Anyone for Tea?

The Victory of Terrorism

2007-07-31T11:20:00.000+01:00

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...

2007-07-02T18:08:00.001+01:00

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

2007-05-02T11:04:00.000+01:00

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!

2007-03-08T18:53:00.000Z

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...

2007-02-16T15:22:00.000Z

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

2007-01-05T14:41:00.000Z

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!

2006-10-19T13:39:00.000+01:00

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

2006-09-27T13:34:00.000+01:00

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

2006-09-06T01:31:00.000+01:00

Yaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy.........

Current mood - NOT HAPPY!

2006-08-25T16:37:00.000+01:00

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........

The law is an ass....

2006-08-09T17:59:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-07-19T15:38:00.000+01:00

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

2006-06-15T11:51:00.000+01:00

"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

2006-05-28T00:45:00.000+01:00

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

2006-05-19T23:35:00.000+01:00

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

2006-04-22T10:33:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-13T12:28:00.000Z

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=RichB

Also, 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

2006-03-08T15:40:00.001Z

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!

2006-02-28T23:29:00.000Z

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 16:9

Most 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.

New looks...

2006-02-23T15:22:00.000Z

Got fed up with the 'Pinkness' of the blog - and the fact that it was the same template as Jacki's! - and decided to reclaim the style for my own, and obviously also for the army of blueness ;-)

Hope everybody likes it, and that the text is readable, etc... etc....
Anyway, I'll try and post again sometime soon on something that people can actually discuss - as I'm encouraged that's the only reason why Wes has got lots of comments from people on his blog and I don't! (envy, envy, envy, green eyed monsters, black eyed fears..)

In the meantime I'll just try and work out how I'm going to get some lunch now, whilst it's raining/snowing/hailing it down outside...

Amusing link of the day

2006-02-17T15:32:00.000Z

Found this quite fun - unfortunately you don't have access to different body shapes and there's a limitation on the colours and 'Mr. Potato Head' features you can pick from, but it's quite a challenge to see whether you can come up with a good approximation to people...

Revelation #1

2006-01-24T23:20:00.000Z

I've just started reading Bonhoeffers 'The Cost of Discipleship' - I think it actually belongs to Wes, but he left it here when he moved out (that was almost a year and a half ago, so - I say - fair game!). But one - almost throwaway reference he makes early-on to the first half of 1 Corinthians 7:23 "You were bought at a price" is what really got me thinking...

Ask anyone to consider what is the most important thing to them in the world is, or - perhaps tougher - what they would find earthly life pointless without, and it will normally come back to a person, or relationship with a person - in many cases, a parents, spouse or child. Hopefully, very few would highlight their job, house, bank-balance or posessions, or claim that their very identity is wrapped up in the posession of those items. Certainly, I wouldn't presume to do so! (though, some of those things might be quite 'nice'!)

Having thought of that (and considering that I consequently do really need to go and visit my relatives soon!!), I start to consider what - if you asked God the same question - that He would answer?

My initial feeling is that it would - ultimately - be no created thing. You, me, and the tea plantations of Sri Lanka, we are indeed all precious in his sight - yes. But - if we had never existed - God would still be God, and would not be any less because of our absence.

"Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust." Isaiah 40:15

So, nonetheless - looking around us and trying to estimate the worth of all that is in creation, including man himself - we must contrast that with the one thing that is outside of the created order. The one thing - therefore - that God really 'needs'. This thing is Himself - complete, supreme and triune. It should then be blindingly obvious here that "creation vs. God", is like comparing peanuts with galaxies, atoms with worlds, it's not even slightly a fair fight!

Then - given that - consider that when God chose to sacrifice himself - in the form of Jesus - for restitution for our sins, what he was placing upon the altar was not only the form of the sinless man - part of the created order - but his own very 'Godness' in the form of his only son.

For me that suddenly dawned afresh into a picture of - firstly - just how insuppasingly much that sacrifice was worth, and the - flip side - a realisation of how much my debt of gratitude should be.

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Phillipians 2

Some of you might - at this point - say 'well, duuuh!'. But it floated my boat ;-)

So who can tell of the glory of God?,
Who can tell of the power of his hand?
He is above all my words and my breath
But yet - for me - he dies.

Wessy's Teapot Blog: Lamenting...

2006-01-17T22:25:00.000Z

Just a quick mention, for an interesting article that Wes has written on his blog. Seems we're considering similar subjects at present ;-)

I'll post more soon, just as soon as I have some more coherant thoughts to share!

I am gooood!

2005-12-24T01:14:00.000Z

OK, as no-one else (perhaps) is going to be interested in me spouting off about my victory over all the combined forces of technical nastiness I thought I just post it here.

Basically - right - we've just finished a sermon series at church (based on the 10 commandments, using some of J John's 'Ten' series as source material) - as part of this, the standard deal is that we put together a box set of CDs to sell onto people so that they can listen to our pastor's wisdom to their hearts' content.

Now, a couple of weeks back - our Philips MP3 Hard-Disk recorder decided to stop recording stuff - which was annoying, but thankfully I had my iRiver Flash recorder with me and we managed to get the sermon.... fine.... but now we had a no-worky Philips.

Jen-from-the-office (as is her officially recognised work name) got on the phone to Philips, and as part of the process of trying to trace the problem, she was advised to format it. Unfortunately, we then come to this week where we discover that actually one of the MP3's that we thought was Sermon Number 4 ("How to keep the sabbath holy") was actually just the worship from the same service and the sermon was no more.

So, step 1 was to try out a bit of 'undelete' software. This initially looked like it was going to do the trick, lots of MP3 files recovered - however, unfortunately not the exact ones we were looking for (Sermons #3 and #5, but no #4!). At this point, normal practice would have encouraged us to give up - it was pretty clear that the FAT table on the drive had taken the sermon to heart and had decided to have a sabbath of it's own!

So - there we were, it seemed all hope was lost, or at least all the recordings were lost. But I thought - weeeell, lets see whether we can find some sort of useful information by just bypassing the FAT and going straight to the disk data itself. So, here's what I did:

I got hold of a copy of 'dd' for Windows, and used this to rip as much as possible of the raw data on the drive to a file on my PC. I got about 4GB of the stuff, before it all got a bit confused and died, but I had enough data to start with.

I searched and found a detailed description of the MP3 file format.

I'd picked up from my work at work that MP3 was primarily a 'frame' based format - that if you were able to identify a certain block of data as 'MP3', you could stitch them together to make a full MP3 file - ie. that the loss of a few frames at the start/end of an MP3 file would not be fatal to the sound file as a whole.
So, after searching the 'net and finding nothing suitable, I just went and wrote my own little utility (in C) which would read through a stream of data looking for the MP3 frame header markers (0xFF 0xF?) and then read the block of MP3 data that followed.
This was tested extensively on lots of other 'basic' MP3s, and knowing some details (192kbs 'normal' 44khz MP3, Joint Stereo, etc...) of the recording format used by the Philips unit I was able to be fairly sure that a run across the data I'd "farmed" from the unit would turn something up.
After a bit of investigation, and dealing with output files that sounded like very much like tongues (or Afrikaans, take your pick!), I also extended the utility to stitch together any sequential MP3 frames that it found into individual files, and output all the files it found to a given directory.
I then ran this on my data, and was presented with 500-odd MP3 files, ranging in size from ~700 bytes to 200MB.
The end result? After listening through all of the reasonably sized files, I turned up two MP3s which - appended to each other - turned out to be the recording of #4 from the morning service that day - and another single MP3 that turned out to be the complete evening service from the same day. Yayyyy!!! Open the champagne!

So, what did we learn from this? We learned:

Keep backups of everything, from as soon as possible until you absolutely totally completely have verifiably made sure that you have exactly what you wanted. And then take one more backup for posterity anyway.
A 'complete format' thankfully (on this occasion) doesn't neccesarily mean that you've destroyed the data.
We hadn't fragmented the filesystem onboard as much as i'd feared and the recorder had kept most of the data together in contiguious lumps.
MP3 rocks as a file format that can deal with marginal corruption of this sort.
The 'last resort' sometimes actually works!
I rock! Although - to be fair - if "I shall not boast in anything, save in Jesus Christ" - then it'll be to His glory that these CD's can make a real difference in someone's walk with Him.... and he gave me a brain and put me in the right places to be a servant in His house.

But yeah... I was rather happy about that. I'll post the source code for the MP3 reader up here in the New Year anyway, so others can make use of it... or if you're really interested in how good my code quality actually is...

Anyway. Church tommorrow (yes, Saturday, Christmas Eve) so I'd best get off to bed. Later...

Blog chain-mail!

2005-12-12T23:07:00.000Z

Yes, just like those old emails that you forwarded to your mates - Dan Hames named me on a list of people he wanted to do it too... so obviously I'm obliged to oblige... lets try and not just completely reuse his answers!

SEVEN.... (all these lists are in no particular order, often not even in the order I thought of them in!)

THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE

1. Become a husband, father and grandfather
2. Write/produce an album that's uninamously considered to be great!!
3. Play some big gigs
4. Live in another country
5. Make some disciples...
6. Learn to care...
7. Start getting to bed on time!
(ok, that last one is seriously lame, but really I'd rather have left 6/7 blank and left room for future expansion!)

