mmm-BELLY-may Days

EthnoLinks

2009-11-03T17:45:57+01:00

I just found out about a nifty new website, EthnoLinks. (HT David Ker.) This is actually really exciting, a great place to connect with people and resources about all the languages in the world, even mmmBELLYmay. Not much up there yet, but I guess that's where I come in!

I am so thankful for people who have a knack for this kind of thing that help those of us who don't!

Hurray for Gordon!

2009-10-30T02:45:45+01:00

A few months ago WIndows ate my inbox, and I thought that it was a symptom of a dying hard drive. Yesterday my new hero, Gordon, took a look at my poor old laptop. Today I got the call-the hard drive didn't need to be replaced! I just had a bad case of junky registry! Which he fixed!

I know, a lot of exclamation points, but come on, that's exciting news.

Gordon taught me how to stop this from happening again and gave me some good tips. The best one was that airport x-rays fragment hard drives, so after flying I should defrag and check the disk. Good to know.

I wrote the instructions down below, if you have a possibly junky registry.

Of course, none of this would be necessary with a Mac.

Registry dejunkifiation

Step 1 Right click on your hard drive

Step 2 Under properties, click on the tools tab

Step 3 Click the check now button, and put a check mark in both boxes, then click start.

Step 4 When it asks you if you want to schedule the check for later, then click yes, and restart your computer. The first time you do this the check could take several hours, but it should be done every 3-6 months after that, and will go faster. Now, when I got the light blue screen of death, Windows told me it was checking the disk, and it did, but it only did a 3 step check, not the 5 step check that Gordon did. The registry gets dejunked in step 4, and that's what my computer needed.

Did I get all that right, Gordon?

Southfield Students!

2009-10-04T20:10:48+01:00

Here's a link to the episodes we've told so far this season. Great job guys!

What he said

2009-09-29T04:08:54+01:00

The most disadvantaged students of the Bible are presented, through economic necessity or lack of other options, with the worst Bible resources. God bless you. Go in peace. Be warmed and be filled. We send away those hungriest for God’s Word with empty promises called mission statements and then dump bounty on the already gorged through yet one more specialty Bible publication for those able to pay the price. I’m tired of seeing the hungry chewing on gristle while a sated few get to feast on God’s Word packaged and repackaged in ever more tantalizing formats.

David Ker says this better than I could. He's right. It's shocking.

Read all of his post here.

Fumes

2009-09-26T03:05:31+01:00

When you put hot glue on tinsel it sizzles and melts and emits toxic fumes. That's all I have to say.

Details, details

2009-09-10T20:41:55+01:00

When crafting biblically accurate stories, the rule of thumb is to let the crafters pick which details to include. If it's not my culture, I don't know what details will resonate, so the choice shouldn't be mine. What clicks for me might be a yawn for them, and vice versa.

The classic example of this is from my idol (idol in a nice role modely way, not in a creepy stalkery way) Jo Shetler's book. Here's how I remember the story going, my copy of the book is in mmmBELLYmay land, so I can't look it up.

Jo had been in the Philippines for a while, but one of her friends village was never really interested in hearing about this guy Jesus. She kept on translating away, even the boring part at the beginning of the book by Matthew. Have I blasphemed by saying that there's a part that's boring to me? Come on, this is just not gripping reading to me.

But when her friend saw the boring part, Jesus' family tree, it totally gripped him. He could list his ancestors back for generations, that was huge in their culture. Seeing Jesus' lineage was proof for him that Jesus was who he said he was. They copied the genealogy onto big pieces of paper and he went around showing it to people. People were so fascinated by it that they wore the paper out, and had to recopy it over and over again.

Last week I helped with a storying group of American junior high students. The episode that week was the first time people disobeyed God. The storyteller and I talked about leaving this part out: "And God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife." It just kind of hangs there toward the end of the story, not connected to anything else. I had a lovely theological reason to leave it in, but I told the storyteller that I knew the kids wouldn't make that connection.

We left it in anyway.

In the discussion, one of the students said, "God does nice things for us even when we're bad. He made clothes for them even though they didn't listen to him."

