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So, quick update as to what was going on this weekend. On Friday night we helped out at 21 (back after half-term), and then went to the pub with most of the 21 crew (AJ, Laura, Jen and her sister, and James and Tash). It’s nice to have so many friends from church at the moment – especially with so many Colchester people moving away … *sob*. Aaaaanyway!

On Saturday morning, Sam Norton (the Diocesan Warden of Ordinands, who I mentioned before) came round to chat to Phil and I about ministry. It went well, and what I need to do now is send off my form and he will forward it on to the Diocesan Director of Ordinands! I won’t go into the way the CofE ordination process works, but it basically means I’m sort of on the next rung of the ladder. So that’s exciting anyway :)

In the afternoon we did a bit of shopping and saw Alex for a cup of tea. Then we headed round to Tom’s for the “Great Essex Feast”. Basically the idea was a fund-raising exercise for the Essex Air Ambulance and Friends of Essex Churches charities. Someone (in this case, Tom) would donate the food, and people would then come round, eat the food, and donate money to the charity. It was a great evening and I think we raised a decent amount! I drank and ate an awful lot and felt a bit groggy on Sunday morning, but not too bad.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then were invited out to the Carmels for lunch with some of the students. We had a good lunch there, and then stayed most of the afternoon chatting and playing on the Wii! Then we went out to Sunday@6, where I was leading the music for the first time. That seemed to go well although there weren’t so many people there, think we had a few regulars missing.

And then we came back and watched ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, which is pretty much everything that happened this weekend!

I should also mention – last week we watched ‘500 Days of Summer’ which is a good film and very cleverly written. However, I wasn’t sure about the conclusion… I wasn’t sure whether it was saying the normal Hollywood thing of “You just have to find the right person” or not. (And I can say that without giving anything away, because the ending is probably not what you’d expect). So, it’s worth watching, but I don’t think it’s one I’d watch again.

Just a quick post to let you know what happened on the second half of the weekend! Most of Saturday was taken up with sessions – two in the morning and one group session in the evening. In the afternoon we went on a walk in the nearby countryside, alongside a canal, which was a very pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon.

On Sunday morning we had another two sessions, followed by a roast dinner, which was very nice. The food over the whole weekend was great, actually – I ate far too much but still! After that came the drive home, which passed by pretty uneventfully with very little traffic. I slowed down a little bit on the way home as well, and it certainly affected the petrol consumption – the needle moved noticeably more slowly!

After that we headed out to Sunday@6, then came back home and watched ‘Lark Rise’.

I just wanted to mention the teaching at the weekend: it was based on Old Testament narrative – how to preach it. I think I’d feel much more confident if I had to preach and Old Testament narrative passage than I would have done before. It hasn’t made it any easier but does give me a way of breaking into the passage, and a few ideas about how to present it. Very helpful. If you’re involved with preaching or teaching the Bible, it would definitely be worth going to! Many of the people who I met had been there before, which I think just illustrates how useful it is. I will try and get there next year as well!

Last night we watched through the final episode of “Glee”. We’ve now seen all of the first series. I’m not convinced by it to be honest – there are some aspects of the series which I think are odd, and one which I actually find quite uncomfortable.

Also note that this post will contain a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Glee but want to, you may want to leave this post until you have seen it.

First things first though, the positive aspects. I do like the music – although I didn’t know all the songs I felt like the ones that they did do were well done. I was quite impressed with the way they covered some of the pop songs such as Queen’s “Somebody to Love”: most of the time I think covers of iconic songs shouldn’t be done, because they rarely do the original justice. But in this instance they made the cover version different enough from the original to make it good in its own right – rather than just ripping off the genius of Queen.

I also liked their characterisation: I mentioned last time that all the characters were essentially pantomime characters. This wasn’t true for the whole series – all the characters (even Sue Sylvester) were made into more 3D characters, and were well portrayed on screen. I particularly liked the relationship between Will, Terri and Emma – I actually thought it was quite untypical for American TV, a lot of the scenes they had were quite simple, without any background music, just them with nothing else to heighten the drama.

That said… there were some aspects of Glee I didn’t like.

The main one was Sue Sylvester. Although the writers did make her character more sympathetic, she was just too pantomime for me. The show had some really nice moments, some good drama, some good humour – but Sue just was completely over the top for me. It seemed like the show was a little schizophrenic about whether to be a comedy or a drama, and it just didn’t quite work for me.

Part of the problem is, Sue was just such an unlikeable character I didn’t see how she couldn’t still have been working at the school without being fired. If I was Will Schuester, I wouldn’t have given her the time of day. If she’d started talking to me, I would have walked off!

