Peter Wooley’s Blog

Hello! Some of you may know of my recent discovery of Launchy – a superfast Application launcher for Windows XP. I was delightfully surprised to see it be so easy to use, nice-looking by default and easy to skin! So, I spent a little time creating a skin (seen here) called Black Glass. I put it up on the forums and voila! it got added to the next release – not only that, it’s also under the sreenshots tab on the Launchy site (bottom screenshot)! So, I must say Thank You to Josh Karlin (Launchy’s creator). If you’d like to use Launchy and check out my skin, go to:Launchy.netWhee! I’m on the Internet!

It’s 5:06am. Tonight I spent 2 hours working with some business card layouts for a class next week. I was saving to PDF to show some friends for critique and had just gotten it down to a reasonable web-friendly size. Getting ready to call it a night, I go into Save As and change the filesize *back* to psd and re-save. Photoshop saves it. I check to make sure everything’s okay, it’s how I want it, all the layers are there, etc. Everything’s cool so I close it.Then I get this really weird feeling that something is wrong. I decided to open it again, to see if it’s right, and guess what, all my layers are missing! Now, I understand I saved my PDF without layers in order to reduce file size, but when I saved it back as a psd, there are no options to save it any other way, so how could this have happened? I’ve no idea, but the file as it was when I closed Photoshop had my layers and now they are gone, gone, gone.The only consolation I have is that I spent so much time on the positioning and not really individual pixel art, that I should be able to re-construct the whole thing in an hour. But, still, why did Photoshop wish to screw me over when I didn’t even have the option of destroying my layers while using the native format? Why!? Someone call me and tell me what I did to deserve it!

I was on my way home tonight when I was listening to the BBC and an interesting story graced my ears. In South Africa, a study has just concluded that showed that circumcised men are anywhere from 60-75% less likely to get aids! Researchers offered several thousand men the option of being circumcised and checked in on them after a few months. At their first check, twice as many men who were not circumcised were infected with aids compared to the men who were circumcised. That’s good news! Granted, it’s not completely comparable to a condom, but in the form of redundancy, circumcision could be a powerful ally!I’ve often heard people refer to Circumcision as a useless and wasteful procedure – just something the “religious” did and therefore should be stopped. If I were in there situation, I might agree. Apparently, as one might imagine, sensitivity is lost when the foreskin is removed, which may hinder the enjoyment of sex. Considering I have been all my life, I will not know the difference on my wedding night, so I am not concerned. But, I must say I enjoy the fact that I don’t have to take so much care to cleanse the area for fear of infection and other nasty things.Now I believe I have an argument for the circumcision debate. Granted, some men may neither be driven by religion or engage in acts that will infect them, but now circumcision may be consider as a safeguard. Similar studies are being conducted in two different areas and have yet to return data. So, we will see!

I decided to surf through a link on digg that talked about Geek Graffiti. I am normally opposed to graffiti, but I understand its role as art and can find it reasonable. As I surfed through, I came onto a post concerning a recent Adidas ad campaign, which was one of the most brilliant and well-handled campaigns I have ever seen.Adidas recently came out with Adicolor, apparently making use of color, which I’d thought they’d been using for years. At any rate, they came up with an ad campaign that blended street poster design and graffiti perfectly.They started with white posters that had the adidas logo and quote by Leonardo da Vinci describing that for color, you must start with pure white. Once those were up, graffiti began to litter them – in color, of course. Time passed and a url started popping up called Overkillshop.com. It turns out, at least some of this graffiti was coming from Adidas and the Overkillshop link links to a store selling Adidas Adicolor footwear. I thought that was great by itself, but then they went on to put up new posters over top of the old with the Adicolor shoes on them, but with pieces cut out to allow the graffiti to shine through on parts of the shoe. And all of this, in color. Brilliant, I say.You can see all the stages at beinghunted.com.

