A very quick reflection. Not something that has been mulled over or carefully crafted. These thoughts are rough, with jagged edges. But, I thought others might find this reflection helpful, and so here it is:

2 Corinthians 4:7-9

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

At times I feel very strong. I have been put here to protect her/him. I have been put here to take on the powers of darkness. I have been put here to witness to the ends of the earth. And I have been given the strength and the ability to do these things.

But then...

But then...

At times I feel so very weak. I am so fragile. Just like a clay pot. One small stumble and I feel my heart break into a million pieces on the hard floor of reality. How can I protect her/him when I cannot protect myself? How can I battle against the evil and sorrow I see and feel? How can I bear a message of healing when I am not myself healed?

I cannot.

And then, I am reminded. This clay pot, this earthen vessel...it was never meant to remain whole. Into this vessel God placed a priceless treasure, a treasure that has been veiled. As I am broken, as my pride cracks into a million pieces, the treasure shines forth. "Not your strength...not you...me. I have given you the gift of my life. Hide it no longer."

Broken, so that me might not be crushed. Broken, so that we might not be driven to despair. Broken, so that we might not be forsaken. Broken, so that we might not be destroyed.

And so, like Gideon's army, I cast down my own clay vessel, breaking it open to reveal the true treasure--the light of Christ.

God is working in me right now. I'm not sure how, or what, or even why. But it is unmistakably that feeling--that terrible, frightening feeling of surpassing joy.

Just in case you haven't heard, Ubuntu 9.10 was released today! I'm really excited to be upgrading sometime next week (I would have done it today, but duty calls) as I've been hearing nothing but positive reviews about this latest version of my favorite operating system.

If you've never heard of Ubuntu before, definitely give it a look. It is an entirely free (as in no $$!), open-source operating system built on Linux. I've been using it exclusively on all of my computers for about 6 years now.

You can download the CD from here. Just download the file and then use a CD-burning program to burn the disk image onto a CD. (NOTE: Don't just burn the file onto the CD. The file is an image of the entire CD. If you're not quite sure what to do, just leave a comment, and I'll be happy to help you out.)

This is Part I of II in a blog series of my thoughts on justification.

Recently, thanks to a long commute, I've been whiling away the driving time by listening to audio books and podcasts. One podcast I especially enjoy is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Google it. If you're interested in history (especially Ancient Western), you'll enjoy Hardcore History.

The past several months, Carlin has been doing a series on the Eastern Front of WWII, on which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany battled from 1941 until the end of the war in 1945. Most of my interest in World War II has been relegated to the Pacific Theater, largely because that is where my grandfather fought. I've read a great deal about the massive sea battles, and the horrible fear of the soldiers fighting hand-to-hand in the great dug-out anthills of small tropical islands. But I had never really read much at all about the Eastern Front. And I think I am thankful for that. What Dan Carlin describes in his 4-part series is truly horrible. All war is horrible, no doubt, but there are extremes even within this gruesome sport, and it seems that both the Nazis and the Stalinists crossed over all extremes during their bitter struggle. The level of hatred was truly shocking to me.

Of course I have read of such hatred before. Accounts of the holocaust and martyrdom are common fare in schools these days. But there was just something about the way Dan Carlin described the hell of the Eastern Front that made me take more pause than usual. I began to think.

I began to think, as we all do from time to time, about what might have been revealed about my own character had I lived through such desolation and hopelessness. How would I have stacked up? Would I have given in the the thirst for revenge as the Soviets did when they pillaged and raped Prussia with abandon? Would I have revealed my own lust for cruelty like the Nazis did in their treatment of the Soviet women and children as they ransacked through the Russian countryside?

Most of all, though, I began to wonder about my faith. In these past several months, I feel I have grown more in my Christian walk than I have in many years. And I feel that I have begun to understand a little of the sheer power of God's transforming grace. And yet, I am forced to wonder, is it easier believing in the authority and power of perfect goodness while living in a relatively good state of affairs? My life is easy. I complain, but when I think about the physical agony of the populace of Leningrad, not to mention the absolute psychological desolation that must have resulted from slowly watching your family starve to death, and then being forced to feed upon them in order to survive...how can my life even compare? How can my sins even compare? My sins, as grievous as they must be...the evil I have seen and known and inflicted, as bad as it is...they are nothing to what was done during that "Great" War. And I am forced to wonder, possibly for the first time, along with Voltaire and Wiesel, is God's authority and goodness really able to overcome such horror? Can it ever really be washed away? Is Christ's blood really that potent?

