I’m still a tech nerd most days. I’m a fan of vintage computers and new shiny tech. I use my iPhone 4 everyday and enjoy an old dual-core G5 Powermac at home.

I like to get a nice long life out of any computer I own.

The challenge is that once a company abandons a platform, software usually follows suit. My G5 Powermac is an example. It works great and is plenty fast, but Leopard was the last operating system from Apple that supports this aging Mac. There’s still a lot of good software in the Mac world for this machine, but a bunch of applications I use are phasing out PowerPC support.

Someday soon, I will need to upgrade to a nice little Mac Mini or something.

But in the meanwhile, open source software is here to the rescue.

For example, web browsers for PowerPC Macs are a dying breed. With focus on faster Javascript performance and speed, speed, speed, there won’t be a version of Safari 5.1 and beyond for my computer. Camino is great, but it uses an older rendering engine that won’t be updated. Firefox has abandoned PowerPC entirely. Other browsers will follow suit as the WebKit engine is no longer updated for any PowerPC machine.

Enter TenFourFox - an open source PowerPC centric version of the latest Firefox, specially optimized for the Mac. It’s pretty great, keeping older machines up in the game for a while longer… even though it does indeed make some design tradeoffs that require workarounds (no flash/no plugins).

This is, in my opinion, the strength of open source software - the power of community over corporate decisions. For a while longer, old PowerPC machines have life. As long as vintage Mac users have resources and time, open source software at least provides the opportunity for outdated machines to be relevant.

This is why open source software is pretty cool, in my opinion.

But… it doesn’t always work. You can practically name on one hand the number of open source software packages that are actually good. (There are lots on the server side of thing, by the way.) On the desktop, you end up mostly with bad clones of popular commercial packages, like Libre Office/Open Office (Microsoft Office) and GIMP (Photoshop).

Now don’t get me wrong - I love the idea of these applications - free alternatives for work, home, and business. But, they still got to be good… or at least good enough.

LibreOffice is the offshoot of Open Office that supposedly had big bug fixes for speed and usability. Guess what? It’s bloated, slow, disorganized, and disappointing. I’ve tried to write papers in it, but it offers no upgrade over any version of Microsoft Office. (For a Mac user, Microsoft Office 2004 or any version of iWork trounces it easily. Heck, go get Bean - a small, fast, well-designed basic word processor done right.)

GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop but only in desire. It’s a terrible, disorganized application that teases you with great features but ultimately is very limited. Just the other day, I attempted to use GIMP to do something as common place as converting an RGB image into a CMYK format. There is no CMYK support for GIMP, just convoluted workarounds. A waste of an experience.

Yes, these kinds of things provide a glimpse of a future where technology and software are available for lots of people, even those without financial resources to afford them. It’s a great movement and effort, but it needs more polish. Open source projects still need lots of vision and direction. In the case of TenFourFox, I think it works. In the case of numerous others, there is work to be done.

Meanwhile, the good people at Low End Mac keep fighting the fight.

I sure haven’t. Thanks!

I’m all over this video of some small group conversations at the 2nd day mission track at General Assembly 2011. Talking about DC! Plus, Spencer Burke (of the Ooze) is a fun guy.

Going to enjoy some reading through the rest of summer:

Many Colors (Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church) by Soong-Chan Rah

Missional Worship by Cathy Townley

& … a new bible, but specifically the Common English Bible, which is my new favorite translation (at the moment)

Yes.

Doing an Advent tune in the midst of Lent.

But it works.

Aaron Niequist’s “End of the Story”

we say – hate doesn’t win

we’ve seen – Redemption in skin

we say – let the celebration begin!

we’ve seen the end of the story and Heaven wins

Sometimes, you can leave for a weekend and take a single bag with you for all you need… and yet come back loaded down with burdens, thoughts, questions, and hopes.

That was my weekend in a nutshell.

Great… but heavy.

Ever felt like that happened to you?

I’m late to the game, but I finally decided that I’m giving up something for Lent.

In the past, I’ve given up mostly negative things and have written about it. By negative, I mean - self criticism, cynicism, etc.. I’d suggest that too if you felt like giving up chocolate or cheese or whatever seemed a little pointless. Consider Lent an opportunity to improve your life rather than an opportunity to abstain from something you like.

But this year, I decided to give up a beverage I desperately love.

If all goes well, I am going to extend this Lent project indefinitely, beyond the initial 40 days. Just quit cold turkey.

I’ll leave it up to you to guess what beverage I am giving up.

Journey on through the desert, my friends.

In my sermon today about love, I used a bunch of quotes from Mother Teresa, that I in turn, got from this great sermon out of the Gathering in Cincinnati. Cool stuff.