THINGS I CANNOT DO (consistantly - occasionally I'll 'fluke' it!)
1. Get to bed and get to sleep before 10pm!
2. Feel true sympathy (or is that empathy?!) for people I've never met
3. Reverse without a rear view mirror
4. Relax
5. Dance
6. Accept personal failure
7. Feel totally sure about anything in life

THINGS I SAY MOST OFTEN (do I actually have any catchphrases?! you guys would tell me, wouldn't you?!)
1. Dunno
2. Hmmm...
3. It's a case of...
4. Urrrrrghhhh (usually in the morning)
5. Tea?
6. I don't have the time
7. Basically...

SEVEN BOOKS I LOVE (excluding The Bible - hmm... I don't read many books at all!!)
1. John Piper - Desiring God
2. John Eldredge - Waking The Dead
3. Philip Yancy - The Jesus I Never Knew
4. JRR Tolkein - The Lord of the Rings
5. Gordon Dalbey - Sons of the Father
6. C.S. Lewis - Collected Writings
7. Paul White - Basic Mixers(!)

SEVEN MOVIES I COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
1. Oceans Eleven
2. Shawshank Redemption
3. The Usual Suspects
4. Lord of the Rings (Extended Edition!)
5. The Princess Bride
6. Finding Nemo
7. Eternal Sunshine

SEVEN PEOPLE TO DO THIS NEXT
(and if you don't have a Blog yet, add your comments below!)
1. Wes Hinsley
2. Jacki W
3. Jenni
4. Phil
5. Anna
6. Annette
7. Josh

Ten words I consistently misspell

2005-12-12T11:39:00.000Z

1. Necessary
2. Receive
3. Accommodation
4. Apparent
5. Occurrence
6. Embarrass
7. Existence
8. Guarantee
9. Consistently
10. Misspell

... proper post coming sometime soon....

Just so you know...

2005-11-25T01:59:00.000Z

This weekend will mostly be spent on a
,
with , , , ,
and other fantastic people!

I will be taking my new and my old and we shall have lots of fun playing until all hours when it's too dark to sail.

It shall be great. Now time for

Check out the Dregs!

2005-11-10T23:38:00.000Z

Yes, you know what that mottled teabag means, it's Dregs time again!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what this means, the implication of those few words are that I and my fellow conspiritors at Teapot Records have been busy - this time during a weekend out at James' parent's beautiful house in Withcall, Lincolnshire - with our multitrackers, mics and friends to produce a whole load more covers of famous - and not so famous - songs. Plus a couple of our own melodic concoctions...

More importantly - perhaps - it's the first album I've played either Saxaphone or Drums on and some bits have come out quite nicely. It's also a fantastic effort by all involved to increase the amount of multimedia, detail and co-production that we're doing at Teapot to previously unmatched levels. I also did most of the artwork on it, which is another string I'm starting to add to my 'bow'.

But yeah, Wes has just got a licence from the MCPS to distribute up to 250 copies of it - and we're hoping to get some cash in for supporting our Church kid's work, so if you want a quick preview of some tracks, we'll pop something up over at the Teapot site sometime next week - or just mail me and I'll flog you a copy for - err... - a fiver or something like that ;-)

Complete track list:
God only knows (Beach Boys)
Parklife (Blur)
Build me up Buttercup (The Foundations)
Sunny afternoon (The Kinks)
Feeling good (Nina Simone)
Little help from my friends (The Beatles)
Mr. Bassman (Johnny Cymbal)
Something stupid (Frank & Nancy Sinatra)
Johnny boy (Traditional, replacement lyrics by us)
Don't wanna miss a thing - aka. Armageddon Hoarse! (Aerosmith)
Cookies (original song by Wes & James)
Don't worry be happy (Bobby McFerrin)
Pies (original choral composition by Wes)

Linky Linky

2005-11-04T00:10:00.000Z

Thought I finally better get around to adding some other links to my Blogger template, so added in some of the guys who've visted here and commented in the past, and to some of my "real" friends who have decided to write some musings on the web...

I'm always caught unawares by the sheer scale of the personal interconnections that go on using the web - even thinking back to when I started out on the web in my first year at uni (it's scary that's about eight or nine years ago!). In those days I spent a good few hours a day on IRC channels discussing different view of the Christian Life with people from all over the world.

But today, with the advent of blogs, myspace, the all-pervasive power of google and other such "Web 2.0" applications being embraced on a much larger scale and often modelling then extending existing friendship circles it goes wider, much wider The point is that you can happily spend a good couple of hours just reading about other people's lives. People who you've never met, and in some cases are very unlikely ever to meet. People who are candidly sharing their hopes and fears with you, but are really just the friend of a friend of a friend of someone you know from a chatroom.... but all people... and all precious.

Night night, Night night,
Hope you dream, until the light
Dawns over your obsessions and your pain
Night night, Night night,
Today was all that might
Have taken you to the life beyond the grave

You're not that far away,
You're not that far away,
All of your heart is cradled as you sleep,
I'm not that far away,
I'm not that far away,
I am closer than your pillow
Night night, my love.
Night night

Take your time...

2005-11-02T23:56:00.000Z

Sorry all, for the long time between updates about what I'm up to in life - truth is, whilst I've been very busy for the past few weeks I've not actually had much utterly fascinating stuff to blog about!

But anyway, what I'm currently up to can be split into several things that are now competing for my time:

1. Finishing the interminability long process of getting Wes's album mixed - this is a challenging effort as it involves first trying to get them back to the same standard as the ones Wes had sounding pretty good on his multitracker, and doing just that seems like very hard work, let alone tightening everything up for release...

2. Work, work, work at work. Big project on, and just little-ol me to get it done, and it's currently getting horribly complicated...

3. AV Crew at church, I'm handling the purchase of lots of new kit - as well as my normal efforts in trying to run a Sunday team and support the other guys - and that's also taking up a fair amount of time to try and ensure that we get the right bits of kit, and don't overspend in the process.

Last Saturday was a pretty good example, I set out for central London (after our church Men's meeting) with Katy (small, chinese, former housemate and my #2 on the 'A Team') in tow with the express purpose of deciding on what speakers we were going to get for the new PA, getting some decent headphones (as I needed mine back from the desk, in order to mix Wes's album!), finding a speaker for the foyer and sorting out which guitar FX unit I wanted to get...

From that list, I achieved the getting of a pair of headphones. And I also bought £300 worth of band-monitors from Virgin Megastore (ok, so the basement is actually a 'soundcontrol' shop, but it's still inside Virgin!) which wasn't really on the menu to start with... yeah... so still no closer to deciding on a system, especially when you mention your current plans to the guy in the shop and he gives you the old 'sucking air through my teeth' reaction! On the other-hand, maybe he just wanted a cut ;-)

And on top of all this, I'm also trying to get to bed earlier - and midnight is my 'OK Rich, sleepytime...' time now, or at least my 'OK Rich, turn off the computer' time. So for now - that is all!

Shamless Plugging

2005-10-13T16:25:00.000+01:00

Some of you know that I'm a pretty avid follower of those pioneers of Rock, Delirious?

Errr... so here's a shameless plug for their single which is selling like lightly-toasted cakes over at iTunes, as of last night they were sitting at Number 10 in the iTunes 'Album' chart and at Number 16 in the 'Tracks' one.

Now the 'album' (ie. the single package itself) has kind of drifted out to Number 14, whilst the single just about holds it's own at 15.

And they've made their way onto the front page of iTunes Music Store UK, with an entry in the 'Pre-Release' section (a slightly odd choice, but lets just start with what we have shall we!?!).

But yes, go and have a listen and buy a copy - as it's only 79p and is probably a good way to raise awareness, especially when it's in the process of trouncing Coldplay, Oasis and co....

Going Spare/Tired

2005-09-30T17:19:00.000+01:00

Phew! Well, the Hi-Team video is just about finished.

The official showing is tommorrow afternoon and so all that remains for me to do is to make sure that my DVD works in the church's DVD player and that I have the right cables to rig up the sound!

Admittedly it has meant that I've been up until about 4-5am every night this week working on it, so I'm rather baggy-under-the-eyes at the moment, and even then I'm not 100% happy with it - but that's the way things go, and for a one off showing I think I get away with it. So far feedback has been good (except for that children become squeeky when sped up!).

It was also fun doing the music, despite the fact that I still wouldn't want to do it for a living - so, the soundtrack album will be available on Teapot Records! ;-)

And then - after tommorrow, I'll get started on making the DVDs and video tapes for the kids, and for the leaders. So we'll have to canvas some opinion this evening about what DVD games we can add!! (and then I'll have to research how to do 'random' stuff in DVD menus, what fun!)

Anyway - I apologise now for any lack of coherance, and will now go to sleep!

Getting busy... who's in the house?!

2005-09-22T16:04:00.000+01:00

OK, just a quick post to explain that I'm still here and that I'm very busy!

Main project at present is getting a video of the summer camp done by the end of next week, which - currently - includes writing 20 minutes of original music for the soundtrack! It's at this point I realise that I don't want to become a per-contract video music writer - however much it might be interesting, you end up having to shelve your own ideas in favour of having something which matches the visuals!

Also still just rebuilding my body and my bike after I fell off it on Hammersmith Bridge a couple of weeks back, just a bit of grazing, bruising and cutting but it's taking a while to heal and still is a bit annoying when I try to put my elbows on the table and realise that actually that hurts quite a bit.

And then there's trying to pass on the drum tracks for Dregs 2 which I recorded a couple of sundays back onto Wes so he can do the final mix, and getting a stable version of Songbase finished...