I think part of the problem is, everyone was treating her as a ’serious’ character. I compared Glee to Green Wing in my last post, and there are similarities: it has serious moments but it also has some very random, funny moments. (Yeah, that’s about where the similarities end, but still). Alan Statham and Sue White are two examples of characters in Green Wing who are completely bizarre, and yet somehow it seems quite normal in the world they created. It doesn’t seem out of place. Sue Sylvester, on the other hand, seems out of place. Anyway, I’ve rambled on about that for long enough.

The other thing which didn’t sit right with me is the ‘adultery’ storyline (apologies for slightly dramatic language, but that’s what it is): everyone was behaving pretty badly to each other in the show – what with Terri lying to Will, Quinn and Puck lying to Finn etc, but Will’s behaviour really seemed out of order. If you’re married, falling in love with someone else isn’t something which you should really do. It’s not just when you’ve got the feeling you can’t help but do anything about it! It’s just presenting, to my mind, another flawed version of love to the world.

Still, all in all, it was quite watchable and hopefully they’ll improve things a little next season. Who knows! That’s all from me anyway…

So, Phil and I have started watching “Glee”, which is a new American comedy. Apparently Alex and Sarah both really like it, and Alex gave us some episodes to watch through (it’s being shown on Channel 4 at the moment I think).

Anyway, as it started out I didn’t think I was going to like it, but it won me over by the end of the first episode (we’ve only watched the first two episodes, including the pilot). At the moment it seems feel-good comedy, but it seems well written and the musical numbers are very well done. I also like the fact that it is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so when the supposedly amateur high schoolers (who’ve never got anything musically right before) perform a pretty much spot-on version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”, it tips a nod to the audience as if to say, “Yeah, we know, it’s just part of the show… enjoy it”.

That said, it does epitomise some of the things I don’t like about American comedy. Namely, characterisation. I don’t know, it just seems that British comedies tend to make it more subtle – you get a more realistic blend of character traits. For example, in Green Wing, even the unsympathetic characters (such as Joanna Clore, Guy Secretan, Alan Statham) you really feel for sometimes. They still have moments of genuine warmth for them.

American characters tend to be much more… well, I would say more pantomime characters. They just aren’t as complex as real life. I don’t know whether this is a difference in my perception or whether there is something objective going on. But I still have to say I prefer British comedies. Perhaps America is just a different place to Britian, and Glee really is reflecting what’s going on in America.

All I can say is, if Glee is an accurate (or at least, based on facts) depiction of what happens in American schools, I’m glad I didn’t go to school there!

On Thursday night last week it snowed pretty heavily. This meant that I wasn’t able to get into work on Friday, but I was able to do some work from home.

And we had another party on Friday night! Fortunately it didn’t involve driving so we were able to walk across town. We went round to Tom’s place for a Christmas ‘bash’, there were a whole bunch of people there and we had a whole lot of fun. This included drinking lots of mulled wine and eating lots of food (and I do mean, LOTS of food. There was enough to feed an army!)

So that was good. Then on Saturday we did a bit of shopping, present wrapping and the like. In the evening we watched “The Hangover”. I’d heard some good things about it from my colleagues. It was quite clever and well-written, but… I don’t think I really got the joke. I’m not sure whether it’s a difference between British and American humour, there just didn’t really seem to be any jokes in it! Kind of like “Wimbledon” (the film) – kind of amusing but it didn’t really make me laugh out loud.

Anyway. On Sunday we went to church twice – despite the snow! After our carol service in the evening – which was relatively well attended despite the poor weather – we went round to Jo’s for some tea.

Apart from all those things, I’ve been playing a fair amount of Red Alert 3: I ordered it last week, and it arrived on Friday. It’s got pretty poor reviews on Amazon, but I think there was a problem with DRM / Product Activation which made people give it bad reviews. Perhaps I went in with low expectations, but I’ve actually been really enjoying it. Someone said that it wasn’t as fast-paced as RA2, which I don’t quite see at the moment: it appears to be just as fast-paced in terms of the missions.

The graphics are decent, and I like with what they’ve done with the units. The only problem is, it is a bit complicated for my tiny brain. Each unit has an ‘alternate fire’ mode, for example, which I never use. (Although I probably should…) Oh, another minor problem: Apocalypse tanks can no longer defend themselves against air attack. I suppose the ability did make them a bit too powerful in RA2, but nonetheless it is annoying. You now have to remember to include Bullfrogs or MiGs into your attack force – not necessarily a bad thing I guess, just keeps catching me out! I do like, though, that there are more airborne and seabound units, and in fact several units are amphibious. The battle is much more ‘all across the map’, rather than just being fought purely on land like it was before. Even with Kirovs and Black Eagles / Harriers in RA2, air attack was pretty limited – and I don’t think anyone really used to battle on the sea, outside the missions.

Aaaanyway, the above is only my experience after playing through most of the Soviet campaign (there are three campaigns – Soviet, Allied, and Japanese). I’m really enjoying it so far, and look forward to completing the rest!

