Dave’s Journey

I have started a new blog called “The Macfoto Life” where the focus will be on Macs, web design, photography and related topics.

I’ve just come back from another weekend at Missions Fest in Vancouver. It was a good weekend. I was running a booth again that has several computers that using a web search tool helps direct people to different organizations present at the conference. If you would like to check it out visit the Mission Opportunities Search site. I had some difficulties with the computer setup at the beginning, but it improved as the weekend went on.

During the weekend I was also able to take in a couple of the sessions and enjoyed listening to the choirs and speakers that they had. One of the interesting things was at the beginning of one session they had a video playing highlighting the fact that it was the 25th Missions Fest with the first one taking place January 1984. They also showed some pictures of what else was happening in the world at that time. One of the items mentioned was, well, the introduction of the Macintosh.

The Macintosh and Missions Fest both began at the same time. The Macintosh is known as a computer that changed the computer industry and throughout its history has had an impact beyond that industry, such as the original iMac’s colourful design that had an impact on the fashions of the day. Many of its users are also fans and passionate about the computer, what it can do and its design. Missions Fest is an event held that brings together Christians from many different churches and backgrounds to share in a vision to see people worship and go out and let others know of the good news and love of Jesus Christ.

Things here on earth don’t last. Some things like Macs come and go, such as what I experienced with computer problems with a couple Macs I was using: one that I couldn’t get started again. Missions Fest is a place where people come and are challenged to live for God in their lives, whether at home or in another part of the world in such a way that they honour God. While Missions Fest as an event may come to an end someday it draws people to have a passion and vision that looks both to the present and eternity.

What is your passion? Do you want to change the world? Have you considered that Jesus came to earth and changed things eternally and we only need to look to him. That is my desire for my life. That doesn’t mean that one can’t be passionate about other things: I still like using Mac computers as well :-).

Introduced at MacWorld in January the iPhone will begin selling later this year in the US. Following the introduction Cisco sued as they held trademark rights to the name. Apple and Cisco have now settled and Apple will be able to use the name iPhone as originally planned. Personally I wouldn’t have minded if they went with something other than that. It was the expected name, but calling it the Apple Phone would have worked in the same fashion their multimedia player is called Apple TV. Pretty soon naming everything iSomething is going to get a bit dated.

Macworld: News: Apple, Cisco settle iPhone dispute

Apple has made some more system updates available. Among the changes are updates that make adjustments regarding the dates for daylight saving time. There have been changes throughout North America when one switches over so you will want to make sure that your computer has this and the other updates.

Apple posts a slew of software updates | MacMinute News

The MacHeist bundle offering a suite of shareware application is available for 2 more days. They have raised $100,000 for charity through the sales. All 10 applications are now included to those that purchase the software.  It includes a couple web design programs: RapidWeaver and TextMate.

Today I picked up my iBook. The problem had been with the hard drive and so that was replaced. A bonus was that they put in a larger hard drive. Thanks guys. While I was in Peru I also had the battery replaced due to the iBook recall so my computer now has a new lease on life.

While I was away in Peru my iBook quit working. I didn’t manage to get it fixed while out there. After taking my laptop in last week I got a phone call today that it is ready. Yeah!

Lately I’ve had to live without my iBook. I had to take it in for service due to problems with the hard drive a couple weeks ago. Fortunately I was able to find an Apple dealer to help me out. At the beginning it wasn’t all that difficult, however, over time you realize how used you are to working with the various programs and having access to all the information that one stores on the computer. I’m hoping that the problem will be fixed soon. Fortunately I had time to backup what I needed.

I haven’t been using NeoOffice lately as much as I had before since I bought Nisus Writer Express for my word processing needs. However, I checked the NeoOffice website again today and noticed that they had a beta of NeoOffice 2 available to anyone for download. This is a major upgrade based on version 2 of OpenOffice.org and incorporates an interface that more fully utilizes Aqua. It definitely shows the continuing work that is going into the program by the developers and that it can be a good office suite for the Mac. One of the things that I found when trying out some documents were that several PowerPoint files that I had some troubles viewing, particularly when it came to transitions and animations, displayed much better.

With Accordance 7 having been available for awhile now Oak Tree Software has just released a new set of CDs of their Library and Scholars packages. In addition they have updated the Bible Unlock CD and Bible Reference CD. One item of interest to me was that the Bible Unlock CD now includes a module for the Spanish language Nueva Version Internacional.