I don’t normally post jokes that I’ve come across on the Internet and e-mail, but this one tickled me.
There was an engineer, manager and programmer driving down a steep mountain road. The brakes failed and the car careened down the road out of control. Half way down the driver managed to stop the car by running it against the embankment narrowing avoiding going over a cliff. They all got out, shaken by their narrow escape from death, but otherwise unharmed.
The manager said To fix this problem we need to organize a committee, have meetings, and through a process of continuous improvement, develop a solution.
The engineer said No that would take too long, and besides that method never worked before. I have my trusty pen knife here and will take apart the brake system, isolate the problem and correct it.
The programmer said I think you’re both wrong! I think we should all push the car back up the hill and see if it happens again.
Brought to my attention by the mighty Grove Books, but also 142,000,001 other places (now).
Anyway, back to the point – here’s a song that’s been recorded over 4 years (or something) and 3 continents, with something like 35 street musicians – who have never met one another. It’s a single tune woven together over time and space (oo there’s Dr Who again) in a coherent whole, and only the final contributer gets to hear how their contribution fits into the overall whole; and possibly not even that person depending on what’s being played in the headphones.
Some of the contributers play a huge part (Roger Ridley). Some play more minor roles (Washboard Chas). But all have a unique offering they bring. Some take part as a big group, other as individuals. Some instruments you expect (drum set, bass), others more surprising (sitar, tabla). Even different languages working to the same tune and harmony.
Each person’s contribution is blind (as I’ve said above), but co-ordinated by a person who has a grand vision and can see the whole picture, and whispers instructions in their ears that direct their natural ability and talent.
Each person plays their part, trusting in how the producer will take their offering and work it into the whole. They are working in unity to achieve a common goal. Furthermore, the motivation is to break down barriers, and promote peace, understanding, and social change.
Doesn’t the above kinda remind you of the (worldwide) Church at its best? Substitute the producer for the Holy Spirit, and you’re there. I find that a breath-taking picture. In fact, when I listened to One World earlier with my son on my lap, it moved me almost to tears (but I do get a bit emotional when I’m tired, I know!!)
In case you missed it, here’s One World and Stand by Me again:
Heard half an interview with someone on Radio 4, who was talking about a Producer called Mark Johnson who was walking down the street in Santa Monica, and heard a busker playing Stand by me, which launched a global project recording street musicians all around the world playing said song.
It sounded interesting – I love that song – and the mental image it conjured was of lots of diffent interpretations of the song around the world. So “this is what Stand By Me sounds like in Russia” (or whatever) kind of thing.
So I googled, and it turns out to be So Much Better. Take a look at www.playingforchange.com/episodes/2/Stand_By_Me (you need to give it to at least 1 min 15 seconds.) – also embedded below (hopefully!)
This song transformed Playing For Change from a small group of individuals into a global movement for peace and understanding.
This track features over 35 musicians collaborating from all over the world; they may have never met in person, but in this case, the music does the talking.
Turns out there’s a whole heap of other performances on the site
(www.playingforchange.com) – the first you get to is a brief introduction and One World.
Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.
It’s heady stuff. While I can’t subscribe whole-heartedly to the ideology (the site talks about finding higher conciousness at one point), the philosphy is fantastic, and blessed are the peacemakers. Even more amazingly, charitable foundation has grown out of it that.. well I’ll let them say:
The Playing For Change Foundation is dedicated to connecting the world through music by providing resources to musicians and their communities around the world.
A decade ago a small group of documentary filmmakers set out with a dream to create a film rooted in the music of the streets. Not only has that dream been realized, it has blossomed into a global sensation called Playing For Change, a project including musicians of every level of renown, that has touched the lives of millions of people around the world.
While traveling the world filming and recording musicians, the crew became intimately involved with the music and people of each community they visited. Although many of these communities had limited resources and a modest standard of living, the people in them were full of generosity, warmth, and above all they were connected to each other by a common thread: music.
Out of these discoveries, the Playing For Change Foundation was born and made its mission to ensure that anyone with the desire to receive a music education would have the opportunity to do so. The Playing For Change Foundation is dedicated to the fundamental idea that peace and change are possible through the universal language of music.
House group this week was interesting. We’re doing a study called The Prayers of Jesus, which is a DVD/study book combo looking at, well, the prayers of Jesus.
It’s a series, and we’ve previously done The Parables of Jesus and The Miracles of Jesus. Once you get past the slightly odd bollywood-esque music and Americanisms, the material is top notch – inspiring, interesting, and challenging.
