Macs (at least for some) are not easier to use...

This article is going to be a tech rant. This article will be moved to a later blog. Macs are apparently known for the ease of use. I often tell people that I personally find macs extremely unintuitive and I get funny looks. Today, thanks to one of the group I play with having a Mac I have a real world example where using both Linux and Windows resulted in getting things done faster and simpler than mac.

I hang out with a group of people that play Minecraft. Not a one of us uses the default skin and so we all have to patch Minecraft to make the 64x64 skins that we do use work. While we are aware that the popular patching tool is MCPatcher we have taken to the belief that Optifine does a much better job at this. To install Optifine you have to copy the contents of the zip file into the minecraft.jar file in the minecraft settings directory. Since I'm one of the 4 "techies" of our group of maybe 10 or so, I have had the opportunity to patch Minecraft and do all sorts of other administrative jobs in all 3 OS's. Now just to let you know, patching minecraft.jar is as easy as adding documents to an already existing .zip file. There is no programming or advanced user knowledge really needed to do this task. However, I just got done patching a mac and I would like to show the contrast, therefore below I have listed instructions and experiences with each of the three commonly used OS's in my group.

Linux (Easiest): First you download Optifine. Then double click on the download and hit Extract. Create a folder to extract the contents into, make sure the All Files bullet is checked (it should be by default) and hit Extract. Then make your way to the .minecraft directory (located hidden in your home directory), then the bin directory. Right Click minecraft.jar and select Open with Archive Manager. Pull up the directory you extract the files into and drag those files into your minecraft.jar archive. Done.

Windows (Medium): First you download 7-zip file manager (Winzip and Winrar is capable of this task but with their annoying "pay for me" pop-ups your better off with the free 7-zip file manager). Then you download Optifine. Double click this .zip file and extract the contents into a folder of yours or Windows making (depending on whether you used Windows .zip manager or 7-zip). Then in Explorer go to the top and type %appdata% then click on .minecraft then bin. Then right click the minecraft.jar file and under the 7-zip menu click open the archive. Then drag the contents of your extracted zip file into the 7-zip window and your done.

Mac (Hardest): Download the optifine zip file. When you try to open it, it will be automatically extracted to a folder called optifine located in the same place as your zip file. Then find your minecraft.jar in Library/Application Support/minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar. Then instead of getting to open the minecraft.jar file and dragging the files in you have to extract the minecraft.jar, copy the files into the extracted directory, then do a command+a to all the files inside the directory right click and press compress. This makes an Archive.zip file. Rename the Archive.zip to minecraft.jar, confirm you want to do this and then copy that file back into bin overwriting the old one.

In the long run not only did Mac make this extraordinarily difficult to do by comparison but to top it off, it still didn't really work (Although these are the same instructions given in the forums (Unfortunately I found these instructions after I did this work muddling my way through it)) and I just ended up copying my linux jar over to mac and calling it a day.

The Norway Shooter Is No Fundamentalist Christian

This is an amazing article covering the topic of real Christianity and trying to save a "Christian Culture". Believe it or not they are not always the same thing. Read on.

The Norway Shooter Is No Fundamentalist Christian by Dr. Chuck Missler:

When Anders Behring Breivik shot and killed 68 people at a Labour Party summer youth camp on Norway's Utoeya island and killed another eight in a bombing in Oslo on July 22, the media immediately began bellowing that a right-wing Christian fundamentalist had just committed the most deadly attack in Norway since WWII. The slaughter of dozens of children under any banner is not simply tragic, but abhorrent. Media outlets spoke too quickly when they asserted that Breivik was a fundamentalist Christian, however. Regardless of what Breivik's Facebook page might have claimed, his actions and words demonstrate no relationship with fundamental Christianity, "right-wing" or otherwise. He in fact supports Darwinism and human logic, demonstrating a rationalist worldview rather than a Christian one....

Please click on the link above or right here to finish this article.

Intro...

This blog is being setup as a tool for me to share my diverse interests, opinions, rants and anything I care to talk about. It will also include snippets or articles that I find on the web that interest me.

So what would one be likely to find in this blog. Some of the various subjects I'm interested in consist of Christianity (yes this blog will contain some religious content. Reader discretion is advised), technology, and anything that might catch my eye or interest in the future.

If anyone in the world actually happens to read this blog, I really hope you enjoy!!!