Apologies for the outage – apparantly the server woz hacked. W00t!
Anyway, everything should be back to normal now.
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17th April 2025 - "Breakfast"
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Apologies for the outage – apparantly the server woz hacked. W00t!
Anyway, everything should be back to normal now.
One of the aspects of being a Christian that I find tricky is remembering it. I don’t mean in the big sense, but in the everyday hustle and bustle of working life. I sometimes find that I’ve gone the whole day without any particular reference to God. Other days I’m very “tuned in”, and keep firing up short little arrow
prayers, and know just the right things to say, and can feel like I’m spending time with Him even in the midst of debugging code.
Why does it matter if you remember God or not? I guess there’s a couple of reaons… Firstly is because Christians believe we have a daily intimate relationship with God. If I was to generally ignore my wife, except for 5 minutes in the morning when I delivered a monolog on what I was thinking and feeling, our marriage would soon fall apart.
Secondly, prayer changes the pray-er. If my thoughts are on God and Jesus, my actions and choices will be influenced. It helps take me outside myself and my self-centredness. I become more Christ-like, if you like (which is, after all, the ultimate goal).
This principle was recognised in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 6 (my emphasis):
6 These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Isn’t that a great image? Everytime you come in or go out of your house, there is the word of the Lord, reminding you of him.
I heard a sermon on this subject at HTB once, which considered what might be contemporary equivalents of writing it on the doorposts
, which I’ll list here (plus one or two of my own).
Post-it Notes
It’s a great habit to write verses on a post-it note, and stick it somewhere you’ll come across it. Bathroom mirror, inside a cupboard, wallet. I used to stick them in my diary, so when I opened it I’d come across a promise of God, or something I felt he’d said to me. Even better, you could then collect them up into one place as a sort of corpus of communication.
Bracelets
I have a friendship bracelet that is made up of little white fishes on a blue background (it’s an icthus thing – go Google if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about). When I wear it, each time I feel it or spot it on my wrist, it reminds me of whose I am. The WWJD/PUSH/… bracelets are a similar idea.
Crosses / jewelery
I have a wooden cross on a leather necklace which I wear sometimes. This has the advantage of being hidden under clothes so doesn’t undermine professionalness or dress-codes. Necklaces are particularly good because you feel them against your chest, for example when you lean forward. You can also finger them through clothes.
Computer Passwords
Possibly my favourite. Choose a password which is based on a bible passage or verse. The best passwords (IMO) are mnemonic based, with a heathly dose of numbers, punctuation, and mixed case. A secular example, you might choose Strawberry fields for ever
as your mnemonic, which would make the password SF4ever!
. Obviously it needs to be a memorable verse, so I don’t want to publish really good examples – but a few random passages password-ized:
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people.might become
Rev2221-TgotLJ(quite a long one that one!)
The Lord’s my shepherdmight be
TL’smyS(Ps23)
For you alone are the Holy One, You alone are the Lordgoes to
4UaatH1,UaatL
This is an excellent approach because the resulting passwords are immune to dictionary attack, but easible memorable. Best of all, every day the very first thing you do at work (and each time you have to unlock your screen) you mentally recite a verse of scripture.
The same approach can be used with Hotmail, Facebook, etc (as long as you choose different passwords for each!!)
Some good substitutions are:
Rituals / habits / Liturgy
Probably the principle way we remember God is through ritual, specifically thinking about the Last Supper. But you can build little God slots
into your day. For instance, every time I get into the car, before I start the engine I will say a prayer. Or everytime I put on the kettle. If you’re at work, going to the loo is a good chance to refocus. Sounds a bit weird, but it’s something that happens everyday, and is usually away from clamour and watching eyes. Shut the door, close your eyes and go “Thank God”, and then go about your business.
Like it or not, we are all creatures of habits, and we all have our little liturgies for how we go about things (whether spiritual or not).
Fasting
Probably any of the spiritual discipline would do, but I personally find fasting the most immediate, when I do it. You get an on and off reminder all day, whenever there’s a little pang of hunger. Why am I hungry? Oh yes, that’s right
.
So I hope some of this is helpful. It’s stuff I’ve found very helpful over the last 10 or 15 years, and continue to find helpful.
And – even the mighty Wombles needed reminding sometimes to remember who they are:
When it’s foggy on the common
And you just can’t see
And I womble into you
And you womble into me.
Just remember we’re so lucky
To be womblin’ free.
Remember ‘member member
What a womble womble womble you are.
I’m definitely getting braver in my old age.
Today I took calculated risks with two fairly precious items – my watch, and my Canon EOS 300D. The second is the point of this post, but the first is worth a quick mention.
My watch ‘glass’ (don’t know what it actually is) was fairly scratched – not the extent of rendering it unusable, but enough to be a pain when reading the time. I discovered on t’internet that Brasso (!) can be used to remove small scratches on watch glass – and it works! Thanks to Steve Waddington for giving me the courage to give it a whirl via his article on cleaning watch faces.
The proviso is that I tried the same on my other half’s watch, and it didn’t make any difference to her scratches. YMMV.
