TheGeoffRe(y)port

I must admit that I do feel like a bit of a sell-out having bought an iPod touch, aka: the phone planless man’s iPhone. But a combination of seeing a shiny new iPhone in the wild and having already decided that I didn’t have enough justification for getting an iPhone, plus apple having a good deal going on refurbished iPod touches led to a moment of weakness that I’m having a hard time trying to regret.

The ongoing wait for home Internet has meant that I’ve had this little beauty since Monday but haven’t had it all updated until last night. And with all the funky apps that you can pick up that’s when she really comes alive. Apart from anything else this post will have been completely written in the wordpress app, which has been remarkably well designed. Like a massive chunk of the iPhone apps, it just does what you expect it to, in the way you expect it to work.

Suffice to say my train trips just got a whole lot more bearable.

Ever since I saw the movie with Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving (possibly the most underrated Australian actor in the business, I’ve had a bit of a “thing” about “V for Vendetta”. So after I made some noises about the graphic novel when we saw it at Borders on our honeymoon, the lovely Rebecca duly took note and made sure that a copy came my way when it came to birthday time. It hasn’t taken long for me to devour the book, and it’s rekindled my intrigue.

At it’s heart “V” strikes at a number of things that resonate with me, as well as draws attention to a few things that I’m not as sure about. For starters, there is the revolution against a fascist totalitarian state. And it strikes at something deep inside (likely put there by WWII movies and computer games) that makes is just fantastic for someone to be beating up the fascists. There’s just something deep down that wants to barrack for the guy who is starting the revolution. I came out of the movie the first time ready to bust some heads.

But it poses some big questions, particularly around justice. V kills - not indiscriminately but with the moral self-certainty of a vigilante. The ethics of “just-war” type thinking, mixed in with the problem of cheering for a terrorist (particularly in today’s climate) give a great opportunity to re-evaluate exactly what you believe in these situations.

The graphic novel is noticeably different from the film (partly out of necessity: the novel was written in the early 80s and set in the late 90s) but the film certainly stayed true to the heart of the comic. It’s a really fun read, but I must admit I couldn’t read “V” talking without hearing Hugo Weaving’s voiceover ringing through my head.

As a result of a) having Virtually Paul tell me that he only finds out about cool blogging tools from me; b) realising that I haven’t actually written a Tech post in a long, long time and c) seeing that Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger Group Writing Project is up and happening, I thought it only fitting that I make a top 5 of my favourite tools for blogging with WordPress.

1. Akismet. That counter on my sidebar doesn’t lie: I really have had more than 5 and a half thousand spam comments blocked. In the time I’ve been running the blog, I’ve only had 3 or 4 comments incorrectly blocked (and Jaclyn, if you’re reading, you were one of them: Sorry!) and it’s remarkably rare that a comment spam will get through the spam blocking wonder that is Akismet. I love it

2. Mint. Sure it actually costs money (practically nothing), and it might not quite cover all my stats-nerd needs, but Mint is quickly becoming my tool of choice for statistical analysis. Mint specialises in giving a really nice quick look at how things are travelling - there’s a nice overview of everything I’m interested in all on the front page. It makes me happy. And any gaps in my statistical nerdy needs are met by my love of……

3. FeedBurner. FeedBurner are a perfect example of what is quickly becoming a Web 2.0 dictum: do one thing and do it the best. Feedburner look after RSS feeds. They do all sorts of cool things with it, optimising it for browsers, putting helpful links at the bottom of the feed, and importantly for my aforementioned statistic addiction - tracking subscribers and hits on the blog. FeedBurner is only really made useful because they have a ripper little plugin which automagically forwards all the hits to my regular feed addresses (http://www.geoffreport.com/wp/feed/ or a derivative of that) to my FeedBurner feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/geoffreport ) without me needing to touch anything. Gotta love that!

4 . Google Reader. I’ve mentioned this in the past, but it really does make my blogging world a happier place. I’m currently monitoring 138 feeds, and that can only happen because it all goes in centrally to the Google Reader interface. It’s also a source for what I think is probably my most under-utilised feature: the starred post feed and sidebar widget where I link through to interesting things I’ve come across in the blogosphere. If I don’t find it in my Google Reader, it doesn’t go in there.

5. Google Analytics. I know, I know, I’ve now got three places that I’m listing statistic services, but it’s MY favourite top 5 after all, so you can all just put up with it. Analytics is cruddy at trying to pick up the here and now stuff, which Mint is much, much better at, but Google Analytics is an absolute wonder at looking over historical data - particularly now that I’ve almost got a year’s worth of data in there. So I can have a look at how the traffic spike for one Problogger writing project versus another, or how many people read the “going out” announcement versus how many read the “engagement” announcement. It gives a stats junkie way too much to do.

Others that came close to making the list are Adsense, but I haven’t made a penny off that yet (although it’s getting there), or ScribeFire except that I’m still getting used to using it, and not that sure that I love it as much as I’d hoped that I would.

