Tag Archives ⇒ Good

How does Truth prosper among us?

March 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

New Eng­land Friend Bri­an Dray­ton recent­ly vis­it­ed Philadel­phia and recount­ed host min­istry on the old Quak­er query, How does Truth pros­per among us?

Friends in the past used “Truth” in ways that went well beyond a sim­ple propo­si­tion or asser­tion of fact, a “truth claim,” some spe­cif­ic con­tent. “Truth” instead con­not­ed some­thing of the action and the real­i­ty of God’s work in the world, as we expe­ri­ence and try to live it.

Used by indi­vid­u­als as a greet­ing, some vari­a­tion of “How does the truth fare with thee?” can be a reminder that the friend­ships of Friends can be spir­i­tu­al­ly deep­er than “yo, whas­sup?” infor­mal­i­ty (at one point Friends would even eschew “Good morn­ing” as a greet­ing on the chance that the morn­ing might actu­al­ly not be com­par­a­tive­ly good).

Essential Mac Apps 2017

November 1, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Oh dear: a few weeks ago Wess Daniels start­ed a Twit­ter dis­cus­sion about the new Mac app Card­hop. In the thread he asked me about oth­er apps which apps I find essen­tial. I thought I’d type up some­thing in ten min­utes but then the draft post kept grow­ing. I’m sure I still missed some. I guess I didn’t real­ize how par­tic­u­lar I am about my com­put­ing environment. 🙂

Bartender

Okay, maybe it’s a bit OCD but I hate clut­tered Mac menubars run­ning along the top of my screen. This app was just rebuilt for High Sier­ra and is an essen­tial tool. I have most every­thing hid­den and have set up a key­board short­cut (the little-used right “option” key) to tog­gle the full menubar icon set.

Fantastical

This is my favorite cal­en­dar app. It sits in the menubar, ready to give a beau­ti­ful agen­da view with just a sin­gle tap. It can open up to a full view. Man­age cal­en­dars is easy and the nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing is suburb.

Cardhop

Just released, this is Fantastical’s newest cousin, an app for man­ag­ing con­tacts from Flex­ibits. It works with what­ev­er you have set up for con­tacts on your Mac (I use Google but iCloud is fine too). Giv­en Flexibit’s track record, and Cardhop’s resem­blance to the dis­con­tin­ued Cobook, this is like­ly to be a win­ner for me.

Favioconographer

I’ve been a Chrome user since the week it debuted but late­ly I’ve been try­ing to switch to Safari, want­i­ng its supe­ri­or bat­tery man­age­ment and sync­ing of book­marks and tabs with iOS. Many of Safari’s annoy­ances have lessoned as Apple itin­er­at­ed with each release. There are enough exten­sions now that I can get by. I am, though, one of those weird peo­ple whom John Gru­ber iden­ti­fied: wannabee Safari users who real­ly like Fav­i­cons in tabs. For­tu­nate­ly, Fav­i­cono­g­ra­ph­er has come along. There are occa­sion­al odd­i­ties (float­ing icons, icons that don’t match site) but over­all it improves the Safari expe­ri­ence enough to make it a win over Chrome.

1Blocker for Mac

Uses the built-in con­tent fil­ter­ing sys­tem built into Mac Safari. Good sync­ing with the iOS app. “Con­tent fil­ter­ing” (aka block­ing) has become an impor­tant secu­ri­ty con­cern and let’s face it: the web runs so much bet­ter with­out all the crap that some sites throw in along with their con­tent. You can whitelist sites that respect read­ers. Hon­or­able men­tion in Chrome or as an alter­na­tive for Safari is uBlock Ori­gin, a great block­er (and dis­tinct from stan­dard uBlock, which I don’t recommend).

Karabiner-Elements

Lets you remap the gen­er­al­ly use­less Caps Lock key. I have it mapped Brett-Terpstra style so that a sin­gle click opens Spot­light search and a hold and click acts as a hyper key (imag­ine a shift key that you can use for any keystroke).

BetterTouchTool

Remap keys and key com­bi­na­tions. With Kara­bin­er, I can use it to have Capslock‑C open a par­tic­u­lar app, for instance.

Tunnelbear

I used to think VPNs were a lux­u­ry but with peo­ple hack­ing in on pub­lic Wi-Fi accounts and the loss of pri­va­cy, I’ve signed up for this easy-to-use VPN ser­vice. One account can pow­er mul­ti­ple devices so my lap­top and phone are secured.

Evernote

It’s been around for years. I cur­rent­ly have 13,000 notes stored in Ever­note, includ­ing every issue of the mag­a­zine I work for going back to the mid-1950s. There was a time a few years ago when I was wor­ried for Ever­note, as it kept chas­ing quirky side projects as its main app got bug­gi­er and bug­gi­er. But they’ve had a shake-up, ditched the dis­trac­tions and have built the ser­vice back up. Most of my projects are orga­nized with Evernote.