Emboldened by my success with the watch, my attention turned to my camera. I know it’s an old model now, and probably £25 on eBay or something, but I absolutely love it. I am constantly surprised (even after 6 years) with the quality of pictures that come out of it.
If you want to see for yourself, point a browser at photoboxgallery.com/eutony. Not all of these are from the 300D, but the vast majority are.
Anyway, which photographing on a beach in Cornwall earlier this year, some sand was introduced to the interior of the camera, and settled on the mirror and focusing screen (eek!). I cleaned up the mirror ok, but in trying to clean up the focusing screen I made matters very much worse, rendering the viewfinder on the brink of useless. This is not a good thing on an SLR.
In the excitement of our pending new arrival (due any day!!), I decided I need a fully operational camera, so started some research on what one could do about a trashed focusing screen. I discovered a whole new world of people intentionally switching their focusing screen to a split prism one, which grealty assists manual focus. I liked the sound of that, so I’ve ordered myself a cheapy on eBay to give it a whirl.
I also found instructions on how to remove and clean the focus screen on digitalrebel.nl, and thought (bouyed by my success with the watch) why not?
It is actually very straightforward. You just need some tweezers and a steady hand. I took the screen out, gave it a good ‘ol bath and a polish, and – to be honest – it’s a good as new now. I thought it had been scratched by the same, but it turned out to all be dirst/dust/smudges. It is, however, very important to make a note of its orientation when it comes out!!
It did take me 5 attempts to replace it back in the camera. First time I hadn’t cleaned it properly. Out it came again. Next 3 I had it in upside down and in some cases only partially seated. Upside down it seems to work ok, except the auto-focus lights don’t light up. You also have to watch that you don’t catch the foam pad (which damps the mirror) in the clip. I’m not sure the auto-focus lights quite show properly, but there always were a little fuzzy.
The final attempt also had a bit of a heart stopper when the clip slipped up behind the mirror, and hence periously close to the sensor. Seem to have got away with it though!
Twitter has now turned off Basic Authentication, so apps have to use OAuth.
In case you missed it, I have a page which says how to a PHP twibot using OAuth, and I’m grateful to Shadowfax for highlighting some of changes he had to make to get it work in CentOS.
Enjoy!
Thanks to The Church Mouse, I’ve come across 7 link challenge – and it seemed fun.
Also decided to keep a mini-diary. At that stage it was almost like Twitter, with very short “newsy” type items. Due to a strange quirk, it was post #99 in the pre-Wordpress database!
Had a trip to casualty on Friday evening.
Nothing serious – I was having a session at the Harrogate Climbing Centre (which, incidentally, I can’t rate highly enough) on Thursday, when I fell off the bouldering wall awkwardly and landed on my ankle.
Hobbled home (well, cycled actually) – pretty painful but that’s how it goes.
Anyway by Friday it had swollen to twice it’s usual size, was a horrendous purple, and was very tender to the tough. The good Mrs H. said I needed to take it casualty for an X-ray to make sure nothing was broken.
At this point I have to say Casualty were excellent. I was in and out in well under an hour, including an X-ray and several pokes. I even got a special You have sprained your ankle
sheet, which instructions about how to manage it, and some pysio type exercises to get it mobile again. Nice.
The point of this post (yes, there is one), is the first conversation I had – with the triage nurse…
What seems to be the problem.
I’ve hurt my ankle, and am worried it might be broken.
How did you do it?
Well I was at the climbing wall…
Ah. You were climbing a wall
(*writes notes*)
No no – I was at the climbing wall – the one near Hornbeam
Yes – you were climbing a wall
At this point I gave up, and thought that my pride could probably cope with the difference between injury sustained being a plonker
and injury sustained through pushing the very limit of the human body in the ultimate of sporting achievements
. Maybe there isn’t a difference anyway? 🙂
Well, had my new phone for nearly a month now (if you squint a bit).
I’m definitely getting old, because there great swathes of it I haven’t really touched yet. I usually explore every nook and cranny of a phone the day I get it, but somehow I’ve had other things to do.
This is also unusual in that it’s only a “partial” upgrade – but which I mean I fully intend to jump to a full smartphone when my contract is up, and finally retire my Palm. This in turn has reduced by excitement for setting it up just so…
So I’m not going to do a review (plenty of those on the web). In summary I like it. There are aspects of the INQ I miss, but I wouldn’t go back.
In detail then, what I like:
Things I don’t like…
Very excited – new phone in the post. SHould be here Weds.
I have to say that ever since I strayed from the One True Way (Sony Ericsson) I’ve been a bit disappointed with my phones. I got a Samsung P300 (weird calculator phone) several years ago, which was very cool in terms of size, battery life, and features – but a pig to use because the UI was horrendous. Right up the day I retired it, I often pressed the wrong button in response to a UI prompt.
I then jumped ship to 3 (largely because of free ‘unlimited’ Internet) and got an INQ1 (the Facebook phone), which in many ways I like a lot. The Facebook/Skype/Messenger/Phonebook integration is very nice – but it is also very irritating. Firstly it’s S…L….O……W. I mean really slow. It’s not unusual for the whole phone to freeze up for 10 or 15 seconds, sometimes in the middle of a text message. You can never be fully confident about whether you’ve pressed a button or not – and then of course it suddenly catches up with itself and you end up phoning Barack Obama, or something.