Not a hint of exaggeration. I might not have seen that many, but those Irish boys certainly do know how to put on a show. I was going to wait until I had my photos ready to put up, but it’s late and I can’t be bothered doing all that when I could be sleeping. Should get them up sometime tomorrow. Might even just make a Flickr category for them or something. I’ll let you know.

Now - onto the concert. For those of you who are a little bit slow, or not from Melbourne, U2 came to town on Saturday and Sunday night, and I was one of the people who were online for four hours, about a year ago when the tickets went on sale, and so I had General Admission tickets (aka - standing room out on the arena). Which meant that it was going to be worthwhile getting there early.

So I rocked up at about 4:15 (having had to drive to Box Hill, because they were running buses from Ringwood to Box Hill, grumble grumble) and got sat in a glorified pig pen with about 200 other people to demarcate our place in the queue. It was about the most sensible way I’ve ever seen of setting out a queue, you didn’t feel like you needed to watch your place like a hawk: the whole thing was very well organised. So after about an hour and a half we got moving, and 15 minutes later I was inside. I found a decent spot - about 35 metres from the stage - they had a barricade to stop us going any closer (I think you had to be there before lunch to get those spots, so had about as sweet a spot as I could hope for and then just sat around for another hour and a half.

Kanye West came on and he was alright without being inspiring. I’m not really a hip-hop fan, but I’d decided that I was ready to be converted, but it didn’t happen. I don’t think Kanye’s sound is quite big enough for Telstra Dome with the roof open. He did have plenty of bass though. Could feel my shirt flapping with every “doof”, so that’s a win! Then there was another big wait - about 45 minutes, and the show was on!

While I was about 35 metres from the main stage, I was much, much closer to the U-shaped catwalk stage they had set out. So when the lights had gone dim, and Bono emerged out of nowhere to suddenly be about 10 metres in front of me wrapped in an Australian flag (yes, I know, cheesy and cheap, but it somehow seemed to work) - everyone just went absolutely mental! And the show had begun!

Did I mention that they know how to put on a show? “City of Blinding Lights” was their first, and from that moment on I was in musical paradise. There was a pretty good mix of new stuff along with the songs that you desperately want to hear them play were there (see the set list at the bottom of the post), and it just hit the spot. There were plenty of really pumping songs, as well as a few of the slower, swaying songs. I almost cried when they played “One” - it’s been my favourite for years and I almost thought they weren’t going to play it for a little bit.

I might have mentioned that they know how to put on a good show. It amazes me just how conscious Bono is of the images he makes. He understands symbolism better than any performer I know of, whether it’s crawling blind for the microphone, wrapping himself in the Australian flag, the iconic “CoeXisT” headband, or even just the deliberate decision to always wear sunglasses.

And I felt so close to them - at one stage or another I was within under-arm gumboot chucking distance of each of them, often more than one at a time (band members, not gumboots, I didn’t actually throw any gumboots). The set was just unbelievable, they had a massive, low-res screeen, with two pretty big screens off to either side, and as big a freaking speaker tower as you are ever likely to see.

I can’t come close to describing how much fun I had - it was certainly one of the most entertaining nights I’ve ever had, and as worth the money as any night’s entertainment can ever be. There might even be a “The Greatest Show I’ve Ever Seen Part Two” - we’ll see how assignments go. But it was SO GOOD! (and I may have got two T-Shirts and a poster as mementos). I don’t care what anyone says - I LOVE BONO!

Set List

City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Elevation
I Will Follow
New Year’s Day
Beautiful Day / Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (snippet) / Here Comes The Sun(snippet)
Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
Angel Of Harlem
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
Love And Peace Or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rock The Casbah (snippet)
Bullet The Blue Sky / When Johnny Comes Marching Home (snippet) / The Hands That Built America (snippet)
Miss Sarajevo
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Where The Streets Have No Name
One

Encore(s):The Fly
Mysterious Ways
With Or Without You / Never Tear Us Apart (snippet) / Love Will Tear Us Apart (snippet)
The Saints Are Coming
Desire
Kite

(Set list stolen verbatim from Analise, mostly because I’m lazy)

I’ve finished (not so long ago) “Searching For God Knows What” - the latest book from Donald Miller, the “Blue Like Jazz” guy. It’s a good read, and it’s certainly very easy to read. He takes a while to get warmed up, there’s not much of the first few chapters that I can really remember, but once he gets going, there are some great analogies in there. Highly recommend having a read.

And it certainly reads as a fairly solid example of “narrative theology” in action. (For a little background - have a look at my previous post on narrative theology) Miller’s ideas aren’t conveyed through propositional truths, instead he expands on his thoughts through stories, both of his own and those of others, to communicate meaning. He’s not interested in providing a list of statements of truth, but instead only offers his ideas as concepts that have been distilled from each narrative.

My initial reaction was one of excitement and, to a certain extent, relief. Relief that these ideas can work, at least on some level. I came away from reading “Searching For God Knows What” with a better understanding of what makes me tick, what makes others tick, and relating to God in general. The system works. The narrative structure of Miller’s theologising made it much easier to relate to what was being said, and there was definitely a feeling that this is how ideas like these should happen.

