Journal of the Week

Posted on April 13, 2026 by timlyg

4/16/2026 Thursday

Just came across this program called GauntletAI, highly selective bootcamp, but once selected, you go through a FREE 10 week program (3 weeks remote, and you will be flown into Austin, Texas for free, free hotel, free food, for 7 weeks) and after that your alleged starting salary is $200k, building AI projects for companies that partnered with GauntletAI for hiring. GauntletAI is supposedly paid by the hiring partners in some sort of commission. Gauntlet's founder is Austen Allred, also CEO of the for profit bootcamp Bloom Institute of Technology (formerly known as Lambda School) which has faced criticism for its claims, so it's still hard to tell if GauntletAI is all it's claiming to be, despite the fact that it says this is not for everyone by design, highly competitive (if you fail the projects you may be put and some sort of probation and then kicked out), and some has apparently benefited from it.

I note this down as a reference to AI Bootcamps. It seems to me that these AI (or developer) bootcamps are quite serious about the claim of their results. Folks gone in, they get good paying jobs after that. But I think I still need more convincing, and Bootcamps like Gauntlet seems to require me to quite my job to bet on the 10 week program, despite everything from transport to room being free.

Sore muscles for last two days, because wife made me do pushups (I think 30+) for out of anger yelling at her (I was sick of her not placing fragile things on the floor but not specifying where when I was moving them on top of a newspaper on the dining table, except for waiting for me to place it there and complained about it, so I exploded: "Stop it!" at her, which I apologized after a shower).

4/15/2026 Wednesday

The Pope and J.D. Vance (and Trump) are now in a theological feud on Just War theory, as the Pope called Trump's Iran war (EPIC FURY) as unjust. I am alerted by BBC on this news when Vance's previous brawl with the same Pope on issue of migrants was mentioned, with Vance calling attention to Ordo Amoris (order of charity/love) where one needs to focus on his own citizens (family) rather instead of immigrants (Pope's view). I do find myself leaning to the Pope's position, though not entirely due to anthropocentric elements. Ordo amoris makes sense only when we talk about responsibility to the family (or fellow citizens if you really want to go there). Responsibility really has nothing to do with love or charity, because it is beyond the kind of love one may put in the order. Rome/the Pope could rebut this easily with the good Samaritan parable. As for Just War theory, I would say Trump's administration really need to answer the bombing of girl school in Iran, deliberately or not is beside the point. And if U.S. is responsible, then what is the repercussion that is other than saying: "oops, it was a mistake, it's terrible that people die."

On that note, I'm surprised (in this case I consider high praise, superficially, higher than Alex's) that Alex's mom would like my comment: "When cultural Christianity becomes Christian Nationalism." on his post regarding Trump's latest debacle on the now removed post of him looking like a divine "healer" of the country with civilians praying as if to him. Makes me reflect more on what I said.

4/14/2026 Tuesday

With Gemini's help, some interesting points and reminders from Rev. Dr. Henry Ongkowijoyo:

Anthropomorphism and God's Nature: Dr. Henry argues that emotions like anger, jealousy, or regret in God are real, he warns against seeing God as a "static" or "mechanical" being, emphasizing that He is dynamic and personal [11:11].

Apostasy and Perseverance (Hebrews 6:4-6): Addressing whether the elect can fall away, he references 1 John 2:19 to explain that those who "apostatize" were never truly part of the elect; they appeared to be Christian but did not possess genuine faith [17:25].

Imams/Priests before Sinai: Exodus 19:22, he suggests that "priestly" functions (offering sacrifices) existed through heads of households or elders before the formal Levite priesthood was established [23:42].

4/13/2026 Monday

Allie Beth Stuckey's take on the Therapy Culture:

With the help of Gemini, this is my response:

Here's the summary from Stuckey's perspective: Stuckey breaks it into 3 parts: Inner Child Theory (comfort the inner child in you) which is against 1 Corinthians 13:11 - put away childish ways, Shadow Work (integrating with the dark side of you) which is against Colossians 3:5 - mortification of sin, Somatic Therapy (the body keeps the score so medicalize the mind - Stuckey claims that body doesn't make you sin nor heal you from sin, the soul does). This is an example two extremes, Stuckey brings the extreme examples against Biblical values out to judge from her own extreme takes. So there's some strawman, some shallow take on psychology.

