Metta Round The World @ BL

Dear Friends,

Back for awhile from a retreat, trust that you all are well!

The Buddhist Library is hosting the next session of Metta Round the World on 29th Oct 2012 and we hope that you can join us for a quiet peaceful evening of simple ‘love making’, or more traditionally known as developing and radiating metta (loving kindness) towards all sentient beings!

What is Metta Round The World?

Metta in the Pali language means love and kindness.  It manifest as a wish for others to be happy.
While it is easy to wish for our loved ones to be happy, it may not be so easy for some to wish for strangers to be happy.  Can we still say “May you be Well and Happy” towards our boss or customers who appear to be so unreasonable?  Regardless of our religion, beliefs or creed, can we look at foreigners and say “May you be Well and Happy?”

Fortunately, we can, even if it is sometimes trying or difficult.

In the Buddhist tradition, part of our spiritual practice is to cultivate Metta amongst other wholesome qualities.  Metta, or the capacity to love others and to wish for others happiness can be developed.  If developed over time, it gets internalised and become a natural part of how we see this world.  When fully developed, this love becomes boundless and is all encompassing.

Metta Round The World (MRTW) hopes to share this with everyone, to encourage everyone, regardless of one’s religion, beliefs or creed, to develop this boundless love.

I hope to see you all join us for this simple session at the Buddhist Library.

Please find the programme brief below.  I’ll be happy to answer your queries through this email thread or sms/whatsapp @ 91772284.

7pm Start of Session

  • Puja (Simple Chanting)
  • Metta & Mindfulness Meditation
  • Sharing on Metta
  • Sharing and Thoughts

9pm End of Session

2 LORONG 24A GEYLANG
Singapore 398526

~With Blessings from the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha~

Back From a Retreat

Hi everyone,

Just got back from a retreat and found that the daily verses on facebook also went into a ‘retreat’!

The verses and images are back online.  Read on if you want to know the gritty details.

There were three main failures leading to the ‘retreat’ of the verses.

1. New web hosting environment
2. Change in imgur apis for public albums
3. Automatic suspension of monitoring services

1. New web hosting environment
I switched to a new web hosting company a few days before going for my retreat.

Mistake #1.

Never make major changes before going on a retreat.  (I also uploaded an update of the Android app back then … leading to app settings not saved etc … another story!)

The old web hoster was demanding an increase of hosting fees (200% ~ 300%) and it was due in Oct.  With the new hosting company, the hosting fees are ‘locked’ in perpetually.  What this means is that it will honour those prices and promise not to hike the prices but allow existing customers to renew at their signon rates.

A part of me secretly thinks that it means they will honour it until they go bust.

Another reason for switching, a technical one, is the numerous and frequent unscheduled downtime of the web server.  I am perfectly fine with scheduled maintainence / upgrade server downtime.  But when the server just goes up and down and have poor response time, it means that this company is signing on more sheeps than their barn can hold.

Time to go to another farm.  If I’m going to get fleeced, I want to make sure I get adequate leg-room and good chomp to boot.

Effectively, a hosting company just have to email me before they power down their servers for maintenance, and I’m a happy camper.  I don’t care if it is because they want to upgrade to a new shiny SSD drive or just to watch customers’ sites go down.  If you keep me posted, that’s good enough.

The catch is that, you cannot do that for failures or traffic load.  Not easily anyway.  So decent web hosting companies should do just fine, not the shady run by night ones.

With the new hoster, all is shiny and good.  At some point, they decided to enforce a php safe_mode lock down.  Good practice.  Except it breaks many other legitimate apps.

This led to multiple warnings and errors logged in the server and disabled the tweeter code.

Failure #1.

2. Change in imgur apis for public albums

Imgur is a very useful image hosting service company.   It is mostly free to users to upload and to view the images online, with the option to go pro (read: cough up the silver!).

Like most online services, it has an api (Application Programming Interface) for other mobile, web or desktop apps to talk to it and consume the image hosting service.  So instead of having a human being go to its site, copy and paste the image link etc, you get an app to do it.

Effectly, your app talks to the imgur server app.  But there need a way for them to understand each other.  Apps are pretty dumb, in that you cannot simply get two apps
to talk without first establishing how they should talk.  They need a way to Interface, hence Application Programming Interface.  It’s like trade lingo, except it’s for apps, and in this case, specifically for apps to talk to imgur.

Imgur decides how other apps talk to its server apps.  All went well until I think mid or late August or so.  Imgur decided to speak French.  Ok, maybe not French, but a slight change in the URL format.

