The Breeze of Springtime

A warm breeze blows across my face laughter is in the distance… So many days with golden leaves playing in shades of pink hue amid deep grey skies. Burst of tulips are scattered across the lawns as if there was a tulip explosion. Is this spring or summer I cannot tell except for that faint cool breeze that keeps coming back just when you think winter is over… Sleep has escaped again for another night and alas I will depart and chase after that warm breeze of yesterday…

iWeb Like & Dislikes

I’ve been using iWeb (Apple’s new easy to use web publishing product, part of the iLife suite) for a week or so now and have to say that in general I like the product but would like to see more than a few improvements. I think that they rushed the produt and the only reason I’m not too annoyed at them is that a release 1 product is ussually buggy so guess I’ll cut em some slack. There is a nice support site available here if you wish to see samples and find out answers to some questions.

What I like About iWeb:

• The templates- they are really nice
• The drag and drop ease from your media (audio, iPhoto…) to a page
• Integration with the rest of iLife in general
• The general ease of use and user interface
• The one button publish to .mac or a folder

What I don’t like about iWeb:

• The unexpected crashes
• No auto save feature
• Can’t edit publishing date on blog w/out messing up blog entry order
• Publishing errors without any explanations
• Not knowing where the template objects are stored/ coming from
• The templates are great but could we have a bit more?
• No code view where you can tinker with the html, div and the like
• No calendar view on the blog page
• No comments or permlinks
• The long urls esp. for your blogs
• Takes way too long to upload
• Pages take too long to load in general
• Images aren’t optimized

BTW here are a few reviews of iWeb if interested.

• Apple Matters
• Davidwb he has a personal iweb site at: his .mac account
• Gizmodo
• Onedigitallife
• 4hacks
• Webmonkey

Family Feuds & Cursed Figs

This week’s readings were an eyeful. Basically we were supposed to cover Genesis 23-45 & Matthew 19-23 depending on where you are in the catching up game. I have to say that I fell a bit behind on Genesis and only did up to 31, I’ll write about the other chapters later. Anyway, as I was reading through Genesis I was struck by a couple of things:

1. Jacob & Esau- I was pondering the whole predisposition thing. I mean we are told (in Gen 25:22) that Rebekah is pregnant and that the babies were jostling within her (that must have hurt) anyway she asked why this was happening to her and the Lord informs her that “two nations are within her womb… one people will be stronger…the older will serve the younger.” So she gave birth and we are told later that Esau gave up his birthright to Jacob for some stew and later Jacob steals Esau’s blessing. My big question is why are we surprised at this? This was foretold before they were born i.e. thus said the Lord. Could Esau have changed his mind if he wanted to? He was going to do this thing from before he was born so did he have a choice in the matter?

2. Jacob marries his cousins- Talk about messed up. Can you imagine your brother being your brother and your cousin at the same time? What a mess. I won’t even dwell on the fact that Rachel and Leah were Jacob’s cousins. People frown on this type of thing now and they should. It wasn’t God’s plan or his doing but Jacob was deceived by his uncle. I supposed back in those days it was OK to marry your cousin but yikes what a mess Jacob had on his hands. He didn’t just marry the cousins though but their maids as well. This put some modern day polygamist to shame. Its no wonder that they had such deceptions, scheming, rivalry and favoritism going on in the family. The cool thing about all this though is that God chose to bless all people’s though Jacob and his offsprings. God chose them even in the middle of the mess. God even heard the cries of Leah when she wasn’t loved, heard the cries of Rachel when she couldn’t have children.

3. The passages in Matthew were pretty familiar to me and I didn’t have much issue with them except that fig tree story. Why did Jesus curse the fig tree? did he do this as an object lesson for his disciples? Was the fig tree supposed to have fruit on it but had problem producing figs? Was it late? What is the significance of this story?

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