I decided it was time to create some videos for SwordSearcher Bible Software. I bought a license for Instant Demo, and I’m glad I did.  After a few days of work, I’ve got three videos done.  They aren’t Hollywood productions, but they look and sound good, and give people who don’t like reading manuals or web sites an alternative to learning about my software.  The learning curve for Instant Demo is not very steep, and there are excellent tools for all of the things good software videos need, like highlighting hotspots, tweaking and refining mouse movements and clicks, adjusting delays, and adding audio narration.

“Christians are now the foreigners in a post-Christian culture… we need to view ourselves the way others on the outside see us.” –Dan Kimbal, They Like Jesus but not the Church.

“I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” –Jesus Christ (John 17:14)

I have heard many times that if Christianity is to survive, it must adapt to the changing world around it; Christians must “evolve” if they are to be accepted by those around them.  Usually this means things like rejecting the Biblical record of creation, Biblical precepts on gender and sexual behavior, etc. It also means that the underlying message of the Gospel — that Christ is the one and only Redeemer and that all men must believe on him for salvation — must be modified or adapted, or at least not held to as a fundamental tenet, to make it more palatable.

There is a movement — a strong movement — to “undo” the Reformation of 500 years ago and return Christians to a religion of mystical ecumenism, away from the doctrine of Sola Scriptura that so many believers lost their lives over those many years ago.  Certainly there is no overt movement to bring back the Spanish Inquisition (not that anyone would expect it), but the desire to eliminate God’s word as the sole authority by which a Christian lives and believes is as strong as it ever was under the guidance of Ignatius Loyola.

This new Un-reformation, led by charismatic leaders like Dan Kimball and Rick Warren, with nice titles like “vintage worship,” the “emergent church,” the “purpose driven church,” etc, seeks to do what all grand “doers” of religion in the past have endeavoured to do: build God’s Kingdom on Earth. They’ll have this kingdom now, not after Christ’s return, thank you very much. To that end, Christianity must be tempered with the wisdom of the world, with the Bible playing just a small part here and there for those folks who still hold to it, at least until they “die off” as Rick Warren once put it.

Roger Oakland has written a fascinating and sobering book: Faith Undone, exposing the “Emerging Church” for the return to mystical, man-based movement that it is. Oakland contends, and I agree, that this “new reformation” is simply another deception along the way to the end of this time and the return of Christ.

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.” –1st Timothy 4:1

In order to bring about this man-built Kingdom of God, Emerging Church proponents see the Bible as a text that needs to be re-examined, and the foundational tenets of Christian theology as beliefs that need to be re-interpreted and modified in our “post-modern” world. The 21st Century Church, to them, is one that can not be contentious for anything, and must accept and adapt to all.

“Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” –Jude 1:3 

In his book, Oakland describes the methods of this Kingdom building, and that they are, in fact, nothing new. Chief among the methods of the Emerging Church is to “translate” the Gospel with mysticism — centering prayer, contemplative prayer, ritualism, etc.

Oakland writes:

“I believe history is repeating itself. As the Word of God becomes less and less important, the rise in mystical experiences escalates, and these experiences are presented to convince the unsuspecting that Christianity is about feeling, touching, smelling, and seeing God. The postmodern mindset is the perfect environment for fostering spiritual formation. This term suggests there are various ways and means to get closer to God and to emulate him.” 

There can be no doubt that Warren and other Emergents regard the Gospel as an afterthought in their work.  In countless interviews, Warren touts his work as a good works movement to build build bridges between faiths (explicitly stating religion is irrelevant) and “healing” hearts. Their goal is unity at all costs — and all costs includes Scripture. That’s a far cry from the Jesus Christ of the Bible, who said:

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” –Matthew 10:34 

The Emerging Church has no room in it for the divisive words of Christ, since they only get in the way of the unity required to build a Kingdom in his name.  Because of this, the place of Scripture, and of the Gospel, is completely lost. One Emergent Church leader said:

“Evangelism or mission for me is no longer persuading people to believe what I believe… It’s more about shared experiences and encounters. It is about walking the journey of life and faith together, each distinct to his or her own tradition and culture but with the possibility of encountering God and truth from one another.” –Pip Piper

As Oakland points out, this is a far cry from how the New Testament describes evangelism:

“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” –1st Peter 3:15

By now just about everyone in the United States who calls themselves Christian has heard of Rick Warren, and by extension, the Emerging Church movement. But few really know what’s actually going on and why it has so much momentum. I highly recommend reading Faith Undone to learn the history behind this modern un-reformation.

