of books, paper and wood

Been doing some reading lately, in fact, most of my days are spent reading. Whether i understand them or not is another matter althogether.

The stuff that i'm reading currently? I'll try to list some down, and what i've learned from them

1. Papers, Presentations, Lecture Slides on "relevance feedback and multimedia" : This is supposed to be my masters area of research. The whole idea behind this is that when you search for something online (via google or some other search engines, using text, images or otherwise), there are bound to be search results that are not relavent to you. So what relevance feedback does is actually to provide the user with a way to "rate" the results as either "relevant", "irrelevant" or "neutral" and thus providing the search engine with more idea on what the user wants.
   on a whole it seems quite ok, my own interest level? i'll rate it as 6 out of 10. Papers wise? can't really understand much, and more time needed i guess, to come up with something new.
   
2. Papers, Presentations, Lecture Slides on "Semantic Web and multimedia" : i'm supposed to be in a meeting for this research group. and i don't know a thing about it. So i started to read about it yesterday, and boy, how sleepy it was (i still am), too abstract, too deep, too conceptual. The meeting's at 3pm today, so i better get some coffee before i go in.
   
3. The Bible : been trying to make it a habit to read the Scriptures every morning. I guess i'm trying it out in chronological order. Currently with the Israelites in exile to Babylon. These past few days (or weeks) of reading has been about God punishing and punishing the Israelites for all their wrongdoings. Why? Why do we need to be beeten? to be cast out from our place? why?
   Isort of come to realise that sometimes, it takes God to strip us from all our abilities, strength, power, to enable us to return back to Him. Sometimes the phrase 人的尽头，神的开始 is very true indeed.
   How many times have we been wrestling with God? How many times have we been taking charge of all our live? I don't even need to count, it's almost "everytime", except... except those times when we are sick, stressed out, troubled, fearfull.
   Only when the boat rocks, do we cling to it more and more.
   
4. Purpose Driven Life: a popular book no doubt, which made me think twice before reading it (the cynic within me says that no good thing is so good). To be honest i really wanted a change, and when something promises a change, i do want to try.
   The book isn't perfect, but it does contain much spiritual insights. We should be thoughtful and careful when reading it. I remembered a few things...
   "The problem with a living sacrifice is that it can climb down the altar"
   The five purposes are worship, fellowship, to become more Christlike, service and mission.
   
   at least, the book tries to be God centred, instead of me-centred..
   
5. It's not about Me : a devotional book by Max Lucado, urging us to be more God centric and less me centric. The way to do it is to ponder on Him more and more.
   
   i guess we need a dose of this book. It's just too much about me, me, me. I'm sick of it too. thinking of this problem from the perspective of my Christian Fellowship. There are a few camps of people:
   
   1. people who put studies first (we should i guess). However, the problem lies where by what do we do with out studies? Do we glorify God with out studies? When can we glorify God with our studies? I guess sometimes it's more of a self standard that we have set--"i cannot get lower then a B", "i'm the top student of the class and must stay that way".
   Ask them about how to glorify God with their studies? i'm not sure about their answers.
   
   2. people who enjoys the CF. This is good i guess, but it happens to be another end of the extreme. Some people love the CF, it's just so much fun to them, Birthday parties, Sister's day, Brother's day, football sessions... i can feel the love. But what happend to the Word of God?
   
   May God help us. to grow each day, day by day, thru Jesus, our hope, our saviour and our way.
   
6. Knowing God: a book by J.I. Packer. Whoa... this one is a deep, hard book to read. Still at the front few pages, need some time before i have something to write about it.
   
7. Straits Time, CNN, Zaobao, Soccernet: not to forget to keep up with some news. although sometimes all i read is the comics and entertainment section (tsk tsk...)

More or less, i guess. Read anything nice lately? tell me, share with me.