Roman Clarkson

It is an action that is informed by what came before, but is significant on it's own.

I have been giving SmugMug a try now for several days now.  I have been looking to do online backups of my photos for several years now.  There have been several road blocks that I saw each time I thought about making the transition.  The primary dissuasion has been the cost to space ratio.  The second issue that I always came across was the mechanism for uploading the photos. 

I looked at a lot of vendors, Flickr, Google, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, PhotoBucket, and more.  I  found SmugMug to be the best deal for the money going.

I can give you the details but I’m not the marketing department for SmugMug.  You can go to the site to find out. 

It costs $40.  You can save some money by using the referral code ( AGD0hvUIDki26 ) and you will get $5 off.

Reviews

Some of you may know, I am preparing for a leadership retreat this weekend. You can find out more by reading here in an earlier post.  I have been reading the Gallup book called “Strengths based Leadership”.  So far, it is a really good sequel to the book “How Full is Your Bucket?”  These books have an online questionnaire that you complete to access what your strengths are.  There are about 150 questions and it takes about 30 minutes to complete it.  At the end of the questionnaire you get your results.  The results consist of your top five (5) strengths, a Strength-Based Leadership Guide (with action strategies), and a Strength-Based Leadership Report (with your personalized Strengths Insights).  With the reports and guide you get some valuable information that will make the material in the book more relevant.

I too the questionnaire several years ago and I admit that I did not take the the first results all that serious.  However, after taking the second test I am surprised at how close my second score was to the first.  Three Strategic Thinking attributes remained the same, I added one to a new leadership domain, and switched a Strategic Thinking attribute for another. According to the “Strengths Based Leadership” there are four domains of leadership strengths; Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking.  If you read the book you will know, my leadership strength is in the domain of Strategic Thinking, 4 out of 5 attributes are in this domain.

The result?

What I am learning is that as the CORE President and with my leadership domain I need to change the way I do things.  I have always thought of myself as having a leadership strength similar to Executing.  What I found is that I execute extremely well in areas that I thrive in.  If I veer too far from my passions I tend to not execute anything.  That is were this book comes in.  It has taught me some immediate skills and tools that I can use to foster my teams to flourish and succeed at their goals.  As interesting as all this is, I still need to finish reading the book.  When I get that finished I will post an addendum.

General, Reviews book review, self improvement

Over the past month I have been reading the book Journey of the Heart (John Welwood, 1991). I read most of this book during my business travels over the month of December. December, the time of year when I get to spend a lot more time with my immediate and extended family, as well as with friends. So, at this time of year I was particularly connected with a lot more people on many intimate levels. Exactly what this book was focused on. There I was in many of the situations the book described with a variety of people. So the real question I sought to answer is : Did the writings in this book help me remain in the present moment and be intimate and authentic with each person that I came in contact with. The answer I came up with was yes.

I realize that there is no one book that will bring me conscious awareness but it sure can help to remind me of what I want to accomplish in life. One of those accomplishments are having an authentic relationship with my wife, children, family, and friends that allows me to be who I am. I liken it to a dancer with a partner. Welwood states in his chapter Dancing on the Razor’s Edge

The great paradox of love is that it calls on us to be fully ourselves and honor our individual truth. (pg. 45)

Like the dance between dancers, relationships are the dance on the razor’s edge. Each dance requires the couple to rely on the other for their strengths, grace and willfull participation. Some dances are loving, rife with strife, while others express the individuality of the dancers in an interplay of the unknowingness of the other. The hidden beauty of the dance is the practice and devotion of the dancers to their hidden and public performances. This idea reminds me in a poetic way of just what relationships are; a journey between the known and unknown. I find that it inspires me to push more into the unknown with all my relationships.

Poetics aside, the real value of this book is the underlying theme that relationships are about being our Spiritual Self. Better yet, remembering our Spiritual Self. In the course of life there are times when I know that I have forgotten my Spiritual Self. I feel like it would be very difficult for me without the help of others to remember that for myself. Especially people who are connected and committed to relationships at that level. I think it would be great if relationships could start out with the intention of being authenticate instead of developing relationships into authenticity. I think every person should at least read the section on Commitment as Path (pg. 100) in the chapter Conscious Commitment (pg. 85). He actually has what I would call a “Vow to Recall Love” between individuals in any relationship. It uncovers the simplistic nature of remembering just who we are and why we are in a relationship together. His statement is this:

Whatever problems our personalities have together, we will not let them get between us. If our egos are at war, we will not let that ruin our deeper connection – we will always come back and meet on this deeper level. We will help each other wake up and become all that we can be. We will keep opening to each other and to life itself in and through this relationship. (pg. 101)

This is one of the best ways to say “I am sorry” before you even get in the dog house. The only change I would have made to his statement is to put the positive first then the negative reflections last. Set the intention then the remediation. I think the beauty of it is that it can apply to anyone in any kind of relationship.

Overall, I am very happy with the learning value that I got from the book. I would like to share some of the ideals in a workshop one day and I plan on writing and using this book as a reference. I am going to add this book to my collection, I borrowed this one. Welwood is a thoughtful person who presents the information in an inspiring way that I love. Also, it’s the best relationship book I have read so far.

