http://danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?keywords=general Daniel Bigham's Blog en-us Something that came to mind at the Inspire Justice conference last weekend (not for the first time), is the concept of "living at church". What do I mean by that? Yup: Literally living at church. Let me back up a step. Something that causes me concern is that there are so many big, expensive church buildings. At this conference, there was mention made of one church doing a $50 million dollar building expansion! In a world where there are so many children dying from malnutrition and preventable diseases, it causes one pause. As members of a church, can we feel confident that putting our offerings in the plate are the absolute best way to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a suffering world? Are these big, little-used buildings really a core example of what it means to be "the church"? How much difference do these capital campaigns really make? I was shocked to learn that when people in the church die and leave a large amount of money to the congregation, such as $100,000, it is customary for 90% of that to go to the capital fund. Yikes. What goes along with this concern is that these buildings have their core utilization, at least in our congregation, between 9 AM and 12 noon on Sunday. That's 3 hours out of a 168 hour week. The buildings do have pastoral offices, a few activities throughout the week, and there are a couple of organizations that use some of the space, but overall utilization remains low. As a church, I believe we are called to lead by example. We should be able demonstrate good stewardship to the world. Because hey, we are spending God's money, so one would think we'd be pretty careful. Another realization here is that our church is in a small town where there are not one or two, but THREE church buildings. Can churches in a small town not even figure out how to share their worship spaces so that three completely separate buildings, all low-utilization, are required? Part of me shakes my head at this. Good stewards? How about parking lots. My home church in Woodstock recently bought a school that closed down next to it so that it could continue to use the parking lot around the school. Cost: Something like $350,000. That's money that could flow right into missions, perhaps enough to double the missions budget for a whole decade, but the money gets tied up in a parking lot. At this Inspire Justice conference in Cambridge, the size of the church parking lot was absolutely massive. Sigh. The crazy idea is this: Could people live in church buildings? Imagine a family setting up a couple of tents at bed time: One for mom and dad, and another for their two kids. Meals prepared in the church kitchen. Movies watched on the church projector. What would this look like with 5 families living in the church? Shared day-care. Having other kids to play with. If there were multiple people who "worked at home", it would create a bit of an office environment. Community. 0-minute drive to church. Shared meal prep a few times a week. Huge cost savings. Let's take it a step further: What if those families shared their income while living there together, and gave the excess to the church? It almost sounds like Acts. And yet another step further: Including a mix of low-income families, such as immigrants, etc. And yet another step further: Include a couple of elderly people who still have their marbles but can't quite take care of themselves anymore? I wonder whether we suddenly wouldn't have a building under-utilization issue any more, and that might be one of the smaller benefits. I find this fascinating. 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=989 Back in the middle of January I decided at the last minute to participate in the Community Port-o-thon. It was a rather busy day of social activities, so not an ideal at all, but it was fun. I spent 8 hours: Print: 43 min PC Keyboard: 1 hr 17 min Open on Phone: 1 hr 44 min (port of 'Open on Tablet') Smug Sync: 46 min Send From PC: 1 hr (new app) Baby Paint: 25 min Vendor Portal Autologin: 36 min Realtime Earnings: 1 hr 13 min (but gave up) I ended up submitting 6 apps, which should translate to $600, which is a nice perk for doing something I was already intending to do. They were giving out additional BB10 devices to the first 200 people to submit 5 apps... that's what was more the motivation to jump in that Saturday, but as I got going and they reported that they had well over 10,000 apps, I realized that my chances of getting a phone were slim to none. Anyway, wonderful to have all of my apps that I wanted to port to BB10 done, so that I can move my focus to new things. I still intend to enhance Flix so that there isn't a need for a helper app to select movies, but I will wait until "launch" when there is hopefully (?) confirmation of whether there will be a native Netflix app. 