Lord, may it be so! Here, if ever, is a place for your liberating judgment to take place! Burn away the chaff that clings to the souls of these men and women. Glorify them in your righteous grace. For if you cannot, there can be no hope for our world! Let us not forget, after all, that even as I sit in the relative peace of my couch, drinking my soda and eating my chips, evil endures...death continues to cast fear...atrocities consume innocent lives.

Well, things are starting to settle down a little bit. At least for the next week or so. :) The summer has finally come to a close, and with it the end of summer church programming. I always forget just how busy things can be in a youth program over the summer. Usually I think of the warmer months as a period of reduced activity...dare I say, even 'vacation'? That was not the case this year, at least.

In addition to the summer church activities (like Kids Camp, extra preaching duties, lock-ins, retreats, missions), I've also been busy trying to find a new place to live. I was living in Princeton, subletting a seminary apartment, until this past week. Unfortunately, September was my deadline, and I was promptly kicked out. (That's not really true. I was subletting from a friend who would have been happy to let me stick around for a few more weeks.) I was lucky enough to find a really nice place within my price range (which is admittedly laughable for New Jersey--$500/month). The only problem with the place is that it is an hour commute from the church. That's a pretty big time commitment, and Butch protests the increased work load by stubbornly demanding more fuel. Silly girl. Even though I really love the area of my new abode, I'm still going to be looking for something a little closer. I already have one possibility I'm going to check out in Flemmington on Wednesday. I'll let you all know how that turns out. If I do end up leaving my new place, however, I think I will already miss the beautiful country of northwestern Jersey. I have already decided, even after only being out here for a week, that if I ever come to put down roots in Jersey, this will be the place.

Other than the typical news of keeping busy, I am doing well. I have not been able to write nearly as much as I would like, but that's no surprise. I do promise to post up a few more sermons soon. Right now I'm just waiting to get the CDs from our media guy at the church. I would post the transcripts, but I've switched to an outline approach in my sermon prep. I'll eventually get the sermons transcribed, but not in the near, near future.

The Cowon D2+. It's hard to know where to begin in describing this little player. This is partly because it is difficult to know what to compare it to. It has a touchscreen and movie capability, so one might compare it to an iPod Touch. But this would not really be a fair comparison for either player. The Cowon D2+ is much smaller, lacks any sort of internet connectivity, and certainly does not boast the sleek elegance and applications of the iPod. However, the Cowon D2+ is nearly $100 cheaper. And anyone who has any experience with Cowon will tell you that one doesn't by a Cowon audio device for internet or applications. One buys a Cowon for sound quality. And the Cowon D2+ blows any Apple device out of the water on these grounds. Even on cheap headphones, the difference is noticeable. (In the interest of full disclosure, I do not own an iPod Touch. These comparisons were made using a friend's iPod.)

So what should we compare the D2+ to? Really, it's an amazingly affordable audio player with video playing tacked on. It is better to think of it along the lines of one of the previous generation iPod Videos. It bridges the gap between the cheap mp3 players that can do video (like the Samsung S3) and those mp3 players that really do do video, like Cowon's own S9, or an iRiver Clix.

Design-wise, the D2+ suffers, as many of Cowon's products do. It doesn't look all that great. It's chunky. Brick-like. However, what it lacks in style, it makes up for in build quality. The D2+ has some heft to it. It feels substantial in your hand. Though made of plastic, it doesn't feel plasticy, if that makes any sense. And even given it's squarish frame, it still fits quite comfortably in a front pocket.

But design is more than just externals. The thing that really sets the D2+ apart, in my mind, are all the conveniences that it brings with it. This is where it really starts to look nice compared to the iPods of the world. First of all, it is charged and docked using a standard USB mini-jack. You know, the kind that you use for just about everything else that you attach to your computer. I cannot stress how convenient this is. I have a single USB cord plugged into my computer that I use to connect my video camera, my two digital photo cameras, my phone...and I can just use that same plug for my D2+. Even more importantly, if I ever lose my cord, I don't have to send off to the manufacturer, or buy a specialized chord. I can just use one of my million extra USB cables I have lying around. Even better than that: I can charge my D2+ in my car thanks to the USB cable to cigarette-lighter plug that came with my GPS. I really don't understand yet why every mp3 player (or every peripheral device, for that matter) doesn't just use this wonderful standard plug.

