Category Archives: Technobabble

Bugs and User Interface Design

I’ve been dealing with bugs a lot, lately. Not the living insect variety, but the computer bug sort. It is my job. Yes, I’m a missionary, and I do “missionary-like” stuff like living in a remote area in an exotic … Continue reading

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The Great Technician

I was really happy to have succeeded at fixing a satellite relay station of the Papua New Guinea Christian Broadcasting Network (Wantok Radio Light) in Kainantu. The man in the picture is smiling because I just gave him a solar-powered … Continue reading

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Missionary Rocket Science

In a land where only about 10% of the people have electrical power in their houses, you might wonder what good such technology as electronics, satellites, radio, and cell phones might be. Actually, such technology is very useful, indeed. Technology … Continue reading

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Mobile Telephone Service in Ukarumpa!

Our last field term in Ukarumpa, there was no mobile phone service at all in Ukarumpa, except for bulky and expensive hand-held satellite phones. Now, there is service from two different companies! One of those (B-Mobile) has excellent signal strength … Continue reading

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Missionary Email Security in Sensitive Areas

When doing Christian mission work, it is often necessary to consider the effects of email and the Internet when going into areas with opposition. Much mission work goes on in technologically advanced, developed countries. (That isn’t a good description of … Continue reading

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Behind the Scenes

Another missionary working in Papua New Guinea (and currently on another island) told my wife that they only got a newsletter out about once or twice a year. It is hard, and they just can’t “whip one out like [Michael] … Continue reading

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Blog Restored

It turns out that my journal entries were not totally obliterated, just temporarily inaccessible. With a bit of labor, I was able to recover all of the posts in my blog. In the process, I decided to move the blog … Continue reading

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Backup!

You would think that after more than three decades of working with computers, I would be better about backing up my data. Apparently, I’m not. I’m OK with regular files, but I hadn’t gotten around to setting up a proper … Continue reading

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Toshiba Lemon Retired–Long Live the MacBook!

The last time I wrote about computers, I was happy to have found and fixed a serious problem with my Toshiba computer. I expressed high hopes that it would provide long and reliable service. Those hopes were disappointed as the … Continue reading

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Loose-brained Toshiba

The saga of the Toshiba Satellite P35 notebook computer woes continues, but this time I have high hopes that things have turned around such that we will get our money’s worth of work out of this machine, yet. Its warranty … Continue reading

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Nonprofit Organization Web Sites

I still remember when I first found out about the World-Wide Web and HTML-based web browsers. I had know about the Internet, text-based email, ftp, and Usenet, but this was a new thing, still highly experimental. By that time, the … Continue reading

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Email Postcards and our Web Contact Form

Your normal email is less public than this web posting, but not by as much as you probably think. I’ll not get into how easy it is to intercept unencrypted email, except to say that it is very easy to … Continue reading

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