text:
Dear Beyoncé,
I was wondering if you could help me out with a little matter.
See, a few years back I overheard one of my students talking about Rihanna and it wasn't very nice. Matter of fact, she called the singer "that beat-up girl," because of course her boyfriend Chris Brown had punched her and otherwise smacked her around when the two of them got into a fight.
"That beat-up girl" as though Rihanna's black eyes and bruises should be what defined her from that terrible night forward, as though … well, you know what I'm going to say … she was asking for it.
"Doesn't your husband hit you?" another student asked me in the same get-with-the-program tone that someone else might ask, "Doesn't your husband help out with the housework?" Or "Don't you think women deserve equal pay for equal work?"
I have never been in a physically abusive relationship, I told the girls. Nor do I think it's an inevitability that I would or should be beaten up by my partner because I am a woman. The girls looked at me like I had said I had never French kissed — nor ever would.
Now, all the students at our school – which is a school for girls – come from under-served neighborhoods in this hard knocks city of ours. Lotta folks from other neighborhoods avoid this part of town. Objectively, I hate to say, it's one of the areas in the city that has the most violent crime. So, the same folks that avoid these neighborhoods might say that's why our girls don't think twice about violence against women.
Live by the bullet, die by the bullet.
Except the same year these students asked me if my husband had ever hit me, I got an early morning call from my mother, who told me a friend of the family had been killed. She wanted me to know about it before I heard about it in the news.
In the news? I was so confused.
The girl was named Yeardley Love and her old boyfriend is serving jail time for beating her to death at the University of Virginia weeks before they were to graduate. Yeardley wasn't poor. She went to private school all of her life. She played sports and did the other things that teenagers and young adults do when they want to lead a good and trouble-free life. The only thing that made her at risk was the fact that she was a woman.
Here's where I need your help, Beyoncé. My principal asked me last week what I thought – as a woman – about your performance at the recent Grammys. My first thought was that it was no "Single Ladies," which my students loved and mimicked for years. Then I read the lyrics to "Drunk in Love," where your husband talks about being like Ike Turner, beating his wife and abusively forcing cake into his spouse's mouth.
Now, I found myself confused again. As a woman, I don't know what to think. Mainly, I have a lot of questions. Does your husband beat you, Beyoncé? And if so, why would you stay with him? I don't have to tell you that you got all the money and the power a person needs – I mean, when you sang about girls running the world, you were telling it like it is. So, why would you stay?
If your husband doesn't beat you, then why did you let him sing about it like he did? Did you think this was some kind of fun "50 Shades of Grey" hip thing? "Hey, let's act like my man ties me up and knocks me around, because they make a movie about stuff like that! And then we'll just go home and rock that baby of ours and call it good, OK?"
'Cause it's not good. It's not good at all.
See, I don't know what to think or how to talk about this, because I still work at that same school for girls. And our girls, in the course of growing and living, tell us the darnedest things, like they gotta great boyfriend … who's unemployed. Or who is looking at other girls. Or who accidentally shot somebody along time ago.
Sometimes our girls have unexplained cuts and bruises, and they say they fell. Of course, I wonder how a girl, who is so good at dance or maybe sports, can be so clumsy. If it's one of the girls that I meet with several times a year to make sure her grades are fine and she has what she needs to succeed, then I'm going to have to ask her about those marks on her body.
So, here's where I really need your help, Beyoncé. If you were me, and you had to look at a girl with a fat lip or maybe strange bruises on her arm, how would you handle it?
What is it exactly that you would say to her? 'Cause at this point — as a woman — I think I really need to know.


text:
It's hard to say without an example... There are different ways of doing it, or at least to my memory anyway.
Assuming you know what the x-y axes look like... now lay it flat on the table, and then draw the an axis coming out of the origin pointing directly out of the table, that's your positive z-axis. If you're still confused, go here: Cartesian coordinate system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
* Get a graphing program that does 3-D Graphing... there are free ones on the net.
* Sub in z = 0, see what the x-y curve looks like, draw it on the z=0 plane; then repeat with z = 1, z = 2... etc... until you get a feel of what it looks like I guess...
It'd be easier to explain with an equation: is the equation of the plane...
z = 0, y - x - 0 = 0, this is a line y = x
z = 1, y - x - 1 = 0, this is a line y = x + 1
z = 2, y - x - 2 = 0, this is a line y = x + 2
By drawing these lines, you'll eventually see that this is a flat plane... which isn't very interesting... there are funky graphs out there.
Perhaps giving us the equation, we might be able to tell you.

subset: commoncrawl


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Price paid: € 339
Purchased from: Musicstore.de
Features: This is a rather new product on the market having only been introduced in late 2008 and was designed in the UK by Blackstar, a company started by ex-Marshall engineers and manufactured in korea. It is a very feature rich amp for the price and wattage. It is all valve (5 watts), a 12xA7 in the preamp and a curious 12bh7 dual triode valve in the power section that operates in a push pull configuration whatever that means, packing 2 channels (Clean & Overdrive), black tolex covering, rear mounted gnarled chrome knobs, semi open backed cabinet, a 10 inch celestion speaker, shared EQ, standby Switch, FX loop that is switchable to suit either stompboxes or rack mounted effects, footswitch input, 8&16 ohm extension speaker output, emulated headphone line out with a 4X12 or 1X12 voicing Switch and of course the much vaunted ISF (Infinate shape feature) control. This comes in the form of a knob that when turned clockwise gives a amp a more british character (woody and dark) in the style of a Marshall and when turned counter clockwise gives the amp a a more american character (more bright and cutting with a mid cut) in the style of a Fender or Mesa Boogie. The amp also comes with a footswitch supplied. I was surprised by the power of this amp, I didn't realise a 5 watt all valve amp could be loud and it has never been past 5 on the clean or overdrive channel in my house. Rehearsals and gigs are another story especially with a loud drummer and it will probably need miking to be heard clearly. Btw this amp also comes in a mini stack and head form however I opted for the combo as it is the light (14kg) and portable option. // 10
Sound: I am using this amplifier with a 2006 Gibson les paul. Like many guitarists I dabble in many styles but I am most partial to rock. I was disappointed somewhat by the sound of this amp when it first arrived but I soon learned that like all good valve amps you gotta wait for it to warm up before it starts to cook! Also a good sounding room will bring out the best in this amp but I guess that could be true for all amps. The clean on this amp was a revelation to me, it sounds beautifully clear and has a lot of character and doesnt't sound at all sterile like a solid state amp and if you dig in at about 1/4 volume you can get just a little breakup. Pushing the clean volume past 3/4 and you push the power valve acheiving classic Drive with a humbucker equipped guitar (think rock'n' singer by AC/DC and should I stay or should I go by the clash) cuts through well it is very easy on the ears. Moving to the overdrive side of things and you are in more modern territory as there is a lot of gain on tap here. The sound of the distortion is what I would describe as wet and saturated not classic rock smooth (Although this sound can be achieved by rolling the gain back and turning the volume knob up pushing the amps power stage)with the gain at around 6. With this setting I can quite easily nail the tone Joe Satriani had on his "surfing with the alien" album. If you don't think this possible check out the Peavey Joe Satriani mini colossal which promises to nail his tone but with an even smaller speaker but at twice the price. The isf is also very useful on this amp, actually surprisingly so with the gain whacked up and the isf turned toward the american side this amp can sound quite "djenty" maybe not pantera djenty but can certainly handle Metallica sounds from all their eras and most other forms of hard rock or metal. Because of the smaller speaker it tends to be on the brighter side but this can be remedied by proper EQ'ing. The amp is not noisy at all apart from the highest volume settings and this is what makes it such a viable choice for recording.The amp also takes pedals quite well either in front or through the fx loop. // 9
Reliability & Durability: This amp is very solidly built. It feels like something that will last a long time if properly cared for. However, because it is all tube I can not recommend gigging without a backup as you just never know when the power tube(s) will decide to give up and die on you. I have not had to have this amp serviced yet as I have only had this thing a few weeks but it has been gigged and preformed well (with a mic of course). It got a little bit hot in the back by the end of the gig but I guess that's just the sign of a well worked power section. // 10
Overall Impression: For the price I don't think you can get a whole lot better particularly if you are after an all tube high gain sound. I had to buy this online as I couldnt find them in ireland and whatever ones are in shops have been flying off the shelves from what I understand. In my 8 years of playing this is the best small amp I've had, it certainly has a vastly superior clean and Drive channel to the MG and Vox valvetronix I had before this though it isnt quite as powerful as those amps. If it were lost I would buy either this or possibly the Blackheart handsome devil which is similar in price but is 15 watts although it has much less gain so would need a pedal to get a good heavy sound. // 10
Price paid: A$ 810
Purchased from: The Rockshop NZ
Features: A 2009 Blackstar HT-5 combo. 2 footswitchable channels, clean and overdrive (FS included). 5W all tube, one 12AX7/ECC83 preamp tube, and one 12BH7 power amp tube. A 10" Celestion speaker. FX loop return and send, with level Switch. Speaker emulated output with 1x12 or 4x12 voicing.