Another great feature of convenience of the D2+ is the SD Card port. That's right...this is one of the few players you can find nowadays that is actually expandable. I bought the 8gb version, but with the purchase of an inexpensive sd card, I can double, or even triple the D2+'s storage. (Yes, indeed...it is SDHC compatible.) And I love the convenience of popping in/out the sd card to load up new podcasts rather than plugging the player in. What can I say, I'm lazy. I like the convenience, and the knowledge that if I ever get around to filling up the 8gb of space I have (which I will), I'm a 16gb SD card away from plenty of extra breathing room.

To round out the external ports and buttons, you'll also find a proprietary I/O plug (for Video-Out or an external microphone), a standard headphone jack, a power/hold slider, a built-in microphone, volume buttons, and a menu key. It's actually roughly the same configuration you get with the iAudio 7 (with the exception that the iAudio 7 used a standard connection for the Line-In).

Now, let's talk about the user experience. The D2+ is touchscreen. This worried me at first. I'm not a huge fan of touch screens. I like real, physical buttons. Furthermore, my experience with the iAudio 7 did not give me much confidence in Cowon's ability to design an intuitive menu-system. And with a touchscreen, and intuitive menu-system really is a must. Now, to be honest, the UI of the D2+ is...okay. It's actually much, much better than I feared. But it is still a little convoluted, and it takes some getting used to. Some things are brilliant. Others...not so much.

Let's talk about the brilliant things first:
1) The play/pause rew/ff buttons are great. Basically, whenever you're on the playing music screen, simply pushing your finger anywhere on the screen will bring up the play/pause button in the middle, and the rew/ff buttons on either side. They are big enough that it's easy to hit them. It works so well, I can even control the player on the touchscreen without even looking. It really is that good. Just push the screen once to bring up the menu, and then push the middle of the screen to play/pause, or either side of the screen to skip forward or backwards. Brilliant.

2) The menus are context-sensitive. I really like how when you bring up a menu while you're playing an audio file, the menu options are designed to be the ones you would most tend to use while playing an audio file. It makes a lot of sense, but I have rarely seen it done this well. The only thing that would make this better would be to have the menus user-editable.

Not so brilliant things:
1) There are a million options (which is certainly not a bad thing), but they're hard to discover and difficult to get to. This is problem I have run into with just about anyone except Apple. Apple solved this problem by not letting you change anything. But this is no solution. I love how tweakable the D2+ is. But some major work needs done on consolodating menu items and categorizing things properly. I'm sure I'll figure it out in time. But really...why should I have "Display", "General", and "System" settings all in very different places, controlling very similar things? Put it all in one place.

2) There is no way to delete files without syncing the device to the computer. I really don't get this one. On the iAudio 7, I could delete a file even while I was playing it. My sansa clip (which I will review next week) can delete files without any problem. I realized that it may seem strange to want to delete files--but when I'm finished with a podcast, I don't want it hanging around on the system. I get confused which one's I've already listened to. I want to just delete it and be done with it. As it is, though, I have to plug the D2+ into a computer before I can do anything about it. This could easily be fixed in a firmware update, which I really hope happens...but I won't be holding my breath.

Aside from these major things, there are many small pluses and minuses we could go into. But that would get boring really quickly. Let me just summarize by saying that the UI is not as nice as an iPod, but quite usable, and a big improvement from the other Cowon devices I have used in the past.

Now, before this review gets too long, I just want to point out a few other pluses and minuses to the D2+ as a system. The only real minus that I think deserves mentioning is that this really should not be considered a video player. Yes, the screen is fantastic, and the fact that you could just load your videos onto an SD card is really convenient. Except that Cowon has messed up again and severely hamstrung the D2+'s video playing ability. You are limited to playing videos that are encoded in MPEG-4 (XVid works fine), which is not so bad, until you realize that the resolution must be 320x240. It's a huge pain to have to re-encode all of my videos to play. Perhaps the system just isn't beefy enough to downscale a 640x480 file, but it's still annoying. And at this point, a little h.264 love would be nice.

To end on the good points, let's begin with the absolutely unbelievable battery life. I experienced this with the iAudio7 as well, but I'm even more impressed with the D2+. The thing just lasts forever. I'm upwards of 40 hours right now, and I'm still showing about a 1/3 charge. Can you believe that? 40 hours! And this is not just listening to music. I've watched a little over two hours of video on it as well. I suspect that part of the reason that the D2+ seems a bit hefty and chunky is due to the battery. It must be some battery to last this long! But this is really something that I think other mp3 player manufacturers should realize--I'm willing to have a slightly stubbier body if it means I'm not having to plug the player in every day to charge!