One can refute Stuckey (and also the opposite extremes that she's attacking, of course) by refocusing the "inner child theory" as a metaphor for processing wounded memories, finding Christ's rule in these memories, rather than self-re-parenting.

On Shadow Work: Stuckey is not wrong but shallow here that the heart is desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). So instead of integrating dark shadow, repentance and killing of sin are key. However, since this is counseling, Stuckey fail to go deeper into dark faults. Christians should focus on bringing hidden works of darkness into the light (Ephesians 5:11-13), this is an important deep self-reflection to identify hidden idols or sins to be mortified in God's grace.

On Somatic Therapy: This is a kind of paradox I would say that Stuckey fail at. The body can become a stumbling block to the soul and emotion, rather than just "providing the context for our struggles". Our body is cursed, hence it needs to be put to death, this is where Stuckey and I think many Christian Fundamentalists today don't get, that we are cursed due to the FALL. Though finding physical relieve is not the solution to sin, having a cursed body can certainly influence us, already fallen (that means Christ is an exception), to sin.

When it comes to counseling, or Christian counseling, you don't want Stuckey as your counselor. However, that the people whom Stuckey finds to interview, could be a different story, because Stuckey definitely has shown to have an eye for interviewing the right guests for the job.

A informative chart showing that Strait of Malacca is the busiest Strait, not Strait of Hormuz. Though they are pretty close together as the world largest transits in Million Barrels per day (Mn B/D).

Posted in Computer Science, Faults, Geography, Theologization | Leave a comment

Journal of the Week

Posted on April 6, 2026 by timlyg

4/10/2026 Friday

If China's Xi Jinping's meet up with Taiwan KMT's Cheng Li-wen was just reading scripts to each other, then I wonder why bother meeting?

4/6/2026 Monday

From time to time I do appreciate interviews done by Allie Beth Stuckey. A few with former porn stars, etc. This one is Brittni De La Mora, with ministry called: https://www.jesuslovespornstars.org/. Allie is wise enough to not take issue with "female" pastors in this case. It's also interesting that these kind of testimonies usually involve pimps who are some sort of backsliding Christians, demon possessions, drugs, and the pride of having money in the porn industry. Once nick named Jenna Presley, Brittni was convinced by the verse: Revelation 2:20-23 and repented.

Posted in Geography, Theologization | Leave a comment

How the Quran Refutes itself

Posted on April 1, 2026 by timlyg

Refuting the Quran, same way Sye Ten Bruggencate did in another entry I had: This is Pastor David Hentschel's Quranic verses that refute itself (If we have the word of God, Islam is false, if we don't have it, Islam is still false, the Islamic Dilemma) which I believe he credited to David Wood @1:34:42:

Surah 3:4 Allah revealed the Quran and before that he revealed the Torah as guidance for mankind.
Surah 18:27 says no one can change Allah's words.
Surah 7:157 says Jews and Christians who read about Muhammad and we find him mentioned in the Torah and the Gospels that have been written down to us.
Surah 2:85 if you don't believe in all your book, he says I will send you to hell.
Surah 5:43 Jews come to Muhammad to settle a dispute and Allah says why are they coming to you if they have the Torah? And Muhammad actually says bring me a Torah. He gets up from his cushion, he puts the Torah on the cushion and says let the Torah be your judge.
Surah 5:48 says Allah sent Muhammad as a guardian of the previous scriptures.
Surah 5:68 he says you have no ground to stand upon unless you stand fast on the Torah and the Gospel.
Surah 10:94 Allah said Muhammad, if you're in doubt, ask those who are reading the book before you, make sure your revelation lines up with theirs.

On the side note, good for MBC to grow to a point that they are announcing two services in April, just like Crossroads in March.

Posted in Theologization | Leave a comment

Journal of the Week

Posted on March 30, 2026 by timlyg

3/31/2026 Tuesday

David Bahnsen is sympathetic to Doug Wilson's Christian Nationalism cause. It's not surprising when someone offered you (not too surprising also if your father was a famous figure) prayers or was involved in raising you when you were young: ...in the thirty years of my adult life since my father died, I could count on one hand how many times a Pastor has offered to pray for me and pray with me... and that your father's been accused similarly as Wilson. He's only following the already public critics of Wilson (Serrated Edge-colorful language only for non-Christians but not fellow Christians, women should not vote, slavery, etc.) and couldn't go deeper perhaps for fear of ruining their relationship. Not impressed. What Wilson truly lacks, is a Gospel centered life, while masking himself in the comfort of American (not divine) heritage and blessings.

