDA.
But a little history first...
For the past year or so, I've been trying to reduce the amount of stuff that I carry around with me. I'm trying to declutterise. And the number one thing on my list was my PowerBook.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love my PowerBook. It's a 12-inch, so it is about as portable as a computer can get. But as I soon discovered after I bought it, it's a major source of distraction: there's always something to do, something to tweak, some new piece of software to try out. And since I found myself unable to stop myself from wasting time with it, I decided the best course of action would be to leave it home when I went to school.
The second object of distraction was my PDA. I don't have a cellphone, so my PDA was what I used to keep my schedule and contacts on me.1 But a PDA can also do a number of other things. Like play games. So that too was left behind.
But this left me wishing for ways to keep doing the necessary things that I did with PowerBook and PDA without the distractions. The solutions proved to be quite simple, but very effective: pen and paper/notebook for class notes and the like, and the HPDA for my ToDos and such.
The HPDA, in its simplest form (and the way I use it), is a few (10-12) index cards held together with a clip. That's it. I've added a few tape flags to divide things up, but they're not necessary. The result is an easy to use notepad of sorts that can be slipped into a pocket without producing unsightly bulges and never runs out of batteries. At the end of the day, I leaf through the cards, write down/type what I need to keep, and trash recycle 'em.
Again, like my previous Moleskine post, I realise this may sound a little silly and perhaps even counterintuitive. But it really works. And I've found that it helps to keep things as simple as possible.
As for my PowerBook and PDA, I still bring the former with me on occasion (like today), and the latter has been assigned the role of my portable media player.
But that's a whole other post.
1For a while, I very much wanted a cellphone. But then it hit me: if I have phone with me all the time, I can be reached anywhere. And I really, really don't want that.
The site that I linked to,
43folders, is a great place to get info on "lifehacks", little tips to make life easier. Also related is
Lifehacker. Finally, check out
DIYPlanner.com if you'd like a more traditional planner, but are tired of spending (a lot) to get one.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Christopher
has been missing from IPF rotation for the past year and a
little bit. He apologizes to his loyal readers for this absence.
After much insisting from The Lao, he has finally submitted a
few pieces from the archives of his blog -digitalmud
- to be posted here on a regular basis until he finds it in
himself to write something new.
- The IPF Syndicate
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail:
christopher.m@gmail.com.
Or leave a comment on the
Message Board.
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Saturday, July 22,
2006 -
Christopher M.
The Divine Conspiracy
Originally posted on October 7, 2005
Every so often, I hear or read or see something
that leaves me awe-struck at how well its creator manages to
capture his or her thoughts and ideas. I felt this awe when I
read C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves for the first time. I
felt it at my initial and every subsequent hearing of Henry
Górecki's Third. I most certainly felt it when I first saw (A
print, no less.) Raphael's Sistine Madonna. And I've been
feeling similarly as I've been making my way through Dallas
Willard's The Divine Conspiracy.
Before I go on, a disclaimer: I am not the kind
of person who reads "self-help" books. And I certainly don't
read the Christian variety. Perhaps it's because I'm jaded.
Regardless, I do not make such recommendations lightly. I would
not, for example, recommend The Purpose Driven Life.
Don't shoot me for saying that, it's just the truth. I was
less than impressed by what I read of it. I am, however,
recommending The Divine Conspiracy because it has been
speaking to me as a Christian who is disgusted with my
'Christianity'.
I could probably wax eloquent about how Dr.
Willard so deftly sifts and wades through so many of the
questions and anguishes that have been plaguing me as an old
Christian, but instead, I'm going to let the text speak for
itself. The following is a long quote, but I think it's well
worth the read.
God's Joyous Being
Dallas Willard.
From The Divine Conspiracy, pp 62-64
Central to the understanding and proclamation of
the Christian gospel today, as in Jesus' day, is a re-visioning
of what God's own life is like and how the physical cosmos fits
into it. It is a great and important task to come to terms with
what we really think when we think of God. Most hindrances to
the faith of Christ actually lie, I believe, in this part of our
minds and souls. If he cannot help us with understanding God's
life, he cannot help us at all to that salvation/life that is by
faith. But of course he can and he does.