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=984 Sneaking in some more development before the end of the year... Spent 1.5 hours finishing off and submitting my baby names app for BB10. Signing the app was a bit of a challenge. When submitting the BAR file, it kept complaining that the Package ID had changed. I finally figured out that the id tag in my bar-descriptor.xml file was com.daniel.BabyNames when it was intended to be com.danielbigham.BabyNames. 31 Dec 2012 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=983 Time spent: 1 hour 20 mins Finally back to my baby names app, the first app I started writing to learn Cascades. This app has been derailed so many times due to beta issues, etc. It's mostly done, just a matter of making changes required by the newer APIs and finishing it off. Spent an hour and a half getting it rolling again. Left to do: - Hook up "reset all" and "instructions" features again. - Fix bug: Rating screen doesn't reset properly when changing girl/boy or mom/dad selections. - Results screen is highlighting words in red. (spelling correction?) Turn that off. - The results screen is taking approx. 4 seconds to populate. Why? Should be able to do that in the blink of an eye. - Get rid of gear icon in overflow menu for selecting a letter. - Look into why segmented control is such a dim grey appearance. Looks disabled. 31 Dec 2012 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=982 Yesterday I had a great dev day. I started by finishing off Flix for BB10. At least, I hope so. I cheated by continuing to use version 2.1 of the SDK. (crossing my fingers it doesn't get rejected because of that) One remaining glitch was that the audio/video synchronization was off, but my theory about what was causing it was right: The number of bytes of audio per millisecond on the PlayBook always seems to be 176 instead of varying like one would think with the quality of the audio stream. But on BB10, it does seem to vary. I also re-Photoshop'd all of the graphics to fit the resolution of BB10. With that done, I submitted the app. Next, I spent just over an hour porting Print to BB10, and that went pretty smoothly. With that ported, it only took 20 minutes to port Send To PC. Finally, late in the evening, I started porting Picasa Sync, and 2 hours later that was done. The main annoyance there was this label issue with the .textWidth property not giving accurate values back. I finally worked around it by removing the old label from the stage each time I need to update its text, creating a new label, waiting for the added event, and then querying the .textWidth property. I'll have to go back and update iTunes Sync / Print / Send to PC to use this same logic. So as of now I have the following apps submitted: - iTunes Sync - Flix + Flix Movie Selector - Print - Send To PC - Picasa Sync Time log: Flix: 1 hour 37 min Print: 1 hour 15 min Send To PC: 22 min Picasa Sync: 2 hours 13 min Total: 5 hours 29 min 30 Dec 2012 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=981 Today I figured I'd tweak, test, and submit Flix to App World for BB10. I had spent a couple hours on Flix a month or so ago, with the hope that I could combine the Flix Movie Selector app with the main Flix app (via the WebView control), but getting the Foreign Window sample app to work in conjunction with my screen code just wasn't working for some reason. Given that roadblock, I figured I should at least submit it as is. I spent 20 minutes making required changes to Flix Movie Selector, but upon launch the app would just immediately close after displaying the standard BB10 spash screen for an instant. (AIR app) Boo. Of course, after spending nearly an hour going over every detail with a fine tooth comb, I couldn't figure out what was going on. In the end I had to take a "Hello World" BB10 AIR app and re-build the app by copying and pasting over functionality, and finally, that's working. (1.5 hours of time) Next I moved onto Flix itself. When the dev alpha was first released, Flix worked like a charm. I tried building and deploying it today with the latest SDK, and no such luck. First of all, user prompts weren't showing up. I found some information on the forums and fixed that. Next, I needed to prevent portrait orientation. But with those things fixed, the actual playback wasn't working at all. It buffers for 30 seconds or so, and then the audio starts playing with some choppiness, and video frames aren't showing at all. Bleh. The strange thing here is that when the Dev Alpha was first released, I tried Flix on the device and it worked fine. So what gives? I went back and tried the code with the PlayBook 2.1 SDK and it worked fine. Then I noticed that you can deploy NDK apps built with the PlayBook 2.1 SDK to the Dev Alpha, and if you do that, again, the app works. It even uses the proper BB10 dialogs, etc. It makes me wonder whether I might be allowed to submit the BB10 app compiled using the 2.1 SDK. Flix Movie Selector: Changes required for BB10: 20 min Troubleshooting bizarre app crash on load: 1 hour 10 min Total: 1.5 hours Flix: Fix user prompts: 10 min Prevent portrait orientation: 10 min Troubleshoot why playback is broken: 40 min (unsuccessful) Troubleshoot using 2.1 tablet SDK: 1 hour Total: 2 hours Total: 3.5 hours 28 Dec 2012 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=980 Well it has been a long time since I've done any PlayBook development. Life just hasn't afforded it recently, and any time I've had has gone to BB10 stuff. But I wanted to make a quick little enhancement to my Alarm Clock app so that it would support a visual alarm for Eli, our 3 year old. We're going to try having him use the PB as his alarm clock, and have the background image change when it's time for him to get up. It took 20 minutes to make the code changes, but it looks like I don't actually have the PB SDK set up on my new computer. I downloaded 2.1 and tried to install, but during installation the installer freezes, with the window showing nothing but black. Groan. Why must computers be such a bear? After 20 minutes I finally got the installer to work by choosing the installation directory on my C:\ driver rather than my E:\ drive. Initial implementation: 20 min SDK installer troubleshooting: 20 min Testing and bug fixes: 35 min - Bug 1: Part of my implementation logic didn't make sense. - Bug 2: Alarm type was getting reset once app was exited and started again due to a subtle bit of logic that took 20 minutes to discover. Total: 75 min 16 Dec 2012 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=979 The last couple of years have been an interesting journey. To a fault, I have been pondering money issues. Where this started, I think, was the realization of how financially blessed Meredith and I are. We have both been successful in our careers, and with that has come good salaries. Since I grew up in a family where one parent worked outside of the home, and I always felt like we were very well off, I at some point started to question whether Meredith and I really needed all that we were being given. Something that has exacerbated this questioning is that in the last year, my app development hobby exploded, and at one point I was making twice as much money on app sales as I was at my day job. Around the time this happened, I felt like God was clearly telling me that this app money was our "cup overflowing", and that we should use that money beyond ourselves. It has been a very joyful process for both Meredith and I. More recently, I read the book Radical: Taking Your Faith Back From The American Dream by David Platt. I would highly recommend this book to my Christian friends and family. The chapter that really hit home for me was chapter 6. If I can paraphrase, there are many thousands of children that die each day due to starvation or preventable diseases. Many of us are vaguely aware of that, but file it away in the back of our minds. Meanwhile, we consume ourselves with our desire for more physical stuff, prettier stuff, or experiences. Jesus tells us pretty plainly in the New Testament to do otherwise, but we fall victim to interpreting many of the difficult teachings of Jesus through a materialistic North American context. Our culture is far more powerful than we give it credit. David Platt argues that our blindness to this issue is analogous to the blindness that people had to slavery. It's very frightening to realize that such good, God-loving people honestly believed that slavery was good. Is it perhaps similarly frightening that many North American Christians are blind to the control that their culture has over their lifestyle and how they interpret the teachings of Jesus? Having read this, I feel very convicted that I am far more materialistic than God desires us to be. And secondly, I feel like David Platt's writing has been successful in dislodging my mental defense mechanism which allows me to ignore the critically poor in the world. Part of this is that I'm a parent now, and the thought of watching one's child, Eli or Hazel, die to starvation or a preventable disease, is something that I can empathize with far more than I could before having kids. The way we perceive harm to our children is profoundly powerful. When one can empathize with other parents in third world countries, it is like receiving a large electric jolt. No longer is it a vague abstract concept for me. It is real people, just like me, living a nightmare. This may sound extreme, but I have cried very heavy and burdened tears at least twice in the last week. One of the core questions I am struggling with is how much money it takes to save a life. Two billion people in the world live on $2 a day. So the $5000 that we can easily spend on a two week vacation is an incredible sum of money in comparison. If there are thousands of children each day on the tipping point between life and death, how is it possible that it is God's will for me to use that money for my own pleasure instead of helping my brothers and sisters? Being hit with that question has been tough. It really shakes one's whole world view of money, and how we should live. And it seems kind of silly, because it's not like I've been completely oblivious to this topic my whole life. I'm thirsty