For a valve amp this price, its quality and features are unbeaten. Because it is made in Korea, it is far cheaper, but Blackstar make sure there is no lack in quality. The ISF control is great, letting you haveva UK or US sound, and anywhere in between.
This is one of the best practice amps you can get, only lacking a built in reverb, and ultra high gain. Both can be fixed easily with an FX pedal.
Other tube amps around this price or less, lack many features, like channel switching, and a 3 band EQ. This amp has it all. // 10
Sound: I use an Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus, with stock pickups. I alsso have a Boss OS-2 overdrive/distortion pedal, but I only need to use it for band practices at school. I play punk, alternative, and hardcore punk. This amp fits perfectly.
I don't need any ultra high gain, etc, and I like good overdrives, and also mild distortions. It sin't too noisy, but I tend to sit facing the speaker, so my pickups produce a hum. If I turn the other way, it's fine. Due to the ISF control, and 2 channels, this is one of the most versatile all tube practice amps.
Although these are the sounds I need, on of the best sounds is the clean.Scoop the treble, and boost mids and bass, you get a warm, soft tone. Boost treble and scoop the bass, it's absolutely sparkling. Once you get the volume over 3 oclock, it produces a light overdrive, which is quite nice, although my styles don't have the need for that.
My only pickle is that the distortion can't get ultra high gain, but I don't ever need that. A fiddle around with the EQ can help this alot too. Overall, a marvellous sounding amp. // 10
Reliability & Durability: I can depend on this with my life. Although, being tube, I will have to replace the tubes eventually, but I wouldn't expect that for at least another year. I would gig without backup, seeing my Line 6 Spider III 15w sucks, and it is being sold.
The design is very solid, the pots are very strong and stable, all in a recessed area on top, so if it falls over nothing is there to snap. My Line 6 fell over, and the cable bent almost 90 degrees. The power input, as well as footswitch, speaker inputs, and FX loop are located on the back, but under it. Hard to explain, but it means if it falls the other way, no cables will break.
I haven't needed any repairs in the 2-3 weeks I've had it, and I wouldn't expect any repairs will be needed, but tube replacement. // 10
Overall Impression: This is a wonderful amp. Looks great, and sounds great. This is my 6th year playing, and 3rd amp. I have already said all my other gear, and this amps works well in conjuction with it. It's easy to use, and, for me at least, is well loud enough for band practices against a drummer.
If this were stolen, I would personally hunt down the person and kill them. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but you get the picture. I would hope that insurance would get me a new one, because I spent almost all my money on this.
I wish the footswitch cable was longer, but an extension cable would be easy enough to get if I really needed it.
I was also looking at the Orange AD5, and Tiny Terror w/ Epiphone Valve Junior cab, but this was by far the best option. Just plain better than the AD5, and more logical than having $1000 (New Zealand) head that had almost no features. I also looked at the Fender Blues Junior, but the overdrive on that isn't great, only a good clean.
Overall, the best amp in this price range on the market, packed full of useful features (no mediocre built in FX boosting the price for nothing), and I would recommend this to anyone looking for a low priced, high quality practice/studio amp. // 10
Price paid: € 375
Purchased from: xmusic dublin
Features: The amp was made in Korea in 2009, after being designed in the UK. This amp is very versatile, it will go from a blues sounding amp to heavy rock/ light metal amp, as well as being able to sound like an American amp and a British amp. It has 2 channels 1 clean and 1 overdrive channel. The clean channel is controlled via a single volume knob that has no eq, whilst the dirty channel has a gain, volume, 3 band eq and an infinite shape feature (isf) knob, which along with the eq give both a British or American amp characteristics to the sound. It has a 10" Celestion G10N-40 16ohm speaker, effects loop, headphone output with a 1x12 or 4x12 cab simulator. I use this for bedroom practice and it is plenty loud enough for what I want. This is a 5 watt tube amp, with a 12bh7 in the power amp and an ecc83 in the pre amp. // 10
Sound: I primarily use my Epiphone G-400 with it, using the bridge humbucker, and occasionally I use my brother's fat start which is a hss with coil tap on the humbucker. It suits my music style perfectly by being able to do blues, all types of rock and some metal. For 5 watts this thing is seriously loud when I use the speaker I only have the clean channel on about 4 and the dirty channel on 2. When using a high gain setting is can get abit noisy with background noise, but you can easily put a noise gate in the effects loop to clear that up. The clean channel is based on the Artisan series of boutique amps, and on 10 it is still perfectly clean with no break up what so ever. The distortion can get brutal whilst not into the death metal shredders territory, still by having the distortion on 10 you can still get screaming harmonics out of it. // 10
Reliability & Durability: By no means is this a gigging amp, it is designed for home practice and studio recording, but if you want to gig with it you will need to use a microphone especially on the clean channel, whilst I have no cranked the overdrive channel up to 10, judging by what it sounds on 2, you may be able to just hear it over a drummer.
Whilst I've only had it about 5 months it has not once played up, as for the need to replace tubes, I've read in many forums that the tubes are barely used so never need replacing, whilst browsing forums a quote from Blackstar actually supported that claim, even in the manual there is no mention about retubing it. // 10
Overall Impression: This is a perfect match for my playing style of blues, rock and metal. I've been playing since September 2009, with an Epiphone G400, Boss DS-1 and a Tenson Scream 15. Before I got this amp I had little ambition of constantly playing, after I got this amp it made me want to play more and more, instead of playing for about 30 mins 5 days a week, I now play closer to an hour 5-7 days a week.
I bought this amp purely based on reviews and youtube and it has not disappointed me one bit. When I was looking at amps I compared this to the Marshall class 5, which is about the same price, and in terms of value for money and features this amp blows the Class 5 away, as for the sound they sound very similar, and after reading Blackstar's history it's clear to see why they sound similar. If this was stolen, lost or broken I would easily replace it with the same amp.
There is not one feature on this amp I don not like, whilst a 3 band eq on the clean channel would be nice the whole amp makes up for that not being there. // 10
Price paid: £ 300
Purchased from: Gear4music
Features: This is a 5 watt valve amp featuring:
Seperate power and standby switches.
2 channels, clean/overdrive, both channels have seperate volume controls and the overdrive channel has a gain control.
A shared EQ consisting of Bass, Middle, Treble and the ISF.
A headphone/direct out which mimics either a 1x12 or 4x12 cabinate.
An effects loop with boost/cut features, +4DBV and -10DVB.
A footswitch.
And 3 speaker outputs, one for the internal speaker and two for external cabinates. // 8
Sound: I am currently using a Kramer Stiker 211 with the amp aswell as an MXR 10 Band EQ pedal, an EHX Memory Toy and a Maxon OD-9. I play rock/metal from 70's to late 90's. But first, the sound from just the guitar plugged straight into the amp.
To start with, even though this is a 'bedroom' amp its still really loud, I can't have the volume past 1 (on the control not on a clock face) on the OD channel before I start annoying everyone in my house.
The clean channel, I think, isn't all that bad. However, I dont play a lot of clean stuff and I can't compare it to Fenders and other amps like that because I haven't tried them, but for what I use it for, the clean channel sounds really good.
The overdrive channel is where I spend most of my time. With the gain on max it can create some good Sabbath tones but nothing heavier in my opinion. It can do AC/DC very well and other bands with tones ranging between the two listed above.
The ISF control is a really good feature. All the way to the left the sound becomes more tight and American sounding, all the way to the right the sound becomes more loose and wooly sounding, apparently sounding more British, but to me it just sounds like a mumbled mess if the ISF knob is turned round more than 2 o'clock.
The middle and treble controls are very responsive but the bass is not. Probably due to the 10" speaker but there is hardly any bass from this combo, even when the control is maxed, which it always is when im playing Sabbath stuff, it still sounds a little tinny.
The headphone/direct out is a nice touch, but it isn't all that good to my ears, there isnt a huge difference between the two available options and the body of the sound seems to dissappear.
(Please read on further for a little review with an MXR 10 band eq, i didnt want to write about it in hear as this is about the sound just from the amp.) // 7
Reliability & Durability: I have had it for about 4 months now and so far nothing has gone wrong. I dont use it for gigging so it hasn't been pushed all too hard, but like I said so far its worked fine and feels solidly built. // 9
Overall Impression: Right then, the mini review with the MXR EQ pedal, aswell as a Maxon OD-9, and to clarify, ive had these pedals since I got my Orange TT which is listed later.
With these 2 pedals connected to the amp it really becomes a whole new experience.
The EQ pedal is placed within the effects loop and ive got it set up so that it boosts the bass quite a bit, boosts the treble a tiny bit and scoops the mids a little, the result in conjunction with the ISF knob all the way to the left and the added Maxon before the amp means that you can get into Metallica, Skid Row, Ozzy Osbourne/Zakk Wylde, Iron Maiden...etc.... territory.