Now that I’ve been using Windows 7 for a couple of weeks, I thought it would be a good time to write up a couple of thoughts that I have.

The thoughts are overwhelming positive so far. In fact, to be honest I don’t have a single bad word to say about Windows 7! (Shock!! Horror!!) Actually there are one or two little things, but aren’t there always! Here are a few bullet points, because I like bullet points:

• The user interface is more refined than XP. Not just in a cosmetic way – lots of thought has gone into the design to make it easier to use. I like the fact that the taskbar doesn’t distinguish between quick launch applications and running applications – they’re all just icons, easily ‘docked’ to the taskbar if you so wish. The only thing wrong with this that I have found is, if you want to start a new instance of (say) Firefox while another instance is already running, Windows just thinks you want to minimise / maximise it. No biggie, just one little niggle.
• I like the way multiple windows of one application are handled – only one icon on the task bar, but little preview windows open up when you hover / click on it.
• My printer was installed and ready to use about ten seconds after plugging it in. As has been the case with every single other USB device I’ve plugged in. (It took a while to get the printer working in Linux because of driver issues.).
• Another thing about the taskbar. I find this incredibly cool: when you’re copying a large file and then minimise the window, the icon background then becomes a progress bar. It’s a little difficult to explain, but it’s a great way of showing you how far along your file copy is without you having to open up the window!
• I don’t know how good it is for compatibility with older apps, but everything I’ve tried so far has worked. Including Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, which is almost ten years old!

All in all, I have been very pleasantly surprised by Windows 7. It does seem to be a real step-up from Windows XP in terms of usability, and the things I’ve highlighted are only a small number which have particularly struck me.

I’m still no fan of Microsoft as such, but Windows 7 has won me over … for now ;)

As per my usual habit of combining two completely unrelated topics in one blog post, I’ve decided to talk about two things today. Firstly, politeness.

I’ve noticed a couple of examples of things recently which seem polite but, on reflection, perhaps are not. The first thing is, holding doors open. The general idea being that someone walking behind you will not have a door slammed in their face! That seems quite polite. But the problem comes with how far someone has to be behind you in order for you to hold the door open: a couple of steps? A few yards? Half a mile?! Personally I don’t like it when someone holds a door open for me and I’m a fair distance away. Being English, I feel compelled to run in order to not keep them waiting. It’s just an embarrasment factor we could all do without.

My new rule is, “hold the door open only if it will slam in someone’s face”. If not, then – well, working doors is not exactly rocket science. If I hadn’t been there to hold it open the other person would have had to open the door anyway. Obviously there are always exceptions (i.e. someone disabled or elderly may have difficulty opening doors) but that’s the general idea.

The second thing is, pouring out hot water from the kettle. At my workplace, we don’t have a massive office but it’s big enough that there are often a few people waiting around for the kettle to boil. Some people will fill up your cup with hot water for you when it has boiled. This is a nice thing to do, obviously… but I don’t generally do it. The problem is, people all like cups filled to different levels, and it seems a bit redundant to ask people how full they want it when they could have filled it to their own preference in practically the same amount of time.

Anyone else have little random things which seem polite but are actually not very?

The other thing is, Top Gear. I didn’t mention this the other day, but I was a bit disappointed by this week’s show. I just found it incredibly formulaic, I could virtually have predicted what was going to happen from the start:

1. Top Gear team go off somewhere to test drive cars (in this case, drive along the best driving road in Europe, or whatever it was)
2. They don’t bother preparing
3. They do stupid things such as buying a Dacia Sandero (can’t be bothered to look up spelling :p) and park it right behind a lorry;
4. Hilarity ensues.

I don’t know whether it was just me but, although the show was entertaining, it didn’t strike me as being as good as previous series. Still, let’s see what next week’s episode has in store!

This weekend was pretty busy, but it felt longer because we had Friday afternoon off. The reason? We were going to see Muse at the O2 :-) We left mid afternoon and got there in good time. We got free entry into the British Music Exhibition with our tickets, so we had a quick look round beforehand. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to go round the whole thing but what we did see was interesting, and we’ll have to go back and check it out more next time! They have a roomful of guitars / drums / pianos you can play around on which was pretty cool.

Anyway. The support act were called The Big Pink, who we’d never heard of before. They were OK – quite dramatic music and I liked the arrangements, but unfortunately it seemed a bit too loud and the tunes weren’t very strong. Still, I did check them out on Spotify afterwards so they must have done something right!

After that, Muse came on. They were amazing. Really, really good live. We were saying afterwards, it’s the knid of music that lends itself very well to being played live: Keane pretty much played their songs as they were on the album, Coldplay were a bit different, but Muse really rocked out. Brilliant stuff. They started out with ‘Uprising’, then ‘Resistance’, and then played a selection of new songs mixed with a few from ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ and their previous albums. I was quite pleased with how many older songs they did play actually, it was so great to hear them live. There were a few surprises in there. I didn’t think they’d play ‘Supermassive Black Hole’, ‘Cave’ (from the first album) or ‘Hysteria’ but all three went down really well.

