A while back, I watched the video for the movie The Gray. In that movie, Liam Neeson played the part of an oil rig worker who had crashed in the wilderness, forcing him to flee from a vicious pack of wolves who proceeded to pick the workers off one by one (including a female stewardess on the plane).
Conservationists working to save the wolf have succeeded all too well, by publishing beautiful calendars which portray wolves in benign ways that make viewers mistakenly conclude that wolves are misunderstood and persecuted animals. But watch this National Geographic video and notice that Arctic wolves are more than capable of hunting down musk oxen, one of the largest species of animals in the arctic. These ARE NOT dogs, and as the Liam Neeson character observes, they do not eat nuts and berries.
It's true that early settlers were so afraid of wolves that they hunted wolves to the point of near extinction in this nation and elsewhere. But there was a reason those settlers were afraid of wolves, and it came from primal memories of a time when human beings were constantly being threatened by wolves in terms of survival. Wolves are efficient killing machines, but they are not too bright, because other canines figured out long ago that it made sense to make nice to human beings, and to accept the offer of a nice warm spot by the fire. Wolves value their independence, even though their insistence on independence has made them a threatened species in many parts of the world.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Smarty Tags
You may have heard of QR Codes, but have you heard of "dynamic" QR codes?
Not long ago, I used the services of Smarty Tags (http://smartytags.com/) to generate a graphic code which, when scanned or uploaded to a decoder site, would lead to the following:
http://smartyt.ag/755187
If you were to click the above URL, you wouldn't think that much had happened, because it would lead you back to this blog. The reason is essentially that the URL is like one of the "URL shorteners" available via Google. It's basically a shortcut to the true URL of this particular blog. The actual text is probably harder to remember than a regular domain name, but that isn't the point, the point is that if you can scan the QR code, you shouldn't have to remember anything at all.
One advantage of dynamic URLs is that the information stored by the company which issued the dynamic QR code might have been entered incorrectly the first time around (for those of us prone to typos), or parts of that information might have changed. For instance, I may eventually use a web hosting service such as www.1and1.com, to offer the Chapel Network News in a more sophisticated way than I can with a simple and free blog. If I do that, the QR code will still lead to the new correct site, I merely need to edit the information stored by the company which issued the dynamic QR code. Or at least I think that's the way it is supposed to work. I still have some tests to run, but I believe that it will prove to be a good idea to use dynamic QR codes when promoting this site.
Not long ago, I used the services of Smarty Tags (http://smartytags.com/) to generate a graphic code which, when scanned or uploaded to a decoder site, would lead to the following:
http://smartyt.ag/755187
If you were to click the above URL, you wouldn't think that much had happened, because it would lead you back to this blog. The reason is essentially that the URL is like one of the "URL shorteners" available via Google. It's basically a shortcut to the true URL of this particular blog. The actual text is probably harder to remember than a regular domain name, but that isn't the point, the point is that if you can scan the QR code, you shouldn't have to remember anything at all.
One advantage of dynamic URLs is that the information stored by the company which issued the dynamic QR code might have been entered incorrectly the first time around (for those of us prone to typos), or parts of that information might have changed. For instance, I may eventually use a web hosting service such as www.1and1.com, to offer the Chapel Network News in a more sophisticated way than I can with a simple and free blog. If I do that, the QR code will still lead to the new correct site, I merely need to edit the information stored by the company which issued the dynamic QR code. Or at least I think that's the way it is supposed to work. I still have some tests to run, but I believe that it will prove to be a good idea to use dynamic QR codes when promoting this site.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Get Your First Edition of Chapel Network News!
As mentioned in a prior blog post here, I intend to distribute copies of the Chapel Network News in the form of PDF files which can be downloaded from "the cloud" (more specifically, from the Skydrive folder where I store that document in "the cloud").
Note that this document is formatted for 11x17 paper. Chances are, if you're like a lot of folks, you don't have a printer capable of printing on 11x17 paper. But you technically don't have to make a printout to read the document at all, since Adobe Acrobat Reader can zoom in and out on PDF files. Also, chances are good (especially since this first edition has been specifically created for Christians in Bellingham, WA) that you can easily save this PDF file to a USB drive and then take it over to a store where they can print the file for you, on such paper.
