"Learning to deal with stress is one the best ways to stay healthy. The inability to resolve stress can result in chronic pain or sickness. The body system that controls reactions to stress, the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis is linked to the immune system and a number of other areas that can affect day-to-day well being. The Hypothalamus is located just above the brain stem…The Pituitary Gland is under the Hypothalamus…And the Adrenal Glands are on top of the kidneys. The processes of each organ rely on the others in a cycle. If one portion of the cycle has a problem, the entire cycle may have a problem. Insomnia, Anxiety Disorder, Depression, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or other health problems can be the result. Stress management tactics can help avoid such issues.

I recommend expressing healthy anger. Battling Dr. Robotnik is certainly stressful so I often taunt him to make myself feel better. Experts list other ways to deal with stress as well:

1) Seeking out others with Similar Issues – My buddy Knux has had a few run-ins with eggman

2) Find a Hobby – Tails likes to work on his airplane, the tornado

3) Use a Mantra – I am the fastest thing alive…I am the fastest thing alive

4) Take a deep breath and count to ten – This works at the worst of times

5) Read a Book – I think a comic would do

6) Space out or use your imagination – (Hum)

7) Make Plans – One day I will defeat Eggman for good

Stress doesn’t have to last, Let it stay in the past."

The Christian Alphabet Poster, originally uploaded by Mark Lawrence.

The Bible instructs us to teach God’s words diligently to our children so that they will have a foundation of truth in their hearts throughout their lives.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6: 5-9

The Loved Letters collection combines some of my favorite verses in a fun and memorable letters of the alphabet arrangement. Each Loved Letter of the alphabet begins a memorable and powerful verse from the Word of God. I read recently that the older a person gets, the less likely they are to accept the salvation of the gospel. It is important that we share our faith with children early and often in their lives.

As a parent I am so amazed at how curious our five year old son is about God. I enjoy reading to him and answering his questions about heaven and Jesus. We have an incredible responsibility and opportunity to teach our children about God and His love. Letter by letter, each picture in the Loved Letters collection communicates a timeless truth from God’s word.

As the scripture above instructs, we are to teach His words to our children, continually talk about them, and surround our homes with God’s eternal words. As these words supernaturally grow in our children’s hearts, we will be placing them on the only true path of peace, security and eternal life in Jesus Christ. A heart full of God’s truth; there is no better gift to give.

Loved Letters Collection, the Christian Alphabet. © Copyright 2008 by Mark Lawrence. All Rights Reserved.

See the new Christian Alphabet Poster

The deadline's approaching.  What do you do?  What will you do?

My suggestion is to read, take a walk, and drink.  In that order.  Let me explain.

I like reading.  I love knowing what other people have to say.  Thankfully, today we have one incredible resource at our fingertips in the Internet.  Call up your favorite search engine and type in keywords related to your topic.  Start reading what others have already said about your topic.  Don't steal their ideas!  Just read about the topic and explore the different angles those authors have taken.  Typically, these Internet articles have links to other topics and ideas.  Follow the links down the rabbit hole.  Explore new topics.  Read the fresh perspectives.  Read read read.

But remember, you're on deadline.  Once you're gotten a good base in your head, take a walk.  Think about what you read.  Think about different angles people have taken on your topic.  Think about your own experiences and how they may differ from what you read.  Take mental notes which might only be free form thoughts, but may also serve as jumping off points to help get the creative process started.

And drink.  I've found things with sugar and caffeine in them to work the best.  Stay away from alcohol.  You're no Ernest Hemingway.

What's worked when you've been besieged with Writer's Block?  Ever been forced under deadline to have to find your way through the Block and still deliver the goods?