This week was session 2, although the DVD player didn’t work, so we didn’t actually hear what the scholarly types had to say about the passage, which meant an amount of guess work was required in answering the questions in the book. In the end we gave up and had a general discussion about the passage, which was very interesting.
The passage was Luke 18:1-8 (The Persistent Widow), which is a pretty familiar passage and one I felt I knew fairly well. The widow in question kept on and on at the judge until she got what she wanted, and in the same way we must keep on praying.
It’s in the same category (in my mind) as other the great teaching on prayer in Luke 11 – with the chap who gets up in the middle of night because his neighbour keeps pestering him, and then there’s the great no holds barred assertion in vv 9 and 10:
9So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
As they say on Alpha – that’s 6 times Jesus says it!
However, when I actually read the passage of the widow again, a rather different element leapt out at me… Here it is, with my emphasis:
1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’
6 And the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?
The widow was actually asking for justice – that is for the right and fair outcome. As I was reflecting on my own prayers, praying for justice doesn’t feature very prominently. Grace and mercy, absolutely – all the time, but justice? And what does it mean for God to give us justice?
As the regular reader will know (Hi Steve – how are you, by the way?), I recently-ish acquired some cheap extension tubes for me camera. These are basically cylinders of metal that move the lens away from the sensor, thereby reducing minimum focussing distance (at the cost of light and depth-of-field).
This enables them to act as a poor-man’s (<10 quid!) macro lens, enabling more than 1:1 reproduction with a full set and a 50mm lens (which happens to be my favourite lens). I’ve already posted some of the pics I’ve taken with them on here.
There are, however, two definite drawbacks to using (cheap) tubes, and one probable drawback.
No electrical contacts mean you lose aperture control (on most lenses) and auto-focus. This in turn means the lens is stuck wide open, leading to
(debatable pro/con) a tiny depth-of-field. Literally millimetres or less. And finally,
you lose a lot of light, requiring a tripod or flash. Akin to this, they are very susceptible to shake. It also will highlight deficiencies in the lens.
That said, they are really good fun!
Can’t do a right royal lot about the auto-focus (except buy a macro lens, or much more expensive tubes with contacts) – although the general trick seems to be to rock backwards and forwards to achieve good focus.
The good news is that you can do something about the aperture (on a Canon, at least) – you can choose the aperture to shoot with! You have to decide the aperture in advance, but it’s well worth doing.
The steps are as follows:
Mount the lens on the camera.
using Av or M modes, dial in the required aperture (f/8 – f/11 seem good choices).
Press the Depth-of-Field Preview button to stop down the lens.
with the button still pressed umount the lens – it will remain stopped down.
Mount it on the tubes, and then both back on the camera.
Voila – enjoy a sensible DoF for macro work (albeit at the cost of even more light).
I caught a snatch of Radio 4 the other day, when a radio presenter was being interviewed, and he was talking about radio being his great passion. Specifically he said
You hear some footballers say I would play football in an empty stadium, and it’s like that for me and radio. I have to do it, even in an ’empty stadium’
His point (I think) was about motivation. Even if a footballer is all alone, in an empty stadium, they will still play football because it’s what they love.
I’ve been thinking about these sorts of things for a while, and what Confucius apparantly said:
Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
I think this is an over-simplification, but it’s a compelling statement with a lot of truth. Find the people who never have to a work a day again in their lives financially (Formula 1 drivers, Rock stars, etc) – and they choose to continue to work. In some cases it’s greed, but I genuinely think a lot of these people have turned their passion into their job, and don’t want to do anything else. The paddock seems to be full of ex-F1 drivers just hanging around really. In these sorts of cases are being paid to do what other people would pay to do!
The next step is of course self-reflection. What are my empty stadia?
Well, there’s obviously ‘blogging/writing (‘cos nobody reads this, I pay to make it available, and still write it!) Photography’s got to be in there. Writing ‘stuff’ for computers (web pages, code, etc). I suppose Church and Growing Leaders, but religion’s kind of in a different category, somehow – and I’d probably add worship leading and preaching (not that I’ve done either recently). I still, at times, wish I’d gone for it and pursued a career in the media – specifically radio. That said, I’m happy in my current situation, and can’t and wouldn’t regret any decision on the way here.
My experience is when I’m doing stuff I’m good at and enjoy (e.g. programming), it doesn’t feel like work, so perhaps Conficius was onto something…
One of my ambitions for the year was to submit a photograph for publication to a magazine. Haven’t quite got around to that yet, but one of my photos was published in this week’s Harrogate Advertiser.