3/29/2026 Sunday

One thing wrong with churches with their modern music in order to appease younger generation is that they do not cite their sources. So I am going to just use a recorder to figure out whose songs they are singing. Today it's Chris Tomlin's Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone):

Eleni's going to like this one: CityAlight - Ancient of Days:

Keith & Kristyn Getty's Christ Our Hope in Life and Death:

Another song that Crossroads love to sing but not today is Matt Maher - Lord, I Need You (Official Lyric Video):

Posted in Theologization | Leave a comment

RDP attack

Posted on March 26, 2026 by timlyg

Password spraying, NTLM Brute Force Attack are all too common for anyone running RDP service.

Event ID 4776 logs the authentication attempts in Event Viewer (Windows Logs > Security). Using "microsoft_authentication_package_v1_0". You may find out what the source Network Address (IP) is. Sometimes IPs do not show but only the Source Workstation Name which is often spoofed (fake). You get Audit Failures more than once logged per second quite often when this happens.

Then further investigation is needed by preparing for NTLM auditing. Which is to enable Event ID 8004 logging (Group Policy Management > Forest > Domains > Domain Controllers > right click Default Domain Controllers Policy to Edit...

Then Group Policy Management Editor will open, from there go to Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options:

  • Network security: Restrict NTLM: Audit Incoming Traffic = Enable auditing for all accounts
  • Network security: Restrict NTLM: Audit NTLM authentication in this domain = Enable all
  • Network security: Restrict NTLM: Outgoing NTLM traffic to remote servers = Audit all

Then run in command prompt: gpupdate /force

And go to Event Viewer will log 8004 in Application and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > NTLM > Operational (right click to select Properties and change log size to 20032 (20MB). Now you can see the log. This log shows you the real device (workstation on the network) that's being targeted. From there, next step investigation can be done: i.e. look for IPs on that victim device that need to be blocked, etc.

Posted in Computer Science | Leave a comment

On Pro-life, Abortion, IVF

Posted on March 26, 2026 by timlyg

As Christian, I would say yes to pro-life. However, I do not align with most pro-lifers in America especially when they are on the right wing. Abortion is a no. IVF is leaning yes.

I do not align with American right wing pro-lifers in such that when I say I'm pro-life, I'm overall pro-life, meaning that I should feel as strongly as when U.S. bombed Iranian girl school killing non-militant girls and the right wing Christians just call it a sad tragedy of collateral damage while they fought teeth and nails for the killing of adorable little cute babies. Because two can play that game: That the left could call killing of babies is merely sad, but the murder of Renee Good is evil!

So yes, I do suspect many Ring Wing Christian prolife activists are really just finding adorable things should not be killed, rather than preventing murder of those carrying the image of God. It's no wonder many of their children grow up vegan or left-wing animal activists. Because animals are cute, as their parents have taught them to love cute things. But any human life murdered beyond this context, is just followed by their mantra "it's tragic" and very quickly back to loving little things only they find adorable.

As for IVF, now the Catholics and many American Right folks like Charlie Kirk (who's still not comfortable with his own view on this) and Allie Beth Stuckey, etc. would call a human is created at the moment of conception either within or without a womb. I think this is problematic. I can agree with realization of pregnancy in the womb, because there is human care under divine providence. The womb is crucial for the divine providence. IVF however, is a more fully realization of human control over any divine providence. Divine creation of a human being would has no meaning if we call IVF conceptions, which is pure human act, all at once in a dish, before entering a womb, a creation of human being. This is not to say IVF babies aren't humans, because they have been birthed from a womb, which is the process of traditionally understood divine providence.

The Catholics' flaw in this is understandable, for they are pantheists by their doctrine. It's a shame that some protestants on the right would fall for similar pantheistic switch. As if God and man are on the same level of creatorship. The divine command to be fruitful, must always be directed by a full reliance on God, not on mere science. There is no full reliance on God in IVF until incubation. So, IVF is an OK for me. It is not murder of hundreds of wasted "human conceptions" for the sake of one human conception. I may go as far as "to call IVF murder of many" as unbiblical, for these "many" aren't incubated (Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:5).