So, yeah. Best get on ;-)

Now we're into it, innit!

2005-08-22T07:58:00.000+01:00

I'm away this week at HI! Team kids camp. Currently it's raining outside, so you intercessors out there, I hope you're praying for Good Weather!! Time to go now, or at least to drink my tea. See you when I get back.

richie

.... where is my tea?!

I've had a haircut...

2005-08-17T02:23:00.000+01:00

OK, so it's not that exciting, but I got the pictures...

Record of the week!

2005-08-09T01:24:00.000+01:00

Now listening to a slightly-odd album called 'Illinoise' by an artist I hadn't previously heard of at all, a chap called 'Sufjan Stevens' (no I don't know how to pronounce his name properly, nor do I really care...).

Mostly, it's a result of wanting to buy something new, fairly original and cool from iTunes which I've (about two years after the rest of the world) finally got around to installing here and at work and to see how easy it actually is to get protected AAC onto my iRiver MP3 player! (I'll tell more tommorrow if my little plan works...)

I can't claim to have "discovered it" - as it did make its way onto the iTunes Music Store front page in a tiny box, enough to catch my eye and give it a preview. But, anyway! Enough about things you already know about - and onto things you don't know. A brief google reveals a few things about this album and it's author:

It's the fourth album by Sufjan, but only the second in an anticipated series of fifty. He intends to try and produce an album about each state of the US! The first was about his home-state of Michigan. He doesn't expect to finish all fifty, but a man can dream can't he!?!

The style is very hard to describe. Musically, the closest band I can think of in style is 'The Polyphonic Spree', in the use of orchestral, choral and brass tones and wide expansive arrangements and in slightly absent minded rambling through passages of music.

However, it thankfully lacks what I always feel is the flowery and bombastic nature of "The Spree", and replaces it with a careful crafting of each song in its own right and as part of the prog-rock style album flow. Thick, layered harmonies and odd-time signatures are de-rigur, and Sufjan's voice as the holding commentry is smooth and non-intrusive.

It also appears from interviews that he's a Christian, which to be fair came as a surprise to me - as it's very much the antithesis of almost everything "CCM".... and some of the songs (eg. "Casimir Pulaski Day") have some lovely exposition of the occasional struggles that those of us of a more 'rational' persuasion have with things like Faith, Hope and Love which are essentially 'irrational' things that we just know!!

Only annoying thing about all this is that, after purchasing it for £7.99 on iTunes - I find that Amazon UK have it for £8.99 or Amazon US for $12.99 - which is a shame because it looks like the sleeve notes might have been quite interesting.

[Final Thought: Hows about someone sets up an online business adjunct to iTunes/Napster/MyCokemusic/etc... selling just the sleeve notes for music purchased online? Surely there's a market - they'd have at least one customer here!]

Time for bed.
richie

To busy not to pray!

2005-08-05T16:56:00.000+01:00

I'm busy. Really busy....

At work I'm in the critical phases of my current project, so I've got less than an hour to get a build out of the door tonight - and our source-code server is being slow. Admittedly, it's only an interim version so that other guys in the company can see what I'm up to and test it out with their sections of code and current projects, but still it's very much a deadline... of sorts.

Of course, work is also actually where I'm coming to relax a bit at the moment. My work outside of the office is far in excess of what I've got lined up inside. Biggest priority this week is getting a version of "Songbase" finished.

"Songbase" for those of you who havn't heard of it before is the lyrics projection software used by our church originally written by the veritable genius that is Mr. Wes Hinsley but then bludgeoned into the 21st century by me (through adding dual-screen support and generally tightening the whole thing up). Thing is, my re-invented version just isn't ready yet - and with my time ticking away, it's become a major priority to get it finished, and out the door to the few people who I've got interested in using it in their churches!

We also can't actually release it whilst calling it Songbase anyway, as that's apparently the name used by Vineyard USA for their package. So if anyone out there has a good suggestion for a name, please submit it here (in return for unending gratitude and a mention in the README)!!

After Songbase, I've also got Wes's album to mix which will take a while to get right, and I don't expect to get any where near finishing it before I'm off on 'Summer Camp' with the kids. On return from that I've got the camp video to make, and then a friends wedding to video the week after (and then I have to edit it afterwards...)

So hopefully sometime in september I'll have five minutes for you all.

However, in the midst of all this symetrical candle-burning - for some reason - I'm feeling pretty solid, renewed, refreshed at present. Why? "submit your way to the Lord and He will make your paths straight"

richie

You REALLY like me!!

2005-08-03T11:07:00.000+01:00

How!

Exciting!

I've been selected from billions of others around the world as Joshua Clayton's hero of the week. If you havn't heard of Josh, you clearly havn't been listening. I'm reliably informed that he is both the current Governer of Louisiana state, five-times superbowl champion and the first man to finish Mario Brothers 3, simultaneously, in all five time-zones of the continental United States.

He's also another person that I've never met in the real-world, who seems to think I'm pretty great...
hmm... I see a pattern emerging ;-)

Anyway, thank you very much Josh - it is a supreme honour to realise that this blog is actually read by people, and that it provides some with some amusement, life-affirment and a fresh outlook on the world. Or something like that anyway!

rich

Yes, I am here...

2005-07-27T17:16:00.000+01:00

Thought I'd better post here again to just let everyone know that Yes, I did get back OK!

The last couple of weeks have been rather hectic since camp, I've actually got a lot more to do at work, at home and at church than I've got time to do. I really need to get better at this 'teach someone else how to do it' thing!!

I'm reminded of our waiter when Jon, Dan and I went out for a meal in Nashville on the night before we flew back - who took our orders and commented that Jon and my choice of the "Tagliatelli Imperiale" was a 'very good choice, I used to eat that every day here. But then I became lactose intolerant'. Or that Dan's choice was also 'excellent, I then started eating that every day, until I became vegetarian'.

OK, so it's not strictly relevant. But I thought it was funny.

Anyway, it's almost a year since I started this blog - I remember that because it was also at this time last year that I was preparing to go off to the Hi! Team summer camp to do the business with the video camera. How time flies...

Richie

Homeward Bound

2005-07-11T23:10:00.000+01:00

Jonboy - I said - as we boarded the plane back in Nashville. This holiday seems like a dream to me now , so I arrived at Chicago, and Dan and Jon went to Charlotte... and we all went to look for America.

OK, the Paul Simon version of that worked better. But that's where I am now, sitting, waiting for the plane that's going to carry me home. The strangest thing of being in O'Hare airport for me at the moment is the vast number of English accents suddenly around me again. Back in Nashville, or even DC to a certain extent, you did get a very profound sense of being the only brit in town...

So - how to waste a couple of hours before our plane leaves. Well, this is a good start, it's still $6 an hour but seems like a good idea when I have access to a laptop. I've just spent a little while having a little something to eat - albeit rather encouraged by Jon and Dan to sample a 'Cinnabon', which apparently took them a good hour to get through on the day they arrived. I finished mine in a slightly more sensible time and whilst it's nice, the $4 price tag is strong notice that we're in an international airport!

It's also a bit curious that here - beyond passport control - they still appear to charge state taxes on food purchases, which you wouldn't really expect if you were in Britain.

As for yesterday, we did church a couple of times, once in the morning, and in the evening - for worship at the downtown Nashville 'Global Cafe' venue. The latter of these was especially good - at least because that they were doing much more 'rocky stuff' than we'd had over the weekend previous. We also got to meet up with the legend that is Mr. John Hermes and - for the sake of his continued sanity - give him what's left of my box of PG Tips!

But now, my body is starting to consider that - despite - the sun in the sky here, it really is now pretty late evening back in London. That might be a good sign that I could get some sleep on the flight, but if the way here is anything to go by, that'll be a fair challenge!

Anyway, time is ticking away. Only another hour to go before I drop my index finger on the 'US VISIT exit procedure' electronic scanner and leave this country... so I'd best get some tea from the nearby starbucks to finish 'the day'.

So what do I reflect on from this trip? That perhaps my perception of Americans has been refined, for example:

Anyone who can figure out the New York metro can't be stupid.

There's no such thing as "American Service" in a restaurant, your milage really will vary

TV advertising tends to be many, many times more blunt and uncontrolled than in the UK, where the "trade descriptions act" helps a lot by requiring advertisers to offer some justification of their claims!

New York or DC are typically no more dangerous than London, if you act in the same way

America is more ethnically diverse and integrated than the UK, the lines here between Black/White/Hispanic/Asian/etc... seem more blurred than I typically see in London

And one thing I knew before I even stepped on the plane at Heathrow. That 10 days is not enough to see this country. I will be returning at some point in the future...

later,
richie

The other side of the world

2005-07-09T06:07:00.000+01:00

The events of the past couple of days back home, first London getting the Olympics and then the terrible bombings of yesterday, have been rather surreal for those of us out of the country, seperated by several thousand miles from those closest to us. Those whom, even though they're fine, we always get the feeling that we'd prefer to be near to whenever we remember how fragile our earthly lives are... hmmm...

It also means that here in Nashville, yesterday's events are almost all anyone else wants to talk to you about when you mention that you're from London, England!

Nonetheless, we're here and having a great time at the conference, lots of good stuff today about Worship. I've been following the 'tech' track today and picked up a few things, seen some very expensive kit and mostly realised that we really don't do so bad in London with our existing systems, given that they're a meagre fraction of the value of what's installed over here! Or is it just a case of having to raise spending by 50% to increase sound quality by 10%?!

