Category Archives: computers

I don’t care for the new look of the internet

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Have you noticed how much white space there is on the internet? I mean how much blank space there is on an internet page? In the past couple of years there has been a trend away from cramming a lot of information onto a page toward spreading it out instead.

This doesn’t appeal to me. It makes me have to scroll, although my screen is 1920 x 1080. I don’t mind scrolling, but I don’t care for all the white space that’s around.

We’re using the latest wordpress theme here at ShieldsGroup — The Twenty Eleven Theme — and like much of today’s web publishing systems, it presents information along with lots of unused screen space. (I will post an image below, in case it’s been altered by the time you read this)

I see no reason for the wasted space making me scroll to the bottom of the screen to begin to read the article. But hey — I have no sense of artistry. I was happy with a DOS screen, looking at text-only computer buletin board systems.

While I don’t care for the new look of the internet, the internet doesn’t care if I like it or not. It will go on, regardless of my complaints.

And if there is one thing I’ve learned in my time on this planet — everything changes. One day we will be back to the old look. One where we can read lots of stuff without going to the labor of scrolling.

By that time, my glasses will be so thick that I’ll be wishing for the Twenty Eleven Theme!

bbPress Spam

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Today I removed bbPress from my web server. There was no real activity there except spammers. It’s not evident to the casual user, me, how to put in a captcha and aksimet wasn’t catching my spammers.

I like the look of bbPress better than many forums, but without adequate spam protection, it’s just not worth my using it.

Generation Gap? It is what it always was….

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Years ago, when teaching The Teen Sunday School Class in my church, I noted that while the adults were harping about “The Generation Gap” between them and their children, what I was observing was a Communication Gap.

It wasn’t that the teens were not thinking about the same issues that their parents did. And if you could get them to talk about those issues, you’d find they were not that far apart in their opinions concerning them. The problem was that the adults and the teens didn’t know how to discuss the issues.

The Generation Gap is what it always was: A Communication Gap.

It happens all the time — young people want to explore areas of thinking that adults have already addressed. Often those areas involve controversial subjects, so when the teen raises the issue, the adult goes off like he’s Bill O’Reilly. That’s not a generation gap. It’s a communication gap.

Now, take that reality — that young people are exploring subjects that adults have already formed their closed, strongly held opinions on — and add to it the words of Melissa Taylor here. What do you have? The potential for an emerging generation to find it twice as difficult to receive godly input from the previous one.

There are two roadblocks that cause this problem. First — it’s hard to listen to people as they explore ideologies that are, in the words of some in my generation, “stupid”. But you explored them yourself. If you didn’t, then you just blindly accepted someone else’s opinions about it, and how is that anything short of “stupid”? Second — it’s often simply a combination of close-mindedness and laziness that prevents my generation from adapting to new technologies. Pick up the keyboard and learn. It will do your brain good!

It is vitally important that, when a young person speaks to you concerning his or her belief system, you listen. Listen. Listen. Then carefully, respectfully, and logically offer your own perspective. And second, as Melissa Taylor notes, do it through a communication channel they can appreciate.