Bibliography

John Welwood, Ph.D. (1991). Journey of the Heart (1st Edition Ed.). New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Religious Science, Science of Mind spirituality, science of mind, religion, religous

Some of you may know, I am on the CORE Council for the Center for Spiritual Living here in Saint Louis.  Just so I can put this post in context, I just happen to be the current president of the Council.  Let me say this, it is an exciting and busy time of year.  Why?  Well, every January the CORE has a retreat.  It picks a location and spends a Friday evening and entire Saturday day reviewing, planning and getting motivated for the current year. 

What I have noticed over the past few years is that I am usually wondering, “what is it that we are going to experience this next year?”  Right up to the night the retreat begins, we as a council really get ramped up for a lot of leadership training and exercises mixed with spiritual meditations.  At the end of the 24 hours, you are in a state of reflection.  You know that place where you just have to sit and say, “Did that really happen?”

This is my second year as president and I have to say I find planning and executing the retreat is the most challenging task that I am given.  I can deal with people/congregants who are happy and giving compliments to the exact opposite, where people are giving me a tongue lashing for something that was decided and acted upon without knowledge of it.  The lesson learned: When you are involved with peoples spiritual home they get very passionate and animated about it. 

So, the question is “What are we going to do?”  The answer is “great things”.  We are going to hone our goals for the Center’s internal operations and expand our community involvement.  I have termed this year’s theme as a bridge year.  Lot’s of God stuff going.

So, when I recover from the retreat I will let you know how I fared.  I am know I will be the better for it.

Namaste

Check out the Center for Spiritual Living for more information about the organization.

Religious Science, Science of Mind spirit religion, center for spiritual living, religous, spirit, religion, science of mind

The message below is from a someone who is constantly sending me comments.  I finally found a way to block him.  If you search on my site you will find a way to block other IP addresses automatically.  If you know this guy send him up the river.  With peace, love and a smile of course. Search "block ip address reverse dns".<-- I am using this as code so any webot will not figure out what I am doing.  Thos pesky things.

Weblog comment on Thought Paper: On what “create”, “creative”, and “creativity” mean to me.

Busby SEO Test to inspirit
yeah you also a creative, thanks for the nice thought

Post: Thought Paper: On what “create”, “creative”, and “creativity” mean to me.

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General, Tips and Tricks end seo spam

The first thing that comes to mind is Creation. All three words are embodied in it. Without them there would be no Creation. Now that I am asked to write about these words I wonder what I thought about them in the past. With many of the thought papers I have found that what was has been wholly transformed, through the creation process, into something new. Many times I didn’t even consciously think about the subject before I read the assignment.

First, the word “create” means to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes. But in reality it is only being transformed from one or more things into something uniquely new and individualistic.

Second, “creative” is an adjective that describes the power to create. But it really is the innate ability of the cosmos to express itself through some object whether it is reproduction, galaxies forming or just me writing a paper. In Science of Mind terminology that would me that a person has the realization that they can use the power of Creation at anytime in any manner.

Third, “creativity” is the state or quality of being creative. This is where someone is actively transforming something in their life. It could be a job, an idea, a relationship, anything. I think of this as the real destination/realization that many of us want to maintain. That special place where things are and become what you think at every turn.

Now that I looked into the words’ definitions and impact on my thinking I have come to the conclusion that my idea of Creation is far beyond the simple definitions given to us. I think the main difference is that I know that there is a Creation Process that exists and that we are participant in it, either actively or passively. I know my path is to be an active co-creator.

Religious Science, Science of Mind spirit religion, center for spiritual living, religous, spirit, religion, science of mind

I came across a situation where a ASP.Net 1.1 application had a security scan done and one of the issues that came back was the fact that the cookies were not marked secure.  Not a major issue.  However, if you have a product base that is customized many times over, how do you change everything in production without wasting a lot of time and resources.  The goal is to not modify the existing code for any of the product bases, create complete http cookie coverage, and simplify the testing and redeployment of a single assembly.

Interested in the fix?

Here is what I came up with....

An HttpModule.  My HttpModule reads every cookie coming in and out, marks them as secure, sets and expiration time and forces it to http only.  Basically, everything that needed to be done and more to the cookies in order to satisfy the security scans.  Below is all the code we needed to create the http module.

using System;
using System.Web;

namespace Jaws.Core.Web
{
    public class SecureCookies : IHttpModule
    {
        #region Implementation of IHttpModule

        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a module and prepares it to handle requests.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="context">An <see cref="T:System.Web.HttpApplication" /> that provides access to the methods, properties, and events common to all application objects within an ASP.NET application </param>
        public void Init(HttpApplication context)
        {
            context.PreRequestHandlerExecute += SecureAllCookies;
            context.PreSendRequestContent += SecureAllCookies;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Disposes of the resources (other than memory) used by the module that implements <see cref="T:System.Web.IHttpModule" />.
        /// </summary>
        public void Dispose()
        {
            //Nothing to Dispose of at this point.
        }

        private static void SecureAllCookies(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            var context = (sender as HttpApplication);

            if (context != null)
            {
                foreach (string cookie in context.Request.Cookies)
                {
                    context.Request.Cookies[cookie].Secure = true;
                    context.Request.Cookies[cookie].Expires = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(10);
                    context.Request.Cookies[cookie].HttpOnly = true;
                }
            }
        }

        #endregion
    }
}

.Net, Tips and Tricks