Conference Extras (Release Candidate 2)

Timing is everything.

Just as I was getting ready to publish the Conference Extras (née “Conference LP”) Release Candidate 1, Apple released version 3.0 of the AppleTV software, with support for iTunes Extras. With a couple tweaks, I was able to get RC1 loaded on AppleTV. One problem – it didn’t work very well. The design looked good in iTunes, but was unnavigable on AppleTV. You couldn’t scroll, the background gradient looked like the Target logo, and most importantly – you couldn’t actually play anything. Back to the drawing board.

The new design works on AppleTV and still works in iTunes. Videos will now play full-screen or full-window. The content is still streamed from lds.org, so you’ll need a broadband internet connection. The one caveat is that you’ll need to use the keyboard to navigate in iTunes (arrow keys, enter, and escape). The mouse isn’t supported yet. Why not?

Well, it’s that timing thing. I started out designing this from the ground-up for AppleTV because it seems to be the more finicky platform to target. Adding mouse support was the last thing on the list, and the only thing remaining when Apple released actual documentation for developing iTunes LPs and Extras.

Instead of delaying the next release until I’ve had a chance to incorporate best-practices from the documentation, I figured I’d release it as-is – everything except the mouse support – so you can try it out.

Instructions:

1. Download ConferenceExtras2009Oct-1.0rc2.zip.


2. Double-click the resulting 179th Semiannual General Conference.ite file. iTunes will import the Extras to the Movies section of iTunes.


3. In iTunes, double-click 179th Semiannual General Conference. Use the arrows to navigate, Enter to select, and ESC to exit.

The Purifying Power of Gethsemane

This was Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s final testimony, given in General Conference on April 7, 1985. Elder McConkie passed away 12 days later, on April 19.

I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears.

But I shall not know any better then than I know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way.

I love the personal foundation of the testimony he shares.

In speaking of these wondrous things I shall use my own words, though you may think they are the words of scripture, words spoken by other Apostles and prophets.

True it is they were first proclaimed by others, but they are now mine, for the Holy Spirit of God has borne witness to me that they are true, and it is now as though the Lord had revealed them to me in the first instance. I have thereby heard his voice and know his word.

This echoes Alma’s witness of how to gain a testimony in Alma 5:45-6: “And how do ye suppose that I know of their surety? … Behold, I have fasted and prayed many days that I might these things of myself.” Alma, who saw an angel (Mosiah 27:11), gained his testimony through prayer and fasting and the witness of the Holy Ghost. Laman and Lemuel saw angels (1 Ne 17:45) but didn’t pray for a witness as Nephi did (1 Ne 11:3).

It’s a beautiful and powerful testimony. Someone has pieced his address together with video from The Lamb of God. They go together quite well.

“The Purifying Power of Gethsemane” by Elder Bruce R. McConkie
April 1985 General Conference

View / Download ⇣

The Atonement Can Clean, Reclaim, and Sanctify Our Lives

Both the regional airport and Freeman Park in Idaho Falls were built on reclaimed landfills.

I have lived in Idaho Falls nearly my whole life. I have contributed a lot of garbage to those landfills over the course of more than 50 years.

What would the city fathers think if on a given day I showed up on one of the runways of the Idaho Falls airport or the middle of one of the grassy fields in Freeman Park with a backhoe and started digging large holes? When they asked me what I was doing, I would respond that I wanted to dig up the old garbage that I had made over the years.

I suspect they would tell me that there was no way to identify my personal garbage, that it had been reclaimed and buried long ago. I'm sure that they would tell me that I had no right to dig up the garbage and that I was destroying something very beautiful and useful that they had made out of my garbage. In short, I don't think they would be very pleased with me. I suppose that they would wonder why anyone would want to destroy something so beautiful and useful in an attempt to dig up old garbage.

That last bit reminds of Elder Holland’s CES fireside back in January. “If something is buried in the past, leave it buried.”