I will probably switch to the 'leaders' track for tommorrow though, as - at the moment - it's probably got a lot more useful 'meat' that I couldn't ever get back in the UK!!

OK, so I'll try to write again tommorrow. This has just been a quick message, so that anyone who's been faithfully checking over the past couple of days, doesn't feel that I've completely forgotten again! (actually, I did post yesterday but the server appeared to have eaten it, or objected to some words, or something....)

I leave you with a picture from where Jon, Dan and myself popped over to the local 'Waffle House' after the evening meeting - thanks for the photo JON!
(BTW: the Americans ordered the Hotel Shuttle, but we brits decided to just stick out our 'stiff upper lips' and walk the 200 metres, yay for us!! ;-D).

Night y'all
richie

If I had to tell the story of a thousand rainy days...

2005-07-06T18:59:00.000+01:00

OK, Washington DC. I'm just off to see it today - at least to go and take a look at the major memorials, Lincoln, Jeffersson, etc... That's the problem with a short holiday anywhere, you never really get to see the real town. Especially when you spend an entire day from your 'vacation' recouperating!

"Recouperating from what?" I hear you ask (well, those of you with REALLY LOUD VOICES anyway...) - well, as I mentioned in my last dispatch, after driving down from Philadelphia in the sweltering heat, I was still waiting for the guy who owned the B&B to get back home. Thing was, he already had, and had gone to bed and there were other people sleeping in all the rooms I could see... at this point I was getting really confuseled.

So I end up, snoozing away on the couch until I am awoken by the host uttering his most sincere apologies that actually he'd "had me down as coming in tommorrow night" (yeah right!). So eventually I get shown to my room and get to sleep off the drive and the day before off... which was nice. Eventually finished "Waking the Dead" while I was there - which is an excellent book, lots to chew on... so read it!

Anyway, that's what I spent yesterday doing - the evening involved driving down to the nearest busy street - U Street - and grabbing a (mildly expensive, but not stupidly so) italian meal at Cippos (a cycling themed restaurant, only organic ingredients, hence the slight premium on price, but utterly chilled out nonetheless).
I would post a picture of the restaurant here, but I've left my SD card reader at the B&B (which - I suppose - I've missed the second "B" for the last couple of days...)

And today, it's already 2pm so I'd better get a move on (not least because this internet connection is probably now charging "per minute") - drop the laptop home and get on down to Federal Triangle for some good old fashioned sightseeing...

richie

Land of the free

2005-07-06T18:56:00.000+01:00

About two weeks ago, after I'd booked my plane tickets for this trip, I had an epiphany: that my arrival in the capital - Washington DC, no less - was slated for July 4th 2005. Independence Day. Today.

So as I planned out my route to drive down from my stop-over in Philadelphia (actually the Super 8 Motel in Mount Laurel, which was about what you'd expect for $35 a night: reasonably clean, taupe textured paint on the walls, and some noisy neighbours), I was anticipating gridlock, carnage, and - given what I'd heard about Washington traffic - several hours of tailbacks.

What I got, was a much longer initial journey from Philly than google maps had led me to expect (hotter too) - but eased by the fact that we never got stopped by traffic, even with a fair number of vehicles on the roads - including one guy who seemed rather upset that the real world refused to acquiesce to his misconception that a bigger car gave him divine right of way!

Having said that about today's traffic, I really don't want to start counting my chickens for getting to Dulles airport on Thursday morning - as that will be in a real rush-hour (albeit going around the city, not into it...)

Fast-forward a couple of hours, I found the B&B - discovered that the owner had left the place closed up for the day and appeared to have forgotten to leave my key out! Eventually, I was let in by another couple of guests and found the keys within, but whilst I've spoken to his voicemail, met his cats, met a friend of his, the man himself is still nowhere to be seen - and I don't know which room I'm in. So, I hope he is actually expecting me!!

With access to the B&B - at least - practically assured, I set off into DC on the metro, pausing only to get my ticket stuck in the machine, due to it being waterlogged by frappechino condensation. I ended up on the mall - the long lawn between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument/White House - and as the sun set, the faint noise of the Beach Boys and the Doobie Brothers floated from a stage behind me, then the sky was lit up with fireworks.

Now, where's da B&B guy?!
richie

PS: Interesting point tonight, the announcer for the concert referred to America as a "Beacon of freedom to the world" - either alluding to the fact that there's a "big green woman in New York", or else making the claim that other world nations look to America as an example of how personal freedom and governance should be modelled. Is this a true statement? discuss!

Start spreading the news

2005-07-06T18:55:00.001+01:00

I'm leaving today, now back on the ferry waiting to arrive back in Staten island, to pick up my (carefully parked) hire car and get on out to Philapelphia - my stop for the evening.

Funny things - hats, just about everywhere i've been here, I've seen all races and all ages wearing baseball caps proclaiming the joys of New York City (or - equally likely, the Yankees).

You just don't see that in London, there's no "Go England" no "I love London" hats, except as the beacons used by tourists to alert muggers to their location.

The bike lanes are even better. Ok so I did my cicle tour on Sunday morning, on a public holiday weekend no-less, so the traffic was very light, but still - pretty much all the major avenues had bus lanes, or real-life bike lanes as well.

Only downside of New York is that the grid system means that - unless you're on one of the outer 'beltways' you never really get to go for more than about 100m before a red-light. On the other hand, this keeps overall motor traffic speeds down and reduces the number of lost looking drivers pulling out from junctions when they shouldn't.

Anyway - best get on the road... thank you New York, now it's time to go count the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.

richie

Two kilos of quarters...

2005-07-06T18:55:00.000+01:00

In any city, I guess there's some random anomalies. Those one or two occurrences that slip through the net. This morning is a fine example.

Leaving - i thought - a comfortable hour to get from the b&b from whence I checked out to the starting point of this morning's cycle ride, I set off down Bay St to the ferry terminal.

The directions are clear "pay at muni-meter" so I park up and look round... "what does a muni-meter look like" - asking the nearest human, I'm told that I'm parked in the wrong place - I should be at the other end of the car park.

So, hop back in the car, drive up to where I now espy a meter and park. Security guy though says "nope, the only spaces for none permit holders are those 30 over by where you came in! It is at this point I'm doubting whether the bus might have been the easier option!

So, eventually I get parked up and return to the meter. It's now at this point I realise that it only takes quarters and dollar coins (the latter of which were discontinued in the late 90's).

Picture then the scene, a confused looking tourist, sprinting - no less -around the north-eastern tip of Staten island, into every deli and laundrette, asking random passers by and security staff to help me 'get change for a dollar'.

Eventually, and clearly extremely late for my bike tour - I get in my hand a good 1kg of nickel and feed it patiently into the machine.

Now I just have to figure out how to get to the ferry from here...

And it was evening of the second day, and behold, it was good.

2005-07-06T18:52:00.000+01:00

Currently sitting al-fresco in a little restaurant by the banks of the Hudson, watching the sky turn maroon, orange and deep sapphire blue behind the buildings of New Jersey.

This evening has perhaps been the necessary repose from a day of flapping around and getting little done, although - granted - that's probably the point of a holiday!

Most of the daylight hours were spent in the queue for the statue of liberty - including the realisation that they had no tickets left to let me into statue itself (note to future travellers, save yourself time and trouble by pre-booking on statuereservations.com !).

Meh! Anyway, I enjoyed a nice quiet afternoon on liberty island, until I realised it was already 4pm and the shops were about to close.

Quel surprise, I then summarily managed to get lost (who would have thought that Broadway would swing so far west?!) and miss most of the shops - half of which turned out to be closed on Saturdays anyway.

At least I managed a couple of Simon & Garfunkel titles in the process - seeing the 59th street bridge and taking a crosstown bus!

Finish the day with a wander through central park - albeit accidentally north instead of south! So we end up here, just around the corner from ground zero - in a place full of life and peace.

I could write more, but it's getting late, my caesar salad is here, and anything else I have to share is probably 'best left unsaid'.

Customer service

2005-07-06T18:51:00.000+01:00

This morning, I'm perched on a porthole in the lower bow of the staten island ferry, the occasional splash of water, the statue of liberty passing behind me, the sun above me and many small children with cameras nearby.

We were a couple of minutes late leaving port today, due to a problem with one of the docks. Of course, the difference with London being that the driver knows what's going on, tells you, positively pleads with you to forgive him for your five minute delay and assures you that he's told your connecting bus to wait for you.

Ok, time to disembark,
richie.

Time, and what a time it was, a time, it was.

2005-07-06T18:50:00.000+01:00

I'm easily confused by this whole time-shifting thing. I eventually got here, to my B&B at about 1am NY time, after driving from JFK.

Most of that journey was spent trying to work out the actual width of my - so called - "compact" car, trying to avoid driving the wrong way down roads (once) and (Annette will appreciate this) trying to find the indicator lights ("turn signals") - instead of the windscreen ("windshield") wipers!

That adventure over, my body was telling me in no uncertain terms that 6am UK time is not a sensible time to be going to sleep, I stuck on the small airconditioner in the corner, flopped down on the bed and slept like a hibernating squirrel.

Of course the confusing bit of this was that I had completely lost track of time, of which devices I'd updated to EST and which I hadn't. So, the end result of this was looking at my clock this morning, and being convinced that it was 2pm in the afternoon (just like a typical Saturday!) - then going downstairs to find that actually it was only about 10am and breakfast was still on the table!

