AKMA’s Random Thoughts

"Forced out for unknown reasons." Only in the Church, it seems. This kind of thing is unacceptable, and will only persist as long as it's tolerated.

So sorry about Richard, I know that must have been very hard.
If it helps brighten your day, your were spoken of way down yonder at Camp Allen, TX during Clear Vision 6. I was eating at the table with Sam Lloyd, he of Trinity church in Boston and fellow Mississippian (he's a cousin to our Bishop, too). I had never met Sam before, and told him that my NT prof at Seabury called me the "Phillips Brooks of Seabury", a title that was quite flattering until I a) saw a picture of Brooks and b) realized he called me that BEFORE ever hearing me preach! Everyone got a kick out of that - Sam said he lives in Brooks' former home and that the doorways are incredibly WIDE!

A few years ago, Webster led the Two Choir Festival at my home parish, Trinity Church Indianapolis. I won't forget it because it was my first Sunday to visit the parish not long after moving to Indy. Since then, I've heard nothing but good things about his time with the choirs.

In the very small world of accomplished Anglican musicians in this country, he has an incredibly good reputation.

Yes, Don. And, for the record: there is nothing but good to hear about Richard. In every way he deserves his incredibly good reputation. And in so many small, less visible ways, he has always modeled and continues to model the life of a faithful embassador of the Gospel. His musical gifts are only the beginning of his spiritual gifts, which are all offered to the glory of God.

Richard Webster's ministry at St. Luke's was, single-handedly (I repeat: single-handedly!), the catalyst for my return to the church in late 2001 after an absence of more than a decade. I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. In my new parish, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, I can only hope to live out the many lessons I learned from him. Right now, in the wake of all that's happened back in Evanston, it's his generous and forgiving spirit that I'm seeking to emulate. May God grant me -- and all of us -- the strength.

(Adams: please say hello to Si from his former fellow chorister, "Mr. Holtrop.").

Peace,
Dennis

Margaret told me about Pippa. I am most sorry for her and the other kids. Richard has provided such a wonderful example for my sons for the past 14 years. He has such a wonderful way of bringing people together and making them part of a community. It is all so unfair.

The Stack is just what it sounds like: a tower of things that starts at the bottom and builds upward as it goes. In our case, the things in the stack are called "Stack Frames" or just "frames". We start with one stack frame at the very bottom, and we build up from there.

When the machine compiles your code, however, it does a little bit of translation. At run time, the computer sees nothing but 1s and 0s, which is all the computer ever sees: a continuous string of binary numbers that it can interpret in various ways.

This variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.

That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.

Earlier I mentioned that variables can live in two different places. We're going to examine these two places one at a time, and we're going to start on the more familiar ground, which is called the Stack. Understanding the stack helps us understand the way programs run, and also helps us understand scope a little better.

But some variables are immortal. These variables are declared outside of blocks, outside of functions. Since they don't have a block to exist in they are called global variables (as opposed to local variables), because they exist in all blocks, everywhere, and they never go out of scope. Although powerful, these kinds of variables are generally frowned upon because they encourage bad program design.