History, especially Church history, has shown that so many of the world’s worst crimes have been done in the name of building God’s Kingdom.  This time is no different — though no inquisitors are killing those who won’t convert, the minimization and perversion of the Gospel is just the same, for the message of Christ the ONLY Redeemer is not being preached by these Kingdom Builders.

Rick Warren wrote in his book, The Purpose Driven Life:

“When the disciples wanted to talk about prophecy, Jesus quickly switched the conversation to evangelism… He said in essence, ‘The details of my return are none of your business.’”

Warren is simply wrong, because Jesus said much about his return and how to be prepared for it (Luke 12).  Warren also said in a speech:

“…God is going to use you to change the world. …I’m looking at a stadium full of people who are telling God they will do whatever it takes to establish God’s Kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’”

Anyone claiming that we can build God’s Kingdom on earth and ignore prophecy should read this warning:

“And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” –Revelation 22:10-11

I got her a Western Digital drive, so I figured I’d try using their utility to do the transfer. The Western Digital Data Lifeguard boot CD-ROM utility failed to copy the old partition to the new drive with an unspecified error. (Come on! Cryptic errors are better than nothing!)

So I tried using the GParted LiveCD. It took a long time just to get something visible on the screen, mucking around in interactive boot mode. Finally, I got it to copy the partition to the new disc and resize it. Or so it told me. It took an hour but the target drive was not bootable. I checked all the partition flags and even booted the Windows install CD in recovery mode to rewrite the boot sector (FIXBOOT), and when that didn’t work, the MBR (FIXMBR) and boot sector. It just wouldn’t boot — and no error messages from the BIOS either (how nice).

Finally, I downloaded Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0.

This program is awesome. It is what all low level utilities should be. It just works. I was hesitant to try anything that didn’t run off a boot disc, assuming that I was asking for trouble running a program in Windows to copy the boot partition to a new drive. But it was easy and clear, and apparently Acronis really knows how to make Windows do low-level stuff the right way. It re-booted the system into the UI mode that I’ve only seen chkdsk run in and copied the partition to the new drive, then told me it was done and I could remove the old drive and reconfigure the system to boot from the new drive. And it just worked.

I copied a partition from an 80 gigabyte parallel ATA drive to a 250 gigabyte serial ATA (SATA) drive. The partition was automatically expanded to fill the new space, and I didn’t need to defrag afterwards even though the source drive was pretty fragmented — apparently it does more than just a blind copy of the clusters.

Anyway, this program is awesome and worked perfectly. I just wanted to sing its praises and hope this might help someone else avoid the hassle I went through learning about it.

Frankly, I am amazed this doesn’t happen more often. This reminds me of a book I recently read called The Limits of Software. Anyone who is curious about why computers and software so frequently don’t work properly would benefit from reading it.

The Limits of Software is a sort of docu-drama in book form about the massive failed attempt at upgrading the Federal Aviation Administration’s ancient computer systems. The event is a case-study proving that all the money in the world can’t make the impossible happen. But since the government can just spend, spend, spend, they sure did give the impossible a try. I highly recommend this book for programmers or anyone who wants to understand what kind of problems programmers are always trying to solve.

What it all boils down to is that software is a means of describing abstract human thought for computers to understand and implement in reality. It will never be perfect.

No consolation for the 8,000 poor folks stranded in LAX, I know.

Here’s an interesting book if you’re curious about how successful technology companies get started: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston.

Founders at Work is a collection of interviews with 32 people who started, or helped start, super-successful companies like Adobe, TiVo, Blogger, Yahoo!, and more. It also includes interviews with people who founded not-very-successful-but-made-the-founders-super-rich companies, like Hotmail and Lycos. (Yes, I know, some people will disagree with me about those companies not being successful. Hotmail has had serious problems, and I think Lycos’ domain name expired yesterday. Just be glad I didn’t put Apple on that list!)

These types of books always interest me, because I am one of those individualist entrepreneur types. I don’t ever expect to “hit it big,” because my focus is always on narrow niches, but it’s still fun to read about people who, often enough, created extremely successful businesses without really trying to.

For example, PayPal began as a PDA application and initially told customers they didn’t want it to be used to pay for auctions. They eventually abandoned the initial goals of PayPal and now everybody uses it to pay for auctions.

Then there are the companies that almost collapse under their own initial success, like Blogger. Prya Labs didn’t set out to create a new “sphere” (as in blogo-), but when it did, had lots of users and no way to make any money off them. They had to lay off practically the entire company and run on fumes until someone with lots of money (Google) came in and made the one guy who stuck around super wealthy.

There are, of course, several companies represented in the book who did exactly what they set out to do. But that’s boring.

