Ronald's ScribblingsPosts
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The Irony of Preaching Love
Matthew 22:39 (KJV) calls for all believers to love one another:
…Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
There is no simpler interpretation to that passage—suspend judgement, and simply be accepting and loving, regardless of who your neighbours are; even towards your enemies.
Just recently, over 10,000 pink-attired Singaporeans turned Hong Lim Park into a sea of pink, where they gathered to form a giant pink dot in a show of support for inclusiveness, diversity and the freedom to love.
This is the greatest irony. It took the last marginalised minority of volunteers to preach the message of love to the public. And they successfully got their message across, even through the mass media. Why isn’t the church the one doing it instead, preaching the message of love?
The institution of the church has been too busy judging and criticising areas of society that it has failed to be relevant to take the lead in shaping society’s views. Their actions have left the LGBT minorities alienated and rejected from the body of Christ (and their accompanying social support structures), as if they are not of God’s creation, and that God’s love is conditional.
If the church were to reject them, who shall they turn to? Do they not deserve God’s love and care that is showered through the followers of Christ?
Even if believers are to condemn “their sin” (a discussion for another day), why do we apply double-standards to other sins? Are divorcees condemned to hell the same way LGBT minorities are? Why are followers of Christ tolerant of people who break the covenant of marriage? What about the adulteress? Or those that have pre-marital sex?
I believe that broken people need God’s love and touch (through His believers) the most, and a majority of the LGBT minority are, or are once, broken and/or abused. With untold discrimination and the lack of social support structures, these people have difficulty seeking assistance and support. Bigotry and hatred will not help nor improve things, and there always have been cases of unnecessary suicides.
Thanks to the virulent nature of the Internet, such a case spawned the “It Gets Better” project where strangers from all over post videos on YouTube to encourage LGBT individuals not to waste their lives unnecessarily and to just hang in there as “it gets better”. The institution of the church was no where to be found.
“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
To be a light of this world, and the salt of the earth, how could any follower of Christ ignore this minority? How would believers be able to plant the fruits of the spirit within them? Why would they even want to hear the gospel if no one wants to hear their plight?
It would really be tragic if the status quo is to be maintained any longer. Your thoughts, if any, in the comments section please.
P.S. I avoided using the word “Christian”, even though it implies the followers of Christ, as there are many that call themselves Christian and yet do not follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.
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Singaporean Drivers
Today, I drove to the West and back to the East through heavy rain, and along the way, I saw accidents, and reckless and inconsiderate driving behaviour. Honestly, I don’t think speeding in general is the main cause of traffic accidents. The main cause of accidents should be attributed to two causes: 1) inexperienced driving, and 2) inconsiderate and reckless driving behaviour.
Inexperienced Driving
Although I can say that it is not easy to pass the practical driving test in Singapore, I sincerely believe that the difficultly is misplaced or mis-emphasised. To pass the practical test, a candidate must not accumulate more than 18 “penalty” points, and these points are awarded based on the severity of the mistake committed, ranging from 2 to 4 points, and a special category of instant failure. There is a very great emphasis on performing routine checks and observations within the vehicle for safety, i.e., moving your head when looking at the rear-view mirror, followed by the side-mirror, and then turning your head 90º to check your blind-spot. This is entirely unnatural and drivers will avoid doing it when they actually pass their driving tests.
What needs to be tested is not the action but the reaction to the observation of danger. How will you react when faced with a contingency situation? Is safety a primary motivation for your reaction, or just reacting without consideration?
For example, when faced with a vehicle breaking ahead, some drivers switch lanes without checking for traffic in the adjacent lane, while others have to jam brake and subsequently increase the safety distance. While both reactions are non-ideal, the latter reaction will result in less accidents as the third party involved (the car behind) would have greater reaction time than in the former case (3rd party: driver in adjacent lane).
The practical driving test in Singapore should be split into 2 practical tests. The first, being the vehicle technical handling test, while the second, taken approximately 1 year after passing the first, is an experience and competence test. Passing the first test gives candidates a “provisional” license that will expire 2 years after passing the first test. Provisional licence holders will require the “p-plate” to be displayed at all times and will only have 12 merit points available for deduction.