I know from what ive seen/heard from various vids on the internet that the HT-5 Head with a 2x12 or 4x12 cabinate has no problem with bass but with the combo you really do need an EQ pedal, in my opinion, if you want to get into these types of tones with this amp.
The amp takes to pedals really well, as ive said im using a MXR 10 band EQ, Maxon OD-9 and an EHX Memory Toy.
Now ive had a fair few amps, starting with one from Argos, to three Line 6 spiders, an Orange Tiny Terror, Hayden Mofo, Peavey 6505+ 112 combo to eventually the Blackstar. For me, with the setup ive got now, I wont be buying another amp, unless I start gigging and I need a louder amp, in which case id go with another Blackstar.
The setup ive got now can do what any of the amps listed above could do apart from the huge gain that the Peavey has. Fair enough looking at my rig ive spent around 500 for the amp, MXR and Maxon all together but in my opinion its money well spent. I was never really happy with any of the amps ive listed above and due to where I live the music shops near me are rubbish so every amp ive bought ive tried my best to research it before ive orderd it from the internet but with every one there has been something missing, even with the Peavey, sure it had more gain than any of my previous amps but it was too harsh sounding when it came to tones like AC/DC.
For me, the Blackstar HT-5 along with its ISF knob and an EQ pedal is one of the most versatile amps/setups ive heard.
So, I would say to anyone who is looking for a small bedroom/practice amp that can do a wide variety of tones....grab one of these and an EQ pedal, you will not be dissapointed.
Unfortunately I have to rate just the overall impression of the amp, not my setup, which would be a 10...finally!
Thanks for your time in reading this rather lenghty review and I hope its helped you in making up your mind about either getting one or looking for something else. // 8
Price paid: A$ 499
Purchased from: Mega Music
Features: First things first, I'd done a lot of reading up on blackstar's products for a while and while I had made a pretty firm decision to get one, I needed to be convinced. The amp is an all-valve (or tube depending on what country you're from)5 watt combo with a single 10" celestion blue speaker. Made in Korea. It's come with a pretty simple set up, a clean channel and an overdriven channel, and basic eq settings of bass, mid, treble and a control that Blackstar call the "ISF" or "Infinite shaping feature". It sounds like a load of wank, but it does actually have a significant effect on the way the amp sounds, but more on that later.
I haven't had it long but the main reason I got it was to supplement my other amps, and have something semi decent to practice on instead of some cheap crappy practice amp that I was using previously. Along with this I needed something with a fairly neutral clean channel to play acoustics through on smaller gigs, and to use as a back up to my 40w Marshall combo. All in all, it came with everything it said on the box. The only thing I would have liked would have been a larger speaker and maybe a reverb or chorus feature. They have now remedied this, having released the HT-5R which has a 12" speaker and a digital reverb channel. The only real gripe here is that the back inputs for the footswitch (optional) and effects loop and to hook it up to an extension cabinet are facing downwards, which makes it ergonomically awkward. Only a small gripe, and with such a small and lightweight amp, it's easily dealt with. // 7
Sound: Blackstar amps have a reputation of being chameleons of sorts, in that they can pull of a range of different sounds, yet still retaining a fairly unique character. I play a huge range of music from instrumental pop, to blues to hard rock and metal, and while it doesn't necessarily pull off every one of those styles with equal aplomb, it certainly gives an excellent covering of the bases that most guitarists will want to cover. The clean channel is very bright and almost Fender-esque (is that a word?) and dirties up just enough when you crank the volume on your guitar. The distored channel is quite the beast to behold. This is also where you get the true character of the ISF knob I mentioned earlier. Crank up the gain and swing the knob to the left and by scooping the mids you will get an excellent late 80s Metallica sound, particularly through a humbucking guitar like my Les Paul. Swing the knob back to the right and you'll be greeted by a thick crunch reminiscent of Cream or Black Sabbath (I could go on for days going over the myriad of tonal possibilities with this amp, but suffice it to say it's one hell of a versatile animal).
Does this amp suit the styles I play? 100%. Does it give out the tonal character most people have come to expect from high-end boutique amplifiers and big-dollar, big watt items? Almost. As you would expect, there is some trade off, but as an amp to be used stand alone for rehearsals, small venues or recording, it's virtually peerless. Along with that, if you want to go a bit bigger, you can extend into a 4x12 or mic it through your PA. Overall, unless you have an infinitesimally specific sound you are chasing, and have the wallet to back it up, there aren't a lot of sonic applications where this little black box doesn't come up trumps. // 9
Reliability & Durability: I'm yet to gig this amp, but it is build solidly and despite having a semi open back, the speaker is well protected. Unfortunately, it's relative light weight may prove a hazard as I can see this being a lot more easily knocked over by an over-enthusiastic bass-player than a bigger, heavier item. All the more reason to keep one's bass player on a leash. Obviously, being an all valve item, there are specific care and servicing requirements, but I won't bore you those. It certainly looks tough enough to withstand everything I intend to throw at it. // 9
Overall Impression: Having been playing for 15 years, I've had the opportunity to play through some very cool gear. Like I said at the beginning, I need something that is more than a 1 trick pony, which I'm sure many of you will agree, is the downside of some of the high-end amps that we all drool over. While this particular model, being the older combo, lacked some of the other features I had been looking for ie. Reverb, it made up for it in the fact that it is an amp that is full of character, and yet is also a blank Canvas in terms of the way it can be used to achieve such a wide array of sounds. Frankly, aside from a few gripes, mainly to do with packaging and layout, I cannot fault this amazing little machine! // 9
Price paid: £ 170
Purchased from: Web Purchase
Features: My Blackstar HT5 was one of the earlier models fitted with a 10 inch Celestion speaker and without reverb. I bought it second hand with a fault that its had for ages - the switching between clean and drive channels always needs two presses of either the foot switch or the button. It was made in Korea but is finished to a good standard and looks and feels nicely made. Like all Blackstars it is fitted with corner protectors and the plastic covering feels and looks nice and not cheap. It's key features are two foot-switchable channels and an effects loop. The clean channel has a volume control whilst the drive channel has Gain, Volume Bass Middle and Treble controls. Like all Blackstars it has an ISF control which I am unconvinced by. Yes it changes the tone but not that much... The amplifier also has an emulated out that may be used with headphones etc. I have never used it on this model. // 7
Sound: Unlike many modelling amplifiers the Blackstar does one thing. It sounds like a small Marshall like amplifier and is really easy to tweak. It has a "Copper like" mellow clean tone that sounds lovely with Gibson type guitars. The clean channel goes fairly loud but doesn't stay clean for that long. It has a nice edge of breakup tone that can be made dirtier by heavier playing or using the volume knob on the guitar (think older style blues). The drive channel does have a lot of gain and go a lot more modern than I would tend to play and can cover most '70s/'80s stuff (e.g. Bryan Adams, Rainbow) without needing extra pedals. I have used mine for several jams with a drummer/ guitar/ bass/ singer through P.A. and I could hear myself fine and drummer had nice things to say about my playing - so obviously he could hear it! I don't regard it as loud enough for a genuine gig. Its quite a bit louder than a 30Watt solid state but. // 9
Reliability & Durability: I wouldn't want to do a conventional gig with a HT5. Its great for Jams with a drummer etc but isn't quite loud enough for a small heavy rock/traditional rock gig. That said you could play it comfortably in a coffee shop. Its also not so powerful that you can't play it in a flat with the volume turned down at sensible levels. I believe its on its first set of valves and believe its very strongly built. I wouldn't abuse it but it has regularly been transported in the back of a car (or by post when I bought it) and is absolutely fine. // 9
Overall Impression: Most of the time when I play at home I tend to play "Rocksmith" or practice along with backing tracks. I also have a Boss JS8 to play along with should I want it although I never tend to plug into it anymore - I prefer the Blackstar tone even when played very quiet. This amp was bought as a relatively cheap amp with a nice tone for Gibsons and dual channels that I could easily carry into a Jam session out of the car (guitar one hand amp other) and easily adjust to get the tone I wanted. I didn't want a modelling amp as I knew it would have lots of settings that I wouldn't know how to use. I was very tempted by Hughes and Kettner 18 Combo but was not entirely sure about the tone and they were at least twice the cost of this amp. The HK would have done everything I wanted and more but I couldn't justify the money. The Blackstar is still doing everything I need. I hope at some time in the future to need a more powerful gigging amp but at the moment it is good enough and its a good compromise between power, cost and weight. // 9
Super BisDak
Johnny Quest


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|Mar 04 2013
The 35th Annual Playboy Jazz Festival will be held June 15-16, 2013 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The event will be hosted by a new Master of Ceremonies, comedian and actor George Lopez, who takes over hosting duties from longtime emcee Bill Cosby. The festival will offer performances from Bob James and David Sanborn, George Duke with Jeffrey Osborne, Angelique Kidjo with Hugh Masekela and Taj Mahal, India.Arie, Sheila E., Trombone Shorty, 2013 Grammy winner Robert Glasper Experiment and Grammy nominee Gregory Porter. In addition, Naturally 7 will be joined by special guest Herbie Hancock; the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra will handle an 80th birthday salute to Quincy Jones featuring guests Patti Austin and Hubert Laws; and the Brubeck Brothers Quartet will perform a special tribute to their late father, piano legend Dave Brubeck. Tickets and more information for the Playboy Jazz Festival are available here.