We should, to begin with, think that God leads a
very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly
he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of
his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy.
All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally
drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously
experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness.
While I was teaching in South Africa some time
ago, a young man named Matthew Dickason took me out to see the
beaches near his home in Port Elizabeth. I was totally
unprepared for the experience. I had seen beaches, or so I
thought. But when we came over the rise where the sea and land
opened up to us, I stood in stunned silence and then slowly
walked toward the waves. Words cannot capture the view that
confronted me. I saw space and light and texture and color and
power . . . that seemed hardly of this earth.
Gradually there crept into my mind the
realization that God sees this all the time. He sees it,
experiences it, knows it from every possible point of view, this
and billions of other scenes like and unlike it in this and
billions of other worlds. Great tidal waves of joy must
constantly wash through his being.
It is perhaps strange to say, but suddenly I was
extremely happy for God and thought I had some sense of what an
infinitely joyous consciousness he is and of what it might have
meant for him to look at his creation and find it "very good."
We pay a lot of money to get a tank with a few
tropical fish in it and never tire of looking at their brilliant
iridescence and marvelous forms and movements. But God has seas
full of them, which he constantly enjoys. (I can hardly take in
these beautiful little creatures one at a time.)
We are enraptured by a well-done movie sequence
or by a few bars from an opera or lines from a poem. We treasure
our great experiences for a lifetime, and we may have very few
of them. But he is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal
experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right.
This is what we must think of when we hear theologians and
philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life.
A short while ago the Hubble Space Telescope
gave us pictures of the Eagle Nebula, showing clouds of gas and
microscopic dust reaching six trillion miles from top to bottom.
Hundreds of stars were emerging here and there in it, hotter and
larger than our sun. As I looked at these pictures, and through
them at the past and ongoing development of the cosmos, I could
not help but think of Jesus' words before he left his little
band of students: "In my father's house there are many places to
live. I go to get some ready for you." Human beings can lose
themselves in card games or electric trains and think they are
fortunate. But to God there is available, in the language of one
reporter, "Towering clouds of gases trillions of miles high,
backlit by nuclear fires in newly forming stars, galaxies
cartwheeling into collision and sending explosive shock waves
boiling through millions of light-years of time and space."2
These things are all before him, along with numberless unfolding
rosebuds, souls, and songs”and immeasurably more of which we
know nothing.
The poet William Cowper appropriately exclaimed
of God:
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never ending skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
Now, Jesus himself was and is a joyous, creative
person. He does not allow us to continue thinking of our Father
who fills and overflows space as a morose and miserable monarch,
a frustrated and petty parent, or a policeman on the prowl.
One cannot think of God in such ways while
confronting Jesus' declaration "He that has seen me has seen the
Father." One of the most outstanding features of Jesus'
personality was precisely an abundance of joy. This he left as
an inheritance to his students, "that their joy might be full"
(John 15:11). And they did not say, "Pass the aspirin," for he
was well known to those around him as a happy man. It is deeply
illuminating of kingdom living to understand that his steady
happiness was not ruled out by his experience of sorrow and even
grief.
So we must understand that God does not "love" us
without liking us through gritted teeth as "Christian" love is
sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of
his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father
cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness,
the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God
toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to
the core which we vainly try to capture with our tired but
indispensable old word love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Christopher
has been missing from IPF rotation for the past year and a
little bit. He apologizes to his loyal readers for this absence.
After much insisting from The Lao, he has finally submitted a
few pieces from the archives of his blog -digitalmud
- to be posted here on a regular basis until he finds it in
himself to write something new.
- The IPF Syndicate
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail:
christopher.m@gmail.com.
Or leave a comment on the
Message Board.
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Friday,
May 26,
2006 - Christopher
M.
Bunker
Originally posted on
March 11, 2005
http://digitalmud.blogspot.com/2005/03/bunker.html
If you're the type that likes taking walks in the snow, you
should be in Toronto today. It's been flurrying today: big
flurries, the kind we used chase as children, in attempts to
catch them on our tongues. And with almost no wind to speak of,
it feels like you're walking in a snow globe. It's really quite
beautiful.
