The Victory of Terrorism
The EU defines the term 'Terrorism' as follows:
"The organized recourse to violent and illegal acts with the view to creating extreme fear, social dislocation, intimidation, heavy destruction or governmental disorganization, for political, extremist or personal gain."
As such, given my previous flight from Heathrow via Munich to Bologna, and back from Bologna via Frankfurt to Heathrow... I'd suggest that the "intimidation" bit seems to be working quite nicely!
At least to the extent that following the failed attempts to use liquid explosives on planes earlier in the year, the security services are now under instruction to confiscate bottles of water from passengers. This - when travelling with a young lady who needs to be kept cool if a reasonable level of health is to be maintained - presents a problem!!
Following the check-points, we admittedly are still able to go and buy replacement water from the cafe near the gate (albeit at inflated prices). But - naturally - when we reached our connecting airport, ta-da!, that bottle was confiscated too, despite having been acquired within what was supposedly a 'secure area'. The rules also discriminated against various aerosols, sprays, etc... which staff at the airport were more than happy to take off us and place in bins which, were they containing anything dodgy would be in a nice place for an explosion!
Of course, with these new rules, they're then too busy - so they never checked shoes for plastic explosive, and a friend of mine relayed the story of how his Leatherman knife went with him in his hand luggage on a multi-stage trip around the continent.
So, certainly I understand and appreciate the efforts to thwart terrorism in the EU, but there has to be some more 'joined up' thinking on this! Surely, all of the successful terrorist attacks so far have simply been the product of the instigators looking at the target and asking "where is the weak link?" - so security services need to be asking the same questions themselves.
For example, why not reduce the checking overhead by providing free drinking water within secured areas and then clearly indicating that this is the case? Why not introduce a scheme which allows manufacturers of goods to create 'tamper-proof' containers for air flight which can then be scanned through? And why not ensure that airports are configured in such a way that you ensure a "secure path" for connecting flights within the EU that guarantees that whatever's in it has been checked or purchased within it...
Personally I don't have many answers, but do know that most importantly, we must always remember that the goodwill and cooperation of the public towards Customs & Excise is a vital ally in the effort to keep people safe. So keep the rules simple, communicate them well and you'll be well on the way to keeping the stress down!
Being slightly geeky again...
This is just a little test to check that actually I can get my blogger RSS feed from anyone4tea.blogspot.com to import into Facebook, which - to be honest - is where most people seem to be sharing their news! ;-)
Anyway, once upon a time, I implemented the font-rendering engine for the main bit of software which our company produces - curiously, or perhaps consequently this led to a reasonable appreciation of the wonders of Typography. How, often the style of the text you include in printed material says almost as much as the words that you use.
eg.
says 'Unfussy, Official, Trustworthy'.
says 'A bit fun & fancy, but still with a technical and serious edge'.
says 'Old Fashioned, Official, Authoritative, but - with the .co.uk bit - we're still relevant!'.
Anyway. Those are just a couple of examples - check out sites like http://www.lettermade.com/ if you want to see more interesting bits and pieces.
La son de musique
Anna & myself finally got to see 'The Sound of Music' stage show last night, and mighty impressive it was... firstly, from a technical point of view - mounting a large section stage on a gimbal so they could move it up/down or tilt it towards or away from the audience. Then mounting the various stages on either motorised tracks or dropping them down from the ceiling, etc...
We'd been through a fair old hoo-har to actually get to see a night of the show with Connie Fisher in it. Yes, of all the 'reality' TV programs we'd been addicted to that one! Even after having lost her voice (which prompted us to swap our tickets the first time) and then having to take two days a week off to maintain it (which prompted us to swap our tickets a second time) - it was well worth it, she's perfect for the role - in fact (dare I say it) perhaps more convincing than even Julie Andrews in the film version...
The children were also very good, especially
the youngest who was extensively cute and had some very good timing for the laughs ;-)
Only details that slightly annoyed me was that there was a fair amount less "getting to know each other" time in the stage version here, so the transition from arrival to chummy mateyness was all over in about twenty seconds or so! Also, some of the nuns were rather too extensively tanned for a life in the Abbey, and neither of the male-leads really convince either - Alexander Hanson was just too 'nice' all the way though, never really seeming to dominate a scene, and the lad playing Ralph didn't really make me believe that Liesl could actually like him at all!
