Budget Fisheye Lens

This one's just a pretty picture. I took this photo with an AstrHori 10mm f8 fisheye lens, at Century City in Cape Town -- close to my home. This bridge crosses one of Century City's canals. It's a good photo, for a lens which costs less than $80 -- half the price of a budget fisheye lens. OBSERVATION: What's the disadvantage, at such a low price? The disadvantage lies in the "f8". It has a fixed f-number, and it is high. That means that the lens is ideal for good lighting, but awkward under dim lighting.

POSTSCRIPT: The AstrHori 10mm lens* is available on Amazon.

*This is an Amazon affiliate link. I earn a commission, at no cost to the buyer. 

Trial and Error

On Saturday, I reported that I had designed a lo-fi amplifier for my seminary classes -- to broadcast WhatsApp voices to the class. Its most innovative feature was a single positive feedback capacitor to replace a preamplifier. On Monday, I had occasion to test my design in class. It failed -- the gain was too high. I took out all of the positive feedback -- and on Tuesday, I tested it again in class. It failed -- the gain was too low. I put some positive feedback back in -- about a fifth of what I'd had at first. Today, on Thursday, I tested my design again in class. It was on target. It worked beautifully. OBSERVATION: It is one thing to test an amplifier at home -- quite another to test it in the classroom. Expect to see it in Silicon Chip magazine in a few months' time. They snapped it up.

Swan Song for a Ugandan

This one's another "pretty picture". In the second semester at Seminary, final-year students deliver a "swan song" address. This is a Ugandan student after his address, who spoke on 2 Corinthians 4:7 onwards: 

"But we have this treasure in earthenware jars, in order that the extraordinary degree of the power may be from God and not from us."

AI-Free Zone

There is a huge controversy in the headlines this week: a prizewinning author is accused of having used AI to write a short story. As a matter of interest, this blog is AI-free. It is generally 100% human generated, which means written by me. OBSERVATION: From time to time, though, I might check whether an intuition, or certain facts, are illuminated by AI. AI might respond: "I can confirm this as follows ..." or "You forgot something as follows ..." Then I make an adjustment, in my own words.

Health, Wealth, and Family

It is generally said that the Prosperity Gospel is a health and wealth gospel. God wants you to be healthy and wealthy. However, there is a third leg that it stands on: family. God will turn your health around, your wealth around, and your family around. This threefold emphasis is found both in the USA and in Africa. OBSERVATION: I am teaching on the Prosperity Gospel, in a course titled "World Religions and Cults". Is it a cult? The seminary and I decided yes.

Inactive Church Members

On the surface of it, inactive Church members would seem to be no more and no less than “dead wood”. From the point of view of praxis, however -- rather than principle -- one needs active members. In fact, there are some serious hazards to "dead wood". Here are five reasons why members of a Church should best be acive:

1. Special quorums may be required for major decisions, and dormant members may make this difficult.
2. There tend to be deep differences of spiritual outlook between active members and dormant members, and these can lead to conflict at critical junctures.
3. With deep differences of spiritual outlook, dormant members may not see the urgency of certain issues, which may lead the Church into stagnation or decline.
4. Dormant members may quickly be activated by someone with an axe to grind, all the more easily because they are out of touch, and
5. The requirement of active membership creates an awareness of the need to be in fellowship in a Church.

OBSERVATION: I have personal experience of all of the above. I need to add, though, that there may be some positives to dormant members. For example, I have seen them mobilised to build a Church. They may also grant special favours when needed..

The Bride

Did I ever post this picture of the bride? I don't think I did. It is wife E, on the morning of our wedding, on 5 January 2013. You may click on the photo to enlarge.

Lo-Fi Amplifier

At seminary, all classes use advanced video conference cameras for distance learning. But I bought a new computer, which turned out to be incompatible with the cameras. What to do? I switched to WhatsApp conference calls, using an amp to broadcast my smart-phone to learners in class. But it broke. OBSERVATION: So I designed and built a new one today -- using just six components -- although it is decidedly lo-fi. I obtained the very small component count by using an amplifier chip (no preamp) with positive feedback.

Malta Lecture Summary

Here's something I created and completely forgot. It's a Gemini Notebook summary of my Malta Lecture last year -- which I titled After the Parts. The subject was holism -- based on a concept I call the "nameless whole". OBSERVATION: I was surprised by the quality of this AI-generated summary. I couldn't do it better.

Manual or Automatic

This one's about a notable event in ministry -- though not my own. A minister's wife, as a teen, suffered a permanent physical injury. This meant that she was impeded in her movement, and couldn't drive a manual car -- but she could drive an automatic. She did a lot of work for the Church -- with the Church being about 1.5 miles distant from the parsonage. When the time came to replace the minister's car, she asked the Church to consider an automatic. But this could push up the price of the car about 10% -- and the petrol bill about 20%. The Church said no. OBSERVATION: The minister and his wife said nothing more about it to the Church. However, it meant a continual struggle for them.