Last Wednesday, on the other hand, wasn't so beautiful. It was
uncomfortably cold and pretty dreary all day. So, after a
not-so-great English lecture, I stopped by at a nearby Second
Cup and picked up a coffee to keep me warm on ride home. It was
then, as I was riding the east bound train from St. George
station, that I was suddenly reminded of Jensen Bush.
The last house we lived in before we left Sri Lanka was on a
street called Broody Lane. It was named so after the family that
had longest lived in the area. In fact, when we were there, they
still occupied the house at the top of the lane - an aged,
hulking place, built of what I remember as being weathered,
mossy stone and surrounded by a tall wrought iron fence. Once
you passed the Broody house, if you continued to make your way
down the lane, you would eventually come to our house.
Immediately after our place, was the house where Jensen Bush
lived.
'Jensen Bush' was actually his first name though everyone just
called him Jensen. I can't remember what his last name was. He
was the only boy my age - I was around four at the time - who
lived close enough to be a regular playmate, so we spent many a
Saturday together. From what I remember, he was a little taller
than me, had almost brown curly hair and skin that was a little
fairer than mine, and often wore a pair of blue shorts and a
matching button-up t-shirt when we would go out to play. He had
two sisters and a mother and a father, though I can't remember
his father at all. The one other thing I remember clearly about
Jensen was that he always seemed to be in trouble; someone in
his family was always scolding him for some reason or the other.
But really, he was a wonderful fellow and a good friend.
Jensen's family had a television. I actually only have two
memories of watching TV in Sri Lanka: one was the watching of a
news segment - in black and white - at my grandparent's place,
and the other was watching a live action episode of Spider-Man
at Jensen's. I remember sitting on the cement floor of the
living room of their house and being mesmerized as I watched
Spidey capture two thieves with the aid of his web and a
sandwich. (The sandwich was for bait, in case you're wondering.
And yes, I know it's weird, but it's all true.) That is,
unfortunately, one of the few tangible memories I have of any
personal interaction I had with Jensen. We did have some more
official interaction though - 'official' meaning that it had
more to do with our parents and an agreement they made.
As most of you probably know, there was quite a bit of political
unrest in the country at the time and it was not unusual to be
awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of shellfire. Our
two families agreed that it would be a good idea to build a
bunker for protection during the raids and decided on Jensen's
family's yard as the place to build it. So, one afternoon when I
came home from school, I found everyone standing near the
section of wall that separated our two houses, watching as one
of my uncles and a friend of his tore a hole into the stone with
pick axes. The bunker was built in due course and served to give
our parents some much needed peace of mind.
Thankfully, as far as I can remember, we only used it once. It
was in the middle of the night; I was awakened by my mother who
said that there was some heavy shelling nearby. So, we made our
way to the bunker using torches (read: flashlights) and spent
the rest of the night there. It was a cold, dank place; really
just a hole in the ground. I remember looking at the wall
nearest to where I was sitting and noticing bugs crawling across
the slick, brown surface. Not exactly the most inviting place.
Once the sun came up, we made our way out and I was readied for
school. Life went back to normal. As normal as it could be, at
least.
Not too long after that, my father passed away and we immigrated
to Canada. We lost contact with Jensen's family.
As I was thinking about him on the way home the other day and
wondering how and where he might be now, it occurred to me that
really, I don't even know if he's still alive. That's just one
of the realities of the war in Sri Lanka.
And, if things had gone a little differently, I suppose it's
quite possible that I wouldn't be here, writing this either.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Christopher
has been missing from IPF rotation for the past year and a
little bit. He apologizes to his loyal readers for this absence.
After much insisting from The Lao, he has finally submitted a
few pieces from the archives of his blog -digitalmud
- to be posted here on a regular basis until he finds it in
himself to write something new.
- The IPF Syndicate
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail:
christopher.m@gmail.com.
Or leave a comment on the
Message Board.
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Saturday,
April 29,
2006 - Christopher
M.
Can Two Walk Together?
Christopher
has been missing from IPF rotation for the past year and a
little bit. He apologizes to his loyal readers for this absence.
After much insisting from The Lao, he has finally submitted a
few pieces from the archives of his blog - digitalmud
- to be posted here on a regular basis until he finds it in
himself to write something new.