The sound design was excellent, though perhaps a bit 'synthetic' for my tastes, and there was also a high pitched squeal at various points - but I couldn't tell whether that was a bit of WD40 needed on the stage gimbal, or the percussionist's triangle with a load of EQ.
The other surprise was that the Upper Circle was only about half full, which didn't really lend itself well to a rip-roaring end - and that there only seemed to be one set of men's loos, at the other end of the venue! But overall, it's a great play, done without extensive flapping or cheese, musically very tight, engaging and with atmosphere and passion in abundance.
Yeah.... go and see it - when Connie's there!
The nights who say knee!
Yes, I have returned - since about two weeks ago now, and have just been remiss in updating here. The pictures are
up on flickr now, and my myspace (see right) has got a video of me doing a spot of jumping off a rather nice kicker!! (yes, I did slow it down a bit, but - honest - that what it felt like!!)
In the process I've picked up a strange shin ache when I'm walking, and Anna's apparently done something nasty to her cruciate ligament (although she didn't actually notice for three days...). Why we go on these 'holidays' I do not know!
Also listening to a few tracks from the rather talented Bobby Thorpe's band "Irvine" -
http://www.myspace.com/irvineband - largly since the 'hook' from first of them ("Miss Me") has been stuck in my head since the wonderous
Mr. Mortimer played his demo to me about four years ago!!
(for those who don't know Bob, he used to play guitar in our church's worship band, and was no small influence on my current playing style!)Also been enjoying the first few demos coming from Jon Blaylock, the
other lead guitarist we've had at Every Nation since Bob, who along with the jawdroppingly amazing Drew-the-drummer & Joel-the-bassist have formed up as
http://www.myspace.com/bladelippoetry!
So I suppose I'd best go home and start writing some new songs ;-)
Out of office...
For the next 8-9 days I will very likely be unable to respond to anything outside my immediate world, 'cos I'm off skiing in Switzerland... yaaaay!
My MP3 player contains:
- The Feeling - Twelve Stops & Home (cheese)
- Sigur Ros - Takk (icelandic)
- The Mars Volta - Amputecture (nuts)
- Iona - The Circling Hour (celtic)
- Imogen Heap - Speak for yourself (nice electronic)
- Mutemath - Mutemath (again.. nuts!)
- Switchfoot - Oh! Gravity (coool)
- Me - Other People's Songs (generally soothing...)
- ... and others
Upon my return I hope to bore you with photos...
An assorted miscellany of salmagundi
Thought I'd better post something to prove to the world at large, or my friends at small that I still exist, have fingers and havn't just decided that blogging is soooo 2006, like everyone else seems to have done
(hint, hint, hint!! ;-)). However, I don't expect any kind of narrative cohesion between the various bits of this post, it's just things as they've come to mind!
Things I'm liking
- Ektopia is a cool site, I first found it when looking for earplugs for the conference back in November. And although some of the posts are a bit 'hmmmm', they do seem to point to some really interesting stuff...
- Prison Break - channel five has been re-running season 1. It's another one of those "guilty pleasure" type shows - like 24 or CSI - where you can look at the screen and point out all of the plot-holes, pveracting and mellodrama - but that doesn't stop it being pretty gripping TV! (oh, how much easier it was not to have a TV!!)
- Now, Discover your strengths and Blue like Jazz - the two books we're reading in discipleship cell at present. The former is quite perscriptive, the latter quite narrative - both controversial (compared with the unspoken ways in which "life" gets practiced these days, both within the church and the secular worlds...) - and both worth a read.
Also had a quick flip through The Five Love Languages whilst we were up at Wes & Fayes late last year. Definitely worth a read - if only because many people think it says "tick those boxes" - when actually it's far more deliciously complex than that!
- Friends and family. Especially at Christmas, when you get to spend a bit of time with people you don't see often enough. Good also to get a mail from the indomitable samboid - if only mostly asking about whether I knew anyone wanting a job in programming some fancy embedded system type things... anyone?! I can heartily recommend his method making of cocoa!!
