Okay the title’s a little dramatic but I thought I would just give a shout out to my awesome wife Amy Chapman. She’s been getting more and more into the photography number and is actively pursuing wedding photography and other various genres of digital and film. She recently worked photography for the Gulfcoast Getaway weekend and had one of her pictures featured in the Christian Chronicle. Check out the picture it’s a pretty classic pose of Chris and Randy. We’re currently working on setting up her website and hopefully before too long we’ll be ready to release it out of Alpha and Beta stages.
[print_link] [email_link]
I recently came across this video and thought it worth sharing. Generally anything by Dallas Willard says is worth sharing. I like more than anything how he places emphasis on developing the tools to regularly commune with God. He doesn’t jump to programs and he doesn’t say that they should be in this church service or that but more importantly he focuses our attention on cultivating the inner life. His greatest concern is in equipping people to be just like Jesus would be if He were in their shoes, with their opportunities, talents and dispositions. I appreciated his desire for us to really grapple with what Jesus said about how to live this life whether it’s dealing with anger, suffering, persecution, money or anything we interact with.
My dad chatted with me on Gmail and sent some new pictures he had found of my Great Great Great Grandfather. His name is Henry Thomas he fought in the Civil war with the 15th Consolidated TN Calvary. He very likely fought in the battle of Nashville. He was married in 1866 shortly after his service in the military. Other than that there’s not too much else to share. Apparently he had a little money to play with compared to his surrounding neighbors. He mostly farmed but made some money cutting timber. The short of it is that Henry Thomas begot Hugh Thomas, who begot Hugh Ralph, who begot Lee Hugh, who begot Leslie Scott who begot me. So I just thought I would share that since it’s the first time I’ve seen these pictures as well.
Lately, one can hardly go an evening without seeing on the news how some breach in data security occurred. Even my own beloved Alma Matter has had problems losing data in unencrypted devices like flash drives. As a result here at TTU we’ve begun looking at ways of dealing with this problem by implementing more stringent encryption policies. Currently the discussion is still going on but in the near future I imagine that we will be seeing a much greater emphasis not only password protection but data encryption. In the spirit of looking for free and open source alternatives rather than paid ones I began looking at TrueCrypt for personal use and experimentation at work. So far I’ve been very impressed. TrueCrypt offers incredible ease of use and security. Among the many features included are travel drive encryption, whole disk encryption as well as simple encrypted “containers” or folders. From what I’ve read and seen so far the implementation is very user friendly and provides a great deal of flexibility.
There are a lot of implications when you start using encryption. For example what do you do when people use it for illegal purposes like the case of United States v. Boucher. Another related issue is the use of key logging software to capture passwords for encryption software. These issues will continue to be a played out and tested both in the schools, workplace, and courts for some time to come.
A couple of weeks ago Amy came to me and asked me what I planned on doing for Lent. Now from time to time she and I will go through the practice of discipline through the time of Lent. But this year she wanted to take it up a notch and experience Ash Wednesday service. I wasn’t too keen on going to a Catholic service, nothing personal just already been there done that, so we decided to go to St. Michael’s Episcopal Church. A friend of ours goes there so we decided to give it a go. We began the period of Lent by going to Shrove Tuesday pancake breakfast/dinner at St. Michael’s. Shrove Tuesday, from what I could gather, was their alternative to Fat Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »