I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14
The apostle Paul’s goal was to be like Christ. He knew that he would receive his reward when God’s upward call came. Like Paul, we won’t reach the goal of Christlikeness in this life, but we will receive it instantly in the next: “It has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).
The upward call of God is our motivation to run the race. We should live in light of being called out of this world at any time into the presence of God, where we will receive our eternal reward. We were vile, godless sinners on our way to hell when God sovereignly chose us for salvation that He might eternally make us like His own Son. What grace! What motivation to reach for the goal!
MacArthur, J. (2001). Truth for today : A daily touch of God's grace (Page 149). Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman.
a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull.
Hurriedly he called to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and kill me, so that they can't say, 'A woman killed him.' " So his servant ran him through, and he died.
Judges 9:53-54
Chocolate Rap: Rise of the B Boyz
Injured in a car crash, Chocolate (Hsin-Hung Chen), a b-boy -- someone who melds break dancing with martial arts -- is convinced to give up his dreams of dancing until he's forced to step up his game to save the day. When a crooked b-boy promoter threatens Chocolate's girlfriend, he must dance and fight his onetime rival to rescue her. Chi Y. Lee directs this dynamic drama starring Megan Lai, Akio Chen and Po-Ching Huang.
The Forbidden Kingdom
Kung fu legends Jackie Chan and Jet Li star in this exciting adventure about a martial arts movie fanatic named Jason (Michael Angarano) who discovers a mystical Chinese staff in a local pawnshop that transports him to war-torn ancient China. When he learns that the staff belongs to the mighty Monkey King, who's been unjustly imprisoned by an evil warlord, Jason joins a group of skilled warriors to free the captive king and return the weapon.
The Kidnapping of the President / Deathrow Gameshow
William Shatner stars in the first half of this vintage double feature. Portraying a heroic Secret Service agent, Shatner races against the clock to rescue the president (Hal Holbrook) from the clutches of crazed South American terrorists. Then, in the cult favorite Deathrow Gameshow, John McCafferty plays the slimy host of an outrageous game show that pits death-row inmates against one another in a battle for their lives.
The Legend of God's Gun
When rotten scoundrel El Sobero returns to the desert town of Playa Diablo to shoot it out with the local sheriff, a preacher who handles a six-shooter as savagely as he does his Bible sets out to settle an old score with the bandito. Now their twisting paths of good and evil are headed for a final, bloody showdown. Mike Bruce directs this engaging modern take on the spaghetti Western starring Robert Bones and Kirpatrick Thomas.
Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies: Daytona Jones and the Pearl of Wisdom
Alvin, Simon and Theodore swing into action in this episode of the spoof-filled show. Alvin is adventurer Daytona Jones, and Simon is his faithful sidekick, Seri-Toga. There are cliffhangers aplenty when they set off to find the legendary Pearl of Wisdom. Fans of both the animated series and a certain Hollywood classic will find hilarious in-jokes and more than a few surprises, along with a little swashing and buckling.
Barbie & The Diamond Castle
Barbie and Teresa share this enchanting tale about Liana and Alexa, best friends who find a girl trapped inside a mirror. To free her from the glass prison, Liana and Alexa must put their fears aside and journey to the mysterious Diamond Castle. Along their noble but intimidating quest, the two girls encounter some tricky situations that seriously challenge their friendship and test their courage.
Cats: The Movie
Who says cats can't be trained to do tricks? Actual felines make up the cast of this live-action family adventure, with voices provided by human actors Michelle Rodriguez, Jeremy Piven, Dominique Swain and Jeremy Sisto. When his owners go out of town for the weekend, a cooped-up cat named Marcello ventures outdoors to frolic with a new friend, a pretty kitty called Jujube. This time, when the people are away, it's the cats that play.
Clifford the Big Red Dog: A Big Help
Come play with Clifford the Big Red Dog and his pack of canine, feline and human friends -- including Emily Elizabeth, the lucky girl who picked him out when he was just a runt-of-the-litter puppy -- in this collection of helping-themed episodes. In the title episode, Clifford teams with T-Bone and Cleo to assist others around Birdwell Island. But the trio worries that their efforts won't have a big enough impact. Boy, were they wrong!
Doodlebops: We Love Our Friends
The music-loving Doodlebops -- Deedee (Lisa Lennox), Moe (Jonathan Wexler) and Rooney Doodle (Chad McNamara) -- cut loose and get down with their friends in this kid-friendly collection of four episodes. Audio Murphy tries to help Jazzmin manage her to-do list, and Rooney builds a strange new invention. Later, the band discovers a chicken that lays seemingly magical eggs, and Jazzmin loses her rhyming skills.
Edgar & Ellen: Season 1
Twins Edgar and Ellen have a penchant for making mischief in this Nicktoons animated series based on the books by Charles Ogden and illustrations by Rick Carton, which evoke playful comparisons to the creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe. In the show's first season, the trouble-loving 12-year-olds set booby traps in their parents' 13-story mansion; enroll their beloved pet -- named Pet -- in a dog show; and invent a robot that can't stop cleaning.
Ki-Kids: Astronauts & Medicos
Kio and Kia learn about the careers of astronauts and doctors in this installment of the bilingual animated series. Joined by their friends, Pekas, Kate and Kukie the Giraffe, they discover what it takes to take care of others and rocket into space. Geared toward preschoolers, this program imparts understanding of physical fitness, responsibility and other traits important not just to doctors and astronauts, but to everyone.
Legion of Super Heroes: Vol. 3
Superman teams with some of DC Comics' best-known teen superheroes -- including Brainiac 5, Lighting Lad and Phantom Girl -- to fight crime in the 31st century in this third volume of Season 1 episodes from the Saturday morning cartoon hit. Since the Man of Steel can stay in the future only for so long, the teens will have to hold tryouts to find his replacement. Could an iron-clad mutant named Ferro Lad be the hero they've been looking for?
Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour
Far from home in the small town of Pine Valley, 17-year-old Sarah Landon (Rissa Walters) finds herself staying in a haunted guesthouse, but that's nothing compared to the horrors she discovers when she unearths the secret of the town's witching hour. Plucky Sarah investigates the spooky mystery involving two brothers, a villainous spirit and the town psychic in director Lisa Comrie's haunting yet family-friendly thriller.
Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: Season 1
Sylvester and Tweety tour the world with a little help from Granny in this animated series that blends old-fashioned Looney Toons comedy with whodunit mysteries and capers. In the show's first season, the longtime adversaries travel to Ireland, where someone's lifted the Blarney Stone from its proper place; visit Tokyo, where someone's stolen the world's biggest tuna; and stop over in San Francisco, where greedy thieves try to steal Tweety!
The Best of Barney
Even after 20 years of nonstop singing and dancing, everybody's favorite purple dinosaur, Barney, is still charged up and ready to celebrate with this collection of highlights from his hugely popular show. Relive many of the infectious songs, memorable stories and entertaining activities that are all just part of the fun that Barney and his happy family enjoy.
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dConstruct 2008: Cognitive Bias and Social Design
There have been a couple of great presentations either side of lunch here at dConstruct. Joshua Porter — social web expert and occasional Digital Web contributor — revealed the hidden mental tics (or “cognitive biases”) that designers should be aware of when thinking about how best to attract engage with their users; and Daniel Burka (Pownce, Digg) shared his recommendations on how to approach the key pain points when designing for social interaction.
Keep an eye out for the dConstruct podcasts of these talks; in the meantime, Daniel’s slides are on SlideShare — when I find Josh’s I’ll post the link here too.
Digital Web goes to dConstruct
The UK arm of Digital Web (editor Frances Berriman and me) are at Brighton’s annual dConstruct conference today to hear some of the web’s leading thinkers talk about Designing The Social Web. Steven Johnson is up first, drawing parallels between modern information design and cholera epidemics (London’s “social network of dead people”, as he puts it).
Also in evidence is Clearleft’s Silverback gorilla, dispensing promotional bananas (yes, really) to the assembled geeks. If you’re at the conference, please come and say hi!
Link Roundup: IE8, Google Chrome, 4-Day Weeks, and authentication
New products, plugins, and announcements have been coming thick and fast in the last couple of weeks, but here are some of the interesting posts we’ve been reading:
Peter-Paul Koch summarises the changes in the new beta of IE8, and notes that its “backwards-compatibility mode” doesn’t actually emulate older browsers correctly; Jon Hicks deflates the Google Chrome hype by pointing out that all of their UI enhancements have actually been done before; Chris at Particletree discusses their 4-1/2 day work week arrangement at Wufoo, which includes a 2pm lie-in on a Friday — sounds good to me! and David “Fat Businessman” Thompson muses on OAuth authentication and password anti-patterns — are you careful enough with your passwords?As you may have seen mentioned elsewhere, Mozilla Labs recently released an alpha version of Ubiquity, their new natural language command tool for Firefox. They have big plans for it, but even now the limited functionality to invoke certain commands is extremely impressive. When you find yourself trying to call it up in unrelated applications you realise just how useful it is destined to become in the future.
New Issue: Web Design by Designers
Digital Web is happy to welcome Ringling College of Art + Design’s Kimberly Elam who encourages us to look to critique of design firm websites to inspire our web best-practices in Web Design by Designers. It is a good article with excellent examples analyzing the designs by the best-of-the-best. Anyone looking to add thoughtful critique to their designing (who isn’t?) will benefit from Kimberly’s suggestions.
Our friends over at AbilityNet have been busy testing the official Beijing Olympics website to see how accessible it is for disabled web users — and though things have improved, they found there were still a number of issues.
AbilityNet’s Judith Garman said: “In this special report we asked disabled users to try out the Beijing Olympics website in our interaction lab. Poor information architecture and a lack of adherence to web standards result in an uneven playing field for disabled sports fans across the world. The Beijing website has clearly been developed with some accessibility principles in mind, however these have been poorly implemented — showing how a purely technical approach to accessibility won’t result in a good user experience.”
You can read more comments, access the full report, and watch clips of the testers on the AbilityNet eNation site.
New Issue: Getting the most out of your library
Digital Web is happy to welcome back former editor William Hicks, who returns as our newest Contributing Writer to ask you if you are Getting The Most Out Of Your Library. Most things about technology change quickly—gadgets, trendy languages, technological capacity…even LOL-inducing memes. Ground the volatility with your local library’s free resources (and sometimes free wifi!). As great as the web can be, the time-refined user experience and information architecture of a library offers many inspiring rewards (even if you’re shushed for giggling more often than you would be at home).
There is just 51 days left to register for the Webmaster Jam Session 2008 in Atlanta and space is filling up fast and limited to just 240 attendees. If the price seems high, don’t worry, we got you covered, use the registration code “DIGITALWEB” for a 30% discount!
The speaker lineup includes myself, Jeff Croft, Rob Jones, Dan Rubin, Jina Bolton, Nathan Smith, James Craig, Garrett Dimon, Keith Robinson, Chris Heilmann, Jason Beaird, Ethan Marcotte, John Moore, Brian Oberkirch, Todd Dominey, Ben Chestnut, Rob Weychert and many more!
Today I’m attending the Start Conference in Fort Mason, San Francisco, hosted by Mssrs. Veen and Mason. Rather than live-blog a short event, I’m going to try an adactio-style summary. The conference was in interview format; the first session featured Veen walking Ev Williams (Twitter) and Matt Mullenweg (WordPress) through their projects’ conception and early growth (along with wayback screenshots and back-of-napkin notes, including a pen drawing of my.stat.us, which later became Twitter). Mullenweg made a side point that startups shouldn’t limit their talent pool—a selection bias toward dudes around San Francisco, thereby ignoring ’99.9%’ of talent, including the Ev Williamses or Matt Mullenwegs in the tech “boonies” (though both are male and relocated-to-SF). Beyond the history and business decisions of MoveableType, Mena Trott answered questions about gender assumptions she’s seen during the growth of Six Apart.
The pre-lunch session featured a variety of beyond-the-web entrepreneurs—Ritual Coffee in SF, Rare Device and a Hollywood screenwriter (Josh Cagan) talked about their entrepreneurial efforts. It also featured a foray into business how-to (the room really perked up for that) with various legal/finance experts about taking a side-project into a full-time gig and protecting your work via ‘chain of title’, corporate entity types, non-competes, employment definitions and more.
Post lunch featured the inimitable Merlin Mann, with funny, cogent soundbytes that made the audience immediately look for podcast recording equipment. Wesabe‘s Marc Hedlund and VC David Hornik followed up with a solid talk about motivation and priorities while being a startup CEO, courting (or avoiding) VCs. Which—post a beer ‘n ice cream and Om Malik’s counter-futurism—led up to the pitch round, which (to my mind) was a weird end to a conference strongly focusing on discounting startup/VC myths. Good conference, conflicting conclusions, but a lot of positive support by smart people…as expected. Were we trying to summarize the startup vibe, or evolve it?
On a final note, it was fantastic to attend a conference where there was almost a line for the women’s room.
New Issue: Environment Effects and a Review of "Web Form Design"
Digital Web welcomes Kyle Mueller to our contributor list this week, with a parable about clutter in How Environments, Real And Virtual, Influence Us. Consider your website like it a physical environment, and focus on tidying up to create the experience you want.
Also, Digital Web’s own Matthew Pennell reviews Review: Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski and gives it high marks. While some might expect something interesting from a design mind like LukeW, “Web Form Design” takes web forms far beyond best practices and turns it into a thorough tour of how to design for users.
Internet Explorer User: this page was built with no consideration given to your browser's quirky inadequacies, except to display this IE specific message of course =D, things may not work as you might expect. Sorry for the inconvenience but hey, it's my homepage anyway! Firefox - a web browser that's free, standards compliant, (more) secure, has more features, just flat better than IE.