On IVF ethics, this is of an interest note: Lila Rose and Allie Beth Stuckey critique the story of NBA player Carlos Boozer’s twins, who were conceived via IVF to serve as a bone marrow match for an older sibling [59:17]. I do not have an ethical take on this yet. Although I wouldn't agree with these two ladies that the process involved destroying multiple other "unique human lives[I've already explained above what truly constitutes human lives]" (embryos), which they label as "barbaric" [01:01:05].

Update 5/14/2026:

In terms of political policy on this, some would argue that Trump's administration isn't helping much compared to Biden's era: Bri Stensrud, director of Women of Welcome:

Posted in Biology, Theologization | Leave a comment

Journal of the Week

Posted on March 25, 2026 by timlyg

3/28/2026 Saturday

We ordered takeout for the first time from Bollywood Tadka Restaurant on NJ-18. We love their all you can eat buffet. But take out for a lamb dish, tandoori chicken (6x), 1x lamb biryani, for about $70 is really not worth it because the containers are not really full portion. I told Nadia to eat their buffet (Friday - Sunday only for lamb/goat dish), or Hyderabad Spice for take out (they have good Tuesday deals: buy one biryani get another 50% off => totaling $28).

I learned quite a lot swimming at LA Fitness today around 5pm while Nadia's taking a nap. Because I met an elderly Chinese man swimming in the next lane telling me: You swim very fast. And we started talking after I told him that "I swim fast because I'm young" to which he replied "that's the key!". So I learned that Jonathan is driving a Model Y TESLA which has full self-driving feature and he's been using the full self-drive all the time, claiming that the car drives even better than he. This is really remarkable to me for I knew about these technology, as Elon Musk had been trying to promote self-driving taxies and even produce cars without steering wheels. But I've never met a person that has been through this until now. Nadia thinks I want to buy TESLA now. Jonathan, who is Taiwanese, is also a member of the Monmouth Community Christian Church (MCCC) 美門教會. He's a professor in Brooklyn once a week. What I just found out is that I should take Nadia to check out Bell Works (used to be Bell Labs), which is like a supersize complex mall-type business place in Holmdel. I do wish to see this Jonathan again. He seems to like Stephen Tong's Reformed sermons, but I think his son goes to CrossRoads Worship Center (Charismatic I think) in Marlboro (Cliffwood?).

I conferenced with Brian around 8pm to conclude his MySQL database project and he seemed to love it. We'll have dinner on Wednesday and I would be paid.

3/27/2026 Friday

I'm with Allie Beth Stuckey on this, Ashley Sheatz' husband (Trevor Sheatz) posting "controversial" X tweet detailing his wife's past promiscuity and bleak lifestyle contrasting with his virginity to show how God converted his wife and blessing him with a beauty. The conservative backslash came from folks like Michael Knowles [05:11] calling the exposure of a once-whore spouse to public as inappropriate as there are some things considered "too private" for public [I disagree, because only sinners believe that, I'm sure St. Augustine would agree with me]. Stuckey rightly rebuked these "hyper-patriarchy bros who call themselves Christians out there" as this whore-calling was done by themselves, not Ashley's husband. I believe these conservatives are actually revealing a hidden part of their darkness as they are being revealed by this X posting which is something beautiful, been seen by these hypocrites as something ugly, because perhaps they have themselves viewed women under such dark light and the concealment of a past sin as something of a hypocrisy to cover their believe in work-righteousness rather than the true Gospel. Turning something glorious (new creation: 2 Corinthians 5:17) into something shameful:

Ashley's favorite preacher is Paul Washer @42:50.

The only problem I have with the Sheatz dating method was after she met Trevor at church, they practiced "intentional friendship" for a year with chaperones to ensure purity [49:55]. Courting is courting, not friendship. But glad it worked out for them.

I learned this new vocabulary: "Manosphere" ideologies. Which is the pool of the "hyper-patriarchy bros bloggers/armchair critics".

I also love this conclusion from Google Gemini: The video serves as a defense of radical transparency in the face of a "shame culture." While critics argue that the public disclosure of sexual sin undermines the dignity of marriage, Ashley and Allie Beth Stuckey contend that hiding the past suggests that Christ’s redemption is insufficient or something to be ashamed of.