So, I keep stealing things for content, but they’re all things that apply, and they have credit! At any rate, I’ll say what I came to say. I ran across DeviantArt’s Job offers and found one for a “Legendary Web Programmer!” The points were so well-written I decided it could be something I try to attain – not only the points about the “spiritual” side of programming, but also dealing with load balancing and multiple languages.(Begin DeviantArt Text)You have proven experience of writing code professionally for atleast five years, and you understand the technologies that drivetoday’s web. You can architect, design, and work with a userexperience that hinges upon mastery of both browser and server sidetechnologies. And you love it.You are capable of advanced programming:* Iterative and event-driven systems* Asynchronous and parallel programming models* You have an eye for efficiency, where its important* You believe that simplicity is a virtue* You can take existing complex code and refactor it down to asimple, powerful, core essence* You can write good code in whatever language you’re asked to code inServer* PHP experience (a definite plus but not necessary)* Familiarity with a server side enviornment that includes manyclusters of servers providing distributed data storage, and processing* Distributed databases: Key-Value pairs, and Relational (MySQL)* General awareness of the design issues that present themselves whensolutions must be able to scale with traffic growth across many serversBrowser* Knowledge of JavaScript on the level of using it as an applicationframework* DOM and Style manipulation* Dynamic page generation* Background data fetches (XMLHTTP, IFRAME, etc.)Bonus Points for:* CSS* Photoshop (or similar)* UI Design* Firefox extentions (or other browsers)You enjoy taking the initiative on projects and working within tightdeadlines, sharing ideas and being involved in the design process aswell as the implementation.You don’t find ‘just solving the problem’ a challenge, but rathersolving the problem in an elegant and scalable way as the realchallenge.(End DeviantArt Text)So, there you have it. A list I’d like to attain at some point – even the Firefox extension one. Oh, what a wonderful world the Internet is!

I said, “God, I hurt.”And God said, “I know.”I said, “God, I cry a lot.”And God said, “That’s why I gave you tears.”I said, “God, I am so depressed.”And God said, “That’s why I gave you sunshine.”I said, “God, life is so hard.”And God said, “That’s why I gave you loved ones.”I said, “God, my loved one died.”And God said, “So did mine.”I said, “God, It is such a loss.”And God said, “I saw mine nailed to a cross.”I said, “God, where are they now?”And God said, “Mine is on my right and yours is in the light.”I said, “God it hurts.”And God said, “I know.”~ by K.C. and Myke Kuzmic~Posted on the wall at the Oklahoma City bombing site.That’s a nice way to sum up my day. I can’t relate, but it felt extremely good reading that. In the midst of all the current debate of God vs. Evolutionism around me, it’s nice to know the above. And I do. And we’ll all find out, soon eough.

Over at pennyarcade.com (not that I really recommend going there) I read a press release that the Left Behind game Publisher sent out to a list of possible game critics (or “demo watchers”). The person that received it at Penny Arcade didn’t seem too impressed, and while I disagree with him on everything except *some* games, I am starting to get a weird (and possibly “bad”) feeling about a Christian Real-Time Strategy video game. The Screenshots listed over at Gamespot seem basic at best. I’m not sure what to expect as far as gameplay is concerned, but the ideas listed below are… odd.(Begin Press Release)When the RTS Rapture Comes Will You be LEFT BEHIND?E3 is set to be the stage for the public premiere of LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces, the RTS based on the wildly popular LEFT BEHIND Christian book series that will break barriers and appeal to both the traditional gamer and the Christian market.We’d like to schedule an appointment for you to meet with the developers and see a demo for the game that is poised to be the first break-out hit for Christian gaming.Here are some more details about LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces:- Conduct physical & spiritual warfare: using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world- The first RTS where every unit has a unique identity; every character has a name and a back story, providing 1000’s of hours of interesting reading – People are the most important commodity: players must protect the lives of their warriors and recruit “neutral” and even “evil” units to their side- Command your forces through battles across the most realistic depiction of New York City in any game- Recover ancient scriptures and witness spectacular Angelic and Demonic activity as a direct consequence of your choices. Unlock inspirational content that makes players consider the larger concepts of good vs evil- Control more than 30 unit types – from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks- Enjoy a robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps in Story Mode – fighting in China Town, SoHo, Uptown and more- Play multi-player games as Tribulation Forces or Global Community Peacekeepers(End Press Release)Perhaps this can be discussed at church or similar events. With a move toward this type of gaming, it seems that it might be a good idea to discuss it and prepare for it.