เมื่อวานนี้ผมได้ไปนั่งฟังการสนทนาเกี่ยวกับหนังสือเล่มเล็กๆ ที่ชื่อ "วิชาสุดท้าย (ที่มหาวิทยาลัยไม่ได้สอน)" กับผู้แปล คือคุณยุ้ย สฤณี อาชวานันทกุล ที่ร้านหนังสือคิโนะคูนิยะ สยามพารากอน มีผู้ดำเนินรายการคือคุณภิญโญ ไตรสุริยธรรมา บรรณาธิการบริหารคนเก่งของสำนักพิมพ์ OPEN Books บรรยากาศเป็นกันเองดีครับ ผมชอบนะ นั่งฟังกันสบายๆ คุณภิญโญก็เก่งสามารถหาเรื่องในการเชื่อมโยงจากสุนทรพจน์ของคนหนึ่งไปยังอีกคนหนึ่งได้ แถมยังพาทั้งคนแปลและคนฟังเฉียดๆ เข้าไปในแวดวงการเมืองให้ได้ครื้นเครงกันพอหอมปากหอมคอ

การมานั่งฟังการสนทนาครั้งนี้ทำให้เหมือนกับผมได้อ่านหนังสือซ้ำอีกครั้ง โดยที่ไม่ต้องอ่านเอง ระหว่างที่พูดถึงสุนทรพจน์แต่ละเรื่อง ในหัวผมก็จะมีคำว่า "อ๋อ, เออ, ใช่ๆ จำได้ๆ" อยู่เป็นระยะๆ พอนั่งฟังจนจบแล้ว ผมอยากกลับไปอ่านหนังสือเล่มนี้อีกครั้ง

หลังจากได้ลายเซ็นต์ของคุณยุ้ย และพี่ภิญโญ แล้วก็ได้มีโอกาสเจอนักเขียนที่ชื่นชอบอีกหลายๆ คน อย่างคุณปิ่น ปรเมศวร์ เจ้าของหนังสือ BLOG'S BLOG ม.ล. ปริญญากร วรวรณ ช่างภาพและนักเขียน รวมไปถึงคุณศรุต เจ้าของ blog 0bserver.com ด้วย คราวหน้าถ้ามีงานแบบนี้อีกสงสัยต้องขนหนังสือของ OPEN Book มาเผื่อไว้เพราะนักเขียนมาให้กำลังใจกันให้พรึ่บเลย (ฮา)

ดีใจกับคุณยุ้ยด้วยนะครับ ที่หนังสือพิมพ์ครั้งที่ 3 แล้ว และได้ข่าวว่าจะมีการพิมพ์ครั้งที่ 4 ในไม่ช้า ผมรอเล่ม 2 อยู่ด้วยใจระทึกนะครับ อิอิ ;-)

The Rainforest Site is dedicated to the preservation of rainforests around the world. Your daily click funds the purchase of rainforest land by The Nature Conservancy, The Rainforest Conservation Fund, The World Parks Endowment, and Rainforest2Reef. These organizations work to preserve rainforest land in Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay and other locations worldwide.

On average, over 35,500 individuals from around the world visit the site each day to click the green "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button. To date, more than 150 million visitors have preserved more than 40,500 acres of land.

Your click on the "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button helps fund free mammograms for women in need — low-income, inner-city and minority women whose awareness of breast cancer and opportunity for help is often limited. Your click is paid for by site sponsors, and mammogram funding is provided to clinics throughout the U.S. through the efforts of the National Breast Cancer Foundation .

The Animal Rescue Site focuses the power of the Internet on a specific need — providing food for some of the 27 million unwanted animals given to shelters in the U.S. every year. Over 10 million animals are put to death every year in the U.S. alone because they are abandoned and unwanted.

Each click on the purple "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button at The Animal Rescue Site provides food and care for a rescued animal living in a shelter or sanctuary. Funding for food and care is paid by site sponsors and distributed to animals in need at the Fund for Animals' renowned animal sanctuaries (including Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch in Texas and the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in California), pet shelters supported by the Petfinder Foundation , North Shore Animal League , and other worthy animal care facilities supported by the GreaterGood.org foundation.

100% of sponsor advertising fees goes to our charitable partners.

The Literacy Site is dedicated to funding free books for children.

On average, over 80,000 individuals from around the world visit the site each day to click the "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button. To date, more than 87 million visitors have helped provide more than 1.6 million books to children who need them the most.