And there’s the occasional founder who was so wrapped up in what was happening to him that he doesn’t know what was going on around him: like Steve Wozniak (aka the Woz) who is still convinced that the Apple II set all sorts of records that it didn’t, and thinks Commodore passed on acquiring Apple when in fact Steve Jobs tried to push Jack Tramiel too hard and lost the chance. But I digress.

I can certainly recommend reading this book. At the very least, you’ll learn that nobody ever got rich because of a book or blog post they read, and most of the ones who do get rich don’t stop working after their bank accounts overflow.

As usual, there were some very helpful sessions. Dave Collins and Thomas Wetzel convinced me to give Google AdWords yet another try with their insights. There were several sessions about blogging, newsletters, and podcasting as marketing vehicles, with Bob Walsh, Phil Schnyder, and Michael Lehman making several appearances on these topics. Nick Bradbury, author of the excellent TopStyle, had a great presentation on effective user interface design and the difficulties of keeping software simple while still satisfying the needs of power users.

David Intersimone of CodeGear had a session on native code development. I have to say I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t make more of a pitch for using Delphi. He showed off some of Delphi’s features, but his session seemed to be more of an overview of the development options for Windows, rather than one really driving home the benefits of native code development with Delphi. But it was great to see CodeGear at SIC, because it shows that they understand the importance of reaching out to independent developers rather than just focusing on enterprise customers like Borland has been doing for the last several years. Spending time talking with David was a highlight of the conference for me.

There are plenty of sessions I didn’t mention simply because there are too many for one person to attend.

SIC isn’t just about sessions, it’s also about networking and schmoozing.  It’s nice to have an opportunity to spend time with people in the same industry, as being an independent software developer often means spending your days behind a computer without “realspace” interaction with your colleagues. I had a great time meeting new people, and especially catching up with people I’ve met at previous conferences.

Industry Awards at SIC

The Shareware Industry Awards Foundation presents several awards each year at SIC during an awards banquet. Last year, my wife and I attended the banquet and decided that we could save some money by skipping it the next time and eating out at a restaurant instead. So this year, a group of us drove out to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse where we enjoyed some good steak and excellent company.

Upon our return, I was informed that I missed my own award presentation! I didn’t believe it at first, because I assumed Bible Software was too much of a niche market to even put me in the running. But nobody was pulling my leg — SwordSearcher received the People’s Choice Award for the Hobby & Personal Interest category. I was stunned — I didn’t ask anyone to vote for me, I didn’t mention it in a single newsletter. I didn’t even vote for myself! The People’s Choice Awards are voted on by thousands of people across the internet on major websites like CNet, Tucows, and PC World. So that was exciting.

Here’s a picture of the award. It’s much heavier than it looks and takes up a good deal of space on a shelf. Always thinking about getting the word out, I promptly wrote a press release announcing the award.

A big thank-you to the folks who put on the conference. I hope to be able to attend again next year in Boston.

To wit, I’ve just used Delphi 2007 Update 1 to compile what I hope to be the next release of Daily Bible and Prayer — version 2.1, a small update. I was able to do all of the .1 development in D2007 without anything holding me back, and the finished product works as it should. If all goes well, DBAP 2.1 will be released (as a free update) later this week.

Mark Steyn makes a compelling argument that Europe is already lost to Islamofacism, and the Islamofascists didn’t need to bomb a single pizza parlor to do it.

Steyn’s book is all about demographics. His argument is nigh unanswerable: if the folks in your country are reproducing at a rate lower than is necessary to even sustain your population, and you have a cradle-to-grave welfare state that requires you to have workers to tax, you’re going to have to let them come in and they will eventually own the place. This is already happening all over Europe.

Steyn also makes a solid case for something most of us already understand intuitively: our culture is superior to theirs. If you’re intent on holding to the indefensible position that all cultures are morally equal, you won’t like what you read in Steyn’s book.

All-in-all an excellent read. Steyn has a good sense of humor that fills every page. Even though he’s discussing what amounts to a coming New Dark Ages, you’ll find yourself giggling all the way through.

America Alone is easily the best political book of the year.

I like vBulletin.

I recently upgraded my SwordSearcher User Forum from phpBB to vBulletin, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the process. My phpBB board was getting hammered by spammers and administrating the board was just a major chore because of the way phpBB is set up.

Not so with vBulletin. Handling administrative tasks is just so much easier. This is definitely another example of “getting what you pay for.” Just because something’s free (as in phpBB) doesn’t mean it’s a good deal.

A more interesting (in my opinion) business book that I recently read is On The Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. If you have a fondness for the early Commodore machines, as I do for the Commodore 64, you’ll enjoy this book packed with insider information about how Commodore became the most powerful and successful personal computer company in history, only to lose it all in the end.