The ruler, even though he had kept all of the commandments, Jesus told him that he had to sell all he had to be able to inherit the kingdom of God. The ruler left, not feeling so good about himself. I always thought the point was that we have to share what we’ve been given, to be generous to others.

The way the author explains it though, he says that the money, and the garments that made him appear as a ruler, defined him in society. It was his money that he had put his hope in in life, and the only way for him to truly be a Christian, he needed to shed off that old societal definition of being rich, young, and a ruler, and to become fully devoted to God.

It’s the same with us. We are defined by our popularity, by the crowd we fit in, and even by our wealth. I see in myself that I often define myself by the way other people see me. Whether I feel like a “fun” person at the time, or slightly boring, often my self-worth is measured by what society tells me. I’ve recently had problems with vehicles, and two incidents happened with my car. When something of monetary value of mine is threatened, I start to worry, and it gives me huge butterflies so much so that I can’t sleep. Jesus tells us not to worry about food or clothing, and yet I can’t even imagine life without a car. I think this was the rich young rulers problem. He was defined by his wealth, and so if he lost it, he would be a nobody.

When we are defined so much by something in this world, we lose our definition as Christians. We put our hope in our jobs, instead of our walk with God. Or maybe our hope is in the car we drive, or the crowd we are with, or even our family. All these things are blessings to have, but they can easily come between us and God.

What’s it going to take for us to be God’s child, to see ourselves by what God sees, and not by what’s on the outside. We need to leave the popular crowd, and reach out to those who are a little lower than ourselves. We have to get out of our mind off of the cars we can’t afford, the clothes that make us look like snobs, and the newest Gadget that might give us a couple of hours of entertainment.

So what is Jesus saying to us. “Leave your best friends, and follow me” (2 Cor 6:14). “Don’t work so many hours at your job; teach your kids about my love.” Jesus tells us to put our teasure in heaven, instead of in things that are just temporary on the earth. What are you defined by?

Romans 15:13 - PDF
Romans 15:13 - MIDI
Romans 15:13 - LilyPond

One thing that is limited, is that if you switch the presentation, but not the slide, the timer stops. I don’t really know how people plan to use the program, or if they will want to switch the presentation, but I may add some sort of icon indicating that a timer is running.

I’ve also switched the shortcuts to use Control-Left, Control-Right for moving slides, or Control-Shift-Left and Control-Shift-Right to switch presentations. I figure that’s eaiser for people to remember, and I couldn’t get Control-Shift-Period/Comma to work anyways (probably have to use Greater-Than symbol, but this seemed more intuitive).

I think that covers all the necessary things to use it as a presentation program on a single computer. All other features seem like good things to have, but not necessarily must-haves.

It really wouldn’t be that hard. Some sensors for lines in the road, sensors to test the distance of obstacles in front of you, and a camera to record speed limit and other road signs. They already have distance sensors for backing up, but front sensors would have to be able to sense for a longer distance.

It would need to disengage during bad weather, traffic, or extreme road conditions. I would have an aggressive knob, to know what the minimum preferred speed is (least aggressive would use the least gas).

I’m sure there’s a lot more to it, but it’s possible if a car company would just do it, and they could go a long ways. There would have to be “Not Responsibile in case of X” clauses that the person would have to agree to, and lots of safety issues as well.

I would go for a car with autopilot.

The 40GB Hard Drive isn’t going to work for long. I do have a hard drive my brother had that he couldn’t use, but unfortunately, I really need to have windows to where I can dual boot it with Ubuntu. I don’t have a copy of windows lying around (XP would do). They should make a Priceless Edition. I have a product key on the bottom of the laptop for XP Tablet Edition, but I’d have to pay $40 to get it from Toshiba.

I also need RAM. It’s got a 512MB Stick, but, boy, does it get slow when I have 15 windows open when I’m at work.

Maybe I’ll go get some RAM in the next couple of days.

Edit: 1.5 GB > 512 MB. I got an upgrade in RAM, and the difference looks amazing so far. I’ll have to run it for a while to know for sure, but loading the O/S seems slightly faster, and web-browsing seems better as well.

I’ve removed the BETA status, because I think it’s ready for production usage in certain situations. It might be easier for those who have good experience with computers, because there’s not an actual installer, and it requires a few extra programs (See Installation). Maybe by next version I’ll have at least a Windows installer. The NSIS installer is plenty confusing, but I’ll take a shot at making it.

If you need lyrics, Christian Devotional Lyrics is a good resource.

I think Clutter would be a good option to create animations. It has some built in stuff, and uses OpenGL to render these. I’ve just looked at some of the docs and stuff, so I don’t quite get it all yet, but the built-in animations look good, and the videos I’ve seen are impressive. I may have to take a look at some of the examples to see what exactly can be done.

One issue that I have is that there is no windows executable. I may have to create a fallback, just in case the user doesn’t have it installed, or doesn’t have 3D available (or some may not even want animation).

Clutter looks pretty exciting, and maybe it will have matured a bit by the time I get Exposong 1.0 released.

I don’t like having little personal relationship with people here. I talk to people at church, and my boss at work on some days, but I just don’t have a social life other than that.