I recently switched from Colloquy to Irssi. It seems like a step back, after all Irssi is a text based command line client, but it’s very useful. There are some good tutorials linked to from the irssi documentation site, especially to get a hang of window management and using it with screen, another nice utility I started using lately. With both screen and irssi, I can now be on IRC without having a window open and switch back to it whenever I can or want. I can also watch as many chats as I want at the same time.

I installed irssi on my Mac using Macports with the +perl variant, but had tons of trouble getting the Growl perl bindings compiled because some libraries were missing in the Macports perl. Since I know nothing about perl, I decided to just compile irssi with the built-in perl and break the Macports rule of having everything contained in the /opt/local directory.

To do that, just do

sudo port edit irssi

--with-perl-lib=/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/

sudo port install irssi +perl

If anyone can figure out an easier way, maybe to use all the libs that OS X comes with in the Macports perl, by including them in perls @INC, let me know, since I can’t figure it out

Finally, if you would like to hang out in IRC and keep up with Web-Empowered Church stuff, join us in ##wec on Freenode!

Found some Youtube fun on Way of the Mater Radio

In a brilliant move we decided to replace our ugly, painted cinder block stairs with nice, wooden ones in our yard to go up on the second floor.

We got the stairs fully assembled for a reasonable price and the builder told us they move those with two or three people. We drove them home and tried to lift them out of the pickup… I am guessing 1000 lbs easy. Maybe they move them with two or three guys using a forklift, but there is no way two or three people can move these.

So after measuring the width of our yard gate and concluding the stairs were too wide to fit through, my great plan was to lift up the stairs over the 6 foot fence with four people. Short story: It didn’t happen. Long story: We lifted it for about 30 seconds without moving after which we almost dropped it on the person lifting them from underneath (me).

Taking the stairs apart made the wood splinter, so we came up with awesome plan #2: Dig out the fence post. Myka started that yesterday and our fears of it being set in concrete were confirmed. I continued digging out the concrete today until I discovered that the concrete was connected to the foundation of the house. Yipee.

Now the last straw is taking the stairs apart. I got most of the relevant screws out already. We still have to lift each part over the fence, of course. I hope that we can get this nightmare over with this weekend; the stairs have been sitting in our front yard for about 2 weeks now…

We had a good time last weekend with Myka’s parents out in the panhandle. I took about 550 pictures of mostly wildlife that you can take a look at on our flickr. Well, of the 550 we only kept 50 or 60; I really enjoy my new camera! Pictures are cheap so I take a lot of them. Highlights include a sunset over a wheat field, a Kestrel falcon, several other species of birds, a coyote, and a collared lizard. Below are the two albums, the first one of Cimarron County, the second of the Black Mesa State Park. Enjoy!! (There is some more text after the albums )

  

The first few days back home were a drag because both of us had such a fantastic time hanging out and being outside most of the time, but something good came out of it: we made a plan for Myka to stay home with Eli in about a year or so. Whereas before it looked impossible, now it only looks almost impossible… Please pray for this to work out since it’s clearly biblical and the way God intended it to be. It’s also the situation that would make us both the happiest, not to mention the benefit for Eli.

And as part of a shameless plug I added a Systematic Theology by Chafer to my Amazon Wishlist. You know what to do…

In other news, my unborn son just kicked me in the face after I talked to him. He either really likes me or I scared him. Either way, that was pretty exciting!

Found some more cool Christian Hip Hop last week. It’s the GrassRoots EP by Lamp Mode Recordings and you can get it on their website for the one time fee of nothing. Check it out, it’s good stuff and theologically sound.

Way of the Master Radio played some excerpts from one of their artists, Shai Linne. I really liked it so his two albums are in the mail right now and should be here tomorrow or so! Yay!

We got our baby crib last night, and after promptly assembling it, now have a functioning -sans mattress- baby crib in Eli’s room!

I just finished the second year of the Roundtable here at Trinity. After the Roundtable of Theology comes the Roundtable of Ethics, one year of agressive discussions on ethical topics. I learned a lot, and it was a great honor and privilege to attend.

I can now add another certificate to my collection, together with a little trophy, for lack of a better word, that reads “The Roundtable – Testes Veritates. In recognition of completing : Roundtable of Ethics 2007-2008. Christoph Koehler”

I am proud to display those and gladly take out the somewhat nicer diploma looking certificates I got from the honors society that don’t know me and just want my money, to display the ones I actually did something for. I pray that I would use the skills I learned for God’s glory to witness to the truth of his Word.

With a baby on the way we saw the need to invest into a camera that’s a little bit more capable than our 5 year old current one, so after doing a lot of research we decided to get the Canon Powershot S5 IS, pictured below.

It has 12x optical zoom, 8 and some mega pixels, image stabilization, a 36mm-432mm lens (35mm equivalent) with f:2.7-3.5 aperture wide and tele respectively, up to 8. It’s not a dSLR, but very much like one. The reason we didn’t go with a dSLR is that we wanted video as well as photos, which dSLRs can’t do. This one can, and you can even use the full zoom during movie shooting.

Here’s the first good picture (you may respectfully disagree ) I took out my office window. I think it’s a young red-winged black bird, but correct me if I am wrong. Settings: 1/400, f3.5, 12x zoom, ISO 125. I also cropped some of the surroundings away.

Boy! Just got back from the second ultrasound appointment and it’s very obviously a healthy boy! His name is Eli Noel and he will spend a few more months with his mom before seeing the light of the world!

We are thrilled to pieces and are already planning a soccer team with all the other boys who are on the way among all our friends. Of course Eli will be able to beat up all the other kids and <insert more manly stuff here>.