Within the U.S., access to books is essential to reading development: the only variable that directly correlates with reading scores is the number of books in the home. However, most recent data describes a profound, even shocking gap: while the ratio of books to children in middle-income neighborhoods is approximately 13 books to 1 child, the ratio in low-income neighborhoods is 1 book to 300 children.* In addition, over 80 percent of childcare centers serving low-income children lack age-appropriate books. Together, The Literacy Site and its domestic partner, First Book, provide children from low-income families in the U.S. with books they can take home and keep.

The Child Health Site is dedicated to funding simple and very effective preventatives and treatments with the goal of robust child health around the globe. Your daily click funds the administration of Vitamin A to prevent life-threatening childhood illness and disease as well as one preventable cause of childhood blindness; the manufacture and fitting of children's prostheses so that a child injured by a landmine or other accident can still walk, run and play and still has a fighting chance to be a productive contributor in his or her society as an adult; eye surgeries that can reverse one kind of childhood blindness; and HIV testing that will alert medical personnel that a mother may pass the infection onto her child at birth so that she can be treated and the newborn spared of this terrible disease. When you click, once per day, every day, you are helping to get these types of treatments and services to the children who need them most.

On average, over 70,000 individuals from around the world visit the site each day to click the blue "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button. To date, more than 100 million visitors have helped more than 2,161,000 children.

The Hunger Site was founded to focus the power of the Internet on a specific humanitarian need: the eradication of world hunger. Since its launch in June 1999, the site has established itself as a leader in online activism, helping to feed the world's hungry. On average, over 220,000 individuals from around the world visit the site each day to click the yellow "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button. To date, more than 300 million visitors have given more than 500 million cups of staple food.

The staple food funded by clicks at The Hunger Site is paid for by site sponsors and distributed to those in need by Mercy Corps and America's Second Harvest . 100% of sponsor advertising fees goes to our charitable partners. Funds are split between these organizations and go to the aid of hungry people in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America.

1. Muçulmanos cumprimentam-se uns aos outros, dizendo: “Assalamu ‘alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatu.” Isto sígnifica, em Português: “Que a paz esteja convosco, e assim também a Misericórdia de Allah e as Suas bençãos.”

2. Quem é cumprimentado, deve dizer de volta o seguinte: “Wa ‘alaikum Salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh.” Isto sígnifica, em Português: “Que a paz esteja também convosco, e a Misericórdia de Allah e as Suas bençãos.”

3. Aquele que conduz, cumprimenta aquele que anda. Aquele que anda, cumprimenta aquele que está em pé. Um grupo pequeno de pessoas cumprimenta um grupo grande e os jovens cumprimentam os idosos ou mais velhos.

I pointed out to him that he could simple download any one of the many free alternatives to Word that are available for download; most of which “save” and “open” in Word’s .doc format. It surprised me to learn that he was unaware that there are free alternatives to Word, of which, AbiWord is arguably one of the best of these light word processing applications.

AbiWord has been designed to integrate perfectly with the operating system it runs on, and there are many, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (PowerPC), ReactOS, and BeOS. This great application has been written to take advantage of the functionality provided by the system it runs on, such as image loading, or printing capabilities.

AbiWord is no slouch when it comes to being able to read and write all industry standard document types, like OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Rich Text Format, HTML web pages, and many more.

There’s no learning curve involved with AbiWord since it features a similar looking interface to Word, with it’s basic character formatting, paragraph alignment, spell checker, interactive rulers and tabs, styles, unlimited undo/redo, find and replace, and image support.

AbiWord has a very small resource footprint, which allows full functionality on systems that are not considered “State of the Art”. For those users with underpowered systems (by modern standards), this alternative light word processors should prove to be ideal.

I find AbiWord with its surprising amount of features and simple straightforward interface, to be the appropriate word processor I need running in the background while I’m on the Internet. Its small memory footprint, as opposed to memory hogging Microsoft Word, is ideal for most of my day to day work. In fact, portable AbiWord is my word processor of choice for my portable office on my USB key.

As you can see from the picture below, this article was written on AbiWord.