Last changed: Mar 04 2013 at 7:38 AM
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Skip to comments.Our Glorious Gospel
Posted on 01/06/2004 6:08:05 PM PST by P-Marlowe
18. Our Glorious Gospel
When Jesus began His public ministry, He went into the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth. He was handed the Scriptures. He turned to the Book of Isaiah and read this portion to them:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Isaiah 61:1-2a).
After reading it, Jesus closed the book and said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:16-21).
Jesus closed the book after the reading, but Isaiah's prophecy doesn't stop there. Let's read on.
And the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, that garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified (v. 2b-3).
The glorious "good tidings" that we proclaim to you today is God's glorious message to man. In a world filled with so much misery, strife, and trouble, it's good to hear some good news for a change.
Message for the Meek
Reading the newspapers or watching the news on TV gives a sad commentary upon man's existence. Oh, how ready we are for some good news! The Gospel is good news, but who is it for?
In reading from Isaiah, Jesus declared, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings," the Gospel "unto the meek." The Gospel is for the meek, those who are conscious of their inadequacies and needs and are reaching out for help. The best way to understand the word "meek" is to separate it: me...ek. When I realize how "eeky" I am, I know what meek is all about. The Gospel is for those who recognize their need for something more, who are dissatisfied with their current status, who desire a better life.
Many people today are very satisfied with their lives. They're satisfied with their possessions and situations. The Gospel isn't for them. Other people today are extremely proud of themselves. The Gospel isn't for them, either.
The Gospel Message
What does the Gospel do? First, it is meant "to bind up the brokenhearted." We've seen Valentine's Day cards that show broken hearts. Sometimes the heart is broken through the middle and sometimes it is totally fractured. Our hearts often break because of unreciprocated love. We have a deep love for another, but it's not received and accepted. This causes our hearts to break. I wonder how many times God's heart is broken over us.
Our hearts often break over our own failures and weaknesses. We promise ourselves that we'll do certain things, but we don't seem to be capable of achieving them. So, we experience heartbreak over our inadequacies. Our desire to be what we apparently can't be and to achieve what apparently is beyond our capacity causes personal heartbreak.
The Gospel has come to bind up the brokenhearted, to let us know that we can be what God would have us to be. The good news is that we can achieve, attain, and experience a love that flows and flows and doesn't quit. The second thing that the Gospel does is "to proclaim liberty to the captives." Paul spoke of those who had fallen in the snares of the devil and had been taken captive by the devil against their will (II Timothy 2:26). Many people today have fallen into the snare of the devil and have been taken captive by the devil against their own will. In another passage Paul referred to those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:15).
We often use the term "free moral agent," but it's almost a misnomer. To say that a man is a free moral agent when he cannot help but do the things he does is a contradiction. If some compelling force is driving you to do things even when you don't want to do them, you're not free. You're a captive.
Sin often comes to you with a sugar-coated covering. You taste it and "Wow!" you plunge right into it. After the sugar is gone, you taste the bitter portion and try to spit it out. But now it's lodged in your throat and you can't get rid of it. If you're controlled by a cigarette habit or if you've got to have a drink, don't tell me you're a free moral agent. You're a captive - and the bitterness is just pouring into your system.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ has come to set free those who are captive. He can break every snare and deliver men from all the bondage of corruption that has held them in its power.
The third thing the Gospel does is "the opening of the prison to them that are bound." Today the Gospel will open the prison that you find yourself in.
When we were in Ecuador, the missionaries told us that if we get involved in a car accident, even if it's not our fault, the best thing to do is to go immediately to the airport and catch the next plane out of the country. When you're involved in an accident down there, guilty or innocent, you'll land in jail. You have to stay in jail until you can prove you're innocent, but you may not get a court date for five years. And in Ecuador they don't feed the prisoners. Someone on the outside has to feed you or you'll starve to death. And that's one of the nicer things about the jails.
I've also heard about the Mexican jails. If you get thrown in, your influence in the United States doesn't mean anything to the judge. They say the best thing is to stay out, because once you're in, you're really in. I don't know how true that is, but I don't want to experiment to find out.
Let's say that you're in jail in Mexico. You've tried every way to get out. You've written to the Mexican government, the American consulate, the UN. You've done everything, and you've finally concluded that you're not going to get out. So now you want to escape. Someone comes along and says, "I have a friend who can get you out."
"How can your friend get me out? Man, I've tried everything."
"He can."
"What makes you so sure?"
"He's freed thousands of others." Really! What do I have to do?"
"Just trust him." "But how's he going to do it?"
"I don't know. He has his own ways. But I know he can."
"But if I don't know how he does it, I'm not sure I want to trust him."
"It's your choice, friend. Either rot in jail or take a chance."
We find ourselves in the prison of our own lust and sin. The good news comes that there's One who can deliver us, set us free, open the doors of the prison and liberate us. But we've got to put our trust in Him completely. We've got to commit ourselves totally into His hands, trusting that He can do what He has promised. We can be assured that He's already delivered thousands out of that same jail. He has set multitudes free from the bondage of sin. He can set you free today from your prison, if you'll give Him a chance.
There is an urgency in this Gospel of Jesus Christ. "...To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Though the Lord is offering you this freedom today, His offer is subject to withdrawal at any time. You see, Jesus Christ is under no obligation to save you at all. He doesn't owe you anything. His offer comes to you strictly because He is so good and loving that He hates to see you in a mess. So He offers to set you free.
However, this offer will be withdrawn - just when, we don't know. God told Noah, "My spirit shall not always strive with man" (Genesis 6:3). If you reject His offer today, you can't be sure whether the offer will be good tomorrow. "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (II Corinthians 6:2). "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near" (Isaiah 55:6). "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them" (Ecclesiastes 12:1).
We proclaim to you "the acceptable year of the Lord." "Now is the accepted time." Now is the time for you to receive this glorious Gospel. Now is the time for you to be set free.
There is coming a "day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2). His offer will then be withdrawn and men shall experience nothing but what they justly deserve for their sins: the "day of vengeance of our God."
The Gospel Power
What will the Gospel do for you? Verse 3 reads: "to give unto them beauty for ashes..." I love the power of the Gospel! I've seen the effects of the Gospel, and I've seen it bring beauty for ashes. Some people are burned out, wasted, and destroyed. I've seen the Spirit of God take those burned-out lives and remake, remold, and reshape them into new and beautiful men and women.
I think of Mike MacIntosh, the pastor of our church in San Diego. When Mike first came to church, he was totally burned-out. He had taken so much acid and speed that he thought a bag was over his head and a .45 pistol was going off inside his brain. He would hear the explosion over and over. As I watched this handsome but totally burned-out young man, I wondered if he would ever recover from the damage done to his brain cells. I saw God take these ashes and begin to work with them - mold, shape, and change. I saw God restore Mike's wife and children. I saw God restore all that he had lost through his own folly.
Today, I see that beautiful young man standing before a glorious congregation in San Diego, with the glow of Jesus on his face and the love of Christ radiating from his life. I realize the power of the Gospel gives "beauty for ashes."
"The oil of joy for mourning" (Isaiah 61:3). Many people today find themselves in deep depression and sorrow of heart, grieved not only over themselves and their inadequacies, failures, and inabilities to cope, but with all of society. Our glorious Gospel gives "the oil of joy for mourning." It will lift your life from depression, sorrow, despair, and despondency to joy and hope.
The Gospel will also give you "the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness" (Isaiah 61:3). Jesus said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy leaden..." (Matthew 11:28). If the burden you're carrying is heavier than you can bear, if you feel pressed down by life and by your circumstances, our glorious Gospel will fill your heart and life with praises unto God. How glorious to see people who once wallowed in the dejection and hopelessness of this world now walk with a spring in their steps, a smile on their faces, and the garment of praise covering their lives. That's the elect of this glorious Gospel.
The Gospel Glory
What is the purpose of the Gospel? That we "might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified" (Isaiah 61:3). God has done His work so that we might glorify Him. "To God be the glory, great things He hath done." As we see lives change - men and women set free and remade through the power of Jesus Christ, born again by the Spirit of God - we give glory to God for His work. These hopeless lives are now "trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord." The changes are God's work wrought in them, and there is no other explanation for it.
So often a man who has fought against alcoholism has been defeated by it. His life is burned out, and he's now an outcast. You see him in the street in his pitiful condition. He has cried out for help. His family has tried to help him. But finally everyone has given up, and we call him a bum. As the power of the Gospel touches the ashes of his life and begins to turn him around, it changes and sets him free. The Gospel liberates him from that prison and makes of him a glorious person, beautiful to behold, a tower of strength within the community.