But…. (and there’s always a but)

I was also left with just an underlying feeling that it didn’t quite go deep enough. As much as I enjoyed reading it, and certainly “got stuff out of it”, there was a feeling that it almost became an exercise in “pop psychology”. I might have some post modernity in me, but it just felt like there wasn’t quite enough solid underneath it. To a degree, it felt like there is only a certain depth to which stories can travel, after that, you’re left with either going there on your own thoughts, or waiting for propositional truth.

And maybe that’s the poit of doing your theology in a narrative model - that it forces you to push to the depths yourself, rather than having someone do all the work for you. I’m not sure, but there was a slight feeling of dissatisfaction on finishing this book. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this - particularly if they have read the book themselves. Sorry that the post is a little dis-jointed and non-sensical.

…go see Little Miss Sunshine. Absolutely hillarious, and at the same time a brutally realistic picture of family trips. One of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time.

Well, there comes a time in every nerds life when he (or she) must make a decision. Whether they will stick with the evil Micro$oft empire, become a pretty little (cashed up) Mac person or join the hard-core nerd community and go with a Linux distro. And I’ve been wanting to leave the dark days of Windows for quite a while, but until now I’ve had too many reasons to stick with my Blue Screen of Death generator.

But things are changing. My work laptop, which is the machine I (ironically) use mostly when I’m not at work, now runs Ubuntu Linux. I only ran the install yesterday (freakishly easy install) but already I’m liking this thing. I had been playing around with an Ubuntu install on a VMWare virtual machine, but now I’m fully immersed. There are some cool things already, like having such a wealth of applications available for immediate install, and getting updated automatically. All very cool.

So stay tuned, I’m pretty sure the adventures of Geoff on Ubuntu will become a semi-regular feature here. If you’re wanting to follow along at home - you can download the CD image from the Ubuntu main site. It’s free. And in the wonderful world of Linux, free is a word you start to hear a lot of.

Months and months ago I posted about the new IE 7 Beta - well it’s now available as a release candidate (meaning it should crash a whole lot less). It looks pretty, has tabs, has a slightly cumbersome UI but I’m willing to get over lots of it. Basically, it’s a good browser without being great. They’ve weeded out lots of the really frustrating rendering things, so that web developers are happier people generally, and they’ve got it coming close to where Firefox is at. Personally, I think that Firefox still kicks its behind, but given that we’ve got a few apps that only work in IE at work - there are worse problems than having to end up using this puppy for them. Naturally, I’d recommend that rather than use this, you click on the “Firefox with Google Toolbar” icon on the lower left hand side. But this is better than using IE 6, so if you’re still using that - get onto IE 7 quick smart!

This post is being written in the latest new fandangled thing from the Microsoft “Windows Live” people - who look like they’re doing some pretty cool stuff. “Windows Live Writer” - which can be found here, is a WYSIWYG blog editor.

At this stage I must admit it does look pretty darn clever. It’ll suck down the styles from your blog and make it look exactly like it will end up in your post. Pretty smart. I’d say I’ll keep playing around with it - at this stage it’s only a beta and there will no doubt be some issues. I’ll have to give it a whirl on the train this evening too - see how it performs in an “offline” environment. If we even manage to make it work with “Ultimate Tag Warrior” (which I just plugged into the wordpress install), we might even use this regularly.

Pretty funky tool at any rate.

Saw Pirates of the Carribean last night - and was pretty disappointed. I wasn’t quite as massive a rap for the first one: I do think that some of the enthusiasm was overblown, but there were quite a few parts in Pirates that left a lot to be desired. Orlando Bloom should one day have a fight to the death with Hayden Christiansen and Keanu Reeves to decide who is the more wooden, because I find him almost unbearable to watch. It consistently feels like he’s reading from a not-particularly-well-written script. And while Keira Knightley might have the market cornered for pouty english actresses at the moment, she certainly left quite a bit to be desired.

As you’d expect Johnny Depp turns in a really decent performance, despite not always having a wonderful script to work with. Regardless of the specific kind of eccentricity, if you were casting a slightly strange male lead in a film right now and hadn’t had a crack at getting Johnny Depp in to do it - you would be kidding yourself. He is very good. And the stuff with the cool tentacle beard on “Davy Jones” was pretty cool to say the least. But I even thought that some of the special effect stuff let itself down in a couple of places - there was a couple of moments where you started thinking that you were watching animation: not the ideal.

And so that this isn’t just a straight movie review, this article from “Out of Ur” (a consistently good performer blog from the Christianity Today people) has some very valid points on the way christians react to movies, and looks at some of the reasons behind it (although I think they are over-stating the badness of the Pirates film). Pretty fair comments, and while I’m not really one to get out the placards and protest against any movies, let alone Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean, there’s no doubt that as chrisitians we need to be consistently evaluating why we’re “opposed” to some things and allow others. Where you draw these line I’m not sure, but at very least when you do - they need to be straight ones.