The text is sort of 80% based on what I sent to. Sadly the paper don’t pay anything for ad-hoc submissions (no top up for my macro lens fund), but stil nice to be in print!
This is was I submitted:
The wind, rain, and floods gave way to autumn sunshine as the Rev’d Francis and Mrs Elaine Wainaina cycled down one last hill from the Vicarage to St Andrew’s Church in Starbeck on Sunday, where a crowd of over a hundred parishioners had gathered to celebrate the successful completion of their Lands End to John o’Groats cycle ride. Balloons and banners decked the church, and BBC Radio York interviewed the couple live on air as the church bell tolled their safe return.
Despite having just cycled 1,000 miles in 18 days, the couple looked fresh and happy – and were even talking about what the next one might be!
The ride was jointly in support of the St Andrew’s Church building project and Wellspring Training & Therapy, and is it not too late to donate via www.teamfrancis.co.uk (which also has pictures and a blog) and www.wellspringtherapy.co.uk.
Turns out flickr only hosts 200 photos for free, which is clearly a limitation if you’re doing a 365 project!
While I’m only on No. 138, I wanted to sort something out before I got near 200 and started not being able to see the pics, so I’ve moved all the photos off flickr and on to my own website, on 34sp.
The new place to look is photo.eutony.net/365, and I will probably move all my blog photos over there too.
I got maybe 10% of the way through writing my own photo hosting webpages, and then decided I didn’t have the time or enthuiasm to do it all from scratch, so it’s powered by Gallery. I’m in the process of creating a eutony.net theme for it, so it fits in a bit better with the rest of this site, but for now it’s the default.
Of course, all my 365 pictures are also on 365project.org/eutony still, and that site offers a month by month calendar view, in case that’s more your thing!
(It also means I can automatically put the latest one on the front page on my website, which is nice.)
All in all a most satisfactory ending to Torchwood Miracle Day. Unlike the end of Children of the Earth, they couldn’t be shouting Next Season more clearly.
So, the important bit – how were my predications?
Jack gets immortality back, and death returns to everyone else.
Pretty close. I really didn’t see Matheson coming, although I did start to wonder after he was shot by Charlotte.
Gwen, Rhys and Anwen all make it through.
Yup
There’s no cross-over with Dr Who (although I wouldn’t completely write off River Song or Martha Jones). Yup.
Kitzinger is going to come to a sticky end. Surpisingly not. Watch this space, I guess.
… as is Danes, Oh yes.
… probably Matheson too, Somewhere between half-right and couldn’t be more wrong.
… but probably not Esther. Again, surprisingly she didn’t make it.
At least 1 further character will be introduced to further the plot, then killed off after 1 episode (the assassin, the Colasantos)
Charlotte’s possibly in this category, as is the woman family member in Shanghai. I didn’t really realise it was the penultimate episode when I predicted this one.
Aliens are involved. Not really.
Time travel won’t be involved. Yup
Overall, I’d have to call that a pretty poor showing. I’m unconvinced by the Matheson immortality thing. We know that Jack is immortal because he was brought back to life by the time vortex. It seems unlikely that this attribute could be transferred to someone else by a blood transfusion, or even blood replacement. It’s an interesting concept though, and I wonder if the effect is temporary or as permanent as Jacks?
Oh yes, and I’ve worked out what the next spin-off will be called:
I’m quite enjoying this season of Torchwood (Miracle Day) – it’s moved a long way from the Alien of the week format. I could do without the sex, which seems to be solely about gratification and not about developing the plot, but otherwise it’s good.
I’ve been mulling over what’s going to happen (I should add that I’m writing this just before Episode 9 airs – Jack’s been mortally wounded with a gunshot and is being driven away by Esther, Gwen has been deported)
So, the pretty definites, I would say:
Jack gets immortality back, and death returns to everyone else.
Gwen, Rhys and Anwen all make it through.
There’s no cross-over with Dr Who (although I wouldn’t completely write off River Song or Martha Jones).
Kitzinger is going to come to a sticky end.
… as is Danes,
… probably Matheson too,
… but probably not Esther.
At least 1 further character will be introduced to further the plot, then killed off after 1 episode (the assassin, the Colasantos)
Aliens are involved.
Time travel won’t be involved.
Actually it would seem there are only 2 more episodes, so it’s going to wrap up pretty quickly.
I wonder if Jack will somehow use the null field to restore his immortality? Or he may die, which will reverse everything, including bringing himself back to life.