On the subject of breakfast, I was joined by a couple of 'Salvation Army' pastors - father & son - from Oregon/California and their family. Over our croissants and OJ, I was surprised to find that the owners of this establishment* actually were also able to make a reasonable cup of tea.

So, wandering out onto the front porch - as the temperature and humidity begin to rise and the mist obscuring the familiar skyline of Manhattan and Liberty island, way off over the bay slowly lifts - I reflect that I am here in a foreign country, another world where they speak the same language but stand beneath a different flag.

I'm an Englishman in New York... and it's a heluva town.

Richie

* I'm staying at the 'Harbor House' - www.nyharborhouse.com - 3 nights B&B for $260 - looks good so far...

Travelling without moving

2005-07-06T18:18:00.000+01:00

So here I am, some 10km off the ground, travelling at over 550mph.

Currently we're about three and a half hours into the seven and a half we're due here and are gradually clearing the bottom end of greenland.

So looking out upon the canopy of cloud below and the vague specks I can only summise to be icebergs, yet my fellow travellers and I are held in the grasp of this firmament by only a pretty small looking set of wings and four rolls-royce engines.

We are so small.

Why would the same creator - who drew those same icebergs, (only ten percent above water, remember!) and designed the minds of men like Whittle - choose to be born as a bloody, screaming baby in a dirty rural cave, knowing full well that he was set on the path to pain and death.

Don't you know that love makes fools of us all.
Time for bed here (8pm Greenland time) - sleep well, whenever you are.

richie

OK, and we're back in the game...

2005-07-06T18:15:00.000+01:00

Now sitting in Starbucks, U-street, Washington, District of Columbia, USA - it's taken me a couple of days to find somewhere where I can use Jacki's shiny new iBook G4 (oops... was that supposed to be a surprise for y'all?!)

Anyway, that - and the fact that my computer is now no longer encased in a wrought steel box, so I can get my reports off my Palm and onto the web means I can now give you the unedited prose and piccies from my first few days over here. Hope this gives a good idea as to what I've been up to!

richie

Land of the free!

2005-07-02T22:11:00.000+01:00

Just got off the ferry from the statue of liberty, got in the queue at about 11am this morning. I don't know, even if the british invented queuing, the americans have now got it into a perfected form.

Anyway, liberty was cool we didn't get inside but had a good wander around and got to see the lady close up - and more unusually, to realise that they actually put as much effort into the back as the front. God bless the french!

Oh, I also did a quick "Where's the leader" using my camera whilst I was there, if anyone's interested in using it for Hi-Team! .... I think it's funny anyway ;-)

Now I'm just doing a bit of shopping before the shops close, then will eventually pop up to central park and see that in the cool of the day - I'm sure I've missed a lot of the sights in this great city by sticking mostly to the tourist trail but it's been pretty enlightening.

Anyway, whilst my mobile can phone and SMS you guys back in the UK, I havn't actually managed to work out how to get it to call 'local' numbers round here. So I'm off now to find a payphone and call up the local bike shop and see if they'll let me on their ride tommorrow.

Hopefully there's also a chance of getting you guys some pictures tommorrow before I get on the I95 down to Philadelpha - anyway seeya.

richie

A letter from america

2005-07-02T01:32:00.000+01:00

OK, sitting in a slightly dodgy feeling burger king on Broadway, New York, USA typing away on a utterly untactile keyboard and only 10minutes to get my point across beefore the machine logs me off, so apolgies for typos!

(I've got a full load of articles that I'm building up on my palm and will transfer up here as soon as I have a USB/SD socket at my disposal!!)

Well, it's true what they say, New York is a helava town I've been pretty much around downtown today.. but more of that later.

Firstly, the journey was fine - they let me into the country without any particular fuss (fools!) and I've still got two legs and all that. We landed at equivalent 5am UK time and then I had to drive my - so called "Compact" car - the 20 miles or so to Staten island trying to avoid hitting anyone or going down too many carriageways the wrong way.

Anyway I made it, set my watches again and then went to bed. Found that I woke up and looked at the clock - 2pm! - then went downstairs and realised that I hadn't updated that clock after all and that it was only 9am and time for breakfast. So there's hope for avoiding jet lag.

So today has been a good day, staring with breakfast along with a couple of Salvation Army pastors who are also staying in my B&B, and with the hosts looking after me with some nice "Hot Tea" ( the travel kettle hasn't had to come out yet!)

Then I sat on the rocks by the beach just outside and playing my guitar (which survived the flight) in the sight of the verzanno narrows bridge, until I was too hot and had to go back in. At this point I could not see the island of manhatten AT ALL it was just a ghosty blur (if I can find a way to post pictures, I'll show you!) - but this soon sorted itself out after taking the bus and the staten island ferry.

Finished up walking most of the length of Broadway and then spending a good hour in a queue for the Empire State Building. Then two minutes after going up, the fog comes in and we can see nothing..

Anyway, it's later now - I somehow managed to completely miss all the guys from Morning Star New York who I was going to meet up with tonight :-(, but I'll go back to the B&B now and let you know tommorrow what I got up to.

And besides, my time is up - better post this now! See y'all soon...

richie

End of an era!

2005-06-03T00:40:00.000+01:00

Wow, has it been almost an entire month since my last post - how strange. I hope I can try to claim that I've been busy, but I guess that's a bit of a flimsy excuse (as 'when am I not'?). I seem to recall that I was going to post once a couple of weeks back, but was then interrupted by some major nationwide emergency that required my attention.

Anyway, speaking of nationwide emergencies - this Sunday just gone was the wedding of two of my bestest friends in the whole wide world, Wes and Faye - who I've know since they both arrived at Imperial, 7 and 8 years back - respectively, and whom I've shared so much with over that time... The wedding was great, check out the pictures over at Teapot Records - but that's not really what I wanted to talk about now.

The point being that when you've known a couple of people for such a long time, that when suddenly they've gone from being two people who you thought you knew to suddenly being this shiny new 'Fweysey' man-and-wife conglomorate that in your heart there's some kind of a feeling of loss, some kind of a feeling of uncertainty of how they'll each have changed (on return from their Honeymoon), and just how the relationships between you and them will have to change in the years to come. Scary huh?! Or maybe it's just that - as Morgan Freedman says in 'The Shawshank Redemption' - "I guess I just miss my friend[s]". Awwwww, bless....

As for me - I've just booked my holiday for later this month - our global church is having yet another conference (this one about worship leading and stuff like that) and I decided to go! Difference being that it's in Nashville, Tennesee in the United States of America.

For those of you who don't quite realise the magnitude of this, you should be informed that the previous furthest that I've been from home is Italy, and I've only flown twice - and that with EasyJet - so to fly to New York (it's a helava town!) all on my lonesome and then go touring down the east coast for a couple of weeks, is a big thing...

Of course, anyone reading this who has relatives - preferably sane - in New York, Philly or DC who would just love to offer a random british guy a bed for a few days in the first week in July - please do get in touch! ;-)

Before that, I havn't really got a weekend free at all - every single moment is filled with either AV bits for church, people having parties, or with deadlines waiting to be met.

Anyway - Mike, who's sleeping on our sofa tonight - is finding it hard to sleep with the light on, so - now the water's up to temperature - I'll go and have my bath and leave him in peace.

Gii-us a lift mate!

2005-05-12T00:26:00.000+01:00

My bike is in the bike shop being repaired (at a cost of well over £100, after about 1000 miles, it's finally needing most of the movable bits replacing!).

So, I've been doing a lot of walking this week. Today's little jaunt was from my office near Hammersmith Bridge, down to Putney and then across to Fulham Broadway. It was a lovely, if slightly chilly day, but it was very nice to be reminded of the beauty of nature as I wandered along besides the Thames. Really must remember to occasionally take some longer routes home on the bike in future...

The reason I was going this rather tortuous route was partially because I resent giving Ken Livingstone any more than £2 of my cash on any given day, but mostly because I was off with the boys to see 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'.

Wasn't quite sure what to make of it in the end, at many times it seemed to just lack the zany comedy which marked out the earlier versions and resorted a bit too easily to slapstick - but I guess that was it, how do you make a big screen version of something which has already been interpreted in radio, book and TV formats and still keep it fairly true to the authors original intention whilst making it good entertainment to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Neverheardofit...

In many ways, it was a bit of a 'no-win' situation - I can't get away from the fact that David Dixon delivered Ford Prefect's lines better than Mos Def, and I couldn't really believe that Martin Freedman really loved tea as much as Simon Jones (who cameoed) ever did! Also, the idea that it was mostly a 'love story' between Arthur and Trillian somehow grates on me a bit, dialogue ended up clunky and trite...

On the other hand, Sam Rockwell made the Zaphod role his own and Zooey Daschael (or however you spell her name) stole the show as Trillian... the special FX (apart from Zaphod's second head) were generally good and the opening title sequence was genius.... so if you liked any other version of it, it'll be well worth a watch.

laters...

They're all spies!

2005-05-11T02:16:00.000+01:00

Was just about to 'share an encouraging message' with all those who occasionally drop in on my blog (or just pick it up via RSS!), about how I'd just been to my first church "leaders meeting" (as part of my masterplan to take over, starting with technical bits and going from there!), good time, some prayer and encouragement and a nice new book for me to read.... when, I glanced at my taskbar and thought "oooooh pants" as I spotted an icon I didn't recognised.