As of late, there have been many articles flying around the Internet refering to the missing link being found. I’ve also just begun an Astronomy class at schol, which will be teaching current Evolutionary theory as fact. In addition, Bill Nye recently angered some parents who believe in God with comments about Genesis not being accurate as it refers to two lights (sun and moon) and stars , where the sun is just one of many stars and the moon is not a light at all.At this point, I’ve no idea how God would wish me to act upon these things. My current thought is to roll them off my shoulder, continually reading through scripture as well as science that supports Creation- not forgetting, of course, to keep up on current Evolutionary thought to understand what is observable, what is “guessing” and what is, in the end, truth.A comment made by an Instructor of mine seemed to declare that in the late 1900s, scientific thought and research had come so far that it disproved the existance of God and the human’s place in the Universe. To this, I can hardly contain myself. I make attempts to not turn anyone “off” to my views by not going over-the-top with my responses, or even keeping quiet, but I was thrown off my seat at the sound of this. Unfortunately for we that believe in something greater than chance (yes, believe), these scientific advances, these found “missing links”, these radioactive dates seem so right. Many athiests, agnostic and even Christians demand that we believers just accept what is right in front of us – we are worthless in a grandios Universe. A mere chance happening. Just one of the smallest (albiet lucky) lifeforms that occupies an infinitely minute space in all of Space.With those things in mind, the dating, the fossil records, the links, the demands, consider this:In March of 2005, a story was released (msnbc.com) telling of an odd discovery. Evolutionist Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University discovered some flexible blood vessels inside a fossilized thighbone of a Tyrannosaurus rex – supposedly 70 million years old in Eastern Montana. This tissue had never been seen before in fossilized dinosaurs – nor would Evolution allow it to be, as it should have broken down millions of years ago, whether buried in sandstone (as it was) or not. The questions this discovery brings up seem large enough, but why has this not been explored further? Why are many people so unaware of this, but are told of the found “missing link” so readily? Paleontologist Jack Horner said he hoped for other museums to crack open bones and try find tissue – but has this been done? I’ve heard nothing, but would certainly love to. In Evolutionary terms, this problem should not even exist, but as believers in Creation, we can know that the reason tissue that should have been gone just thousands of years after animal’s death is still here, is because the animal died just a few thousand years ago.Or consider just how Evolution works. As many know, science changes. New discoveries are made, theories are modified, thoughts change, it all needs to change to accomodate what we do not know. This seems to be useful for learning, but to say life evolved in a specific way seems impossible, as ideas change so often. So, when we are told to believe Evolution, we are being told to believe we were made through a way we have no way of surely knowing and no way to prove it. Some may say that you can prove it through observation, but who is to say that fossils are “in-between” evolutionary steps, or different animals all together? Must apes have evolved into something else, or is their chemcial and biological make-up sound enough to stay as it is? With no real way to prove these, and no sure way of knowing, belief in Evolution sounds a lot more like a faith, than a science.Lastly, there is one idea that as far as I am aware, is nearly never discussed among evolutionists and ignored when brought up in debate. That idea is origin. As believers in Creation, we know that God made us for himself out of love. But, where does Evolution stand? In my classes, my dicussions, my debates, an answer to this question has never even been attempted. Current Astrologists believe that our planets and star formed as a result of a “Big Bang,” which wasn’t the beginning of everything, but rather the collision of two ancient planets, which produced all the chemicals of our universe. If so, what made the planets that collided, how did they form, were they created through yet another “Big Bang?” Was there one original “Big Bang” that started it all – how did that happen? As far as I can tell, I am not sure I will ever hear an answer to this.With so many questions and discoveries surrounding the ever-evolving Evolutionary thought, how might one say the case is closed on where life, stars, planets, space and everything else came from? If anything, this battle rages more hotly the longer it burns, and it will until we all die and find out or Christ himself returns.