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Freedom Convoy 2022

A number of countries and US States have finally ended their overbearing, unnecessary emergencies over COVID-19, but we still have many stubborn holdouts. Now there is some high-profile resistance to the destructive idea of mandating alleged vaccines and these people need support.

Predictably the movement is being smeared and there is much hand-wringing over how destructive this supposedly is to Ottawa in particular. The Canadian Government should just do the right thing and end the mandates.

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COVID-19 Vaccines

I have not, nor do I ever intend, to take any one of the COVID-19 Vaccines which are being relentlessly pushed. Why? Well, I have a distrust of both government (regardless of the level) and the “news” media. With the latter it is not merely a question of what is reported and how it is presented but what is either not reported at all or given scant attention.

The idea of passports or proofs of vaccination in order to do normal things like travel, go to a restaurant, even keep a job, is off-putting and has eerie echoes to this:

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Revelation 13:16-17 (KJV)

The following explains why taking the mark is ill-advised:

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

Revelation 14:9-11 (KJV)

I don’t believe this is the mark but it definitely seems to be a step toward it if for no other reason than to see how people react. This is far from an existential threat so there is no reason for people to be threatened with the loss of livelihood to comply. If this was truly about healthcare, why are healthcare workers getting fired? Are we or are we not in a healthcare crisis? Words say “yes” but actions say “no.”

Here are the parts thus far of whistle-blowing to Project Veritas:

It is time to push back on authoritarianism.

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Resurrection

Today I found a fascinating video from Dr. James Tour which goes into our body chemistry. Rather like the saying one never steps into the same river twice, we are not the same from one moment to the next.

Yes, I believe if God can create life in all of its staggering complexity, He can certainly restore us to life, even if we are burned to ashes and our remains are scattered to the winds.

See 1 Corinthians Chapter 15, which is cited in the video above. It is a succinct explanation of the Gospel, the Good News of what we can be saved from and for what we are saved to experience.

The Lord Jesus is alive and He will return. Sometimes it seems life’s routines will just continue on and on into perpetuity, the cycle repeating itself with new generations. But 2 Peter Chapter 3 warns us that is not to last. We don’t know precisely when He will return but I am convinced it cannot be far off.

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Web Development

jQuery and legacy IE

It would seem there is some consternation regarding the future of jQuery with respect to outdated (to put it diplomatically) versions of IE.  A post on the jQuery blog was added to clarify the new direction:  versions 2.x will be for modern browsers and the 1.9x line will still be maintained for compatibility with IE versions less than 9.

I think this is a reasonable decision on the part of the jQuery core team.  Why should jQuery going forward be perpetually burdened by the legacy IE albatross?  Supporting those browsers isn’t free by any stretch of the imagination.  All of the conditionals in the jQuery code to make its API work cross-browser comes at a cost in code size and execution time.  The freedom from legacy IE support should make the implementation and testing of new API features and refinements quicker and easier.  If feasible, some of these changes can always be back-ported into the 1.9x line.

What is so onerous about using conditional comments to include jQuery 2.x for modern browsers and 1.9x for older browsers, especially if the portions of the API one uses are identical across versions?  Users of newer browsers will be able to enjoy a quicker jQuery download and improved execution speeds while legacy compatibility can still be maintained without difficulty.  Is this ideal?  No; one has Microsoft to “thank” for this problem.

New versions of jQuery do not cause old versions to stop working; jQuery is open source and older versions are still widely distributed.  The latest version is now 1.8, but I have written a number of sites which use versions 1.4.2 and 1.7.2 and they are still operational.  They probably would benefit from a jQuery version upgrade, but that is something to be decided after proper testing.  Granted, it is probable at some point browsers which will become widely deployed will be incompatible with these older versions of jQuery, but such a contingency is remote for the near future.

If one is concerned about the future of jQuery’s legacy support, one can be part of the solution by contributing to the jQuery 1.9x line in the form of code contributions, testing and bug reports.  If one is not willing to do so, there are viable alternatives such as MooTools, Prototype and Dojo.  I am willing to trust jQuery’s developers on this course; if somehow it proves to be suboptimal, it will not bring about doomsday.  Legacy IE’s days are thankfully numbered.

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Hello, world!

I am glad to finally get this site launched!  I had been considering it for some time and after a Saturday night and Sunday morning of stimulating research, I decided to use Hostgator.  I was (barely) using the Amazon Web Services for a small non-public side project; although I did find the array of services offered through that platform to be intriguing, the cost of hosting per month would be suboptimal for a small site.

The next order of business is to make my own plugin for WordPress to manage and display data from a database I recently exported to MySQL from a local SQL Server 2012 Express instance.  I was using this database with a Windows Presentation Foundation desktop app I coded to manage points for a poker league I direct.

While I am generally pleased with the app, it is rather inconvenient to have to fire up the local SQL Server instance and then launch the app from my laptop when I could be managing the data from a browser on my phone.  I did consider reimplementing it as a native Android app but I would need the data to be persisted to some web-accessible database anyway, so I wouldn’t really be gaining much.

I will make some of this data available here so the competitors can track their performance and where they stand with their peers.