Perhaps this doesn't make sense to anyone else, but I have a habit of running a fairly tight ship of a computer, taking care to keep Windows updated, Mozilla patched and setting up the most restrictive permissions for browsing. I have one besetting weakness though, a pathelogical willingness to run as 'Administrator' all the time...

So, when I then let my flatmates and various other visitors to the flat browser around the net on my computer, I guess it shouldn't be any surprise to me when I come home and find my computer crawling with Spyware.

So, now, here I am 2:25 in the morning and I THINK I've just finished, after four reboots, various excursions to "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" and going through the various untrusted registry keys (HKEY_CURRENT_USER/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run and RunOnce), Ad-Aware finally insists there's 'nothing to see here, move along please...

Now time to add a password to this user, create a new 'User-Level' person for my flatmates and then... GO... TO... BED.

Goodnight Jonboy...

Update on music...

2005-02-21T00:03:00.000Z

Thought I'd do a quick update on what I now think of those albums I bought a couple of weeks on ...

Athlete - Tourist

Still utterly great, every track has something which marks it out and makes an album that's a lot better than pretty much everything else I've heard recently. Only down point I find is 'Modern Mafia' which does go down as definite 'filler' in my book, although to leave it out might have unbalanced the track running order...

KT Tunstall - Eye to the telescope

Again, almost every track is fresh and original. Her voice has got great depth and colour on it and listening back on it a couple of times more on decent headphones realises some additional production tweaks which generally impress. Great happy 'chill out' acoustic folk rock stuff.

Led Zeppelin - Physical Grafitti

OK, so a couple of tracks are just plain weird, and it doesn't really seem to quite work as well as a whole album as a traditional 'prog-rock', but anyway it does have some real gems - including that 'Kashmir' track, which Matt Damon quoted in Oceans 12!

Soulwax - Much against everyone's advice

As mentioned before, at least a couple of wonderful tracks, but some of the quieter ones have now grown on me too. Unfortunately though it doesn't come close to really being the sum of it's parts.

The Who - The Ultimate Collection

Doesn't really impress that much, it might be the "Ultimate Collection" because all of the songs, but it's not an album and I just feel at bit disappointed - expecting all loud crashing guitars, but it instead generally sounds a lot more 'weedy' in most songs. To be fair, I probably need to listen to the entire thing a few more times, but the problem ends up being that we have almost 30-40 songs and finding the gold in the gravel isn't as easy as it perhaps should be.

Thirteen Senses - The Invitation

It's grown a bit more on me, but still it has nothing which really pulls it out of the current "pretty average soft-rock" group of bands and it just doesn't stand there shouting anything but "I'm an average album!!!"

Impromptu Excursions

2005-02-14T01:19:00.000Z

Phew! What a day. Started out fairly late actually, after yesterday's excitements - we just about made it over to our local Benjy's as mentioned before by about 1pm. Then wandered over to church to find that actually I was very much in demand to perform miracles with a six-person drama group who all wanted to be heard and who kept swapping microphones! (admittedly, I did tell them to do it half of the time).

Anyway, the mixing went satisfactorily - it was initially a bit hard to fill a mix with just one keyboard, a bass and some drums - especially when the keyboard player does love his 'hammond organ' sound! But then the Electric Guitarist turned up (the amazing Bob) and that made everything sound nice. Packup went OK afterwards as well, although there seemed to be more people sitting around chatting and waiting for us than actually helping clear up, sheesh....what did they think it was, Church?!! ;-)

We got packed up and then someone said "Nandos, anyone?" so we did the run with the van to take everything back to our storerooms (the church doesn't own it's own venue, so everything has to be set up and packed away every week) and then over to Nandos.

One medium 1/2 chicken and chips later, someone said "Cinema, anyone?" so we all piled off to see 'Oceans 12' - which isn't anywhere near the same league as Oceans 11, and has a plot through which you could drive a fleet of buses - but still a reasonably entertaining yarn, and all in the best possible taste.

Anyway, hence why I'm so late home - bath and bed calls. cya.

Student Sunday!

2005-02-13T12:22:00.000Z

Had a fun time yesterday round at Wessy's making invites for his wedding (in May, must remember to keep the date free!) and getting my hair cut with my new clippers, hmmm... a little bit shorter than normal perhaps, but that generally means I just need to keep my chin a bit smoother for a while - to avoid looking 'upside down'!

Only got back fairly late last night so now I'm just waking up on a Sunday err... afternoon, working out what's real and what's one of those annoying dreams where you dream you've just got up and got dressed then realise 'no, I'm still in bed...'. Eventually a good cup of tea tends to be the deciding factor in actually forcing myself out of bed and getting dressed and on with the day.

So here we are, off to Benjys for an all day breakfast then straight over to church to prepare for the 5pm service - which, as I'm generally providing most of the technical support, mixing, plugging things in, and trying to keep the band and everyone else happy from a Sound/Video point of view I need to be over there a good couple of hours early... Especially as it's a 'student service' which generally means that anything can and probably will happen.

Working with the stars.

2005-02-11T18:33:00.000Z

Strange place Hammersmith, and Barnes for that matter too. Where else in London could you regularly find yourself in a mildly delapidated looking Argos store in a mile long queue next to none other than authentic celebraties such as newsreader extrordinaiire Moira Stewart (as I did earlier today)?

Or where can you wander out of Hammersmith tube only to almost bump into GLA member and former Lib-Dem candidate for 'Mayor of London' Susan Kramer, or even wait to pay for your lunch at Tescos with Chelsea's Eider Gudjohnson or even Tim Henman?

More to the point, should I really wonder so much whether Moira got herself a pack of video tapes or a desk-lamp? Is it just another form of the same 'connection' with the random people that we see on TV and websites that sells several thousand 'celebrity gossip' magazines every week - do these 'minor celebs' get used to it after a while, or what is the acceptable protocol?!

Or even just to expand the question to our Christian brothers and sisters in the media, when you spot a member of Delirious, or the pastor of your 'mega-church' or some other 'celebrity' in the Christian world is there an unwritten code of conduct?! Or should I just keep sticking to the 'subtle nod of recognition and general good wishes' that I've been practicing?

Holiday Music

2005-02-08T16:55:00.000Z

Went shopping just before the skiing trip and spent almost £50 on CDs! Well, at least I had some music for the trip but I probably would have been thanked more by my wallet for buying online (I like amazon, play and cd-wow - with no real faithfulness to any one of them) ... but - anyway, I listened to a few of them - and my verdicts follow:

Athlete - Tourist

Actually, I didn't get this in the shop as it wasn't out until the monday following - but I've now got it on order from cd-wow. However for the holiday, I picked up a 32kbs playback of the whole album from XFM's listening post which was enough to push me over the edge into the 'saturation listening' to any album like this one - which grows on you quickly and then starts to reward you with noticing the extra little blippy bits they like to put in.

Every track has something about it, either a sing-along-chorus or a wide string soundscape, deservedly a number one album already - Just get it, it's good!!

KT Tunstall - Eye to the telescope

First heard her on the repeat of 'Jools', after Sam (my little brother) was raving after seeing her on the initial run - and mostly because she was playing with an Akai Headrush tape-loop pedal! Then had a listen to the tracks of her website and finally got the CD.

Mostly semi-acoustic 'girl-with-guitar' country/blues/rock stuff (imagine Norah Jones fronting for Gomez and then getting a bit of attitude to go with it), but with some added fantastic little production twists and musical surprises. Definitely Top-10 worthy, and as there arn't really any filler tracks - it's good stuff.

Led Zeppelin - Physical Grafitti

Actually, Joy (my sister) gave me this for Christmas. And thought I'd better take it with me. As you'd expect, it's prety classic mid-70s stuff... definitely prog-rock - which I think I like!

Soulwax - Much against everyone's advice

Actually an album I've wanted to hear for a while - it's got at least three killer tracks, in the title track, 'Overweight Karate Kid' and 'Too Many DJs' (one of my all-time personal favourite tracks). But apart from that, it's a collection well produced tracks, but without any real cohesion and one two many fillers and balladesque bits of whining. Probably worth getting if it's ever on 'special'.

The Who - The Ultimate Collection

Nuff said, you need a bit of 'Who' in your CD collection and this looks like it has all the hits

Thirteen Senses - The Invitation

Bought this on impulse after hearing 'Thru the glass' on the radio, but it didn't really grow on me. Jury is out on this one - it's either weak wannabie Embrace/Keane/Coldplay or it's actually quite good and I just havn't given it a chance - so I'll reserve judgement on this one. But yes - apart from the mentioned track, I didn't hear anything yet to convince me it's any good...

Das Photo du Ski

2005-02-07T17:23:00.000Z

OK, the photos are now all up on my photo site - but here's one to wet your appetite:

That particular shot was taken from the top of the 'Glacier De La Chiaupe' in the La Plagne ski area, which we skiied over to on Friday. Most of the week before that had been spent in the areas of Les Arcs and Peisey Vallandry making up an area of skiing which was really pretty impressive in it's magnitude. The only annoying thing being that as lifts generally started closing at about half-four in the afternoon there was a certain limit on how far you could get in a day.

Our chalet was in La Villaret, which was a little village which seemed pretty dominated by skiers - at least I didn't notice that many people who looked like locals! On the other hand, we only really saw the chalet in the mornings and the evenings, pretty much all of the rest of the time was spent up the mountain skiing or eating out. The guys running the chalet were great, especially when you consider the constant production line of cakes and 3-course haute-cuisine meals in the evening. They also were generally quite willing to offer guests a lift down to the 'lobster pots' (the antiquated, but functional cage-lift up from La Villaret/Peisey into Plan-Peisey where the ski lifts started...)