It was a shame they didn’t play ‘Space Dementia’ or ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ but you can’t have everything! They finished with ‘Knights of Cydonia’ which was amaaaaaazing live and had everyone going. All in all, it was worth every penny and I’d definitely love to see them again.

Anyway, so. That was a good evening :) On Saturday afternoon we headed down to stay with Philippa’s parents overnight. It was a horrible day (the Dartford Bridge was closed, they diverted the traffic through one of the tunnels instead) but we got there safely. Then on Sunday morning we drove down to Reading to see Phil’s sister Roz.

Roz is engaged to be married, and although we had met her fiance (obviously) we hadn’t met the rest of his family. So we went to Roz’s church in the morning, and then afterwards went round to their house for lunch.

It was a really nice lunch and a very enjoyable time. Matt’s family all seem nice, and they seem to get on well with each other which strikes me as being a good sign! So that was a lovely time.

Then we came back home and watched Top Gear and “The Waters of Mars”, the new Doctor Who special. It was indeed a good episode – probably one of the best that Russell T. Davies has written. I like it when they show a slightly darker side to the Doctor, show that he isn’t invulnerable. The ending of the episode was actually quite unsettling. I’m looking forward to the last two episodes of Tennant’s Doctor now, I think it’s going to be interesting what they do with the character! If anything, though, that episode proved (as if you need any more proof) that Doctor Who is not just a kids’ show.

A few weeks ago, Muse released their new album “The Resistance”. I have avoided commenting on it thus far because I wanted to give it a proper listen. I find the problem with albums is that my opinion can change over the course of time, so I want to try and give it as long as possible before commenting!

This is why it’s been a while for me to mention this. But now I’ve given it a proper listen through. This album is GENIUS. It’s the best album Muse have ever put out, a seminal work which one day may be looked on in the same way that Sergeant Pepper is looked at today. Well, perhaps not quite Sergeant Pepper, but – this is good. Very, very good.

What I’m going to do is go through all the tracks and make a few comments about each one.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend started off fairly normally: 21 has started again for the autumn term so we were helping out there on Friday night.

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping – a Waitrose has opened up in Colchester, fairly near us, so we went there for the first time. It was incredibly busy, but looks like it will be a good place to shop. Phil was very excited as she is a big fan of Waitrose, I think we will be back there fairly often!

After lunch we headed down to Wembley Stadium to see Coldplay. They were on at 9PM, but there were a few support acts beforehand. We got there one or two songs into White Lies’ set. They were pretty good, although I didn’t really know much of their music. Ditto for Girls Aloud, and Jay-Z. I must say I’m not really a fan of rap music, but Jay-Z seemed pretty good at what he did and I enjoyed it even if it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.

Coldplay were brilliant. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but they played most of their well-known songs, a few older songs such as The Scientist, and quite a lot of their newer songs (from Viva la Vida and Prospekt’s March). Chris Martin seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time wriggling round on the floor, which was quite amusing although a bit strange! I laughed when he got half way through playing ‘The Hardest Part’ on the piano and then said ‘Oh wait, that’s wrong’ and had to correct himself as well.

My favourite song of the evening – well, couldn’t really say, but ‘Glass of Water’ and ‘Life in Technicolor ii’ were both great to hear live. The latter is probably one of mine and Phil’s favourite newer songs of theirs.

The only downside was that we were quite a long way up – a long way from the band! They did have screens up, but it wasn’t quite the same. When we were at the Keane gig in February we were standing quite close to the stage. Although there are pros and cons to that as well, I think in general you get more atmosphere down there. Still, we got into it and had a good time nonetheless.

The real problems started after the gig. Coldplay finished at 11PM, and our train was at 00:18. It took us about 10 minutes to get out of the stadium, and then about half an hour to get to the tube. At this stage we were a bit worried, but thought we could just about make it. Then the tube train only went two stops (to Baker St) before turning round and going back. So we had to jump on another tube train – but unfortunately the next one only went to Moorgate (i.e. one stop before Liverpool St)! Long story short, we missed the last train back to Colchester.

We basically just spent the night wandering around London, which was quite fun in a surreal kind of way! And then we caught the first train back at about 4:10AM. Unfortunately (again), due to engineering works we couldn’t go directly to Colchester. We had to go to Stansted and then catch the bus. Ah well, chalk it all up to experience! If we go to Wembley again we will know what to expect. We finally got home at about 7AM!

Not surprisingly, we didn’t do much on Sunday! Phil went to church in the morning and I went to Sunday@6, but nothing much to report apart from that.