- Having access to a camcorder again. At last I can actually deal with some of those MiniDV tapes I've had kicking around for ages! Might also do some work on 'Morris' at some point... yeah... as if!
- The incomparable Anna. Nuff said really....
Things I'm not liking
- MS DRM. It smells.
- I'm tired. My brain is just rabbity mush at present, and it's my own fault. Oooo... boo hoo... bad llama.
- Mozilla Firefox appears to have acquired a problem with Copy/Cut whereby it doesn't recognise the Ctrl-C or Ctrl-X as keyboard shortcuts. This annoys me....
- The pawltry amount of time I get with incomparable Anna. Nuff said really....
Return to Songbase!
Having just about finished tidying up the loose ends of the assistance I've been providing for Lana and her family & friends at
222ministries.com - and with that site due to go live as soon as the content's up, I've returned to do some more work on our (being Wes and I) word projection software - still called Songbase.
Actually, the name still needs to be changed - we've had some reasonable suggestions: Songburst, Vision (or Litevision/Provision), Angel, Songvault - but none of them have quite hit the mark yet in terms of being a strong enough but unique enough 'brand' to replace "Songbase"!
But anyway - previous versions with the 'background' support have had a problem with text colours. Due to the way that we have been rendering the text (using a high speed OR based paint operation), any colour except white begins to break up on rendering and black text isn't visible at all :-(
My solution to this has been to start leveraging some of the 'Windowless Rich Edit Control' support in version 2 and higher of the RichEdit.DLL - using this COM interface (and delphi wrappers around it, adapted from various sources) to enable the display of any colour, smoothly blended to an image background, and now even to have shadows under text (woooooo....)
Also the newer version will contain several fixes for known bugs, and should improve the usability of both single-monitor and dual-monitor mode with simplified key shortcuts and extra bits of information displayed in the 'SELECT' mode.
Anyway - that should be out for Beta testing sometime next week, I'm aiming to have it stable and flight-tested before our church conference in about three-four weeks...
Bad Apple
I recall Wes having a
bit of a rant about iTunes DRM a while back. Well, I've got my own now... but as a picture == 1000 words:
So, there's 2000 words.... For those of you
watching in Black and White, the first picture is of iTunes saying
"You need to upgrade to iTunes 7 before I can sell you this music" and the second is of the iTunes download pages saying
"Nope... can't find iTunes 7 for you to download mate..."Of course, as far as I can see - for the UK music buyer - there doesn't currently seem to be any credible online alternative to iTunes. All the other sites either have vastly reduced catalogues of 'new music', require a subscription (OD2/MSN/Oxfam/Tiscali/CD-WOW/eMusic/Napster), infect your system heavily with Windows DRM (WMA format - Woolworths/HMV/Virgin Digital) or are blatently illegal! (allofmp3.com).
Certainly, I understand that the reasons why iTunes has to be continually updated to discourage the friendly hackers is probably due to RIAA pressure to protect their 'bottom-line'. But - as Wes says - I am somewhat surprised that we havn't yet seen a truely open-source alternative.
Something - perhaps - like
Sun's DReaM proposals. But
unfortunately that's unlikely to ever be implemented in practice though, due to
opposition from the 'Free Software' (as in speech) wing of the OS movement....
But anyway, something has to change eventually - you can't continue to have the situation where a music item from one shop is incompatible with an item bought from another shop. That's simply anti-competative behaviour and - taken to it's extremes - will discourage both musicians (who can't sell their work) and listeners (who can't hear the work)...
Current mood: Happy
Yaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy.........
Current mood - NOT HAPPY!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........
The law is an ass....
Permit me to ask a question. If I gave you £16,000 - and confiscated all your other money, do you think that you could make a return of £2,000 a year from it? - a return of 13% on your original investment?
(for reference - 6% is about the highest that you can obtain from most banks)
Well,
apparently according to the UK government, that's the scale of the self-sufficiency expected of anyone who is unemployed, but has any savings in excess of £6,000. Any savings above the upper limit of £16,000 means that you get no government benefits at all, and instantly become inelligable for any further bursaries or low-income support that you might have otherwise qualified for.