- The IPF Syndicate
Originally posted on February 21, 2005
I don't know if I've said this already, but somewhere around the
beginning of winter1 I heard it mentioned on the
radio that this season would be a fickle one. And although it
has been, it also seems to me that we haven't had this much snow
in quite a few years. On the other hand, I don't know if we've
ever had as much rain during February as well.2 But
that's okay - something good did come of the rain, all the rain
last Tuesday in particular: I was given a chance to try out my
new umbrella on my way to work.
My 'new' umbrella is actually a few months old. (But considering
that it was a Christmas gift,3 I'm sure you can
imagine why I never had a chance to use it till Tuesday past.)
And, it's big. Very big.4 It can easily cover two
people, if not three. It's also technologically advanced - it
has 'wind flaps'5 that allow the frequent gusts of
air that might find a way under it to leave without turning it
inside out. And it's black. Of course it's black.
Needless to say, the umbrella did a great job of keeping me and
my bag dry on the way to and back from work. But there are
caveats to carrying such a large umbrella about: you will,
invariably, hit other peoples' umbrellas - and sometimes other
people - as you walk down the sidewalk. And I am no exception to
this rule. I hope they weren't too mad.
As I was making my way to UofT's al&d building to fill my 6-9 shift, I was reminded of an essay that we read about umbrellas on the first day of my twelfth grade English class. I remember sitting at the back of the class, as usual, and thinking to myself as I began to read, "It's just an umbrella." Of course, I didn't say that out loud. And strangely, that essay is pretty much all I remember from that term.6
The author was writing of a time she was in Japan (Tokyo?) for a
conference. On the day of, as she stepped out of her hotel to
walk to a seminar, she stepped into a sudden downpour. As she
was considering the bleak prospect of walking the several miles
to her destination in the rain, she was overtaken by a gentleman
who kindly offered her some cover under his umbrella. So, the
two of them walked together to the conference centre, where he
disappeared never to be seen again. It was her description of
how they walked, however, that came to mind last week.
She said that as the two of them began to walk, it quickly
became obvious that if they continued as they were, one of them
would always have a shoulder in the rain. So, she did the only
thing that she could: she wrapped her arm around the man's back
and held7 on to his elbow. A very intimate gesture,
she admitted, but at the time it felt like the natural thing to
do.
I had never thought about it before, but it's very, very true.
If two people want to share an umbrella comfortably and stay
dry, that's what they'll have to do. Walking side-by-side won't
do it. Even taking the other person's arm isn't enough. You have
to get close - till you're practically joined at the hip. And
you have to be intimate enough with each other for one person to
put his or her arm around the other. Then you can walk pretty
much anywhere without having to worry about anything that may
come your way.
And if you think I'm still talking about umbrellas and the rain,
well, I'm not sure what I have to say about that.
1Should 'winter' be 'Winter'? I'm not sure, and I
really don't feel like checking.
2That reminds me of a bit of a Samuel Marchbanks
selection that I read in a Reader's Digest when I was around
eleven or twelve; he tells April to stop dribbling and wipe its
chin, I think. Someone should tell this February to stop
daydreaming and make up it's mind about what season it is.
3And now that you know how I got it, you must be
asking yourself, "What kind of person asks for an umbrella as a
Christmas present?" Well, I have an answer for you: this kind of
person. So I'm very practically minded. Sue me.
4Please get your mind out of the gutter. My big
umbrella is in no way a euphemism for anything else.
5Truth be told, I don't know if that's what they're
called. But 'wind flaps' sounds about right.
6No, that's not true. That was also the year we
studied Hamlet and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
That was also the year I wrote "The Stars Shine On". And
Coldplay released Parachutes around that time as well.
That particular bit I remember, and associate with English,
because the teacher in the room next door - Mr. Knight -
happened to be listening to the album during his spare period
one day while we were discussing the possibility of Hamlet's
having an Oedipus complex. Or something like that.
7Have you ever noticed how some words just look
awkward when they're written down? I think 'held' is one of
those words.
Sorry about all the footnotes. Think of this
post as a tribute to Mr. Baker.
E-mail:
christopher.m@gmail.com.
Or leave a comment on the
Message Board.
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