Features:

Multi Platform

Internationalized

Advanced document layout options

Tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes and styles

Available in most common, and many not-so-common languages

Spell checker

Dictionaries for over 30 languages

Supports right-to-left, left-to-right, and mixed-mode text

The above feature allows support for languages like Hebrew and Arabic

Mail Merge capabilities

Download at: Download.com

Sunday, March 02, 2008

不知道說甚麼好，
通宵完成了它，直至10時半，

我還記得左那關鍵一刻，
窗外特然出見太陽，
照在我的桌面上，
你能想像那神聖的一刻嗎?
多謝太陽伯伯給我這美麗的一刻。

half blood prince
"he was probably the bravest man I ever knew"

《HARRY POTTER》
一個關於勇感和無私的愛的故事

I highly suggest you read the news!

One way to do this is to get yourself a Gmail account. Go to google.com/news and make customized news categories for yourself. Google then puts up relevant personalized news for you every minute, hour, and day! VERY COOL!

My categories are as follows:

World - Israel - Earthquake - EU Solana - and more

OTHER NEWS SOURCES (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED):

JVIM - daily news update

Jerusalem Post - Christian World

Fufilled Prophecy - Headline News Related to Bible Prophecy

Watchman Bible Study - Newsletters

時至今日，我還覺得是無比重要，
所以我會珍惜這時刻，因為是最後一次了。

希望盡快完成它，我一世將會少一個遺憾。

我記憶中好像從沒有進戲院看過一場港產電影。
我真的不太喜歡看，
因為大部份都加入打鬥、鎗戰和追續的場面。

那些都不是我杯茶，
總會令我投入不了，總會令我覺得沉悶和混亂。
時間過得比看到兩人坐著不說話不對望更慢。

我看過的電影不多，
因為從前我都比較喜歡看書，
文字給我更多相像空間。

我可以把一段故事想得更詩情畫意，
把境物想像得更偉大和美麗。
它們就這樣的畫面由我創造，出現在我腦海，
就像我也參與在創作過程。
當看過書後，再看電影的影像總會發現比我想像中差了一點，是應該更好的。

我想只有一套是我滿意的，就是《魔戒》，它比我想像中美麗多了。

我覺得電影和文學真是兩種不同的藝術。

前者是透過觀看一個個假像畫面，
和聽到不同的聲音帶動感覺，
讓電影創作者帶著你天馬行空地走。

後者是先自己的思考方式為故事創作屬於自己的畫面，
從而帶動感覺。

兩種都是說故事的方式，
學習去欣賞電影說故事的方法真的很難。

I cannot stress this enough, people. READ THIS MANGA!! GOD DAMMIT! READ IT! READ IT OR DIE! Basically, it's about these two fraternal twins, one boy, Subaru, the main character, one girl, Hokuto, who protect the city of Tokyo by ghostly spirits by acting as exorcists. Enter their mutual friend, Seishiro, a hot guy who, apparently, is in love with Subaru, making for a rather entertaining, slightly shonen ai manga. GOD, you need to read this. This stuff makes the world go 'round, people!

You're not listening at all, are you? T.T Fine. But if you don't read this series, every waking moment of your life will become a swirling torrent of pain and misery. I'm serious. That, or I'll send Pikachu on your ass. In the words of Fergie: 'You no want no drama!"

5 / 5

Yeah, perfect score, bitches.

I've always just taught my kids that the easter bunny ~along with santa & the tooth fairy~ is kinda like Barney. Pretend. Something fun and nonsensical (I know. But you KNOW how I feel about Encarta. And I really *wasn't sure if it was a word) It's something we do to humor grandma & grandpa. But they know the TRUTH. ANd they have no problem telling it to anyone. Whether you ask or not. SOmetimes this is not such a good thing. Like when it makes thier friends cry. And then causes angry parents to call me at night. That's not so fun.

Parent: How could you do that to your child?
Me:How could I do what? *Not lie to them?

I don't care if you do the 'santa/easter bunny thing. I don't tell my kids you're evil incarnate because of it. But WHY would you call and ask me that question? I don't call you and ask why you tell your children a big bunny comes in the middle of the night laying eggs and leaving easter baskets. I'm sorry my child made yours cry and ask if you were lying. We had a talk about it. Really. But he was smarter than me & I had no clue how to come back from his reply.