Ulysses

There are a gazil­lion writ­ing apps out there that com­bine Mark­down writ­ing syn­tax with min­i­mal­ist inter­faces (Bear, IaWriter, Byword) but Ulysses has edged its way to being my favorite, with quick sync­ing and abil­i­ty to post direct­ly to WordPress.

Todoist

There are also a gazil­lion task man­agers. Todoist does a good job of keep­ing projects that need due dates in order.

1Password

You should be using a pass­word man­ag­er. Repeat: you should be using a pass­word man­ag­er. 1Password is rock sol­id. They’ve recent­ly changed their eco­nom­ic mod­el and strong­ly favor sub­scrip­tion accounts. While I’ve tried to lim­it just how many auto-pulling sub­scrip­tions I have, I under­stand the ratio­nale and have switched.

Airmail

A great email app for Mac and iOS that can dis­play and sort your Gmail accounts (and oth­ers too). Almost too many options if you’re the kind to fid­dle with that sort of thing but easy to get start­ed and great with just the defaults.

 

Google and Apple and clouds

The Big‑G should get a shoutout: it pow­ers the data­bas­es for my email, cal­en­dar, con­tacts, and pho­tos. All my hard­ware has migrat­ed over to Apple, helped in large part by the open­ing up of its ecosys­tem to third-party apps.

What’s also use­ful to note is that all of the data-storing ser­vices are cloud based. If my phone or lap­top dis­ap­peared, I could bor­row a new one and be up to speed almost imme­di­ate­ly. Since many of these apps run on data­bas­es run by Google, I can also switch apps or even have mul­ti­ple apps access­ing the same infor­ma­tion for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. There’s a real free­dom to the app ecosys­tem these days.

Quaker Folkways and Being Patterns on the Interwebs

October 25, 2013
· Martin Kelley

Last Sun­day I have a pre­sen­ta­tion to Had­don­field (N.J.) Meeting’s adult First-day school class about “Shar­ing the Good News with Social Media.” As I pre­pared I found I was less and less inter­est­ed in the tech­niques of Face­book, etc., than I was in how out­reach has his­tor­i­cal­ly worked for Friends.

For an ear­ly, short, peri­od Quak­ers were so in-your-face and noto­ri­ous that they could draw a crowd just by walk­ing a few miles up the road to the next town. More recent­ly, we’ve attract­ed new­com­ers as much by the exam­ple of our lives than by any out­reach cam­paign. When I talk to adult new­com­ers, they often cite some Quak­er exam­ple in their lives – a favorite teacher or delight­ful­ly eccen­tric aunt.

Peo­ple can sense when there’s some­thing of greater life in the way we approach our work, friend­ships, and fam­i­lies. Let me be the first in line to say I’m hor­ri­bly imper­fect. But there are Quak­er tech­niques and val­ues and folk­ways that are guides to gen­uine­ly good ways to live in the world. There’s noth­ing exclu­sive­ly Quak­er about them (indeed, most come from care­ful read­ing of the Gospels and Paul’s let­ters), but they are tools our reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty has empha­sized and into which we’ve helped each oth­er live more fully.

In the last fif­teen years, the ways Friends are known has under­gone a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. The Inter­net has made us incred­i­bly easy to find and research. This is a mixed bless­ing as it means oth­ers are defin­ing who we are. Care­ful cor­po­rate dis­cern­ment con­duct­ed through long-developed tech­niques of Quak­er process are no match for the “edit” but­ton in Wikipedia or some com­mer­cial site with good page rank.

That said, I think peo­ple still are dis­cov­er­ing Friends through per­son­al exam­ples. George Fox told us to be pat­terns and exam­ples in the world and to answer that of God in every­one. A lot of our exam­pling and answer­ing today is going to be on the thread­ed com­ments of Face­book and Twit­ter. What will they find? Do we use Face­book like every­one else, trolling, spam­ming, engag­ing in flame wars, focus­ing on our­selves? Or do Quak­er folk­ways still apply. Here are some ques­tions that I reg­u­lar­ly wres­tle with:

  • When I use social media, am I being open, pub­lic, and transparent?
  • Am I care­ful to share that which is good and eter­nal rather than tit­il­lat­ing for its own sake?
  • Do I remem­ber that the Good News is sim­ply some­thing we bor­row to share and that the Inward Christ needs to do the final deliv­ery into hearts?
  • Do I pray for those I dis­agree with? Do I prac­tice hold­ing my tongue when my moti­va­tion is anger or jealousy?

What strug­gles do oth­ers face? What might be our online folkways?

Philadelphia Metropolis

January 13, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Metropolis - Philadelphia News and Journalism

Metrop­o­lis is a “news, analy­sis and com­men­tary” site from vet­er­an Philadel­phia reporter Tom Fer­rick (Wikipedia). An alum of The Philadel­phia Inquir­er, Tom’s spent the last half-dozen years talk­ing to every­one who will lis­ten about the future of print and Philly news. He’s done talk­ing and is show­ing what can be done on a bud­get bud­get. From “This is Metrop­o­lis,” the lead article:

Local news­pa­pers, TV and radio sta­tions are retreat­ing from in-depth cov­er­age of region­al news either due to eco­nom­ic or audi­ence considerations.