Actually, that was the biggest thing I noticed, having only been once before (to Bettmeralp) I wasn't really used to not being able to stumble out of my door at pretty much any hour of the day and have a chair-lift ready and waiting to take me up to the pristine slopes. On the other hand, the range and quality of runs at Les Arcs seriously dwarfed it's swiss cousin - albeit with the occasional point where someone had just forgotten to put any piste markers in!

It was also brilliant to get to know a new group of guys from church, and having Brad and Emtia around to help me interpret the complicated piste markings was invaluable. All in all, I think everyone enjoyed themselves - although it was fairly clear that you really needed to be able to ski well in order to get the most out of the region: public-transport and runs sometimes not quite linking up - so that the non-skiiers and those who could do only snowplough in our group ended up very limited in the runs they could gain access to.

On my part, it was also really useful to have some ski lessons to try and actually get proficient at skiing - to the point at which I wasn't too scared when the piste got a bit icy later in the week, and was able to take on a few red-runs! (which - to be fair - in P-V were often easier than the blues!). A couple of lessons from the English ski school out there made all the difference...

Anyway, I could go on and on - about how I somehow contrived to lose at Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary - and about the Pictionary rematch that we stole at the death with some inspired visual guesswork, or about the amount of alcohol consumed was possibly a little bit too much for us not to have a "not an official Every Nation Church activity" on the flyers next time - but I think I'd probably either bore you, or never get to go home today - or (more likely) just get no work done at all today. So I'll leave it there...

I came, I skiied, I conked out

2005-02-06T02:07:00.000Z

I'm back, it was fantabulous, we had one day with a little snow and then bright blue skies the rest of the time. More tommorrow (with pictures) once I've woken up!

A Time to ski...

2005-01-26T22:33:00.000Z

Another 'pre-holiday' post! This time I'm off with the church to France (Les Arcs) for a spot of skiing. Admittedly it's only two weeks now since I sprained my ankle playing unihoc and I've still been walking round with a bit of a 'comedy limp' since then, so I'm going to rather be relying on the 'custom footbed' I had made up at edge2edge to keep my feet all in place and stop me coming back with the wrong number of legs.

Should be fun though, and the weather looks good so far. Yay!

Five Months Later...

2005-01-11T13:22:00.000Z

Thought I ought to post on here again, as I was being reminded by a couple of online buddies that I havn't actually passed through these parts for coming on half a year! Anyway, 2005 - a new year, with new possibilities.

2004 was a bit tough - but the cheesy tagline for 'Return of the King' said 'There can be no triumph without loss. No victory without suffering. No freedom without sacrifice.' - maybe that's overexaggerating a bit but anyway, in the past twelve months I cut most of the ties with my old church, then lost a girlfriend, started leading the AV Team, wrote lots of computer programs, changed flatmates, got involved in the kid's mission, recorded a few songs (although clearly not enough) and started to try and sort out - with the guys I've now got around me - the issues that I've struggled with for a while - recognising who I am in Christ, in my faith, and in my relationships.

Certainly, this year just gone has been quite frustrating. If 2003 woke me up to the realisation that actually there was more to life than the 9-to-5, have fun, 'eat, drink and be merry 'cos tommorrow we die' approach of the world - a beauty and passion far beyond anything that you ever found on TV; then 2004 was the journey to see that it wouldn't come on the cheap. That I had to fix my eyes on what I do know (not get distracted wondering about the things that I don't!), count the cost, decide that it was something worth fighting for and start putting in the effort to find it in all it's fullness!

To be completely honest, I havn't found an answer that I'm happy with yet - we talk of 'El Shaddai' (The 'All Sufficient One') and that's my only resolution for 2005 so far. Yes, 'The road is long, with many a winding turn' but join me as I 'seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness' and lets follow where His narrow path leads...

This week, I have mostly been:

2005-01-11T13:17:00.000Z

Thought I'd also mention a couple of websites that have caught my attention over the past couple of weeks.

Delirious's "in the studio" webcam - which I find unusually soothing, for some strange reason!
Ellen McArthur's round the world sailing attempt - I'm thoroughly addicted to keeping up to date on this, currently 5 days ahead of the record but now heading into the even more dangerous seas near Cape Horn, Icebergs ahoy!
The AV Crew forum - (not linked to directly, as it's really only intended for the AV guys from church!) - my second home.
AND:
Pretty much most of the BBC's news and sport sites - although to be fair, it's mostly just the cool "Last Man Standing" cricket game that eats up the bulk of my time.

Anyway, when I'm not mucking about on those websites I also have a job, which I should be doing now. So I'd best go and get on with it!

Oh - plus one more site which Mike just sent me this morning: http://www.frenzy.com/~jester/racecar.html - which got a smile from me...

Calm Before The Storm

2004-08-13T18:34:00.000+01:00

Well, here's the last day at work before Kids-Camp. And the weather for it looks 'changeable' - to say the least! Most of the time this week has been spent playing with sound samples for dramas, trying to find clothes for aforementioned dramas and almost everything in between!

So I've been going out - on those days I've not been rushing off to meetings - to charity shops, and TK Max (yes TK Max....) buying lurid shirts and bermuda shorts for the 'beach day', and wandering around some unfamilier bits of M&S for bits for the day when we all have to dress as an animal... (say no more, say no more, lets see if it 'works' first!) - finally there's the 'Dalmation' day for which I'm probably going to end up destroying an old t-shirt!

Anyway, lots to do, so little time - tommorrow will be fun, getting to the community centre at 10am and not leaving until we're done which is likely to be some atrocious time on Sunday morning! I'm tired already and we havn't even begun!

So, the next post you get from here will probably be after the summer camp - so, if you want to - pray that we all get there and back safely, everyone has a very good time and that I come back with lots of good footage for the video night (be there, or be err... elsewhere...).

OK, seeya.

Camp Freddie

2004-08-11T11:33:00.000+01:00

Well, everything is hotting up - not neccessarily literally - for the big 'Hi-Team Summer Camp' which I'm going on (as official media guy) next week. Suddenly I'm surrounded by lots of whizzy gizmos which I'm going to have about an hour at some point to get familier with before having to come up with a groovy video of the whole thing (yikes!).

Actually, it really looks like it's going to be fantastic - albeit rather draining on the energy front, but as always with these things a calculated panic sets in soon before as we try to find all the stuff that we need to take (where in Hammersmith on a Wednesday lunchtime I'm going to be able to find an animal costume, beach clothes and lots of spots - I'll explain later - is beyond me!).

Also, it's a momentus day with Wes moving out of our flat to go share with James for a while (we've got Katie and Matilda moving in after Summer Camp) - which makes it a bit of an end-of-an-era for me, given that we've pretty much shared flats since 2nd year of uni - some six years back... and we're missing his birthday party due to camp stuff this Saturday... grrr.... still, he's not far and we need him back for filming 'Morris'.

Then there's all the AV Crew and Biblical Foundations stuff that I've had to do as well, so really I'm swamped - and a Friday deadline, so what am I doing here?... good question! seeya.

d: came, d: saw, d: conquered....

2004-08-06T16:06:00.000+01:00

North London was swamped yesterday evening with a large number - OK, I didn't try and count them - of young people, both christian and non-christian off to the Soul-in-the-city event at Alexandra Palace. Hosts David and Carrie Grant kept everyone entertained (although their "stalling" skills need some work!) and the musical undercard of Green Jade (hip-hop, cool), New Inspirational Choir (pretty good) and "Witness" (OK, for rap(!)) battled with such amusements as "Palace Academy" where Mike Pilivachi beat off all comers with his rendition of what I think might have been "Bridge over troubled waters"... although not many were sure. After he'd recovered his voice, he preached up a storm then introduced the guys who were the reasons we'd come over from West London - "my friends, Delirious".

Lights down, the boys walk onto the stage. Stew sporting his "Jesus" t-shirt and - since the day before - blonde hair, Jon replete in a brown Oasis-esque duffle coat and big shades. Martin in his ripped suit and Stu looking cool but a bit too far away on the far side for an asessment of his fashion sense . True to form, Stew sits down behind drums and the beats of "Grace Like a River" pound out across the West Palm Court, a few seconds later whoever was on sound gets the mixer sounding a whole lot nicer than it had for any of the other bands and the whole place erupts into praise. No sooner has the last note stopped from that, Martin - looking like a man on a mission - swings straight into a acapella intro into an energetic rendition of "Rain Down".

The lights flash on and off and pick out colourscapes of sound and vision, the guys are on a roll - although they are spending quite a lot of time gesturing to the monitor desk, I presume it's not Colin on there this evening... However, back to the music - any preconceptions that we're in for a straight play through of 'World Service' are dispelled as the band then rock into an extended version of 'My Glorious' - reprising 'Glory, Glory send your glory'. From here Martin makes his way back to the keyboard and treats us to a solo 1st verse of 'Every Little Thing'- introducing it as "here's a song that you can maybe sing in church, or - if you're like me - down the pub too!", ending off with a chorus of 'I Could sing of your love forever'. It's a quiet moment as everyone in the place comes to praise God and Martin comments on how it's sometimes really easy to be a band going around playing gigs, but it's so much harder to do what the guys out in the auditorium are doing on the streets - and they give us a clap.... very nice.