The bane of consuming web services.  Until apps that you find in your CDROM (anyone still use that??) and install into your pc, web services / apps can, will and do change.  Sometimes without notice.  Sometimes with notice when you are away on a retreat!!

So, that broke the interface for the image retrieval code.

This error also led to time outs, leading to the next problem.

Failure #2.


3. Automatic suspension of monitoring services

The facebook app that I wrote used to run on a cron service to send out daily verses to users according to their timezone location in the world.  One of the previous web hosting company decided that cron jobs are dangerous and routinely disabled the cron jobs without notice.  (I was running the cron jobs 24 x 2 times a day.  Once per hour and another as backup to complete the job if the earlier one failed somehow).

This was switched to an external monitoring service.  I piggy back onto the site monitoring and get it to monitor my server app and effectively call it 24 x 2 times a day!

So far so good.

When the above two failures persisted over a few hours, the monitoring service would suspend that monitor request.  The good thing about this service is that it keeps you notified through email notifications.

The bad thing is that after receiving thousands of notifications, I set a gmail filter to mark it as read and archive them.

Also, once a request is suspended, it no longer update you further.

Oh, and did I mention that I was on a retreat?

 

So, now everything is back online.

Hmmm … I think there is some Dharma learning to glean from the above … but I’m heading for lunch now.  Why don’t you post your learning below? 🙂

Buddhist Library 30th Anniversary Family Day

How can you participate?

There are many ways that you can participate in the Family Day.

You can

  • Join in the fun with your family on that day – Tickets are available from BL now.
  • Meet you friends for breakfast, lunch or tea!
  • Spread the news – Share the above poster and invite your friends!
  • Contribute a stall –  Application form from Buddhist Library
  • Contribute as
    a Volunteer for the day –
    Contact us for volunteers’ briefing.

 

So on Sunday 18th November 2012, see you all for Buddhist Library’s 30th Anniversary Family Day!
Make it a date!


Support of Buddha Vacana App on Apple iOS Phones & Tablets

This year’s Apple iOS Developer Program (July 2012 to July 2013) is proudly supported by The Buddhist LibraryKong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery and Metta Welfare Association.

Through their support, I’m able to continue to write and update the Buddha Vacana app on Apple iOS phones and tablets.

What is Buddha Vacana app?

Buddha Vacana is a daily readings app that automatically bring a verse of the Buddha’s teachings to you daily on your Apple iPhone, iPad, iTouch, facebook, PC and other supported devices.

This app is provided free for the benefit of all sentient beings, so please use it, share it and give your feedback and comments to improve it!

‘Buddha Vacana’ means the Words of the Buddha. It started off with the set of verses from the book Buddha Vacana: Sacred Literature of Buddhism and now offers other books for download.

No gooosie, apple, orange or avocado was harmed during the development of this app!

Pondering kindly is ezi!

Features
* 365 verses from the Pali Canon and post-canonical Buddhist texts.
* Date selectable to browse and read.
* Soothing bell chime on startup of app to remind you to come back to the moment, to your breath.
* Daily verse reminder at user preset time.

 

 

How can I support this App?

This app is written by myself, but is possible only because of the existence of the Sangha and lay Buddhist community to give their
support. You can support this app in many ways too!

Support the Sangha in their cultivation and practices wherever you are.  Provide them with the basic requisites.

Support the Buddhist community.  Attend puja services at Buddhist centres or temples.  Support Dharma work by the Sangha and Buddhist temples and monasteries through volunteering your time and through sponsorship where possible.

And the most direct way to support this app is to download it onto your Apple iPhone or iPad and use it!  Read, reflect on the Buddha’s teachings.  Discuss and share with your friends.  This is the best way to honour the Buddha!

Try out the teachings in your life.  Practise the Dharma.  Inspire your friends and family to learn the Dharma!  The Gift of Dharma excels all gifts!

 

Be Good, be Mindful, be Happy!

Buddhism & Science Symposium IV ~ Growing a Beautiful Mind 29JUL2012@KMSPKS

Buddhism & Science Symposium is a series of public forums initiated by the Buddhist community in Singapore.  The symposiums explore the relationship between Buddhism, Science and contemporary society.

How do we grow a beautiful mind from birth all the way into our golden years?

Join a former NASA Scientist, a Buddhist Monk from Bhutan, an Abbot from Singapore and a neuroscientist with Duke-NUS as they inquire into the issues of education and growing a beautiful mind.

Register today!

http://kmspks.org/events/featured/buddhism-science-symposium