Of course, good old Gordon Brown is aware of this - he raised the absolute cut-off limit from £6,000 to £16,000 in last April's budget, but why £16,000? Why not £32,000? Why not £100,000?
Oh, and if you're married, you've only got a total £16,000 limit to share between the two of you. And - for comparisons sake - the average house price in the UK is now nearing £200,000, and over £300,000 if you're anywhere in Greater London.... So, good luck out there...
Summertiiiiime!
Current Temperature in the office - 33°C, humidity about 25% - currently feeling
toasty.
We were due to have air-con installed yesterday evening, and indeed we did - in the office next door!, whilst our side of the wall (where the majority of the developers are) is generally the hot one anyway. Apparently, they might be back to install them in our office this evening (by which time the british summer might have finished ;-D).
Anyway, my ice-lolly's in the freezer waiting for me when I need a proper break.... but, if it hits 35 this afternoon, I'm off home!
Of course, my room at my new house (in South Ealing) is also a bit warm at present. Facing west-ish the afternoon/evening sun gets absorbed quite efficiently as well - and no air-con there! Thankfully the kitchen and lounge downstairs are pretty cool and we can get a nice breeze going through the french windows... no internet yet though either, so I can't just get a laptop and sit in the shade!
I'm getting plenty of use from my badminton racquet for the purpose of discouraging the local insect life from eating me each night, but it's not all bad - cycling in the sunshine, frisbee in the park, cool-drinks, a nice soothing red wine in the evening - all very meditarranean... (and I'm only going to start complaining again when we hit winter anyway!!)
Since it's been a while since I've posted - I'll claim that's just 'cos I don't have broadband at home yet, and I've been quite busy here at work - I guess I should fill in the details of what I'm up to...
- Moved house/flat, to South Ealing. Phil has now followed me over from the Earls Court flat and we're gradually working on moving in the vast amount of stuff that each of us has got in the past three years!
- I've got my own double room, and that's currently full of bags and boxes and computers awaiting my new desk which should turn up later this week.
- My guitars are now out and about, so have played at church about three times in the last month and a bit. This sunday was good, as I finally managed to get my fingers working again!
- Doing some bits and pieces of web design with Lana and her crew
- Trying to keep AV ticking over whilst everyone's away on holiday!
- Spending some time with my graceful beloved :-)
it's all goood......
Movin' Out
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." (Winston Churchill)Yes - to everything, there is a season and time for everything under heaven - including flats. This week we are currently manically packing, washing, cleaning and generally panicking about the end of the Kenway Road flat... Having lived there for four years, it's a tiny bit of a wrench to move out - even to nicer accomodation (a house in South Ealing, in case you're interested!) - and 'Morris the mouse', noisy neighbours, fussy neighbours, erratic ovens and cold winters notwithstanding it's been a good servant to us all...
But anyway, we're now engaged in rushing around like crazy, trying to get the place clean. And that probably means that I'll need to take tommorrow off to properly complete the job. Which means I'd better get on with work now.
laters...
Skipping back from Skye
So, we went to Skye for the week, it was cool. We went and did the odd bit of walking, drank in the quiet, isolation and peace of the 'winged isle', saw a few sights, ate some cake, played some games and generally had a cool time. Maybe I'll expand upon this theme later, but - as for now - I'm tired and want my bed, so here are 4000 words worth to be going on with:
High in the Skye
We're off to Skye this week - "we" being Wes, Faye, Anna, Jacki, James, Mike and myself, staying in a little cottage on the west coast of the Isle of Skye. At least, the others are already on the road and Anna & me will be joining them tommorrow morning in Glasgow.
Hopefully,
the weather will be nice and we'll have a great time!! And I really do hope to have some good photos on my return next week - as we're unlikely to have access to the web there!
In other news, I've got a house lined up for when we have to move out of our current place next month.... but more about that at some other time. Anyway, I'm off on the plane in the morning, so time for bed now!
Not just a pretty face
I got I.D'd last night, in Sainsbury's.... trying to buy a couple of bottles of wine! First time ever! (believe it or not). Clearly my grey hairs arn't as obvious under flourescent lights ;-)
Anyway, I spent till stupid-o-clock making a cake for Anna's birthday - more pictures later...
