Since I wrote my last post about this, I read some stuff and thought somewhat shortly after the post about writing another one, but never did.

However, I don't remember exactly what it was that I read for sure, so I'll talk about what I've been thinking about recently.

Last time, I talked about three types of 'bad language' (and that is such a wide phrase to mean something much narrower): profanity, obscenity, and cursing, the last of which may bleed into the first two. Like I said before, profanity is disrespecting the sacred with language, obscenity is making that seen which should not be seen (vulgar; it comes from Latin meaning "the common people", which is where such things should not be talked about; they are out of context), and cursing is calling, wishing, or commanding something bad or evil upon a person or thing.

I must say that I have already become somewhat numbed to some offensive language; I see and hear it enough that it begins to bother me less. And that seems a bad thing.

The thing with this group of 'bad language' I call offensive is that it is offensive. Nobody likes pooh in their face for real, so why would they like it in their face with words? Sexuality is meant for marriage, and there is a shame in bantering about it in a public and common manner; thus comes the offensiveness of such words. Furthermore, who likes to be cursed? Do we really have the right to proclaim such things upon people anyway?

Now, this is not to say that every time these words appear in print or are spoken that it is evil. I mentioned before the dynamic nature of language and also the intent of the heart. These both come into play. Not always when people say "damn" are they cursing someone. Not always will people consider words to mean the same thing. Different things are offensive in different cultures.

It seems to be one of those Christian liberty things and one we should be very careful with. These words obviously carry some meaning that at least to some, is offensive or evil. Some seem to me to be universally evil; these would be those that profane that which should always be sacred (such as God's name), and those things that should not be seen by those they are communicated to (such as talking about sex in a dirty way). If we are to be different from the world, and these are the worlds vulgarities, some explicitly wrong, some not loving to our neighbor, shouldn't we not use such language?

Don't get me wrong; I am not declaring this group of words absolutely evil, but I think as Christians we need to be careful and discerning in this area; for some of us, perhaps it is better to forego them completely as we can, for others it may not be so. Using any words to intentionally and maliciously hurt others is obviously wrong, so let us keep that in mind.

I personally steer clear of common words considered offensive ('swear words', obscenity, profanity) in my speech, because it seems safer to me, and there are other words in this language to express my feelings. Don't let me dictate how to live your Christian life, though; that is the job of God's word, so pick it up and read.

I wouldn't call myself a music connoisseur, but I definitely enjoy music. Thus I share this with you. It's an instrumental album; modern orchestral rock, as one reviewer on Jamendo called it, seems to be a good description. There are no lyrics, but some backup vocals, and just some straight talking on the last track.

The music in and of itself is superb; the technical workmanship is excellent. The artist is JT Bruce, but I know not how many individuals may hide behind such a title. The story is somewhat intriguing. I listened to the album, and then I found out in the last track. After the music comes to an end, a voice begins to speak about The Dreamer's Paradox. Here it is in a nutshell: "One third of your life will be wasted. You’ll lie in an unconscious, catatonic state and sleep your life away. What if you could take those years back?" The music of the album represents a person's journey of escape into dreams, and their subsequent blending of dream and reality… until one is the same as the other.

Pretty scary. I confess it freaked me out the first time. I had to like… conquer it -- by sleeping through a night. Even then it took a little longer, I think.

The whole album runs about 74 minutes, but the last track may not be as enjoyable for listening as the others… it's rather anarchic and part of it is just speech. The preceding tracks total about 64 minutes, though, which is a pretty good amount of listening.

The Dreamer's Paradox on Jamendo 

P.S.  It doesn't really happen… I'm pretty sure you're awake. Well, I think so…

You may have heard about the Adobe Acrobat vulnerability a while back. OK, so maybe you're not using it right now. But… if you even have it installed, you could be at risk. Since it integrates some into Explorer on Windows, if you just select an infected PDF file, the proper malware could take advantage of the hole and do… bad stuff.

The recommended action for now is to uninstall Reader and Acrobat if you have them and use an alternate PDF reader.

I'm still using Adobe 8 (for the Firefox plugin, which I rarely use anyway), but it's leaving for now… I'm just fine with Foxit.

[via DownloadSquad]

[This is a bit of a rewrite of Tuesday's post.]

The quick edit icons,   and , can be handy for, well, quick edits, but I personally prefer the clean look of our blog without wrench icons cluttering up the sidebar (by the way, they only appear when you are logged in as an admin of that blog or on a post you made). Fortunately, LawnyDesignz has a simple and elegant solution.

Here it is: you have to add a bit of CSS code to your template. So, get your blog template HTML open in the Blogger editor (Layout settings > Edit HTML). Now the important part: you have to put this in the right section to work. You have to put it in the section between the opening tag <b:skin> and the closing tag </b:skin>. For convenience, just make a new line right after the <b:skin> tag (i.e., insert your cursor right after <b:skin> and hit Enter). Now copy in the following text:

.quickedit{display:none;}

Press Save Template and then take a look at your blog. Wrench icons have disappeared, hopefully.

This still leaves the little pencil icons, but I don't find them so obtrusive and deign to leave them there. However, these can be removed, too, if you so desire. Go into the Settings tab (Basic sub-tab, selected by default), in your blog settings, and select No on the drop down box for 'Show Quick Editing on your Blog?'. Save Settings and pencils-B-gone!

Note: in the previous version of the post, I mentioned you can put the code in the first style section before <b:skin> but I would recommend putting it in the b:skin section. Lawny told me about putting it in the b:skin area, so thanks Lawny!

Also, if you have Firefox, you can grab the Stylish add-on and use this userstyle to quickly toggle the pencil and wrench icons visible/invisible, no reload required. Pretty cool.

I got a bit envious of the nice breadcrumb style location bar while messing with Snowbird recently. So, I went a-Googling.

With some light searching, I turned up two options: QT Address Bar and Minimalist Explorer Breadcrumbs. Both are shell extensions to Explorer, taking the form of toolbars.

I downloaded both, but have not installed QT Address Bar because of reported issues and the stellar performance of Minimalist. Also, QT looks like Vista, but Minimalist blends in nicely enough with your visual style.

Screenshots of Minimalist (traditional Address Bar disabled):

Note: StExBar (StEx in screencap) is a different shell extension I have; it's not related.

And, a nice feature, just like Vista, is that when you click on some empty space in the bar, it switches to an address bar and highlights the current path.

 

Having been shown by Elliot how the Vista breadcrumbs work, I think this shell extension has done a good job of bringing a (hopefully) helpful Vista feature to XP (and supposedly to 98/ME/2k/2003, too, though they haven't tested on those).

One last note: Explorer Breadcrumbs is completely free and functional, but they ask you to register it ($7.95) if you find it useful. Time will tell for me.

Actually, I won in the Judges' Choice student category and tied for second in the People's Choice category with Samantha Robbins (who also took second second Judges' Choice with the same picture, it seems, and also tied for third in People's Choice with Ashtin Olsen). In the second annual Chieftain photo contest. To be specific.

Here's the Judges' Choice winner (yes, that's Matthew):

And here's mine from People's Choice second place:

I am told there might be monetary prizes, but I don't remember for sure and nothing has appeared in the mailbox yet.