Met with Paul at H-Mart for lunch. Talked about his music making and my SUNO AI music process. Talked about movies like The 6th Sense, Predestination (Ethan Hawke's movie). It seems that Paul was pretty much out of touch with the film industry and I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing for him. We ate at the food court so we bought our own. But after lunch he suggested bubble tea so I treated him at HeyTea (I think where it used to be KungFu Tea or MangoMango) which only takes order via app.

This Presbycast episode, featuring Dr. R. Scott Clark and Wilson Van Hooser: The discussion distinguishes between revival (a sovereign, extraordinary work of God) and revivalism (human-centered techniques designed to manufacture religious experiences). Greg Laurie, Tim Keller, etc. were mentioned.

Dr. Clark defines revivalism as "manufactured spirituality" [15:58].

Modern worship often follows a "bipartite" structure: 30 minutes of singing followed by a 30-minute sermon, designed to provide a "dopamine hit" [40:18, 41:02].

"Bob [Robert] Godfrey said when I was in seminary was, (@1:03:57) we effectively replaced God's altar call, which was Holy Communion." [I don't think altar call is comparable to the Eucharist which is not really the primary point of commitment and assurance. [01:03:55, 01:04:04] ]

3/24/2026 Tuesday

I like this from Skye Jethani who distinguishes between Christian Activism (using faith to inform policy/values) and Christian Nationalism (the belief that the U.S. belongs exclusively to Christians and that non-Christians should have fewer rights) [37:56]. The whole 10 minute debate between Skye and Kaitlyn was interesting.

Painting of the day: The Last Supper by Jacopo Tintoretto. Mentioned by Stephen Tong, full of angels around contrasting it with Da Vinci's Last Supper which has no angels and humanist with mere Christian theme. Tong also referred to the 12 legions of angels. Nadia and I went to Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy, but I am not sure if I missed it:

3/22/2026 Sunday

Sunday School at GCC on the Spiritual Radicals & Rationalists during the Reformation is an interesting one. We touched on names: Spiritualists: Hans Denck (Lutheran -> Spiritualist -> recanted to join the Swiss Reformed Church but may still be wolf in sheep's clothing), Sebastian Franck, Casper Schwenckfeld (still active today mainly in Pennsylvania). Rationalists: Michael Servetus, Laelius & Faustus Socinus (rejected Trinity and substitutionary atonement - Jesus was just an example, promoted work-righteousness, fled from Italy persecution to Transylvania and called their belief Unitarian). So they are essentially emotional-centered and rational-centered cults, respectively. And here's Google Gemini's result for Bible verses (it's wrong to say they rejected the Bible) they would have used for each's central ideology:

1. Verses on "Spirit and Truth"

The Spiritualist teacher Sebastian Franck specifically argued that the visible church had ceased to exist (Against teachings of Matthew 16:18) and that the true Church "only exists in spirit and in truth".

  • Likely Verse: John 4:24 — "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Application: Franck used this concept to claim that even non-Christians, such as Muslims and pagans, were part of a universal spiritual church because they were in communion with "the one spirit" rather than a physical organization.

2. Verses Supporting the "Inner Word"

Hans Denck and other Spiritualists taught the doctrine of the "inner word," (against the written Word) believing that the voice of God speaks directly into the individual's heart.

  • Likely Verse: Jeremiah 31:33 — "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts."
  • Application: This supported their belief that inward conviction and "spiritual communication" were the ultimate authorities, even over Scripture.

3. Verses on the Indwelling of Christ

Caspar Schwenckfeld, described as the most intellectual of the group, rejected physical elements like baptism and communion, emphasizing instead the "indwelling of Christ" as the only important element. Christ is this "wholly other."

  • Likely Verse: Colossians 1:27 — "...which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."
  • Application: Schwenckfeld argued that Christians only have contact with Christ in an "abstract spiritual way," making physical church membership and ordinances irrelevant.

4. Verses on Universal Salvation

Because they prioritized their own "inner movement" over objective theological structures like justification by faith, some Spiritualists like Denck moved toward universalism.

  • Likely Verse: 1 Corinthians 15:22 — "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."
  • Application: Denck used his internal revelations to teach the universal salvation of all beings, notoriously including even Satan

Pastor Jeff Jou's sermon at Crossroads on Psalm 3 was no boring matter to me for I memorized this chapter.