I just made ten prints that way the other day, at the FedEx Office, once known as Kinkos, not far from the primary bus station on Railroad Avenue. Another store which can make 11x17 prints is the USB Store, over on Meridian. I'm fairly sure that Copies Now can do that, too.
For those of you who would rather be able to print each edition on your own printer at home, I intend to start offering versions which have been reformatted for standard letter-size (8 1/2 x 11 inch) office paper. The 11x17 size looks a bit nicer when tacked up to a full-size bulletin board, but either type works, depending on your preferences.
I also hope to offer a "large print edition" (for the benefit of seniors or others who possess no suitable reading glasses, and who find it a little easier to read larger type).
For those who are vision impaired, or who would rather get a quick audio overview of the current issue while driving to work, I even hope to offer a version in the form of an audio podcast, eventually. But that's probably a little bit further down the road.
Since the URL for the storage location for the inaugural edition is (like all SkyDrive URLS) ridiculously long, I went to http://tinyurl.com and created a short, easily remembered address so that you would not even need to visit this blog in order to visit the PDF file.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/chapelnetwork will take you to that document, and so will the same address minus the "preview" part of the URL (in other words, http://tinyurl.com/chapelnetwork). I put the word "preview" in there for the benefit of those who might fear that the link will take them to some undesirable location, but either link will work, and will take you to the same document. And of course, either one can also be used in a Twitter "tweet", if you happen to be one of those people who likes to tweet. You can also send it as a link in an e-mail message to your friends, and I strongly encourage you to do so, especially if your friends are Christian believers.
Note that this document is formatted for 11x17 paper. Chances are, if you're like a lot of folks, you don't have a printer capable of printing on 11x17 paper. But you technically don't have to make a printout to read the document at all, since Adobe Acrobat Reader can zoom in and out on PDF files. Also, chances are good (especially since this first edition has been specifically created for Christians in Bellingham, WA) that you can easily save this PDF file to a USB drive and then take it over to a store where they can print the file for you, on such paper.
I just made ten prints that way the other day, at the FedEx Office, once known as Kinkos, not far from the primary bus station on Railroad Avenue. Another store which can make 11x17 prints is the USB Store, over on Meridian. I'm fairly sure that Copies Now can do that, too.
For those of you who would rather be able to print each edition on your own printer at home, I intend to start offering versions which have been reformatted for standard letter-size (8 1/2 x 11 inch) office paper. The 11x17 size looks a bit nicer when tacked up to a full-size bulletin board, but either type works, depending on your preferences.
I also hope to offer a "large print edition" (for the benefit of seniors or others who possess no suitable reading glasses, and who find it a little easier to read larger type).
For those who are vision impaired, or who would rather get a quick audio overview of the current issue while driving to work, I even hope to offer a version in the form of an audio podcast, eventually. But that's probably a little bit further down the road.
Since the URL for the storage location for the inaugural edition is (like all SkyDrive URLS) ridiculously long, I went to http://tinyurl.com and created a short, easily remembered address so that you would not even need to visit this blog in order to visit the PDF file.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/chapelnetwork will take you to that document, and so will the same address minus the "preview" part of the URL (in other words, http://tinyurl.com/chapelnetwork). I put the word "preview" in there for the benefit of those who might fear that the link will take them to some undesirable location, but either link will work, and will take you to the same document. And of course, either one can also be used in a Twitter "tweet", if you happen to be one of those people who likes to tweet. You can also send it as a link in an e-mail message to your friends, and I strongly encourage you to do so, especially if your friends are Christian believers.
Monday, August 22, 2011
PDF and the Chapel Network News
Hi, my name is Mark Pettigrew, and I'm the new editor of the Chapel Network News.
The Chapel Network News is an online publication which will offer individual Christians and local churches and Christian organizations a platform from which to communicate with one another, in a manner which is as cost effective as possible.
The objective is to insure that no genuine needs needlessly go unmet in the Body of Christ. This, I believe, is part of what it means to serve Christ.
Some churches have deacons who serve this function to some extent, but they are often hindered from doing so in a maximally effective way by the fact that they don't have access to a large enough pool of people who are both able and willing to meet the needs of their brothers and sisters in Christ.
For those readers who serve as deacons or elders at your churches, please know that I'm not trying to compete with you or to impugn your motives. I hope that you will come to think of this online publication as a resource and a tool which will enable you to more effectively perform the duties of your job within the local church.