To convert the provisional license to a full license, provisional drivers will be required to pass the second test before the expiry of the provisional license but not earlier than 1 year from passing date. Should they not be able to pass the second test before the expiry of the provisional license, an extension of 1 year should be granted upon proof of a future booking for the test.
In the second test, the technical capabilities of the candidates are a prerequisite and assumed. Thus, the test can focus more on interactions between other road users in areas once inaccessible in the previous test, such as expressways and other crowded areas.
This way, competence and experience of drivers who actually have a full license will be ensured. People who “just happened to pass” will be forced to drive with a “p-plate” until they can past the second test, for the safety of everyone else.
Inconsiderate and Reckless Driving
It was pouring heavily and it was dark. Yet, there still are drivers that weave in and out of traffic, without their headlights and without signalling.
Exasperating! Exterior lights on a vehicle are for increasing visibility to other road users, not as christmas tree decorations. The significant increase in safety from turning on exterior lights greatly trumps the marginal increase in fuel consumption. For everyone’s safety, please, if the lighting conditions are poorer than a regular fine day, just turn on exterior lights. It’ll be easier to spot you from my side mirrors.
As for signalling, I understand that you may not want to signal when changing lanes on an empty road, but it’s no excuse when cars are tightly packed. That little flick of 3 fingers to signal while changing lanes can actually reduce accidents and save lives.
So, it’s no surprise that whenever it rains any tiny or heavy bit, there will bound to be accidents along our expressways. Until driving habits and graciousness can be improved, we can expect more accidents ahead, whenever road conditions deteriorate a single bit.
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WWDC 2011 (Part 2)
In this second post, I shall share some of my thought on iOS 5 that was announced in WWDC 2011.
iOS 5
With the launch of iOS 5, I can consider iOS to be a fully matured mobile OS platform with little missing usability-related features. Out of the 10 mentioned, there are 3 features that I find very significant.
Notifications
Yes, we’ve all heard it. Delivered late and copied. Most importantly, Apple is not famous for being the first (maybe even for the iPad), they are famous for copying, improvising, and perfecting ideas already out in the market. Chances are, Apple’s implementation is top-notch. It is a shame and disgrace that there are companies that imitate but end up with a half-past-six implementation.
It is also good to know that Apple does look around the market for ideas and solutions to problems apart from developing on them in isolation. I believe that much of Apple’s official solutions are inspired by the work of the JailBreaking community.
I remember that in the days before the iOS SDK was released, jail breakers have found a way to get apps onto the OS. They created their own App Store (named Installer). The app installation UX looked very similar to what we are all used to today.
News Stand
I like their system-wide solution to managing auto-delivery of reading materials, somewhat like the Kindle, without the costs associated. This sets the stage where I can already foresee a future where all our newspapers and magazines are delivered to our iPads, rather than our doorsteps.
iMessage
Taking a page out of RIM’s (the maker of BlackBerry) book, iMessage is Apple’s answer to RIM’s BBM. BB’s initial attraction was its BBM service which allowed inter-device multimedia communication, free-of-charge. What better time than now is it to tap capture RIM’s dwindling market-share for its BBs?
While it may be true that it will only work with iOS devices, we should also not underestimate the install-base and its potential for growth. Given that iMessage is integrated with and supersedes the SMS Messages app, communicating between iOS devices (for free) will be frictionless, while non-iOS recipients will receive (chargeable) SMSes, seamlessly. There will be very little reason why iOS users will not choose to communicate via Apple’s iMessage service.
Yes, Whatsapp does the same thing and its cross-platform, but their server availability is flaky at best. Thus far, I have yet to experience an outage of Apple’s push notifications service, ever since it was launched. I can’t say the same for Whatsapp. At the rate this goes, Whatsapp will be the messaging platform for non-iOS devices.
With iMessage and the soon-to-be-3G-enabled FaceTime, we can see Apple relegating mobile service providers (carriers) to just an “ISP”, putting them back in their rightful place for retarding mobile innovation for a good decade. For all you know, these mobile carriers may just have to offer data plans by default with a mobile minutes and text options as “value-added services”.
