19Aug
13Feb
Here are some more pictures from Pang Klang, the Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel are living as workers. (I previously posted a picture of Pang Klang’s shaman.)
The reason there’s a whole post on cooking pictures is because that comprises a large part of Craig & Rachel’s day. Cooking over a cook fire takes just a bit longer than popping something in the microwave!
Picking some food from the garden for lunch
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05Feb
The Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute’s annual Night of Music is being moved from Antrim in Greencastle, PA to the SMBI campus here in Harrisonville, PA. (Because of the blizzard moving in.) Please pass the word around and link here so people can get any updates. The service is still happening at 7:30 PM, Feb. 5.
17Feb
I was inspired to post the following quote, one of my favorite, from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (mm) by a coworker’s IM tagline, “The answer is 42″:
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn’t the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
12Feb
When transferring (backing up) large files (whether many files, or simply large files) over the LAN, use an FTP server and client (FileZilla is excellent for both). Windows throws permission errors all the time and there’s nothing more frustrating than a 50 GB file transfer via Windows File Sharing being stopped at the 42 GB mark because a program is using a file. FTP is not called File Transfer Protocol for nothing. It’s designed to copy files and does so intelligently. Not only can it resume large files, it will simply move on to the next file if it comes across one it cannot copy. At the end, it leaves you with a nice little list of files that it wasn’t able to copy–most of the time those are files you didn’t need anyway. (Thumbs.db anyone?)
An even nicer option, but one which costs a bit of money, is BeyondCompare, a terrific program that I use all the time to keep folders synced and to resume failed Windows transfers by only copying the files that didn’t make it the first time around.
27Jan
It would probably be pertinent to note that this trip was mere days after I had gotten my first DSLR and the quality of the pictures are reflected in that fact.
Playing in the streets
Little tot riding along
A sundae
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27Nov
I’m sure y’all have heard about the unrest in Thailand including the shutdown of Bangkok’s two airports. I have only one comment on a paragraph in a CNN article that stuck out to me as blatantly wrong, having lived in Thailand for eight months:
In Chiang Mai late Wednesday protesters wearing yellow shirts pulled a 60-year-old man from his car and shot and killed him, Reuters journalist John Sanlin told CNN. Anti-government protesters typically wear yellow shirts, he said.
Yellow is the King’s color. The King has always kept above the fray of politics and coups and is the one person that everyone in Thailand loves. Everyone (including us foreigners) would always wear yellow shirts on Monday (the King’s birthday). On a given day (let alone Monday), it seems 25% of the men in Chiang Mai, Thailand wear a yellow polo shirt with the King’s shield/crest on the left breast pocket. For the Reuters reporter John Sanlin to say that anti-government protesters wear yellow is akin to saying that anti-government protesters tend to have legs. On top of this, both political sides sides wear yellow to show that their actions are patriotic–according to this travel blog, the soldiers that participated in the latest coup tied yellow ribbons to their gun barrels. It’s the equivalent of American politicians wearing flag pins.
20Aug
We don’t pronounce Taliban right. It should be pronounced Tali-bane. Taliban is simply the dual of student (taaleb); it means two students. Furthermore, given the Taliban’s role in the world, this correct pronunciation (bane) is etymologically accurate in English.
09Aug
26Jun
Damascus Gate
Alms
School.. or prison?
The ever-present UN
Ramallah’s finest coffee
Relaxing
A Palestinian refugee camp and Israeli settlement near Ramallah–the settlement is above, camp below
The late glorious leader
We visited the refugee camp
Yours truly in the Palestinian refugee camp
Ready for war
Stark contrast
Ramallah
The best schwarma place in Ramallah
The Orthodox in Jerusalem
There was a free outdoor concert right outside Jaffa Gate right by our hotel celebrating Jerusalem day. It was quite enjoyable. If you want the full size images, go here.
14May
I love the Amsterdam airport’s announcement if someone is late for a flight: “Mr. John Smith, you are delaying the flight to London. Please board at gate F12 immediately. We are proceeding with off-loading your luggage.”
Also, I met (in the Amsterdam airport) a conservative Mennonite family from Abbeville, SC traveling to Nakuru, Kenya.
07May
One of the delightful things of tour was to meet a number of online acquaintances in person for the first time! I had the privilege of meeting fellow techie Josh Champagne. (His church’s blog mentioned us too.) At our program at OSU, it was cool to meet the “eccentric… very eccentric”* Matt Smucker. I had the delight of meeting and eating lunch with the famouser** Dorcas Smucker, along with her husband Paul and lovely daughter Jenny. I also met Emily briefly, though she sat with friends to eat.
The tour got featured on Steve’s E-Vangie Tales blog (cached copy). I also had the incredible privilege and an absolutely hilarious time meeting Ray Comfort.
* That wasn’t my impression of him, but rather how he describes himself on his Xanga. I thought it a snappy description. 
** Relative to me, not Josh.
07May
The Times of London has a nice photogallery by one of their photojournalists in Afghanistan that has predominantly HDR pics.
04May
Here’s a fun little math story problem that challenged my math skills–something that happens far too little these days. I got it from a friend’s Xanga. The answer is below the fold. But try to figure out the answer (without looking!) and post the step by step solution as a comment.
A man can paint a house in 5 days. He and his brother can paint the same house in just 3 days. How long would it take his brother to paint the house by himself?
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