Only the Gospel can do that, and only God can be glorified for it. That's the purpose of the Gospel.
The Gospel Truth
You ask, "Just what is the Gospel, the good news?" Just this: Though you have failed and sinned, God loves you. God loves you so much that He sent His Son to set you free from your prison. If you'll put your trust completely in Him, He'll free you today, change your life, and make you what God wants you to be.
We have a glorious Gospel, but there's only one difficulty. To be effective it has to be applied. A fellow once asked a minister, "If your Gospel is so great, why isn't everyone a Christian?" The pastor responded, "If soap is so good, why isn't everyone clean?" Does the fact of dirty people testify against the value of soap? No. It works, but you have to apply it.
Have you?
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Pretty poor analogy, I'd say. One can clean one's self up with soap, but one cannot apply the Gospel to one's self. No man can clean himself up to come to God. No man can apply the Gospel to himself by himself, and thereby save himself. Unless God enlightens the heart, man cannot understand the Gospel. God must first resuscitate the dead heart of sin, because a spiritually dead man cannot perform the actions of one spiritually alive, i.e. believe the Gospel savingly, repent savingly and receive forgiveness of sins savingly. Only a spiritually alive man can do that. God must act on his heart first, monoergistically, or the man will not believe the Gospel, or receive Christ. God does not consult the man's will to do so, He does so Sovereignly. Spiritually dead men cannot perform God-pleasing acts. They not only cannot, they would not even if they could. Spiritually alive men do perfom God-pleasing acts. They believe the Gospel, they receive the Word and understand it, they repent of their sins, they receive justification by faith, because only spiritually alive men can be justified.
Man must be made spiritually alive before he can receive Christ. That is a sovereign action of God, apart from the man's will or desire. Once made spiritually alive, the man will desire Christ, receive Him, and be justified in Him through faith, which is given him by God when God resuscitates his dead, cold, stony heart of sin and corruption, by the hearing of the Word, which brings Faith. Until God resuscitates that heart, the man has no spiritual ears, no receptive heart, no capacity to believe savingly.
Comparing the Gospel to soap is a poor analogy, and even poorer theology.
Marlowe, it's a good thing for you that drstevej isn't here right now. Because if he were, he would ask you "How is a dead man is gonna wash his own tush?"
Almost a misnomer? It IS a misnomer! Unsaved men are captives to sin. As such, they CANNOT free themselves. That's why God must act first. Man does not hold the key to his jail cell. God does. God must FIRST turn the key in the lock (resuscitate the dead, cold, stony heart of sin), Pull open the door (impart Faith by means of the hearing of the Word (the Gospel), and THEN the man can walk out of his jail cell (repent for his sins, believe on Christ, and receive justification).
Are these God-pleasing acts necessary?
Is salvation dependant on them?
What does it mean to be justified?
What does it mean to be spiritually alive?
Does a justified man have salvation?
Does a spiritually alive man have salvation?
Romans 16:25
Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began...
I'd prolly point that out, but that would be picking at nits.
Would God justify a man that was not already predestine for salvation i.e elect?
But then he was teaching predestination and election so it was the true gospel :>))
2Co 4:3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
1Th 1:5 For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.
2Th 2:14 Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yeah, what's up with that?
Its funny you post a simple gospel message and a lot of people just come unglued. Rather than look to the power of the gospel message itself, they look for heresies in every word nit picking every jot and tittle looking for something that they can point to as a hidden theological error and then miss the glorious picture that surrounds them.
BTW Gamecock: Have you?
I recall someone nit picking the Puritan's evangelical program as if the Great Awakening was the working of the Anti-Christ himself. Funny how we seem to miss our own beams. I'm sure God can use this type of evangelism. Personally, I think this would be effective for children.
The best way to understand the word "meek" is to separate it: me...ek. When I realize how "eeky" I am, I know what meek is all about.
(While he didn't go through a lot of effort to discover the etymology of the word...I think children can relate.)
Luk 18:17 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.
Seems to me that the best kind of evangelistic gospel sermon is one which a child can relate to.
Lather up.
Still judging souls, I see.
Care to speak to the beam?
If you are talking about that tract where it stated that you have to prepare yourself to be acceptable before the lord before you will be saved, then I don't think that was the gospel. Salvation is not the work of men, it is the work of God. You cannot prepare yourself so that you are somehow worthy to be saved, you just have to believe. Sanctification comes after salvation, not before.
The tract was just a rearticulation of the Puritan evangelical program. Are you saying that our fore-fathers were tricked into Christianity? If one "lathers up" is he preparing for salvation or is he performing his own salvation?
The point of the article is not why you would or would not lather up. The point is that if you refuse to lather up then you are preparing for your own damnation. The point is that regardless of the reason why you respond to the gospel message, the fact of the matter is that if you are to be saved, you MUST respond to it. You must do what the gospel says. You must believe. Responding insures your salvation, while refusing to respond insures your damnation.
So if you don't respond to the gospel, the gospel does you no good. The fact that some people refuse to bathe is no reason to believe that soap is not effective. Similarly the fact that some people refuse to heed to gospel message is no reason to believe that the gospel message is not effective.
Let me try to define our "lather up" analogy and the differences in our perspectives.
You would say:
Man "lathers up" through his own personal response.
I would say:
God "lathers up" man so that he can respond.
Does this accurately reflect our different perspectives?
Can a man be saved without them? Let me be very clear here, because I know the tendency is to try to distort what Calvinists say. The man performs the acts. I don't think there can be any argument on that point. The question is, does he perform the acts totally on his own initiative, or does God enable the man to do so?
The Arminian says that salvation is of God.
The Calvinist says the same.
The Arminian says that the man must choose to come to God, but they don't address his ability to do so. The assumption is that man is able to make that choice, unaided, only needing to hear the Gospel.
The Calvinist says that man cannot choose to do so on his own, so God must first enable the man to hear the Gospel so that he CAN believe it, and receive Christ.
The Arminian says that's "Prevenient Grace", that wonderful catch-all term that is at the same time universal, yet specific, and sufficient by itself to enable man to make his own choice to receive Christ.
The Calvinist says that God's enabling of the man is Irresistable Grace, or Effectual Grace, meaning that it is specific, not universal, and that it is never failing in those to whom it is granted.
The Arminian says that God does not override man's free will in this, that the man's free will is sacrosanct, inviolable, or God would be some sort of draconian monster, pushing people around, and making them do things they don't want to do, although they never really explain why God forcing someone to be saved would be a bad thing, seeing that it is of infinite value to the one so saved.
The Calvinist says that God, without consulting the man's will, unilaterally resuscitates the sinner's dead, cold, stony heart of sin, a heart that is incapable of hearing or believing the gospel (the preaching of the gospel is to them that perish foolishness), thereby enabling the man to hear the Gospel with spiritually-alive ears so that Faith can come (faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God), and the man can believe, the Gospel, receive forgiveness of sins, Christ can dwell in his heart (which must be spiritually alive), and he can receive justification.
The man is the one doing the believing and receiving, God is the one that makes it possible. Man freely chooses to do so, because he has been made spiritually alive by the power and Grace of God, but he cannot do those things UNTIL he is FIRST made spiritually alive. Spiritually-dead men cannot believe savingly, cannot receive Christ into their hearts, and cannot be justified, because they are spiritually dead. No spiritually-dead man can ever do any act pleasing to God. Only spiritually-alive men can do so.
Can a man be saved without them?
It would appear that would be the case.
I say that because it is my understanding that for God to bring a man to perform a God-pleasing act then he is predestined for salvation. He is already saved no act is required or necessary or this would deny God's sovereignty.
If this is not the case than the works of man in some manner are required for salvation?
No, it is not accurate.
I would exactly say the same: "God 'lathers up' man so that he can respond.
Where I perceive our difference is this:
You say: "God lathers up man and responds for the man, and it is a permanent lathering."
I say: "God 'lathers up' man so that he can respond, and then the man is able to make the choice for permanent 'lathering.'"
I'm not sure that this is what P-Marlowe would say.
So man can resist the call of God.
Can a man be saved without them?
It would appear that would be the case.
I say that because it is my understanding that for God to bring a man to perform a God-pleasing act then he is predestined for salvation. He is already saved no act is required or necessary or this would deny God's sovereignty.
Actually the answer to your questions are contained within my premise, if you look. I will attempt to expand on it a little. Even though a man is predestined for salvation, he still must be brought by God to ability to perform the actions that obtain salvation for that man. Predestination does not mean that it is already done, only that it will be done.
If this is not the case than the works of man in some manner are required for salvation?
Not REQUIRED in the sense that it is those works themselves that save him, but they are the natural actions of a spiritually-alive man. God resuscitating the man's heart makes it possible for the man to perform actions pleasing to God. The very first of those acts is to believe on Christ, which results in eternal life.