The retreat has been grad­ual, but no one expects it to stop. The com­pa­ny that owns the region’s largest news­pa­pers — the Inquir­er and Dai­ly News — is in bank­rupt­cy. The size of the edi­to­r­i­al staffs at the papers con­tin­ues to shrink. The prog­no­sis for metro dailies here and else­where is not good. The jour­nal­ism prac­ticed by these papers is still robust, but the eco­nom­ic mod­el that has sus­tained it is erod­ing. If these tra­di­tion­al sources of news fal­ter or fail what will take their place?

The site was built in Mov­able Type. The most promi­nent fea­ture is the slideshow dis­play of fea­tured arti­cles. Tom has seen a sim­i­lar effect on anoth­er jour­nal­ism site and a search found the “Slid­ing Hor­i­zon­tal Ban­ner Rota­tor” at Active Den, a great site to pur­chase pre-built Flash files. Mov­able Type entries are out­fit­ted with cus­tom fields to enter images and links. Mov­able Type then cre­ates a cus­tom XML file for the “Main Sto­ries” feed, which is then picked up and dis­played by the Flash ban­ner. In addi­tion, the site uses Google Adsense to pro­vide income.

Vis­it: Philadel­phia Metropolis

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Learning the discernment of self-sacrifice, loss and pride

June 10, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Ear­li­er today I post­ed an excerpt of an inter­est­ing arti­cle on Anabap­tism on my Tum­blr blog and it’s engen­dered quite a con­ver­sa­tion on Face­book about tes­ti­monies and emp­ty forms, etc. It’s true that any form of spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline can get twist­ed into look-at-me hero­ism or lets-talk-anything-but-God group conformity. 

The answer isn’t to give up tes­ti­monies or to hold onto them even tighter, but instead to con­stant­ly remind our­selves about their pur­pose: to learn how to live as an atten­tive peo­ple of God. Here’s what I wrote on Facebook:

I’ve been a most­ly bicycle-riding veg­an for decades, an outspoken
paci­fist and a fre­quent plain dress­er. All of these prac­tices have
aid­ed my spir­i­tu­al growth but also have unearthed new sources of pride
for me to wres­tle with. The self-examination has been prac­tice in
discernment. 

I often think back to the sto­ry of the Good Samar­i­tan. What mat­tered
was­n’t how he was dressed or whether he was rid­ing a bicy­cle. No, what
mat­tered is that he knew enough to know he was being called to
sac­ri­fice some­thing: to get cov­ered in a strangers blood, to aid
some­one who might resent him for it, to lose mon­ey he had earned to put
some­one up for the night. Maybe he had prac­ticed this dis­cern­ment of
self-sacrifice by liv­ing a tes­ti­mo­ny that had chal­lenged him to
nav­i­gate between loss and pride, and maybe he had been brought up in a
com­mu­ni­ty where the val­ue of love was prized above all. The important
thing is he knew to stop and be a true neighbor.

A Military Draft Would be Good for Us

November 12, 2003
· Martin Kelley

From Johann Christoph Arnold, a “provoca­tive argu­ment that a mil­i­tary draft might not be a bad idea”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/1003-arnold.php. “Decid­ing which side to stand on is one of life’s most vital skills. It forces you to test your own con­vic­tions, to assess your per­son­al integri­ty and your char­ac­ter as an individual.”
It’s a pret­ty dras­tic wish. I don’t real­ly wish it on today’s youn­gins’ (I’m not sure Arnold is quite con­vinced either). But I will give a snip­pet of my own per­son­al sto­ry, since it’s kind of appro­pri­ate to the issue: when I was a senior in high school my father des­per­ate­ly want­ed me to attend the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my. I went on inter­views and even took the first phys­i­cal. The pres­sure to join was sort of akin to the pres­sure young peo­ple of ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions have faced with a mil­i­tary draft (except more per­son­al, as I was essen­tial­ly liv­ing with the chair of the draft Mar­tin Kel­ley board). I was forced to real­ly think hard about what I believed. I had to rec­on­cile my romati­cism about the navy with my gut instincts that fight­ing was nev­er a real solu­tion. My father’s pres­sure made me real­ize I was a paci­fist. With my deci­sion to forego the Naval Acad­e­my made, I start­ed ask­ing myself what oth­er ram­i­fi­ca­tions fol­lowed from my peace stance. Almost twen­ty years, here’s Non​vi​o​lence​.org.
Arnold’s argu­ment, right or wrong, does reflect my story:
bq. A draft would present every young per­son with a choice between two paths, both of which require courage: either to heed the call of mil­i­tary duty and be rushed off to war, or to say, “No, I will give my life in the ser­vice of peace.”