Second, (and this is the main reason I buy Cowon products to begin with) the D2+ will play just about every file format under the sun. Sure it will do your standard MP3, WMA, and WAV. (If you use the old firmware, you can even play AACs.) But more importantly, it will play your OGG Vorbis, FLAC, and even APE files. I'm a huge fan of FLAC, myself, so this really is a major plus in my book.

Well, that's about it for the Cowon D2+. I really recommend this little guy, especially if you're a linux-lover who likes using open formats like Vorbis and FLAC. Even if you're not a linux geek, though...the D2+ is really hard to beat for the price.

I know I promised to write more regularly. And I shall. July is almost over, and with it Kids Camp will be finished up. That means a little breathing room in terms of free time. Nonetheless, I know that I need to devote more time to writing. Not just here on this blog, but in general. Even my sermon writing has suffered recently.

A while back, I asked what people would like to see appearing on the blog, and one of the suggestions was linux stuff. Now, honestly, as much as I like playing around on linux, that hobby has also suffered recently. Nonetheless, I still use Ubuntu as my only operating system. And so, I thought that I might share a few things about my experience as an everyday linux user. Interestingly, my first foray into this series won't have a lot to do with linux. Instead, we're going to talk about MP3 players.

Last year, while I was out working on the farm, I finally decided that I was tired with putting up with the closed nature of my iPod. I hated how difficult it was to get music onto the thing if you didn't want to use iTunes. And I hated how limited it was in terms of file format. And, though I doubt this would be an issue for many people reading this blog, the iPod is just not very well designed when you're primarily going to be using it while out on a tractor, or while tossing hay bales from a pickup truck. I don't think Steve Jobs really had that demographic in mind when he designed his player.

So, after looking around for a while, I finally settled on a Cowon iAudio 7 to replace my iPod Video 30Gb. And I was super happy with it when it first arrived. It fit all the criteria I was looking for. First of all, it was fully linux compatible. It looks like just a normal usb drive when you plug it in, and you can drag and drop your music onto it without having to resort to any proprietary programs. Also, it played just about every file format under the sun--most importantly for me, ogg vorbis and flac. It had physical buttons (albeit a little finicky) so that I could use the player in my pocket. And (as an added bonus) the battery life was ridiculous. It could easily go for 50-60 hours before it would quit on me.

Unfortunately, I broke the wonderful little player a few weeks ago. I broke the screen. It will still play music, but it is impossible to navigate, now. So, basically, I have a slightly obese iPod Shuffle.

So, about a week ago, I began researching linux-friendly MP3 players once again. I thought about just buying another iAudio 7, but after using it for about a year, I had enough niggles that I thought I could do better. Mainly, I wanted a player that truly had physical, tactile buttons. The iAudio 7 had a touch surface that was just annoying to use, and then 3 programmable buttons on the top edge. I basically used the top buttons for everything. This time around, I wanted to find a player that was designed for those of us that like the feeling of clicking in a button rather than swishing our fingers over a surface. What can I say? I'm old fashioned that way.

In addition to the Real Button requirement, I still wanted a player that could play my ogg vorbis and flac files (which was, by far, the most difficult requirement).

I ended up with the following players on my short list:
Cowon S9
Cowon D2 or D2+
Cowon iAudio U3
Samsung YP-U4
Samsung YP-P2
iRiver T7 Volcano

Now, these players all vary in price considerably. And not all of them met all of my criteria. What I ended up doing, though, was rather strange. I decided I would try out two players. One from my short list. And another one that was completely out of left field. These are the two players I bought:

Cowon D2+

SanDisk Sansa Clip

Thursday, I'll go into more detail about my experience with the Cowon D2+.

Wow, life has been busy. I guess that is to be expected with summer church programs. Last week was VBS, and all this month our church is putting on a summer Kids Camp. Basically, it means church every day except for Saturday. And that is a loose exception. We still have youth activities Saturday evenings. I just made it clear that I would not be planning or leading those activities. I'll probably still come just to hang out with the kids, though. Sabbath is such a difficult thing to keep. But I'm trying to be firm about its necessity in my life.

I will write more later. I think Sunday evenings may become my update time...unless the days during the week start looking a little more free.