The mistake is thinking that the actions themselves save, or that God's Predestination itself saves, apart from the work of Christ, or from God's resuscitation of the sinner's heart. Man cooperates in the sense that he freely chooses Christ, AFTER he has first been resucitated by God to be ABLE to cooperate. This is where the Arminians miss it. They believe that God has already provided all that is necessary for man to choose Christ, WITHOUT the specific and individual resuscitation of the sinner's heart by God prior to belief. They believe that the sinner first believes, which then resuscitates his heart, something akin to a patient in cardiac arrest applying the paddles to himself to restart his own heart.
The works themselves do not cause salvation. They are evidence that salvation has occurred. As James says, "faith without works is dead, being alone. Show me your faith apart from works, and I will show you my faith BY my works."
Maybe you want to think that's what we're saying, but no Calvinist has ever said that God responds for the man. That is a gross misrepreentation of the Calvinist position, and I think you know that it is. I expect a little more accuracy from you than that, xzins. As long as we've been discussing it, you know that is not what we say.
Predestination does not mean that it is already done, only that it will be done.
Done on what conditions or at what time?
Not REQUIRED in the sense that it is those works themselves that save him...The very first of those acts is to believe on Christ, which results in eternal life.
Is not this act of believing required for eternal life/salvation or are eternal life and salvation different?
The mistake is thinking that the actions themselves save, or that God's Predestination itself saves, apart from the work of Christ, or from God's resuscitation of the sinner's heart. Man cooperates in the sense that he freely chooses Christ, AFTER he has first been resucitated by God to be ABLE to cooperate.
I'm afraid I am missing something here too.
Is it not God's will?
Predestination is not sufficient.
Christ works are not sufficient.
Man or his works are not sufficient.
God needs mans cooperation to be able to affect his soviergn will?
God needed to have Christ's works to enable his sovereign will?
God needed his own predestination of the elect to grant his sovereign will?
The works themselves do not cause salvation. They are evidence that salvation has occurred.
Who requires this evidence?
Of what value is this evidence and to whom does it have value?
That is what I honestly conclude after combining the doctrines of pre-faith regeneration and irresistible grace together. Especially after our discussions of the philippian jailer, I've come to understand that you believe the new birth happens BEFORE a person becomes a believer.
I Cleansed Me from SinBrought to you by drstevej courtesy of the....
I praise You, O God!
For giving Me hope,
For Jesus Who died,
And left me the soap.
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
Hallelujah! Amen.
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
I Cleansed me from sin.
We praise Thee, O God!
For Thy Spirit of light,
Who hath shown us our Savior,
With prevenient eyesight
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
Hallelujah! Amen.
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
I Cleansed me from sin.
All glory and praise
To the Lamb that was slain,
Who hath borne all our sins,
Yet I scrubbed every stain.
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
Hallelujah! Amen.
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
I Cleansed me from sin.
Some glory and praise
To the God in my mind,
Who hast brought me, but taught me,
To scrub my be-hind.
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
Hallelujah! Amen.
Hallelujah! Mine the glory.
Come on counselor: They called you by their Gospel, they wrote it, not you! BTW, those are a couple of impressive proffs for Calvinism, thanks for posting them!
Once you are in the canon I will cut you some slack.
The Marlowe Theology library:
The Chick Tract is about a lawyer. What's up with that Marlowe?
The Calvinist Theology Library:
I think that ultimately it is irrelevant why someone will decide to pick up the soap and why they will lather up. The point is that unless a man picks up the soap, he will not be cleansed. God has placed the soap before you. It then becomes your responsibility to pick it up and to put the soap on your body. It is quite possible that many will actually pick up the soap, and may even pretend to put it all over their body, but they don't believe in the power of the soap, they believe in the power of themselves to get cleaned and the soap is just a step in the cleaning process and that they themselves must continually scrub themselves in order to be cleaned. Hence the soap itself just becomes additional dirt on their bodies.
But no, it is the power of the soap that brings you to the point where you can be cleaned and if you exercise a little faith and lather up believing in the power of the soap and allow God to wash you clean, then God will pour out his living water and wash you so that you will never get dirty again.
My experience is that these sorts of objections always turn out this way.
I remember vehemently objecting to a praise/worship chorus we sang at Crusade, which contained the phrase, "My heart and flesh cry out for You, the Living God." That, I argued, flew in the face of "in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. 7:18). However... that phrase is almost an exact quote from Ps. 84:2. Oops....
What happened was my systematic theology had taken the place of Scripture in my mind. I believed, and still believe, in Total Depravity, so to suggest that the flesh (which I inadvertantly equated with the sinful nature -- and I'm certainly not alone) could desire God was unthinkable to me. Yet Scripture did so, and I got caught with my theological pants down.
As an aside, what can you tell me about Oklahoma's and Florida State's law schools?
Preach it, Brethren. Press on.
Then why does the Calvinist insist that before a man can be saved, that the man meditate on all his past sins prior to salvation. How is it, based on your reasoning that a man who is unsaved and cannot recognize his sins be able to meditate on them?
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SYDNEY Junior Kids 300m Swim
|Farm Cove, Sydney Harbour
|25/01/2013 Time: 8:30AM - 11:30AM
|Description: A must do for any Aussie Kid this Australia Day is swimming in Sydney Harbour alongside the Royal Botanic Gardens and Opera House. The Sydney Junior Kids 300m Swim is designed to introduce kids 12 years and under to ocean swimming and the backdrop for this event will add to the enjoyment and excitement of the swim. Entrants will be joined in the water and swim alongside some of Australia's best swimmers including Ky Hurst, Trent Grimsey and Melissa Gorman who will accompany them around the course along with the water safety team. Swimming at Australia's most iconic destination on Australia Day is a sporting chance not to be missed and one that will be etched into the memories of the kids who participate as one of those great Australian experiences.


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Last week I announced the winners of the competition I took part in, the Polish competition. Today I just read about the winners of the continental competition on the INETA website (scroll down for the results). The winner is a Reversi game developed by Dejan Anevski from Macedonia, then a Google Earth clone made in Germany by Florian Kruesch and, as 3rd, a Silverlight RSS reader developed by Radenko Zec from Bosnia & Herzegovina. Congratulation to all, and happy MIX-ing to Dejan and Florian, that will be showing their work in a few weeks in Las Vegas....
A few days ago the list of competitors has been published, and today Marcin published the winners of the Polish Silverlight competition:
Iteration burn-down chart: a burn-down chart with nice animations and good usability
BrickMaster: a kind of Tetris
SilverPostcard: a drawing application
My silverlight prototype arrived 5th, which I think is a good position given the full fledged applications taking part in this competition. But not enough to have a chance to win a ticket for the MIX. Good luck to the 3 winners for the Continental Competition.
Daniela and I are working on a v2 of the...
Even if the Italian edition of the Silverlight INETA challenge was closed for lack of participants I still managed to submit my small Silverlight application: Marcin Celej, the organizer of the Polish edition, invited me to take part in his country's edition, and Jose Luis Latorre, the organizer of the continental competition was very kind to allow this exception to the nationality rule. So I submitted my "proof of concept" to the Polish competition.
Unlike Italy, France and the other so-called Western European countries which showed no or very few participants, the Eastern European countries had a lot of submissions. In...
As I said last week, Daniela and I were developing a small application to take part in the Italian and INETA EU Silverlight competition.
This morning I tried to upload the ugly proof of concept we came out with, but it was not possible to upload projects any more (probably I misunderstood and the final date was Jan 28th in the morning, and not at midnight). Too bad since I checked yesterday and there was no other application submitted to the contest (actually one, but without the application).
But, this post is not about me not being able to take part into...
This is the blog of Simone Chiaretta, an Italian .NET developer, architect, ex-Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, Subtext core member, ASP.NET MVC lover with a passion for triathlon.
Want to know more? Keep reading...
I also wrote a few books about ASP.NET MVC.
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Click Hooks
After being asked about what I like about Click hooks I thought it would be nice to write up a little bit of the why behind them in a blog post. The precursor to this story is that I told Colin Watson that he was wrong to build hooks like this; he kindly corrected me and helped me fix my code to match but I still wasn't convinced. Now today I see some of the wisdom in the Click hook design and I'm happy to share it.
The standard way to think about hooks is as a way to react to the changes to the system. If a new application is installed then the hook gets information about the application and responds to the new data. This is how most libraries work with providing signals about the data that they maintain, and we apply that same logic to thinking about filesystem hooks. But filesystem hooks are different because the coherent state is harder to query. In your library you might respond the signal for a few things, but in many code paths the chances are you'll just go through the list of original objects to do operations. With filesystem hooks that complete state is almost never used, only the caches are that are created by the hooks themselves.