Me: You know... I know what we believe, but everyone else doesn't believe that. ANd you made your friends cry. So maybe we shouldn't say anything to them about it. Thier parents want to tell them something else. And we should respect that.

Thing 1: I thought the bible tells us to tell the truth about Jesus.

Me: It does.

Thing 1: Then why do you want me to lie to my friends? You always tell me not to lie.

Me, *desperately trying to reason with this boy so I don't have to be screamed at by any more parents: I don't want you to lie. I just don't want you to say anything about it.

Thing 6: That's still NOT telling the truth about Jesus.

There was nothing else I could say. I was out wisdom'ed by a (then) 7 yr old.

So you see, it's not my fault. He knows how to read. And he has good taste in books. And great life application skills. WOW homeschooling really does pay off! Who'dda thunk it? (I can't help it. There is just something about that word. I know. It's like a sickness or something.)

All of that to say Have a happy 'He's alive' day. Or happy EasterBunny day. Or whatever you are celebrating tomorrow:)

Rebecca said...

I've been debating this bunny business also. My oldest is two so he hasn't asked yet and we haven't brought it up. Except last year at an egg hunt at a park he was frightened to take a photo with said bunny. I like the pretending idea, still doing the egg hunts (and stuffing stockings) without that being the focus of the holiday. And it looks like thing 1 got ya there. I'd say its compliments to your parenting. And in the long run I think you'd rather remember phone calls from parents knowing your child wasn't afraid to share his faith.

Sunday, April 8, 2007 8:54:00 AM EDT

Heather said...

lol Becca. How can I argue with such a good point?

Monday, April 9, 2007 8:21:00 PM EDT

When I mention I'm writing a book, I'm usually confronted with similar questions. Or a raised eyebrow and a healthy amount of skepticism.

It usually goes something like this:

"What have you been up to lately?"
"Well, besides the usual, I'm writing a book."

There's a lot of responses one can receive after saying they've started writing a book.
Here's a few of the more common ones:

A. "Who isn't?"
The cynical response. This is implying that all people have given writing a try at some point in their lives and have already failed miserably or, if they haven't yet, inevitably will fail.

B. "Oh. What's it called?"
Ah! Either we have some genuine interest here, or they're casually asking---much the same way one would ask about how the weather is or how a sports team is doing ... and could actually care less about the title or the story that lays behind it.

But 'What's it called?' is a tough question to answer if you're not prepared for it. It took me a lot of composting, writing, and moments of inspiration to finally realize what the title of my book was actually supposed to be.

I guess next time I'll come up with a 'working title'; a tentative title just like what films have during production. Because I felt like an idiot not knowing the title of my own book. But eventually I knew. And I graduated to the next part of the conversation, which sometimes they'll just skip straight to:

C. "So, what's it about?"
A weighted question...
If I'm too expositional, their eyes will glaze over---guaranteed.
If I say stuff like:
It's about mankind's struggle to believe in a world full of empirical data.
or
It's about being dragged by fate into the world's torrid whirlwinds.
or
It's about the shades of grey between good and evil.
or
It's about surrendering trust to find true love.
or
It's about achieving a goal you never intended to chase, but will cost you everything in the end.
then I end up sounding like another Barton Fink, complete with delusions of grandeur.
So I tend to say "A high fantasy about a thief." I try to keep it simple and let them take the bait. You know.... To learn more if they wish.
At that point, the conversation usually moves on to another topic. :P
But if they ever did ask any additional questions, I'd be glad to answer them!
*hint hint*

In our personal quests to conquer the novel, the questions only get harder from there. But unlike the casual masses, us writers are genuinely interested in what we are writing (hopefully!) and we want all the expositional details and tidbits that will help us dig into the meat and bones of our stories.

There comes a day when we know we're ready to answer those tough questions. That's when we're done composting/free writing and ready to create scenes!

