Category — Computer

Left to Right: Farid Afnan, Dorothy Foster, Hassan Afnan, Kishan Manocha

The late Joe Foster was a wonderful and active Bahá’í who was a natural teacher. Joe taught mechanical engineering at a college in the north of England, but found himself becoming involved in promoting the inclusion of the Bahá’í Faith in religious education syllabuses and documents.

The Bahá’í Religious Education Agency (BREA, the UK Bahá’í community’s specialist religious education advisory body) decided that it would be a worthy memorial for Joe, who passed away a few years ago, to institute an award in his name for services to Bahá’í involvement in religious education.

Last night (25 June) Dr Kishan Manocha, Secretary of the UK Bahá’í community’s national governing council, presented the Joe Foster lifetime service award to Hassan Afnan, who was a leading member of the Standing Advisory Committee on Religious Education (SACRE) in the London Borough of Brent for many years and who persuaded Edexcel, one of the UK’s major examination providers, to provide a GCSE exam paper on the Bahá’í Faith.

During the evening Dorothy Foster, Joe’s widow, spoke about Joe and their life together, about how they met the Baha’i Faith and became Baha’is in the late 1960s and about Joe’s enthusiasm for religious education. This was a touching tale.

Dr Kishan Manocha addresses the Joe Foster Award ceremony

Sheila Williams, the first recipient of the Joe Foster Award was also present at the ceremony.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, RE, religious education, Joe Foster, Hassan Afnan

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I’ve just downloaded Firefox 3.0 (to replace Firefox 2.x) on my MacBook Pro. It is stunning! So quick and clever. I may be tempted to abandon Safari - although I usually keep both open and use them for different purposes. Why? I’ve no idea. It’s a habit I’ve got into.

Oh, and if you haven’t installed PicLens yet, do it NOW! It’s the coolest thing south of the Arctic.

Technorati Tags: computer, browsers, Firefox, Safari, Apple, PicLens

I’ve just spent a good portion of the day upgrading the Apple OS on my MacBook Pro to OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard). The upgrade took time because I was ultra careful with ensuring that I had an up-to-date bootable backup, that I had cleaned out caches and ensured my back up was as free of cruft as possible. Then I did an “Erase and Install”, so that the hard disk was erased before installing the new OS and pulling my apps and files back in from the bootable backup.

I’m glad to say that it has all gone exceptionally well and I now have a fully functioning laptop with a nice clean install of the OS.

Alex, Charlie and the kids are staying this weekend - it’s really nice to see them all, our children and their children.

Technorati Tags: computer, Apple, Mac, OS X, Leopard, family, grandchildren

I’ve been meaning to write here, but things have conspired against me!

I was in a meeting of the UK Baha’i National Spiritual Assembly (the Baha’i community’s national governing council) all weekend and right in the middle of this my computer decided to go all sulky on me and refused to work.

Needless to say, all my papers for the meeting were on the computer. So, I spent the rest of the weekend flying blind, as it were, through the consultations. Actually, truth to tell, I had studied all the documents before the meeting (and before computer meltdown) and the kind souls who are my neighbours around the NSA table let me look over their papers when I needed to remind myself of something.

Got home last night and spent several hours trying to figure out the problem. I called Alex (my eldest son), who is my private helpline on all things computer, a couple or three times. I tested for hardware faults. I took memory chips out and put them back in. I ran diagnostics. I started the sulky machine in what’s called Target Disk Mode and hooked it up to another computer so that I could access its hard drive.

In the end all I could do was to erase the hard drive (yes, I’d backed up to a bootable external drive on Friday) and start again. Then I couldn’t get it to start from the OS install DVD. That necessitated another conversation with Alex this morning.

In desperation I flicked through my collection of system CDs etc and, yes, I had one of those head-striking, duh-inducing moments. There, staring up at me, was a disk calling itself “MacBook Pro Mac OSX Install Disk 1″. I popped it in the drive, restarted, and … bingo!

So now I’m working on my old PowerBook and watching the reinstall continuing on my MacBook Pro.

I was going to write about something more interesting, but my whole being goes into an existential black hole when my computer doesn’t work. Not that this happens often, but when it does it induces a state of unrest in the core of my being. In Unix terms, I suffer a kernel panic.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, computer, MacBook Pro

It’s not often that a piece of software makes me laugh with pleasure and sheer delight at the delicious way in which something really useful has been implemented. But I’ve downloaded (and paid for!) just such a piece of software.