Likewise, I hope that you will help to publicize the existence of the Chapel Network News, using whatever resources are available to you. If you will choose to do so, I believe that all will benefit. After all, the better the circulation of the Chapel Network News is, the more people will see the free ads you place in the publication. Likewise, the more often you read the Chapel Network News, the more aware you will be of resources which might pertain to the needs in your own congregations.
A substantial amount of the contents of the Chapel Network News will consist of brief classified ads which, in the old days, might have been posted in the form of flyers or notices posted on the bulletin boards at those churches. But there may also be listings which link to external web pages, blog posts or PDF documents which contain more information than can easily be put into brief classified ads.
Also, there may be occasions where folks wish to link to detailed articles, sermons and other items they wish to share with others. Such links could also be used to share media files, such as YouTube videos or audio files.
There are so many options for communicating with one another these days, and so many different things that Christians might wish to communicate with one another, that I am going to try to remain pretty flexible in that regard.
Having said that, I should also say that I do intend to exercise a certain amount of control over the content of each issue of the Chapel Network News, so that the system is not abused in order to communicate contents which are clearly innappropriate in light of the fact that it will be a Christ-centered publication. My desire to exercise that kind of control helps to explain why I have changed my original plan, in terms of the manner of distribution. PDF files will be far easier to control (and to edit, if necessary), compared with the standard "social network", and therefore, far less vulnerable to spammers.
Nevertheless, I believe that if I were to err, I'd rather err on the side of generosity than to err on the side of hindering perfectly innocuous communications which could potentially serve a legitimate need. I agree with a woman I saw recently on TV, who stated that she defined "power" as helping people as much as possible. I'm not a big fan of the other kind of power, which tends to hurt people by denying them access to the kind of help they need.
At the moment, I'm focusing primarily on the area in and around Bellingham, WA, because that's where I live. But really, there's no reason I can see why this concept isn't equally applicable to other regions of the nation, or even other regions of the world, as well.
The first thing you need to know, if you have a computer with Internet access, is that the primary means of distribution of the publication will be in the form of PDF files which can be downloaded and printed. That's because it's much less expensive to do so than it is to print up physical copies and then work out the logistics of distributing those printed copies to all of the churches in the Bellingham area, or whereever I might happen to be living at the time.
Another nice thing about the PDF format is that it can be easily modified for different purposes. That, in turn, enables one to come out with different versions of the publication. For instance, I intend to offer a different version for each specific participating (and sponsoring) church, so as to enable those churches to more easily distribute "church-specific" information which doesn't necessarily pertain to others outside of those local churches.
Of course, churches often sponsor events which pertain to the larger Body of Christ as well, so there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to use other versions of the publication.
In any given church, there might be some ads which would be published only in the church-specific edition for that particular time period, and other ads which would be published in the larger edition for that specific geographic area for that particular time period. There might also be cases where members of that church would run ads in both versions, because they wanted to make sure that the ads were seen by as many fellow Christians as possible.
I may also run an edition specifically for artistic Christians, since I'm currently involved with a somewhat related project I call the Christian Arts Initiative. You can learn more about those projects by visiting the following web sites and reading the information at those sites:
I want this to be a ministry even for people who fit that description, and not just for fellow geeks. I therefore intend to offer a version of each edition which is sized and formatted for the kind of simple and inexpensive printer which nearly every church office possesses. I will need to stick with letter-size designs for those particular versions, since some churches can only print on 8 1/2 x 11" paper, not on larger papers. My hope is that each church will regularly distributed a limited number of the lettersize prints, for the benefit of people who can't access the Internet, or who have no means of making prints from the larger page designs. But some folks may prefer the larger page sizes, so that will be an option as well.
I'll be returning to this blog in order to more content to it later. But I was just talking to a pastor at my church, and I suddenly realized that I was talking to empty air. My phone had beeped at me, and apparently, the reason was that I'd totally used up all my available air time! Hopefully, she won't be too annoyed!
The Chapel Network News is an online publication which will offer individual Christians and local churches and Christian organizations a platform from which to communicate with one another, in a manner which is as cost effective as possible.
The objective is to insure that no genuine needs needlessly go unmet in the Body of Christ. This, I believe, is part of what it means to serve Christ.
Some churches have deacons who serve this function to some extent, but they are often hindered from doing so in a maximally effective way by the fact that they don't have access to a large enough pool of people who are both able and willing to meet the needs of their brothers and sisters in Christ.