Seeing yourself
Just having a quick think about my 'self image'... who do I say that I am?
What is it that defines the way that I currently see myself? Am I a creature of habit? or perhaps primarily motivated by concern for others? or maybe I just seek to belong... or convervesly to be unique and free to act independantly and creatively... or maybe it's not really a question for me to answer, maybe I'm just who God says I am?
(if that's not a circular enough definition... given that the degree to which I understand who he says that I am seems to be filtered by how I communicate with him?).
To semi-quote the newest Doctor Who
(mostly because it was back at Christmas, and I can't remember all the speech...) "I'm not sure what kind of Doctor I am yet, am I a nice Doctor, a funny one, am I ginger?!"... but either way, I don't think I 'define myself' via other people's view of me...
But nonetheless here's an interesting little site, that you might want to submit your thoughts to - presuming that you actually think you know me! A little site where you try and pick a number of words that reflect your view of someone's personality:
http://kevan.org/johari?name=RichBAlso, perhaps even more interesting is personality flaws that you might notice:
http://kevan.org/nohari?name=RichB(Of course, there's also a strong possibility that this could get heavily thrown by 'blogspam'... but hey, it might be fun either way....)
Album of the week
Once again, after a highly profound piece of bloggage - here's something entirely light and fluffy. Here's some new music you really ought to take a listen to. I've had Mutemath's "RESET" EP since the summer and it's cool, some of the most original music I've heard for a while... from some of the former members of 'Earthsuit', plus a red-hot-drummer called Darren... ;-)
Now they've got their debut - eponymous - album out, and I got a copy sent over from their
US Website (thank goodness for the $ being rather low against the £!) - although they do seem to be 'Sold out' at the moment though!
Anyway, it's pretty stunning, almost a single piece of music from start to finish - some excellent songs linked with instrumental sections showcasing the individual talents of the band.
Take a listen to a couple of tracks at their
MySpace page (although there's something slightly disconcerting about a band having a 'myspace' page as their main site... oh well..)That was a party political broadcast by the 'lets have a' Party.
Motivate me!
Spring, a season - tradition has it - synonymous with new life, new jobs, new challenges, new relationships - and all other kinds of sparkly fresh stuff, defrosting nicely with the thawing of the winter chill.
With the imminent onset of spring here in London
(I hope - it's rather cold outside!), I've got a load things quietly stirring in my heart - questions about my purpose, my job, where to serve the church - those questions I end up regularly asking, each time that I'm reminded that I'm now 'a man'! At the same time, I'm also aware of several others - either "between jobs", finishing university or starting relationships - asking the same question: "where do I fit?"
"In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." Pv 16:9Most people - when trying to find a process to find some answers will start with the
"what do you love doing?" test, swiftly followed by asking around the wisest people they know, then a fair amount of prayer, fasting and searching the scriptures for words of guidance. At the end of which, they'll either have come to a desision - or be still sitting on their bottoms waiting for 'the Lord to open a door'.
It's this latter result I'm feeling closest to. What can a man do, when - quite frankly - he can't be bothered?! What do you do when apathy, boredom, lack-of-options/too-many-options and the feeling that whatever you do is doomed to either mediocrity or complete failure, adds up to a sense of trying to swim upstream, against the rushing currents. That each time you let go of the bank, you're just going to be swept further downstream.... And, that if you accept that, you might as well just stay in the comfortable shallows, never growing, never realising the fullness of what God wants you to be...
I suppose the response to that would start by looking to God to change us from within?. If we acquire the revelation that the God's plans for us start to be revealed when we realise that he is both capable and willing to leading us into all the good things for which he
"knitted us together in our mother's womb", then - maybe - the answers can be found in Worship -
as Dan quotes -
"worship starts with seeing You". Maybe it's to be found in prayer,
"the heartfelt prayer of a righteous man availeth much", or maybe it's to be found in the community of the church ... so comment away
!
But - to be honest - I don't really know. At some point soonish, I'm going to be looking for a new job, I'm going to be looking for a new place to live, and I'm going to be looking for a new kind of Richie to experience them - trusting all to the one who does not let my foot slip, and who lights my steps before me.