First it was just the internet, www, then we have google, and now AI. These are just advances of tools to improve ourselves. Time and time again, we have people fearing it because they do not learn to improve themselves but merely want to rely on their convenient tools more and more. So the fear is warranted, no wonder. Using Google Gemini, a competitor of ChatGPT, I shorten the time for tasks I would do on exhaustive google searches for researches in theology, literature, virtually any knowledge. For lectures, meetings, Granola is amazing at it. And the summaries these AI platforms come up with are virtually identical to human ability.

I have noticed that there are many useful quotes and witty lines these AI could come up with to make understanding clearer. I'm almost certain that the AI got these clever remarks from some human somewhere, and if so, I suppose citation is going to be a problem, we don't want to just keep citing "quote is from Perplexity, DeepSeek, etc." Nevertheless, I should certainly copy these smart lines that the AI comes up with from Sunday School classes, Bible studies, etc.

This morning while on the way to church, Nadia and I also argued over the choice of words used for a fan's "obsession of" vs. "dedication for" her idol. An argument that gone even worst at night. Which was gradually resolved the next day. I believe that this semantic should not be taken too seriously, as one could say "The sinner dedicated his large portion of her time for his idol" or "I'm obsessed with God's word." Many do not understand the idea of a neutral stance of a concept/word. Some words/concepts do not need the quality of good or bad. It's just like Bob asking the pastor yesterday in Men's Group: "How much of that inquisitiveness do you think is God's design as opposed to sinful nature?" But when argument gets heated, it is wise to seek peace and go with what they want to believe: that obsession must always be bad, dedication is for good things only, inquisitiveness must be divided into good and bad, etc.

I believe my methodology in argument was flawed. Nadia was trying to look up the words in the car while I was driving, I unwittingly stopped her doing so when I said that these semantics are relative and subjective to the interpreter in literary context, concluding that whatever she found may not easily help the discussion, I was driving so I thought I could speak fast. I should have played along and waited for her to search those words online, which is an act that I always promote in principle. Slow to speak means think first, think more, take time to pause, especially when driving.

Posted in Art, Computer Science, Faults, Theologization, Vocabularies | Leave a comment

Hyper-Calvinism

Posted on March 23, 2026 by timlyg

To explore this topic, because I've encountered various expressions of such at churches such as GCC, Facebook, etc., I shall begin with this:

Having claims to be elects while not behaving as elects even to a point of rejecting the works of elects as of the Spirit but of selves, does not invalidate the doctrine of election/predestination.

Posted in Theologization | Leave a comment

Journal of the Week

Posted on March 16, 2026 by timlyg

3/20/2026 Friday

After swimming for a few years at LA Fitness, I found out today for the first time that a single swimmer gets to occupy a whole lane for herself. When I asked, may I share the lane, as I usually do when pool is busy, I got the response "No, thank you." I couldn't believe it and had to confirm twice with her. She was kind of a slow swimmer, younger than the usual old ladies who swim at/walk in the pool. Not sure if she was mentally disabled so I didn't bother to argue further, as the unspoken etiquette of these pools is that two can share a lane. Apparently, even in California, LA Fitness pools have seen more than 3, 4 people in a lane. I didn't want to be physically attacked by a handicap, because the way she talked seemed like some autistic child. So I went to the next lane, which was used by an old lady who ignored me but did swim on her side so I could share the lane. I submitted a support ticket (record ID 395214) at LA Fitness website. Not sure if I would get a response, but I was responded to before a while back on other matters. This really should not be a big issue. But the unspoken rule could really be problematic when the pool is busy. I did start from rather waiting for an entire lane to free up before, to just be bold enough to ask to share the lane, why be so individualistic? But after this incident, I think I would need to watch out again, especially for these pathetic selfish placebo seeking folks who can't even swim.

Starting to work on Brian's project regarding his own database for students. This is via his Godaddy account with PHP MySQL approach. Project was actually commenced on 1/28/2026. Then I touched on it around 3/9, and then a follow up with Brian for details on 3/14. Again, this is my failure in discipline as I did promise a couple of weeks completion. This is now due around 3/28. What's amazing is that using AI to write codes have not only saved hours of time but also improved the quality of production.

Fascinations with AI includes new tech vocabularies (at least for me) such as CRUD: SQL Mapping: Create, Read, Update, Delete. Instead of saying "create a page that allows user to edit a MySQL table," just say "CRUD for table."