For those readers who serve as deacons or elders at your churches, please know that I'm not trying to compete with you or to impugn your motives. I hope that you will come to think of this online publication as a resource and a tool which will enable you to more effectively perform the duties of your job within the local church.
Likewise, I hope that you will help to publicize the existence of the Chapel Network News, using whatever resources are available to you. If you will choose to do so, I believe that all will benefit. After all, the better the circulation of the Chapel Network News is, the more people will see the free ads you place in the publication. Likewise, the more often you read the Chapel Network News, the more aware you will be of resources which might pertain to the needs in your own congregations.
A substantial amount of the contents of the Chapel Network News will consist of brief classified ads which, in the old days, might have been posted in the form of flyers or notices posted on the bulletin boards at those churches. But there may also be listings which link to external web pages, blog posts or PDF documents which contain more information than can easily be put into brief classified ads.
Also, there may be occasions where folks wish to link to detailed articles, sermons and other items they wish to share with others. Such links could also be used to share media files, such as YouTube videos or audio files.
There are so many options for communicating with one another these days, and so many different things that Christians might wish to communicate with one another, that I am going to try to remain pretty flexible in that regard.
Having said that, I should also say that I do intend to exercise a certain amount of control over the content of each issue of the Chapel Network News, so that the system is not abused in order to communicate contents which are clearly innappropriate in light of the fact that it will be a Christ-centered publication. My desire to exercise that kind of control helps to explain why I have changed my original plan, in terms of the manner of distribution. PDF files will be far easier to control (and to edit, if necessary), compared with the standard "social network", and therefore, far less vulnerable to spammers.
Nevertheless, I believe that if I were to err, I'd rather err on the side of generosity than to err on the side of hindering perfectly innocuous communications which could potentially serve a legitimate need. I agree with a woman I saw recently on TV, who stated that she defined "power" as helping people as much as possible. I'm not a big fan of the other kind of power, which tends to hurt people by denying them access to the kind of help they need.
At the moment, I'm focusing primarily on the area in and around Bellingham, WA, because that's where I live. But really, there's no reason I can see why this concept isn't equally applicable to other regions of the nation, or even other regions of the world, as well.
The first thing you need to know, if you have a computer with Internet access, is that the primary means of distribution of the publication will be in the form of PDF files which can be downloaded and printed. That's because it's much less expensive to do so than it is to print up physical copies and then work out the logistics of distributing those printed copies to all of the churches in the Bellingham area, or whereever I might happen to be living at the time.
Another nice thing about the PDF format is that it can be easily modified for different purposes. That, in turn, enables one to come out with different versions of the publication. For instance, I intend to offer a different version for each specific participating (and sponsoring) church, so as to enable those churches to more easily distribute "church-specific" information which doesn't necessarily pertain to others outside of those local churches.
Of course, churches often sponsor events which pertain to the larger Body of Christ as well, so there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to use other versions of the publication.
In any given church, there might be some ads which would be published only in the church-specific edition for that particular time period, and other ads which would be published in the larger edition for that specific geographic area for that particular time period. There might also be cases where members of that church would run ads in both versions, because they wanted to make sure that the ads were seen by as many fellow Christians as possible.
I may also run an edition specifically for artistic Christians, since I'm currently involved with a somewhat related project I call the Christian Arts Initiative. You can learn more about those projects by visiting the following web sites and reading the information at those sites:
- The Artistic Christians' Network (http://artisticchristians.ning.com)
- The Artistic Rescue Project (www.ArtisticRescue.com or www.ArtisticRescue.info).
I want this to be a ministry even for people who fit that description, and not just for fellow geeks. I therefore intend to offer a version of each edition which is sized and formatted for the kind of simple and inexpensive printer which nearly every church office possesses. I will need to stick with letter-size designs for those particular versions, since some churches can only print on 8 1/2 x 11" paper, not on larger papers. My hope is that each church will regularly distributed a limited number of the lettersize prints, for the benefit of people who can't access the Internet, or who have no means of making prints from the larger page designs. But some folks may prefer the larger page sizes, so that will be an option as well.
I'll be returning to this blog in order to more content to it later. But I was just talking to a pastor at my church, and I suddenly realized that I was talking to empty air. My phone had beeped at me, and apparently, the reason was that I'd totally used up all my available air time! Hopefully, she won't be too annoyed!
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