to talk with others, both people who have likewise been convicted by these questions, and those that think such extreme thoughts are misguided and unhealthy. Obviously there must be a balance somewhere, but most suggestions of balance I have heard so far don't seem to answer the $5000 question I pose above. If you have any thoughts or comments, let me know: mailto:daniel.bigham@gmail.com 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=978 I'm currently in Champaign Illinois for my yearly trip to the headquarters of Wolfram Research. Today at 2:30 as I was typing away on my laptop, I started to feel a pain in my chest -- the bottom three inches or so of my sternum. It was mild pain, but one's mind always wonders whether one should be concerned about such things. I told my manager so that if I went into any distress, someone would know what I was feeling, but continued to work. After 20 minutes or so, it started to get worse, and I felt the urge to lay down, so I packed up my things and headed back to my hotel room to get some rest. I feel asleep and woke up a couple of hours later with significantly more pain, and I could feel my heard beating. I took my pulse and it was 110 bpm, which isn't at all normal for waking up from a nap. I started doing some Google searches and was going to phone telehealth but I was overcome with the sense that being alone in a hotel room with significant chest pain and an elevated heart rate wasn't very smart. I went to put my shoes on, and as I sat up I felt even worse, so I didn't even bother putting my socks on. As I walked down the hall, I felt more ill, and I could feel my heart pounding faster and faster. I didn't feel overcome with panic, so my racing heart was really concerning me. I got to the front desk and wanted to first tell them my symptoms, and second figure out a way for me to get to the hospital to get checked out. My pain was evident in my voice, and when they heard "chest pain" they didn't seem at all interested in me going by taxi. The lady at the front desk later explained that she has had several family members in their 30s and 40s die from cardiac arrest, so she wasn't going to mess around. I felt badly about calling an ambulance and wanted to avoid that, but they wouldn't have any of it. My grandma Bigham died of a heart attack because she didn't want to raise a fuss with her symptoms, so I suppose we should learn our lesson. I got them to phone Meredith and let her know my symptoms. I was really feeling overcome by my pain and racing heart, which was now > 130 bpm, so I lay down and elevated my feet. (is that what you're supposed to do?) The ambulance arrived after about 5 minutes and I stood up and got on the stretcher. They loaded me into the ambulance and measured my heart rate and blood pressure, which I think were 130 bpm and 160/100. They started monitoring my heart, and there were no signs of trouble. He explained that, while the details are complex, they are trained to quite easily pick out the signs of heart trouble, and they weren't seeing anything of serious concern. I got to the hospital and they did an ECG. Everything looked ok. The last major thing they wanted to rule out was a blood clot. Because I have had surgery recently and spent 6 days in bed, the risk of that was a bit higher. So they took some blood. It ended up being an hour or so before I had the chance to call Meredith and let her know that there were no signs of trouble. I lay there feeling very badly that all this time she must have been frantic not knowing what was going on. As I was requesting that they bring a phone for me to talk to her, she actually phoned the hospital. I was able to let her know that everything looked fine, so I could finally relax knowing that she wasn't in the dark. After two hours of waiting, the doctor was able to present the results of the test, which showed no markers of blood clot. I was A-OK. They did a quick ultrasound to make sure there were no visible signs of distress in my heart or lungs, and that looked great. And finally, they gave me a numbing agent to drink to see if that had any affect on my GI tract. By the time they gave me the numbing drink, the pain was reduced by 70%, and the drink perhaps helped a bit more, but didn't make it go away. So here I am back at the hotel room and I've chatted with Meredith and Hannah and my Dad. What a day. I feel somewhat badly that an ambulance ended up being called, but as I said about learning from my grandmother's experience, it's better to fare on the side of caution. So what is causing the pain? It could be stomach, or it could be musculo-skeletal. Ulcer? Acid reflux? I've had heart burn at least a dozen times in my life and the pain I felt today didn't feel similar at all to heart burn, so it's a bit of a mystery. My guess is stomach. Maybe an ulcer? I've had an emotional week pondering difficult questions of injustice in the world, so maybe that is part of the story. But glad that everything seems to be ok. 16 Oct 2012 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=977