http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog//xshots

I am so excited for the ‘new’ thing in X.org. Cairo is this new thing and it promises all sorts of cool hardware accelerated effects, very much like what we see today in OS X’s Quartz. We finally get that beautiful alpha compositing. We get bouncing windows. We get workspace pagers that update the contents of the desktop live. We get unique widgets. That picture comparing the colour picker widgets looks phenomenal. Finally, it’s about time X catches up and surpasses Windows in the visual effects arena.

To be quite honest I didn't feel like this was going to be an awesome TC at the beginning. I was actually hoping to be on one of the teams my friends were captaining, but that didn't happen. I was hoping to do more than just man the spotlights but that didn't happen. And I was expecting a lot more people. Everything turned out great though.

This time around I actually got to talk to my A/V team a bit more. Last year was a lot more work work work. This year we had the balcony to ourselves and whenever the Media Team was taking an awfully long time to get ready, we talked about random things and threw handbooks so that it got stuck in the side of the balcony where it was impossible to reach.

My team for interactions and rec turned out to be pretty cool. We had awesome coaches and our team captains were also awesome. It's nice to have a team that's loud. I absolutely <em>love</em> the team gear this year. It's a sash; much better than cardboard on a string. It's too bad that I couldn't spend more time interacting with the team, since I had to leave for Media rehersals and the morning spotlighting the MCs doing something weird.

I only did spotlighting during the morning service and media. I must say that we finally pulled the spotlighting synchronization together because of the lack of dark caused by the stained glass. I'm sure Media would have liked the Sun to set at around 3 pm, but it made it so much easier to signal. The Media presentation was awesome. Especially the second day. They really did an amazing job at the end there.

There were only about 400 people at the TDSB conference, which is down from the usual 700-1000. It's really noticeable during meals when all the table calls are going around. The cafeteria is a lot smaller than the gym and we would usually have about double the amount of teams there yelling at each other. I did like the smaller setting, since half of the teams had captains that knew each other.

The workshops were really good. I really liked the High School Pyromania one. It talked about acquiring a vision for the school and stepping out in faith according to what God wants for that place. That means that if God doesn't want the whole school to be surrendered to Him, he doesn't want you to go for it. Learned a lot of new things from that.

The Call and Mission workshop was fine too. That was essentially about your interests and personality and how God has equipped you for your mission with what you already have. God has imbued in you a passion for certain things, like bikes, cars, plants, algebra, chemistry, etc. He wants you to use those passions in ministry. There's also a need for Christians in all sorts of fields and that is where everyone's unique talents come in.

The Frosh Connexxions presentation was interesting too. It was about University life and university fellowships. Not much new information for me, but it was nice to see those pictures of CCFs. Can't wait to get to university.

Worship was amazing, as usual. This was one of the first times where I knew most of the songs already. Last year it was about 90% Hillsongs. This year, it was about 90% "I know this song!" I really like One Way though, what with the cool drum intro.

<em>One way Jesus
You're the only one that I could live for
—
You are the way the truth and the life
We live by faith and not by sight for you
We're living all for you</em>

At the end, I got this lovely glass thing with the TC2005 logo in it because I helped out with A/V. I also got a free TC2005 button. I like them a lot. They go nicely with my orange TC2005 shirt.

What am I going to do next year? Well, if I can find a co-captain and if there's a junior conference, I think I'll be captaining. Maybe I'll go back to A/V for the senior conference, maybe not. We'll see, we'll see.

Goodbye Melchizedek. Goodbye Young Nak. Goodbye TC2005.

So today was the last rehersal for TC Media at the Young Nak Korean Presbyterian Church of Toronto (henceforth known as 'Young Nak'). Young Nak is huge. For example, back in 2002, I thought TCCC was ginormous. Then I went to RHCCC and thought, that was big, but not breathtakingly huge. TCMC was more like, 'this is it?' Queensway was huge. Young Nak is somewhere up there with TCCC and Queensway. It is big. It will fit TC in there no problem. Of course, this turns into a problem for us A/V and Stage Crew-ers.

At RHCCC, we have this lovely little makeshift balcony at the back where both spotlights and the entire sanctuary were in close proximity. We could communicate very easily and we were used to their equipment. Walk into Young Nak however, and the distance is cubed. Yes, we were as far away from the stage as we were high and the spotlights we rented were pretty garbage. Haven't had a look at their A/V booth, but it's way up there. The lack of communication of course leads to lack of spotlight synchronization. And of course, we didn't have our own sound board so we had no mics. Nothing. Everything will be our first go on Monday. Not a position you want to be in.

Ah well. Serving's like that a lot of times. You get in way too deep. The only way out is to trust that God will make the impossible happen.

<a href="http://www.napoleonvsfender.com/">NAPOLEON VS. FENDER</a>
Strange, but interesting. I don't think anyone would get it without having seen <em>Napoleon Dynamite</em>.

Another comedy gem from <a href="http://www.engadget.com/">Engadget</a>. First of all there's the <a href="http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000600024290/">ABOSS i-Pocket</a>, which does not bear any resemblance to a very popular MP3 player. Then we have, the slightly less obvious <a href="http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000433021615/">Micromaxx MM42452</a> which attempts to conceal its blatant scroll wheel rip by being not white, but grey. Finally, we have the <a href="http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000890036534/">IPOD Mini</a>. Take note, they said IPOD not iPod. And by Orient Expert Technology Co., Ltd. no less. Note the incredible resemblance to the Micromaxx. That is what I call mastering the art of knockoff-ing.