Click hooks work by creating a directory of symbolic links that matches the current state of the system, and then asks you to ensure your cache matches that state of the system. This seems inefficient because you have to determine which parts of your cache need to change, which get removed and which get added. But it results in better software because your software, including your hooks, has errors in it. I'm sorry to be the first one to tell you, but there are bugs. If your software is 99% correct, there is still something it is doing wrong. When you have delta updates that update the cache that error compounds and never gets completely corrected with each update because the complete state is never examined. So slowly the quality of your cache gets worse, not awful, but worse. By transferring the current system state to the cache each time you get the error rate of your software in the cache, but you don't get the compounded error rate of each delta. This adds up.
The design of the hooks system in Click might feel wrong as you start to implement one, but I think that after you create a few hooks you'll find there is wisdom in it. And as you use other hook systems in other platforms think about checking the system state to ensure you're always creating the best cache possible, even if the hook system there didn't force you to do it.
posted on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 at 10:52 | permanent link
Creating a QML snap with Snapcraft
We want to enable all kinds of developers to quickly make applications and devices using Snappy as their basis. A quick way to make compelling user interfaces is by using QML, so it seemed like a natural fit to get QML working in snapcraft to eliminate complex setups, and just get things working. There is an Introduction to Snapcraft, I'm going to assume you've already read that.
To get started with an interesting demo I went and stole the Qt photoviewer demo and pulled it into its' own repository, then added a couple simple configuration files. This is a great demo because it is graphical and fun, but also shows pulling data from the network as all the photos are based on Flickr tags.
parts: qml: plugin: qml photoviewer: plugin: copy files: main.qml: main.qml PhotoViewerCore: PhotoViewerCore snappy-metadata: meta
The snapcraft.yaml file includes two parts. The first part is the QML plug in which includes all the pieces needed to run QML programs from the Ubuntu archive. The second is the copy plugin which copies our QML files into the snap. We don't have a build system in this example so copy is all we need, more complex examples could use the cmake or autotools plugins instead.
The last item in the snapcraft.yaml tells Snapcraft where to find the packaging information for Snappy. In the meta directory we have a packages.yaml that is a standard Snappy package file.
name: photoviewer version: 0.1 vendor: Ted Gould <firstname.lastname@example.com> frameworks: [mir] binaries: - name: photoviewer exec: qmlscene main.qml -- caps: - mir_client - network-client
It configures a binary that will be set up by Snappy, which is simply a call to qmlscene with our base QML file. This will then get wrapped up into a single binary in /apps/bin that we can execute.
We need to now turn this directory into a snap. You should follow the instructions to install snapcraft, and then you can just call it in that directory:
$ snapcraft
There are a few ways to set up a Snappy system, the one that I've used here is with QEMU on my development system. That makes it easy to develop and test with, and currently the Mir snap is only available for amd64. After getting snappy setup you'll need to grab the Mir framework from the store and install the snap we just built.
$ sudo snappy install mir $ sudo snappy install --allow-unauthenticated photoviewer_1.0_amd64.snap
You can then run the photoviewer:
$ photoviewer.photoviewer
And you should have something like this on your display:
While this is a simple demo of what can be done with QML, it can be expanded to enable all kinds of devices from displaying information on a network service or providing UI for a small IoT device.
posted on Thu, 06 Aug 2015 at 10:22 | permanent link
Just Say It!
While I love typing on small on screen keyboards on my phone, it is much easier to just talk. When we did the HUD we added speech recognition there, and it processed the audio on the device giving the great experience of controlling your phone with your voice. And that worked well with the limited command set exported by the application, but to do generic voice, today, that requires more processing power than a phone can reasonably provide. Which made me pretty excited to find out about HP's IDOL on Demand service.
I made a small application for Ubuntu Phone that records the audio you speak at it, and sends it up to the HP IDOL on Demand service. The HP service then does the speech recognition on it and returns the text back to us. Once I have the text (with help from Ken VanDine) I set it up to use Content Hub to export the text to any other application that can receive it. This way you can use speech recognition to write your Telegram notes, without Telegram having to know anything about speech at all.
The application is called Just Say It! and is in the Ubuntu App Store right now. It isn't beautiful, but definitely shows what can be done with this type of technology today. I hope to make it prettier and add additional features in the future. If you'd like to see how I did it you can look at the source.
As an aside: I can't get any of the non-English languages to work. This could be because I'm not a native speaker of those languages. If people could try them I'd love to know if they're useful.
posted on Sun, 28 Jun 2015 at 23:29 | permanent link
Role change: Now snappier
Happy to announce that I'm changing roles at Canonical, moving down the stack to join the Snappy team. It is in some ways a formalization of my most recent work which has been more on application lifecycle and containment than higher level stuff like indicators and other user services. I'll be working on the core snappy team to ensuring that snappy works for a wide variety of use cases, from small sensors embedded in your world to phones to services running in the cloud. For me Snappy formalizes a lot of trends that we're seeing all over computing today so I'm excited to get more involved with it.
To kick things off I'll be working on making Snaps easier to build and maintain using the native dependency systems that exist already for most languages. The beautiful part about bundling is that we no longer have to force our dependency system on others, they can choose what works best for them. But, we still need to make integrating with it easy.
New adventures bringing new challenges are where I like to roam. I'll still be around though, and might even contribute a patch or two to some of my old haunts.
posted on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 at 23:54 | permanent link
Tracking Usage
One of the long standing goals of Unity has been to provide an application focused presentation of the desktop. Under X11 this proves tricky as anyone can connect into X and doesn't necessarily have to give information on what applications they're associated with. So we wrote BAMF, which does a pretty good job of matching windows to applications, but it could never be perfect because there simply wasn't enough information available. When we started to rethink the world assuming a non-X11 display server we knew there was one thing we really wanted, to never ever have something like BAMF again.
This meant designing, from startup to shutdown, a complete tracking of an application before it started creating windows in the display server. We then were able to use the same mechanisms to create a consistent and secure environment for the applications. This is both good for developers and users as their applications start in a predictable way each and every time it's started. And we also setup the per-application AppArmor confinement that the application lives in.
Enough backstory, what's really important to this blog post is that we also get an event when an application starts and stops which is a reliable event. So I wrote a little tool that takes those events out of the log and presents them as usage data. It is cleverly called:
$ ubuntu-app-usage
And it presents a list of all the applications that you've used on the system along with how long you've used them. How long do you spend messing around on the web? Now you know. You're welcome.
It's not perfect in that it uses all the time that you've used the device, it'd be nice to query the last week or the last year to see that data as well. Perhaps even a percentage of time. I might add those little things in the future, if you're interested you can beat me too it.
posted on Fri, 14 Nov 2014 at 13:35 | permanent link
HUD for the command line
Most expert users know how powerful the command line is on their Ubuntu system, but one of the common criticisms of it is that the commands themselves are hard to discover and remember the exact syntax for. To help a little bit with this I've created a small patch to the Ubuntu Terminal which adds entries into the HUD so that they can be searched by how people might think of the feature. Hopefully this will provide a way to introduce people to the command line, and provide experienced users with some commands that they might have not known about on their Ubuntu Phone. Let's look at one of the commands I added:
UnityActions.Action { text: i18n.tr("Networking Status") keywords: i18n.tr("Wireless;Ethernet;Access Points") onTriggered: ksession.sendText("\x03\nnm-tool\n") }
This command quite simply prints out the status of the networking on the device. But some folks probably don't think of it as networking, they just want to search for the wireless status. By using the HUD keywords feature we're able to add a list of other possible search strings for the command. Now someone can type wireless status into the HUD and figure out the command that they need. This is a powerful way to discover new functionality. Plus (and this is really important) these can all be translated into their local language.
It is tradition in my family to spend this weekend looking for brightly colored eggs that have been hidden. If you update your terminal application I hope you'll be able to enjoy the same tradition this weekend.
posted on Fri, 18 Apr 2014 at 12:46 | permanent link
Measuring Upstart App Launch using LTTng
One of the goals of this cycle is to decrease application startup times on the Ubuntu phone images. Part of my work there was to look at the time taken by Upstart App Launch in initializing the environment for the application. One of the tricky parts of measuring the performance of initialization is that it contains several small utilities and scripts that span multiple Upstart jobs. It's hard to get a probe inside the system to determine what is going on without seriously disrupting it.
For measuring everything together I decided to use LTTng which loads a small kernel module that records tracepoints submitted by userspace programs using the userspace tracer library. This works really well for Upstart App Launch because we can add tracepoints to each tool, and see the aggregate results.
Adding the tracepoints was pretty straight forward (even though it was my first time doing it). Then I used Thomas Voß's DBus to LTTng bridge, though I had to add signal support.