Prev: The 5th Ring: Seven Rays | Next: ????

i'm not a huge fan of this band, but this particular song really grabs me.  it's another nostalgic-feeling, emotive composition, but this one is spoken word, and interestingly the instrumentation is upbeat and eerie at the same time.  i wish i could explain, but i can't.  so here is the beautiful prose.  i find it a worthwhile listen or read...

"In those days, there was a kind of fever that pushed me out of the front door, into the pale, exhaust-fumed park by Broadwater Farm or the grubby road that eventually leads to Enfield: turkish supermarket after chicken restaurant after spare car part shop. Everything in my life felt like it was coming to a mysterious close: I could hardly walk to the end of a street without feeling there was no way to go except back. The dates I’d had that summer had come to nothing, my job was a dead end and the rent cheque was killing me a little more each month. It seemed unlikely that anything could hold much longer. The only question left to ask was what would happen after everything familiar collapsed, but for now the summer stretched between me and that moment.

It was ferociously hot, and the air quality became so bad that by the evening the noise of nearby trains stuttered in in fits and starts, distorted through the shifting air. As I lay in the cool of my room, I could hear my neighbours discussing the world cup and opening beers in their gardens. On the other side, someone was singing an Arabic prayer through the thin wall. I had no money for the pub so I decided to go for a walk.

I found myself wandering aimlessly to the west, past the terrace of chip and kebab shops and laundrettes near the tube station. I crossed the street, and headed into virgin territory – I had never been this way before. Gravel-dashed houses alternated with square 60s offices, and the wide pavements undulated with cracks and litter. I walked and walked, because there was nothing else for me to do, and by degrees the light began to fade.

The mouth of an avenue led me to the verge of a long, greasy A-road that rose up in the far distance, with symmetrical terraces falling steeply down then up again from a distant railway station. There were four benches to my right, interspersed with those strange bushes that grow in the area, whose blossoms are so pale yellow they seem translucent, almost spectral; and suddenly tired, I sat down. I held my head in my hands, feeling like shit, but a sudden breeze escaped from the terraces and for a moment I lost my thoughts in its unexpected coolness. I looked up and I realised I was sitting in a photograph.

I remembered clearly: this photograph was taken by my mother in 1982, outside our front garden in Hampshire. It was slightly underexposed. I was still sitting on the bench, but the colours and the planes of the road and horizon had become the photo. If I looked hard, I could see the lines of the window ledge in the original photograph were now composed by a tree branch and the silhouetted edge of a grass verge. The sheen of the flash on the window was replicated by bonfire smoke drifting infinitesimally slowly from behind a fence. My sister’s face had been dimly visible behind the window, and –yes- there were pale stars far off to the west that traced out the lines of a toddler’s eyes and mouth.

When I look back at this there’s nothing to grasp, no starting point. I was inside an underexposed photo from 1982 but I was also sitting on a bench in Haringey.

Strongest of all was the feeling of 1982-ness: dizzy, illogical, as if none of the intervening disasters and wrong turns had happened yet. I felt guilty, and inconsolably sad. I felt the instinctive tug back - to school, the memory of shopping malls, cooking, driving in my mother’s car. All gone, gone forever.

I just sat there for a while. I was so tired that I didn’t bother trying to work out what was going on. I was happy just to sit in the photo while it lasted, which wasn’t for long anyway: the light faded, the wind caught the smoke, the stars dimmed under the glare of the streetlamps. I got up and walked away from the squat little benches and an oncoming gang of kids.

A bus was rumbling to my rescue down the hill, with a great big “via Alexandra Palace” on its front, and I realised I did want a drink after all."

There is nothing in knowledge that enables it, by any right whatever, to know this world. It is not natural for nature to be known. Thus, between the instincts and knowledge, one finds not a continuity but, rather, a relation of struggle, domination, servitude, settlement. In the same way, there can be no relation of natural continuity between knowledge and the things that knowledge must know. . . Knowledge can only be a violation of the things to be known, and not a perception, a recognition, an identification of or with those things.

What assurance is there that knowledge has the ability to truly know the things of the world instead of being indefinite error, illusion, and arbitrariness?

MICHEL FOUCAULT, Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984. Vol. 3. Ed. James D. Faubion. New York: The New Press. 2000.