That concludes my remarks on iOS 5. Thoughts or comments? Let me know in the commenting section below.
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WWDC 2011 (Part 1)
On 6 June, Apple announced three items—Lion, iOS5 and a fruition of a vision Steve Jobs mentioned in the 1997 WWDC closing keynote I linked to a few days back on my Tumblr—iCloud. The keynote yesterday was one of the longest in recent years; the full stream is available from Apple, an 8-minute long condensed version available on Gizmodo.
I have a few thoughts on each of the products that was announced. In this post, I will cover Lion, and in a subsequent post, iOS 5, leaving iCloud to the last post.
Lion
10 features were chosen to be presented at the keynote. I believe they were chosen to impact developers more than non-developer customers. 7 out of the 10 features demonstrated required developers to adopt new APIs in their applications in order for the features to work as advertised. Hence, end-users may see the features mentioned “typical”.
AirDrop
Of particular significance to me, I like to highlight AirDrop. It is quite revolutionary despite its easy-to-use looks as the amount of technology under-the-hood to get this feature off the ground is no small feat. If you’ve transferred files between devices via either WiFi or Bluetooth before, you would appreciate AirDrop a lot more. Assuming that it works as advertised, gone will be the days of sneaker-net or ad-hoc wireless connections.
Auto Save, Versions, and Resume
With Apple’s attempt to make computing even easier for everyone else, Auto Save, Versions, and Resume, can be considered the first attempt by an OS to implement a system-wide solution with a user-friendly and transparent interface. While this can be seen as a small technical step, it is however, a giant leap in terms of usability and system resilience. Users can now actually trust their computers to remember their work, and no longer have to shepherd their computers with ⌘-s to save their documents as a routine. After all, we use computers for automation, not the other way around.
As for Resume, this feature removes the concept and requirement for users to manage and remember state in their applications. Everything is just as they were when you’d left it. This, in user experience (UX) design, is the principle of least surprise.
Full Screen
Windows had the ability to maximise windows since Windows 95. The Mac never embraced the one-window workflow as it is a royal waste of screen estate. However, with the rise of non-document-based applications, like iPhoto, it now makes much more sense in providing an immersive app experience.
With the sale of portables exceeding desktops, the average screen size has dropped to around 13-15“. These screen sizes are perfect candidates for full screen applications. On the contrary, it would be stupid to use Safari in full screen on a 23” screen—you’ll be seeing more whitespace than content.
Multi-Touch Gestures
Seen as a novelty by some, a life-saver by others, I believe that Multi-Touch Gestures is a way Apple can innovate and differentiate itself from of their PC competitors. To really understand what I mean, try using a PC-laptop trackpad for extended periods of time. The experience on the PC just feels clumsy and erratic. The most important thing is that Apple is betting against Microsoft. Such gestures cannot be executed easily and comfortably with a touchscreen display, 90º upright, and are best executed on the horizontally, on a trackpad.
Mac App Store
The most amazing of all, technically- or usability-wise, is the delivery of the Lion Mac OS update through the Mac App Store. At US$29.99 with App Store rules (install on up to 10 authorised machines), it is the cheapest non-mobile OS upgrade ever. The price just makes piracy impractical, and largely removes financial friction associated with upgrading. Most amazingly, this is probably the first time that I witness an OS being successfully upgraded in-place without the need for restarting and booting to an alternative boot device.
This delivery method does away with physical 3rd-party retail channels, allowing Apple’s dream of interacting directly with all its customers. This way, Apple would be able to fully own the whole user-experience, from discovery, to purchase, and after-sales support. Assuming that they’ll be able to successfully deliver, this seamless instant-gratification will be hard to replicate by other competitors, i.e., Microsoft. I’ll say that this is one step in eliminating the middleman within their distribution channels, moving towards a fully electronic and seamless distribution method, protecting the environment at the same time.
In short, I believe that Lion is designed especially with portables in mind, especially the MacBook Air. It’s also the first keynote where all the machines used for presentation demonstration were portables.
With that, I conclude my thoughts on Lion, the cheapest and most paradigmatic-shifting OS in the non-mobile sphere. Feel free share with me your thoughts in the commenting space below.
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