Bible Search Parallel Versions
Once again, I have made updates to the Bible search schema. This time the changes impact the way the parallel view is displayed. Now verses from each parallel resource are aligned in a row. This took a lot of head bashing and hard thinking due to the fact that I would dump the whole search for a particular resource into a single table cell. That meant I had to create markers in the returned text for each new chapter and verse (because sometimes versions leave out verses due to textual criticism). This proved to be crazy in the situations where the number of verses in the greek text was different than the english which would throw of the table alignment. The problem with that at the moment is if a verse is missing from the english but is present in the greek, the next verse will be put in the table which throws off the verse alignments, but is corrected by adding blank cells at the bottom. I am not sure how I am going to work around that, but I will come up with something.
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Joe Schneider (joe@revision29.com) - 08/7/2008
Life on Mars!!! Or Not
Today I read through my daily [url=http://www.slashdot.com]Slashdot[/url] email newsletter. There was an interesting article that suggests scientists have found something that indicates a definite possibility for life on mars. Apparently the president is being briefed on the findings. The only things I can think of is that Mars contains the right elements, including water which they found this week, to sustain life, i.e. if we were to send people to mars the minerals and such could be used by them. Well, that at least is my theory.
With the instruments on the mars observer, it is scientifically impossible to determine if there are any building blocks for life such as amino acids or proteins. Basically the observer scoops up the dirt and puts it in a small oven and super heats to so that it can run a spectrum analysis on the sample. The only results that they can get are the elements (types atoms, as apposed to various soils components) present in the soil and their amounts. There can be no way that scientists can say they have found life or amino acids or anything, only elements. If they were to fly a sample back, they could do more extensive tests, but that will not happen with the current mission. So if you hear that they say life on Mars has been found, keep in mind that is a interpretation of the data that is way outside of their current ability to test. They would need a microscope at the least to look and see the structure of the findings.
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() - 08/3/2008
Does Voting Work?
Why vote? Seriously, why should we? I have a small theory why our voting really does not matter in America.
Think about how we pick our candidates. We choose the lesser evil from among a short list of people who have some political, social, and religious commonalities with us. Once they get to Washington (or whatever city they govern from) they forget the people who voted for them. The cheers of people who really believed in them at the conventions and rallies around the country are silenced. The will of the people stops at the voting box. From there, the will of special interest groups or the stubborn pride of the elected official take over.
You are probably wondering, what the heck is wrong with a person having his/her own beliefs in politics and such? Nothing, as long as the elected official are willing to bend and mold some as the voice of the people speaks out. Such bending should be within the basic political philosophy of the candidate, but he or she needs to be humble enough to know when his or her policies are wrong.
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() - 07/30/2008
Update 2: Major Backend Changes
I have rewritten the Bible search code so that its results are more reliable. There were some kinds of searches such as Matthew 28:5-Mark1:3 that simply did not work. I have worked and worked and worked at getting my algorithm so that it would properly detect each kind of search(es) being done by the user. Beyond that I had to maintain support for keyword searches which is a somewhat different beast altogether. But it is good to say that one can search with things double quoted if an exact match for that phrase is desired. This can be coupled with other search words such as: "Jesus replied" depart.
Beyond the Bible search capabilities, I have re-written much of the back end code for the site. That means nothing to you, unless something is broken such as my rss feed. Please let me know if something is off with the pages or if you run into problems with the Bible searching.
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joe@revision29.com - 07/30/2008
August 2008
July 2008