Another fascination is that I setup 3x Cron Jobs (daily, weekly, monthly) in Brian's Godaddy account to backup two MySQL tables on a schedule. It runs a php script for such exports and keeps the 10 most recent files each table. I even use command line argument $argv[1] to pass parameter to the script to decide if the backup is daily, weekly or monthly.

3/18/2026 Wednesday

I saw on today's Community Observer (daily/weekly paperboy coupons dump on our driveways) an interesting ad: Sayreville United Methodist Church inviting the public to join them in a bus trip to Sight & Sound's Joshua show at 3pm. I checked the deal: $185 per adult: 9am - 8pm bus, show, and buffet lunch. Given the show is $93/adult, lunch can't be more than $20, the round trip bus ride would have to be $70. Which I think is a little bit of a rip off. I think these liberal churches are really desperate for some cash.

21 Coptic Martyrs, a free 13 minute movie/film based on true story. A look at present day martyrdom. That was animation. It seems that there's also a 2026 documentary made about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgN_ulfycTk

推背圖：ancient banned book that predicted the future, written by order of 唐太宗. I think it's still arbitrary, even if they based it on something viz. 易經:

3/16/2026 Monday

It's remarkable that "Clash of Civilizations" predicted by Samuel Huntington was mentioned by 石評天下. I first heard of Huntington from Pak Tong, now I have to read Huntington. Below is Google Gemini summary of the video:

The Five "Lost Cards" of U.S. Hegemony:

  1. Military Myth: The perceived failure of U.S. and Israeli defense systems (like the Iron Dome) to stop Iranian counter-strikes [15:34].
  2. Economic Stability: Tech giants (the "Magnificent Seven") may pull capital back from the Middle East, threatening the U.S. AI bubble [16:04].
  3. Petrodollar: The conflict incentivizes oil-producing nations to move toward the "Petroyuan" and away from U.S. financial dominance [16:33].
  4. International Relations: Western allies are beginning to distance themselves from U.S. policy to avoid being dragged into a broader conflict [16:47].
  5. Civilizational Conflict: The escalation has triggered a "Holy War" (Jihad) decree from 99- and 101-year-old Iranian Grand Ayatollahs, signaling a shift toward the "Clash of Civilizations" predicted by Samuel Huntington [17:19].

From the same video link above, @9:44, new vocabulary learned: 蠱惑 (gu3huo4) = 意指以欺騙、引誘手段使人心意迷亂或迷惑人，常作「蠱惑人心」。

I also learned of this 80s novel called: Satanic Verses that provoked the Islamic world, especially Iran.

Also interesting to note that the video brought up religion or China's "atheism" stand. Shi interpreted China's stand not as rejection of God, but more of a "宗教不和凌駕一切" @25:40, religion cannot be superior to everything, i.e. not allowed to judge politics. So I think it's more of an agnostic but idolizing politics/pragmatism.

So I commented this on SOLA Media's episode on ChatGPT:

While I thank you all for most other episodes, the treatment of this ChatGPT stuff is so poor.

The main problem people go to ChatGPT is lack of good pastoral examples. Sometimes it's due to overwhelming work load, sometimes just due to laziness. I remember asking Horton something but never got any response back, so why would I not go to ChatGPT?

Secondly, ChatGPT is really just a tool like one goes to the library. Do you believe everything the books in a library say? So it's just due diligence. Church leaders should educate members to not rely on pastors but on themselves to seek the Kingdom (if you say relying on the Holy Spirit instead, you're not listening even here properly to what I'm saying, forget your own members, you're really off the rail to be on the same page of what I'm talking about because you cannot be a true Christian if you don't believe in the Trinity.)

You guys reminded me of the complaints we keep hearing when cars were out replacing horse chariots. Com'n, you are not Amish are you?

Posted in Faults, Theologization, Vocabularies | Leave a comment

Podcast Addict App - Playback Speed and Dynamic Episode Duration

Posted on March 14, 2026 by timlyg

AI said there's no such settings before, but thanks to another googling, reddit gives the solution: The duration status bar display can be toggled in Settings/Display(Advanced)/Episodes/Duration with Playback Speed.

I needed to disable it because I was used to figuring out the duration in my head as I am aware of what speed I'm playing as well as I need to know the standard duration of each episode.

Posted in Computer Science | Leave a comment