Ted Carnahan

Don’t print me!

Ted Carnahan — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:51:04 +0000

I just received an email with a signature line that captured my attention. Instead of pseudo-witty quotes or a 500 word legal disclaimer, it simply said “Please consider your environmental responsibility before printing this email.” I thought that was a pretty cool reminder that killing trees is bad.

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Closed File Formats and Christian Ethics

Ted Carnahan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:24:18 +0000

Professor Vern Sheridan Poythress, a Presbyterian seminary professor, has a great website where he has made a huge portion of his lifetime writings available completely free. On his site, he has published an article discussing the ethical implications of closed file formats.

Poythress roots his discussion primarily in justice for people in the Third World who cannot obtain copies of proprietary software to open files saved in proprietary formats. This is an important point for the church, where communication with people in other countries has been strongly facilitated by the Internet, but I would like to extend his argument somewhat. When one is in the position to choose between software which interoperates with free and open formats and software which does not, one is, in part, making a choice to obligate the future users of one’s work to use particular software.

It’s important to note at this point that none of this discussion necessarily points to using freedom software. If Microsoft, for example, produces a version of Word that fully interoperates with the OpenDocument format, the ethical question of file formats goes away. You might choose to use costly proprietary software to create your document, but the recipient is not obligated do to likewise because the file format is open and anyone can write a program to work with it. Hence, the ethical question of file formats is not even whether the file format is open or closed. Instead, the question is whether or not there exists freely available software for reading and fully manipulating that document down the road. As long as that software exists and is readily available, you can choose whatever software you like.

There are plenty of good reasons to choose freedom software over proprietary software in many instances. Freedom software almost always uses open file formats, so interoperability is guaranteed.

Ultimately, the ethics of file formats is about control. It is irresponsible of the church to give control over access to data or choice of software away unnecessarily.

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Things that are hard to do left handed

Ted Carnahan — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:30:36 +0000

With my dislocated shoulder, I don’t have a whole lot of use for my right hand or arm. I can clutch a few things close to myself, but that’s about it for now. Without further ado, I present the Not-so-comprehensive List of Things that are Hard and/or Impossible to do One-Handed:

Hard to do

Scratch your nose while holding anything else.
Tying shoelaces. Extra points for double knots.
Putting on and taking off shirts. Extra points for polo shirts that aren’t very stretchy.
Typing. Mostly easy, but when you can’t move your shoulder much, hitting backspace is tricky. Try it!
Passing the peace in church. People look at you funny and then try to make a left handed handshake with their left hand. Awkward. Which brings us to…
Shaking hands. People sometimes put their right hand out, expecting me to be miraculously healed and reach out with my big black sling. I grab their hand with my left and shake that way instead.
Holding books to read. Easy while sitting, but holding a hymnal while standing to sing, for example, is quite the feat. Turning pages while standing is well nigh impossible.
Liturgical gestures. Sticking one arm awkwardly out and raising it doesn’t mean “Time to stand up now, folks.” quite as eloquently for some reason.
Anything having to do with contact lenses.
Playing piano. I cheated and scooted my butt up and down the piano seat so I wouldn’t have to move my right shoulder to play a little bit for Coffeehouse last night.
Sweeping and mopping. But with a little imagination, it can be done!

Impossible to do

Buttons. Buttons of any kind flummox me completely. Extra points if your pants seem to have (cough cough) mysteriously shrunk.
Carrying heavy things. Thank goodness Chuck carried our new travel system from the baby shower up the stairs this evening. With Jennifer 7 months pregnant and the right half of my body being eaten by a sling, we’re nearly helpless.
Dialing a phone. Okay, I’ll admit, this isn’t impossible, but somehow my brain won’t tell my left hand how to push the right buttons, and it takes a few tries to get it right.
Putting on a knit hat. Protip: if you don’t mind the taste of cotton, you can use your teeth and get the job done without help.

I hope I’m done with this sore shoulder soon!

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Left Handed Friday

Ted Carnahan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:57:31 +0000

I hereby declare today Left Handed Friday in honor of me dislocating my shoulder last night in the Youth Room and having to do everything left handed today. Fortunately, I’ve found a comfortable position for typing with both hands - otherwise, my universe would likely cease to exist.

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Baby Shower Pictures are up too!

Ted Carnahan — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:14:38 +0000

Jennifer’s family threw a baby shower in Kansas City last weekend and here are the pictures we took. (I know there are others out there, so please send them to me.) Check out that last picture - the pile of presents is devouring our living room. AIEEEE!

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Wartburg Oktoberfest 2008 Pictures

Ted Carnahan — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:08:49 +0000

Pictures from this year’s Oktoberfest celebration are now up in my Picasa space. Check them out:

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Student Technology Task Force

Ted Carnahan — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:33:10 +0000

Here’s something genuinely unexpected: The WAS Council today voted to form a Student Technology Task Force and appointed me the head of it. We’ll be looking for ideas on how to advance technology on campus and working with the administration to implement solutions. I’m pretty excited - hopefully we can get something done.

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Liturgically Geekier than Me

Ted Carnahan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:50:30 +0000

The folks at Lutheran Forum are clearly at least as geeky (and Lutheran) as I. In honor of Reformation Day, they have themed their website in Reformation Red. The difference between them and I? I thought about it. They actually did it.

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Host your own OpenID with phpMyID

Ted Carnahan — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:00:43 +0000

Just got done setting up my own OpenID server using phpMyID. I followed these instructions by Steve Klabnik. Now I can sign on with one username and password across hundreds of sites - pretty cool!

One additional step for people with their own websites: Add to your home page. Do the same for rel="openid.delegate". So now I can use http://www.tedcarnahan.com/ as my OpenID. Even better!

For mere mortals (hah!), you might actually already have an OpenID. This page will show you sites that host OpenIDs already and places where you can sign up for one for free.

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Disable new Switcher in Firefox 3.1

Ted Carnahan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:50:23 +0000

User Scott posted a comment on the MozillaLinks.org website describing how to get rid of the new Firefox 3.1 tab switcher that I deeply dislike. Go to “about:config” and change both of these to false, then restart your browser.

browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed

browser.ctrlTab.smoothScroll

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