With imaculate timing, Stu leads the band back into 'Inside Outside' where - (for possibly the first time ever!) - his vocals come singing out loud and clear, very very nice! From there, we segue into 'Majesty' and every hand is lifted in praise, in the quiet following Martin starts singing "And the wonder of it all....". The place erupts into Deeper, and - as we thought 'that's our lot' they top it off with an absolutely rocking, crowd bouncing, guitar screaming rendition of 'God In Heaven'. The place resounds with - as Martin puts it - "shouting out some things that are really true" - "To God in heaven be the glory".

They finish loud and proud, the lights dim and Mike P returns to the stage and several people give their lives to Christ - it's a special moment and the boys don't disappoint, rounding off the evening with the call they've been singing loud and proud for years now - "this is for all you History Makers". They play their socks off, Stew is streaming sweat everywhere, Jon is looking a little bit warm - still in his duffle coat, Stu lets rip with cutting overdriven solos, Tim leans back and shouts to the heavens and Martin wanders around the stage looking 'phew!' - the big ending and we're all done, a gig of much magnificence and inspiration that's hopefully changed many lives - "Thank you, Goodnight"

Here comes the rain again.

2004-08-04T14:16:00.000+01:00

After a week or so of glorious British sunshine, we finally came back down to earth again yesterday with the most almighty thunderstorm that I can remember seeing in London for a long, long time. What with flooding of the church basement and roads ankle deep in puddles, I presumed that we - with our 2nd floor flat - would be immune - but no. Not content with just coming through the window that got left open(!), the cracks in the plastering of our lounge ceiling apparently didn't think it needed to keep the water out either - and water flooded in through the light fitting and down the wall.... not good!

The landlord was up on the roof this morning, clearing out the drains and is apparently going to do something about fixing the cracks once it's dry again - so hopefully the sun will continue shining for a couple of days more now!

Nonetheless, there was a slightly musty smell when I walked into the lounge this morning, and opened the windows...

By Poxy!

2004-08-02T12:13:00.000+01:00

This weekend has been interesting! We started out on Friday by heading up to Faye's house for a dinner-party type thingy (for which I had to borrow my Dad's dinner jacket) to celebrate her and her fellow students finally becoming real doctors, and playing a bit of jazz - on a Casio keyboard! A good time was had by all, but by this point Wes had broken out with a large number of blotches which divided opinion amongst the Doctors as to what it actually was.

Returning to the flat after a morning back home in Edgware on Saturday afternoon yeilded the news that actually - yes - it was Chicken Pox, cue all the other flatmates ringing around their parents to ascertain whether they'd got it when they were children - it seems we all did. So while it seems that he's going to be out of action for probably up to a week, we shouldn't get it!

Most of the rest of the weekend - before our, now pretty predictable Sunday evening of Church followed by Nandos and a video (this week: Seabiscuit - 5*s !) - was taken up with programming the new version of SongBase - the software that Wes originally came up with for use in church for projecting the words, it's starting to look good and the church laptop can definitely do 'Dual Screen' provided that it is configured accordingly - some more testing is still required though to see what stuff we'll need to support in order to make it work. And it really does seem that the 'background' feature is something they REALLY want, so we might just have to put out an interim version - for testing purposes ;-)

Hmmm.... just thinking aloud there, tonight it looks like we might try and get some more of 'Crouching Phil, Hidden Morris' filmed - especially the bits with Jason in, as he's off to Cambridge soon. But with Wes's current state, I expect we may have to wait a little while before we can finish the bits with him in!

All quiet on the western front

2004-07-29T13:24:00.000+01:00

Another quiet week in Richie-land, after my moan about not having any new songs - I managed to get a new song written and recorded within a couple of days (which is quick for me!), obviously lacking drums though.

These days - even with advances in recording - I just don't have the space, the patient neighbours or, more to the point, the drumming skill to add drums to stuff when we're recording demos on the fly. The choice being then between cheesy keyboard drums (any of my friends who've heard Love-Love-Love or Seconds-Out would know what I mean!) and beat-boxing it!

Ideally, the thing I'd really like (one day) is an electronic drum kit, pads with decent triggered samples on them - generally very expensive, but probably not much more than a gym membership in Central London anyway and probably just as effective as a tool for weight-loss!

STILL! The song recorded is pretty reasonable, almost a 'concept' song (the idea being that all instruments for most of the song are deprived of lower frequencies, except in reverb terms. So that the vocals are the only thing appearing in the mid-range) - it just about works! At the end, we then bring in a deep bass noise and a large number of vocals - which I may still run through Phil's big amplifier and get them distorted. The music is very remenicient of Radiohead ('no surprises' in particular, but I think that's probably a pit-fall of any minor song with high chordally things) and Sigur Ros (at least in terms of the squeeky vocals towards the end).

And the AV Crew forum (which I won't link to, because otherwise we'll probably get lots of 'randoms') seems to be livening up too, and work on SongBase too - which I'll post more about later... sounds like the church conference in october may be fun from a technical point of view, maybe even to the extent of coming up with a 'live CD' at the end of it.

So, another week of so much to do, so little time - but probably not much in the way of anything really happening. Oh well, best go and see if I can find myself a nice cumabund and bow-tie for this weekend, which MIGHT be black-tie, but no-one tells me anything!

cya

Careful with that hammer!

2004-07-26T11:18:00.000+01:00

Well, another weekend gone - and I'm back at work feeling tired!

It all started promisingly enough, a nice long lie-in on Saturday - after which I took my suit to get dry-cleaned (after I left a chocolate in the pocket and it melted... ewwww!), did a bit of reading and bible-study thingies and then, after trying to find something in our fridge to eat that wasn't sausages (they were on special offer a couple of weeks back, so pretty much all my flatmates bought a couple of packs!), I sat down with a nice quiet cup of tea to play a little bit of football on the computer....

Of course, then I proceeded to try and pick up my cup of tea without looking, succeeded in catching it with my wrist and propelling it across the desk. I simultaneously tried to catch the cup (in a suave and sophisticated manner) and only succeeded in diverting the cup into my computer keyboard.

After draining the liquid out, all seemed OK - until the computer decided that it didn't like being sent random key information, so I ended up pulling the whole thing to pieces and cleaning it until about 2am! - well, it seems to work now, so hopefully no permanent damage was done!

What else? Got a CD of the 'Mission' music out to the guys in our kids ministry, we had a Benjy's (the best all day breakfast in the world, only available on Earls Court Road - yellow frontage, turn left out of the tube! - plug!!) and then set off to church, which was cool - Charl sharing on being 'salty' in whatever places God's placed us in.

Then we went to the proms, it was Phil's inspiration that did it and we rounded up Annette and Mike to come with us (Phil, Jason and myself) - the way it seems to work is that you join the queue and then either some person (who may, or may not recognise you as an IC student!) comes round and sells you a ticket, or you just get given a 'raffle ticket' (so you can keep your place in the queue) and pay your £4 on the door... you then realise that you're queuing outside of the window of Natty's room, so Phil gives him a ring and he passes us some tea! (The man is a major saint!). A little while later, we pass back the mugs and disappear into the hall.

Last night's programme was a Violin Concerto by Elgar (with a soloist who looked like he could definitely make you an offer 'you couldn't refuse'!) and a Mass (which up until the choir started belting out 'Gloria' we were expecting to be a symphony) - by Dvořák. Both were great, but my back was giving way (bad posture!) by the end of the second movement. Still, a great night was had by all - and we finished it off by taking a little wine and pistachio nuts with some pasta, cheese-sauce and cut up sausages.... only four more packs to go then!

introductions

2004-07-23T18:19:00.000+01:00

Oh and I suppose I'd better introduce the people who are most likely to read this to each other, in case they havn't already met....

I suppose people fall into three categories....

My London friends - flatmates and other close friends, from church or my time at uni
My 'home' - that's Edgware - family and friends
My 'virtual' friends - very few of whom I've ever actually met, but generally hang about on fan-forums or mailing-lists for Delirious (who I like) and other - more random - connections!

There may indeed be some people who fit into more than one of the above categories - and other people who I know from church but don't meet much outside of a Sunday - or the AV Crew - but that's just the complicated world in which I live. So yeah, Mum - meet Jono (actually... on the other hand, forget I said that..)

Oh well, I'm off to play badminton with Phil and Jason (flatmates), Will and Mike (friends) and maybe we'll drag Wes (flatmate) along as well.

Have a great weekend, everyone...

As the music starts...

2004-07-23T16:17:00.000+01:00

May as well link over to Teapot Records - as it's a friday. Sooner or later it'll get updated with the new stuff that's coming along, the big redesign to promote Wes's album (smile) - once he's recorded it!

As for me - after Puddles, there's not really been much. I just havn't felt like writing and what I am writing tends to be pretty morbid and uninspiring fare - either that or inanely happy.... Writers block? probably more like apathy and many other distractions....

Oh well, it's the weekend!

The inexorable tide...

2004-07-23T13:00:00.000+01:00

Finally decided to give in to the 'unstoppable march of progress' and get myself a blog of my own, not sure how much it'll get updated but hopefully it'll give whoever you are some insight into the recesses of my mind!

Admittedly, we tried to get our old Solution site to run off TextPattern at one point, but it seemed rather like using a hammer to crack a nut - so err... we ended up running off PHP/XML instead!

Oh well, work calls - performance, performance, performance is the mantra of the day...