It’s called Delicious Library and, ha ha, it’s for us Mac users only! This is a bit of blurb from the website:

Get your Mac, a webcam, and Delicious Library and rediscover your home library. Just point any FireWire digital video camera, like an Apple iSight?, at the barcode on the back of any book, movie, music, or video game. Delicious Library does the rest. The barcode is scanned and within seconds the item’s cover appears on your digital shelves filled with tons of in-depth information downloaded from one of six different web sources from around the world.

I’ve tried it. It’s fun. It works and it’s delicious (oh, and it’s useful).

I am not in the pay of Delicious Monster!

Technorati Tags: software, Delicious Library

Baha’is are forbidden to confess their sins to any other human being. We can bring ourselves to account each day only with God. Nevertheless, I am going to confess to be a Mac user. In fact, I’ve been a Mac user since November (you see, I can even remember the month) 1987, when I bought a Mac II.

In days gone by (and not so long gone by), this confession would have caused PC users to go puce in the face and hoot with derision at such a stupid heretic. How could I not see that Windows (I suppose I should put ? or ? here) would dominate the world? Well, my friends, despite the derision I have remained faithful to the only true platform; I rejoiced at the advent of OS X - indeed I was an early adopter; I rejoiced at the change from Motorola to Intel (more ? and ?) chips - and have a MacBook Pro, which I love!

And now the smirk is on the other side of the face. iPod is cool (yes, I have an iPod), Mac is cool, and PC users are changing to the only true platform.

Here’s some good stuff about switching. Go on, have a look. You won’t turn into a sandal-wearing, bearded person (that’s me, by the way) just by thinking about switching.

But regrettably we Mac users still cannot use the essential Baha’i research tool, Ocean. That’s for PC users only.

But here’s something we can all use. Thanks to Ian Vink, Baha’i Research is a web-based application that allows anyone, whether they use a PC or a Mac, to search Baha’i and other sacred texts (and other writings).

How’s that for non-discrimination? Mind you, Mac users have to use Firefox. Luckily I like Firefox. Safari, the Mac browser, which I also like, won’t handle Baha’i Research for some unfathomable reason.

And there we are, back to the Ocean (unfathomable, geddit? Oh, perlease!).

Technorati Tags: Baha’is, Mac, Windows, OS X, MacBook Pro, iPod, Ocean

I make no apologies for publicizing the work of my own family, but if you want to see some really good word, have a look at these sites:

TubeStudio

TubeStudio is a hub for artists from all musical backgrounds. We aim to produce music to the highest quality for people to enjoy. After all isn’t that what it’s about?

The music on this site is free for you to download and distribute amongst your friends. All we ask is that you let us know what you think by using the forum. If you want to use any of our music for commercial purposes please contact us (we’re not adverse to the idea).

Having upgraded to OS X Tiger, I’m now learning how to use the Dasboard widgets. At first I thought they would be a waste of time, but actually they are a really brilliant feature of Apple’s latest and wonderful OS.

It’s a while since I wrote here. I have been so busy and then I felt down - just couldn’t be bothered to write anything. But so much has happened since early April.

Dinesh Singh, a good friend of mine and a research physicist at the University of Regina in Canada, visited on 7 April. It was an opportunity to continue our long-running conversation about science and religion. Like me, Dinesh is a Baha’i. Unlike me he is a scientist and he has given some serious and interesting thought to the subject.

Hari and Avril turned up while Dinesh was here. I introduced them (both astrophysics postgrads) to Dinesh and they were able to pick his brains about physics and work in physics.

Erica and I attended the last of a series of four organ recitals at the Royal Festival Hall on 4 April. In fact, this was the organ’s last outing before being dismantled and refurbished when the RFH itself is refurbished. This was actually a rather fine recital by Simon Preston. The hall was full and Preston was warmly applauded.

Our other musical outing was to the ClassicFM concert in the Royal Albert Hall on 21st April - the first day of the Baha’i festival of Ridvan. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra played, amongst other things, the final movement of Saint-Saens’ organ concerto and Elgar’s cello concerto. The RAH organ is in good voice now that it has been refurbished, but it is so loud that it drowned out the orchestra - as happened the last time we heard this concerto at the Proms last year (with Dame Gillian Wear). Julian Lloyd-Weber was the soloist in the Elgar - truly one of my favourite pieces of music.

We met up with old friends Eric and Tricia Hanson on 20 April. Eric and Tricia, whom we met many years ago at Bosch Baha’i School in California when Erica and I were teaching a course there, are now working at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa. They were over here for a few days and we had a wonderful evening together, catching up. The friendship is such that we could have talked on and on through the night.

Having looked at a whole range of journaling and note-taking apps, I am now trying MacJournal.
Thursday, 28 April 2005 20:52 PM
OK, I bought it.