To setup your Ubuntu Touch device to get some results you'll need to make the image writable and add a couple of packages:
$ sudo touch /userdata/.writable_image $ sudo reboot # Let it reboot $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install lttng-modules-dkms lttng-tools $ sudo reboot # Rebooting again, shouldn't need to, but eh, let's be sure
You then need to setup the Upstart App Launch environment variable to get it registering with LTTng:
$ initctl set-env --global LTTNG_UST_REGISTER_TIMEOUT=-1
Then you need to setup a LTTng session to run your test. (NOTE: this configuration allows all events through, but you can easily add event filters if that makes sense for your task)
$ lttng create browser-start $ lttng enable-event -u -a $ lttng start
To get the Upstart starting events from DBus into LTTng:
$ dbus-monitor --profile sender=com.ubuntu.Upstart,member=EventEmitted,arg0=starting | ./dbus_monitor_lttng_bridge
And at last we can run our test, in this case starting the webbrowser once from not running and once to change URLs:
$ url-dispatcher http://ubuntu.com # wait for start $ url-dispatcher http://canonical.com
And then shut things down:
$ lttng stop $ lttng destroy browser-start
This then creates a set of traces in your home directory. I pulled them over to my laptop to look at them, thougth you could analyze them on the device. For complex traces there are more complex tools that are available, but for what I needed babletrace was enough. All of this contributed to a set of results that we are no using to optimize upstart-app-launch to make applications start faster!
posted on Mon, 16 Dec 2013 at 13:17 | permanent link
Emergent Complexity
When looking at Upstart it comes off as very simple. Almost too much so. It's just events. And jobs that take those events. And not much else. You're so used to configuring every last detail of a system to ensure that it's tightly tuned for every possible scenario, certainly you need more tools than just events! When you let go of that preconception and really start to understand it, you realize that events are not only enough, but they're exactly what you need.
One might have thought – as at first I certainly did – that if the rules for a program were simple then this would mean that its behavior must also be correspondingly simple. For our everyday experience in building things tends to give us the intuition that creating complexity is somehow difficult, and requires rules or plans that are themselves complex. But the pivotal discovery that I made some eighteen years ago is that in the world of programs such intuition is not even close to correct. — Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science.
And so we take these simple jobs that we've built and we start to build a system. They each just wait on a set of events, and some emit events as they go along, and the system starts to take form. But where are our initialization phases and guarantees and complex dependencies? (writing code to solve them is fun!) They still exist, but as an emergent behavior of the system. Let's look at Graphviz diagram of the Ubuntu Saucy system init:
(Graphviz | Full SVG)
Without zooming in and just looking at the shapes that emerge you start to see a natural grouping of the jobs. And there are stages of the boot. There are types of jobs that are gathered together. There'd be even more if initctl2dot could break down the runlevel job into its various values. What we see is a the complex boot of a modern operating system broken down into pieces for analysis. What we see is a model of the behavior of the system, but that model is the only place that the complexity actually exists, it becomes the emergent behavior of the system. And that, that is why Upstart can be so simple and yet be powerful enough to boot a modern Linux system.
posted on Sun, 04 Aug 2013 at 00:06 | permanent link
Application-focused Control
I love BAMF, may it die a peaceful death. BAMF was always stuck trying to solve an unsolvable problem, trying to recreate information and associations that had been lost through the X11 protocol and general fuzziness about what should happen. BAMF then had to handle a wide variety of corner cases and try to bring things back into a situation of sanity. And I loved BAMF because I didn't have to do that myself, BAMF did it, and all of its clients just got sanity. We knew when starting another display system we didn't want another BAMF.
With Mir there is a closer tie between applications as a whole and their windows. When an application asks for a session it specifies who it is, then Unity can make sure it understands who it is, and gets a chance to veto the connection. This means that Unity can check on the status of who the app says it is before it gets any windows and can track that directly throughout the application session. To do this we're using what we call the "Application ID", which for most apps you have today is the name of their desktop file (e.g., "inkscape", "gedit").
Let's look at an overly verbose message sequence diagram to see how this works. Note: all of the columns on here aren't separate processes, the diagram is made to explain this idea, not to represent the system architecture.
(svg | msc)
What we can see here is that because Upstart is doing process tracking, and making sure it knows the state of the application, Unity have have assurances of the application's name and existence. It then can work with Mir to block applications that do have proper configurations and can't be matched well. 100% matching, by design.
posted on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 at 11:55 | permanent link
Application Centric User Experience
One of the design goals of Unity was to have an Application-centric user experience. Components like the Launcher consolidate all of the windows into a single icon instead of a set like the GNOME 2 panel. Nothing else in Ubuntu thinks about applications in this way making it a difficult user experience to create. X11 worries about windows. DBus worries about connections. The kernel focuses on PIDs. None of these were focused on applications, just parts of applications. We created the BAMF Application Matching Framework (BAMF) to try and consolidate these, and while it has done a heroic job, its task is simply impossible. We need to push this concept lower into the stack.
First we looked at the display server and started thinking about how it could be more application centric. That effort resulted in Mir. Mir gets connections from applications and manages their associated windows together. They can have multiple windows, but they always get tracked back to the application that created them. Unity can then always associate and manage them together, as an application, without any trickery.
Application confinement also provides another piece of this puzzle. It creates a unified set of security policies for the application independent of how many submodules or processes exist for it. One cache directory, set of settings and policies follow the application around. Apparmor provides a consistent and flexible way of managing the policies along with the security that we need to keep users safe.
To start to look at the process management aspect of this I started talking to James Hunt about using Upstart, our process manager in Ubuntu. Working together we came up with a small little upstart user session job that can start and stop applications, and also track them. I've pushed the first versions of that to a test repository in Launchpad. What this script provides is the simple semantics of doing:
to manage the application. Of course, the application lifecycle is also important, but Upstart provides us an guaranteed way of making sure the application stops at the end of the session.$ start application APP_ID=gedit $ stop application APP_ID=gedit
Upstart can also help us to guarantee application uniqueness. If you try and start an application twice you get this:
This way we can ensure that a single icon on the launcher associates to a set of processes, managed by the process manager itself. In the past libraries like libunique have accomplished this using DBus name registration. Which, for the most part, works. Using DBus registration relies on well behaving applications, which basically guarantee their own uniqueness. By using Upstart we can have misbehaving applications, and still guarantee their uniqueness for the Unity to show the user.$ start application APP_ID=inkscape application (inkscape) start/running, process 30878 $ start application APP_ID=inkscape start: Job is already running: application (inkscape)
We're just getting started on getting this setup and working. The schedule isn't yet final for vUDS next week, but I imagine we'll get a session for it. Come and join in and help us define this feature if it interests you.
posted on Tue, 07 May 2013 at 08:16 | permanent link


text:
JumpStart by Robb Armstrong
- February 27, 2013
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Comments (9) (Please sign in to comment)
Wasn't this a joke in Pearls Before Swine?
[In hipster speak]…I mentioned Pushkin when Sunny was talking about Dumas.
Joe's as sharp as a tack!
Is it me or is their skin getting darker than usual?
@StoicLion yes, you did. And I made a comic strip out of it. This is why I love this blog. You guys are so darn smart! And as far as RachelC22, I don't read "pearls before swine". Or any other comic strips. I don't think I'd benefit from their influence. I'd much rather cherrypick ideas from my JumpStart blog!
pushkin is what you do when they stay too long…
Yes. Don't remember how long ago, but I clipped and saved it. Pig: "What are you reading, goat?" Goat: "The complete works of Alexander Pushkin." Pig: "Oh I love that guy."
Goat: ""You do? How do you know him?" Pig: "He keeps all my papers stuck to the bulletin board." Goat: "That's push pin." Pig: "Oh, maybe they're brothers." A slightly better joke than in Jump Start. I saw a book years ago entitled "When Pushkin Comes to Shove", but never read it.
Yeah, I knew it was something like that.
I love how Sunny is knowledgeable and interested in things <3
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High- and Middle-School Science Teachers
Nanoscience Research Opportunity
(Summer 2014)
The University of Nebraska hosts a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) entitled Quantum and Spin Phenomena in Nanomagnetic Structures. The MRSEC is funded by the National Science Foundation and involves faculty and students from Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering in state-of-the-art research on nanoscale ferroic materials, and offers many different opportunities for middle- and high-school science teachers to become involved. We are seeking two science teachers to become engaged in this research during the summer of 2014. A summer stipend will be provided and regular visits and other contacts with the teacher and his/her classes will continue during the 2014/2015 academic year. The summer stipend will be $1,000 per week of full time commitment to the MRSEC project for a period up to eight weeks.
The selected teachers will become involved in one of the following research thrusts:
- Novel magnetic clusters and cluster-assembled nanocomposites
- Magnetic nanostructures controlled by external stimuli
- Ultra-high-sensitivity magnetometry of nanostructures
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- Magnetization dynamics of nanomagnetic structures
- Electrically-controlled exchange bias and novel piezomagnetic materials
- Ferroelectric and multiferroic tunnel junctions
- Electron and spin transport in magnetic nanojunctions
- "Seed" thrusts in multiferroics in complex oxide heterostructures, magnetic nanoparticles based therapeutics, and memristive behavior in oxide heterostructures.
The applicant should provide:
- Full curriculum vitae
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- The name and contact information for one other reference who can speak to the applicant's interest and ability in science
Application deadline: March 15, 2014
For more information, please contact:
Professor Stephen Ducharme
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68588-0299
Tel: (402) 472-8590
e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com