Elder Bowen continues:

Just as the landfill requires dedicated work and attention, laboriously applying layer after layer of fill to reclaim the low-lying ground, our lives also require the same vigilance, continually applying layer after layer of the healing gift of repentance.

Just as the city fathers in Idaho Falls would feel bad about a person trying to dig up his old garbage, our Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ, feel sorrow when we choose to remain in sin, when the gift of repentance made possible through the Atonement can clean, reclaim, and sanctify our lives.

“The Atonement Can Clean, Reclaim, and Sanctify Our Lives” by Elder Shayne M. Bowen, of the Seventy
October 2006 General Conference

View / Download ⇣

Remember Lot’s Wife

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spoke at BYU on the importance of looking forward instead of focusing on the past.

The start of a new year is the traditional time to take stock of our lives and see where we are going, measured against the backdrop of where we have been. I don’t want to talk to you about New Year’s resolutions, because you only made five of them and you have already broken four. (I give that remaining one just another week.) But I do want to talk to you about the past and the future, not so much in terms of New Year’s commitments per se, but more with an eye toward any time of transition and change in your lives—and those moments come virtually every day of our lives.

Lot’s wife’s sin wasn’t in looking back; it was in wanting to go back. Instead of hearkening to the word of the Lord which told her to go forward, she yearned to return to Sodom and Gomorrah.

So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives.

Elder Holland speaks of how the Apostle Paul left everything behind to follow Christ. He shares the poem of Miniver Cheevy, by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and the story of a young man who left his hometown to do something great, only to be torn down by his peers when he returned. He changed, but they refused to see the change in him.

He also speaks passionately about forgiving ourselves, and especially others.

When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.

Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried.…

[Dwelling] on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“It is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.” Powerful.

“What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” –Acts 10:15.

Many repented of a rambunctious youth and went on to serve the Lord in righteousness, including Paul, Alma, Alma the Younger, the sons of Mosiah, the Anti-Nephi-Lehis, and Moses (sort of).

“Remember Lot’s Wife” by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
BYU Devotional, January 13, 2009

View / Download ⇣

October 2009 Conference iTunes Extras

I’m please to share with you the 179^th Semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – as iTunes Extras.

For now, the Extras will only work in iTunes 9 (Mac and Win). I’m still working on getting support for the AppleTV 3.0 update released last week.

You’ll be able to watch all five sessions of the October conference, as well as the General Relief Society Meeting held on September 26, 2009. (Soon, I’ll release an update that will include the text of the talks, so you can read along as well.) Browse through the sessions, search for your favorite speakers, and enjoy the music of the choirs. Just download, unzip, double-click, and enjoy!

179th Semiannual General Conference iTunes Extras.zip

Moral Discipline

When Elder Christofferson spoke at our stake conference in February 2008, little did we know that he would be called to serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles just two months later. Little were we surprised that he was.

Speaking of societies’ failure to teach the rising generation moral values:

As a consequence, self-discipline has eroded and societies are left to try to maintain order and civility by compulsion. The lack of internal control by individuals breeds external control by governments. One columnist observed that “gentlemanly behavior [for example, once] protected women from coarse behavior. Today, we expect sexual harassment laws to restrain coarse behavior. . . .

“Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become.” (Walter Williams, “Laws Are a Poor Substitute for Common Decency, Moral Values,” Deseret News, April 29, 2009)

On the parental responsibility to teach their children:

I have heard a few parents state that they don’t want to impose the gospel on their children but want them to make up their own minds about what they will believe and follow. They think that in this way they are allowing children to exercise their agency. What they forget is that the intelligent use of agency requires knowledge of the truth, of things as they really are (see D&C 93:24). Without that, young people can hardly be expected to understand and evaluate the alternatives that come before them. Parents should consider how the adversary approaches their children. He and his followers are not promoting objectivity but are vigorous, multimedia advocates of sin and selfishness.

View / Download ⇣