I've blogged about the power of this detail in mmmBELLYmay land here, my most read post. I really didn't expect a similar response in the States, though. Huh. Goes to show how much I know.

Seriously?

2009-09-08T14:13:00+01:00

So I'm watching television and I see a commercial for an important new drug that helps a previously underserved population-those without thick eyelashes.

Ok, I get it. If I had no eyelashes at all I would want some, but that's not how this stuff was marketed. The spokesperson was Brooke Shields, apparently in need of eyelashes to go with the brows. (This is not a Brooke Shields slam, or a heavy eyebrow slam. In the 80s my grandmother told me that I had Brooke Shields eyebrows, and I still do.)

Back to my rant point. Could we not do a little something more about malaria before putting money into studying and marketing an EYELASH drug?

What is MALARIA?

Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease.

It is a public health problem today in more than 100 countries inhabited by some 2,400 million people -- 40 percent of the world's population.

Malaria is estimated to cause 300- 500 million clinical cases and over one million deaths each year.

Every 30 seconds, a child somewhere dies of malaria. In any given year, nearly ten percent of the global population will suffer a case of malaria.

Most survive after an illness of 10-20 days.

Children are especially vulnerable to malaria. In Africa, where 80% of malaria cases are treated at home, the disease kills one child in twenty before the age of five.

Pregnant women are also at high risk. They have an increase risk of disease and death, as well as adverse impacts for their developing babies- including low birth weight, growth retardation, still births and death.

In African countries, up to 60% of hospital admissions may be for malaria; that's 6 out of 10 admissions!

Look Ma, no emails!

2009-09-05T02:19:30+01:00

My inbox is empty! Sadly, that's because Thunderbird or Windows or something ate them. I turned on my computer and got the light blue screen of near death. I was informed that the disk needed to be checked, so Windows thoughtfully did that for me, and then deleted a bunch of corrupt files. Which seem to have been the pile of unanswered emails in my inbox. Happily Sadly, my backup is from about a month ago, so a month's worth of emails are lost forever.

My next computer is going to be a Mac.

Except the budget does not really stretch to a Mac these days, so I think I'm going to go for a netbook. Two of the people at this training course I was just at had them, and they looked great- small, cheap, and light. Not that I was shopping for them online during some of the lectures or anything. Not me.

Lightning McPotato

2009-08-13T05:06:35+01:00

The elder niece dresses like she's going to the prom every day. Fluffy dress, tiara, Mardi Gras beads, the whole nine yards. Yet, she also loves the movie Cars, especially Lightning the Queen. Yeah, I know that's not his (its?) name, but that's how she says it, and I as an auntie am obligated to think that it's adorable, which is not hard. Now that I think about it, this must be her way of integrating the car into her princess lifestyle. Anyway.

I found this cookie cutter which looks a lot like the Queen. I was pretty excited, so we got some refrigerated cookie dough and some sprinkles. I froze the dough so it would be nice and cold. This is what we ended up with.

I thought they looked like potatoes. The elder niece consoled me and said they looked like Doc, another car from the movie.

Any suggestions on how to get car cookies out of those cutters?

Novel utterances

2009-07-28T22:02:13+01:00

My friend Yenabo and I look at a lot of picture books together. She talks about them in mmmBELLYmay while I look at the pictures. Having the pictures makes what she's saying understandable, even if it's stuff I've never heard before. That, in geek-speak, is a novel utterance.

I was tickled by the novel utterance that came out of this book: "The fox is wearing clothes."

It must be wearing clothes, because foxes are red, not yellow. We had a good laugh, which is always nice when you're stretching your brain as far as it will go.

Next week I'm going to go to a village that I haven't been to before, and start spending one night a week there. I just might bring a picture book with me and see what other novel utterances we come up with. Never a dull day in mmmBELLYmay land!

PS This is an old post that seems to never have posted. Can anyone tell me how to make Windows Live Writer work right? But, I did indeed bring this book to the village, and many novel utterances were uttered. Now I'm in the States, but this post isn't too outdated, since I brought my recordings of the chats Yenabo and I had about this book home to practice with.

Besides, my nieces are always coming up with lovely novel utterances, as exceptional nieces do.