What d'you think about that?

Since everyone on the Trannisphere has gone all Introspective White Emo Ranger I suppose I'd better join into.

Now the evenings are lighter, I've been able to start walking to work again. Which unfortunately gives me lots of time to think. Today I was musing on something Lara blogged about.

On Saturday I went out in the city, and ended up in my local tranny-friendly pub en homme.

The place wasn't very busy, but none of the regulars gave me a second look, and apart from the barstaff, I didn't really interact with anyone apart from the friends I was with (we chatted to the smokers while waiting for a taxi, but that was it).

When I go as Pandora, I banter with the DJ, have a joke to the bar staff, and get random strangers stopping by for a natter.

As I thought about it more, I realised that whenever I've been in regular pubs, people mainly keep to themselves (with a few exceptions). But when I'm Pandora, even in provincial town pubs, people are mostly friendly, and many will come over for a talk. The guys to congratulate me on my "bravery", and the girls to have a gossip and ask where where I got my top or shoes from.

There are generally only a few tossers, and they tend to stay outside in large herds for moral support. Sadly one comment from this lot can undo a whole week of confidence.

Although being Pan makes my confidence soar, and allows me to be more assertive. I really need to dress up and go out more!

So what conclusion can we draw from this? Obviously:

"Trannies make every social gathering better"!

For Those About To Rock...

Arithmetic Coding is quite possibly one of the most interesting ideas we've come across for losless file compression in the P3P Brightnet. Not only would this encoding be lossless, but it would reduce an entire file down to a single decimal number.

It may be possible to reduce a 10MB file down to 1MB or lower with this, thus drastically increasing the transfer times over the P3P Network and making it that much more efficient. Of course it all depends on how the algorithm is set up for the filetype compression.

In highest probability, we would have to have a talk with IBM concerning their standing patent on a certain type of Arithmetic Coding, and maybe strike a deal for licensing if possible. But from what we are reading, some of the patent holders do not charge a fee, so we'd have to look into their terms closely before we decide if this is the way to go.

As it stands, the P3P BrightNet system is by far more than adequate to handle the files and traffic, so the arithmetic coding algorithm would act as just an overkill scenario.

Just as a heads up, no it's not a typo. We really do mean P3P and not P2P or the soon to be P4P (which is pretty useless). P3P BrightNet is the term used for the Andromeda3D Network Backbone and is more efficient than normal P2P while also being better capable than even P4P. Keep in mind that this P3P BrightNet is not going to be falling into the hands of an ISP anytime soon. In an effort to remain neutral with P2P sharing and routing, we're building the protocols and rulesets into the browser so that it will automatically handle the traffic without intervention from the ISP or from A3D as a company.

Plans & Validity

A lot of the recent articles on this blog about Connections have been "newsy." However, one of the intentions behind this blog is to reflect upon the process of church planting for the edification of ourselves and others.

Yesterday I met someone who is involved with an emerging church/fresh expressions/church planting network. One of the points of conversation revolved around the issue of validity.

One of the purposes of having such networks is to provide the blessing of validation. A key struggle in the early years of Connections was battling external perceptions with regard to our validity - were we a valid church, a valid congregation, validly Anglican etc. etc.?

I vividly remember our first baptism, some months after starting, where afterwards there was the sense of "I don't know what we are, but we're something." We had encountered a sense of validation, and this has only increased as we find ourselves being included, recognised, supported and growing. In a network, because we have been given validity, we can give that to others as well.

Soon after this conversation I found this concept of validity creatively colliding in another conversation with some musings about how churches should be organised and managed and the importance of having "mission and ministry plans for a local context." I found myself perceiving an implied demarcation between "valid" churches/congregations that are able to produce such a plan, and "invalid" churches/congregations who can't.

That is a flawed demarcation.

Why? Because the ability to develop a plan is not a good (sole) indicator of church vitality. For instance, in some “dying” loci the plan is easy - “sustain palliative care as long as possible.” For some “emerging” loci the plan is more difficult because they would be in the middle (or the beginning) of a process which is asking “Who are we? What can we do?”

I would say that enforcing young church plants or fresh expressions to develop a “plan” too early can end up killing them. It's like asking a 12 year old to have the self-awareness of a 30 year old resulting in them feeling trapped in the decisions they were forced to make too early. You don't force 12 year olds into mapping out their life, but you do talk goals, ambitions, heart and allow them to explore, fail etc.

All this shows is that church growth is primarily organic in nature (because it is relational), not bureaucratic (like a machine).

What validates a church, no matter how old or young? Evidential commitment to grow as a local Christian community. No matter how ill-defined the trajectory, that is the true heart.