Then there’s the Facebook integration, which is good in many ways, but then you actually try to do something that seems obvious – and you can’t! For instance, look at the Facebook homepage. “James has been tagged in an album”. Try and click on it to see the album – no can do. Have to either try and find it via the “Photos” tab, or via the contact’s profile who posted it.
I like that it’s an MP3 player, and the music reproduction is fine. But the playlist management is awful. Got all my toons in one ma-husive playlist. It takes literally 2 minutes to go from selecting it to being ready to play the first track. And the shuffle is appalling – it’s not unusual to hear the same song 2 or 3 times in a few hours, and then not hear others on the list for weeks (and we’re talking several Gb of music here).
So anyway, I’m in the “upgrade” zone, and I’ve decided to return to the nest, and plumped for an SE W995 (one the “walkman” phones). I’ve had my eye on a walkman phone for a while, and this one ticks all the boxes I currently want to tick in a phone:
I came very very close to going for an HTC Hero, but it doesn’t have FM radio. Plus I just “get on” with the SE interface. I’ve yet to have a Sony Ericsson I haven’t liked.
I think my next phone will finally replace my aging Palm Tungsten – I don’t think the W995 is quite up to that task yet, maybe the Hero would have been?
Oh dear. The Church does get itself in a stew, doesn’t it?
I’ll be honest – I struggled with the ordination of women. My understanding of the Bible was that women should not be in a position of leadership over men. However having met women who seem genuinely called and gifted for the Ministry, and who are annointed leaders, plus a re-examining of the scripture, I have to say I’ve changed my tune.
I believe it is quite possible to make a coherent case for not ordaining women. It’s also possible to make a coherent case for ordaining women, and it is this latter position that I’ve come to believe holds more weight. That combined with the fact that I’m not sure it’s actually a core issue. Did Jesus die and rise again? Was/is He the Son of God. These are core issues. The other stuff is important, yes, but secondary.
What I can’t see is tenable is to say you can ordain women to be deacons and priests, but not bishops. Or indeed, that you can ordain them to be bishops, but not “real” bishops.
The Church of England has decided that women can be ordained. Therefore they should be ordained to every office (including ABC) as led by the Spirit.
The problem is that there are those within the CofE who conscientiously dissent from this view. Most pressingly are those who have given up their livelihoods to serve the church, i.e. the stipendary clergy. These are people who passionately believe women should not be in leadership above men, and who entered a life of ministry and service on that understanding.
Equally, there are women who pressingly feel called in ministry, whose way is being barred by said dissenters.
So who wins? The men who don’t want women, or the women who do?
My 2p is to take a long term view, and accept that in many ways we are just a cog in history. Pass a 40th Article that states all ordinands must support the ordination of women, and be willing to submit to their authority, before they can be ordained.
Then wait for 40 years until every current deacon, priest, or bishop has retired. Lo and behold, no further opposition or need for Episcopal Oversight or any of that nonsense.
Men who feel called to the ministry, but dissent from the official position of the CofE on women need to find a new home (it’s called submitting to the leadership). But equally, no one who has given their life to the ministry on the ‘old’ position is forced (unfairly) to either change their views or leave the church.
The Big Problem with this, is that we effectively “write off” a generation of women leaders from the ministry, and you could say that a generation of male leaders “get their way”. I suppose I would say that the CofE has not had ordained women for 500 years (longer before that as the Catholic church) – for the sake of unity and moving forward together could we give it another 40? But I don’t know that can we really ask a generation of women to lead by example and make this sacrifice?
I’m sure it wouldn’t take as long as 40 years. I’d be surprised if any candidate for ordination today can be against the ordination of women, given the reality of women priests and the no-doubt imminent reality of women bishops. Plus I think it’s increasingly rare for ordinands to be much under 25 or 30 (although I don’t have stats to back that up).
I’m not so self-unaware to not realise that I’m writing this as a man. I’m happy inviting an entire generation of would-be women leaders to make a sacrifice that I don’t have to. I suppose all I can say is that Christianity, and leadership, is fundmentally rooted in service and sacrifice. In some ways while “sides” exist at all, let alone trying to get their own way, we are failing as the body of Christ…
When I was on a stag weekend last year, conversation turned to music (as so often it does), and for some reason we started talking about bass breaks.
A bass break
is where all the other instruments stop for a bit while the bass does it’s funky stuff.
For some reason this discussion really captured my imagination, and I have been pondering it ever since. Of course, as soon as I think of a song I forget it again – so here’s my attempt to draw up a list. I imagine this will be a kind of rolling edit job.
Oh yes, and the domain is pop songs (i.e. songs which have been in the charts).
And my close, but no cigar
list
Oh dear, 2 songs. That’s rubbish. I know I’ve thought of about 5 more, but they escape me.
First edit already. On the way to work I’m sure there’s tracks by these guys which I can’t quite remember: Queen, Beach Boys, Blondie.