Category: Uncategorized

I happened to be searching Google Maps for churches near Colchester today (I’m not looking for a new church, just wanted to check how the Fordham site was doing 🙂 and came across something rather bizarre.

As you can see, Google seems to think “Places of Worship” fall under the same category as… “Bus Station”. So, next time you’re at a Bus Station, just remember that you should be reverent, for you are walking on holy ground. Or something.

The other thing I should mention is Simon’s blog feed. Now, for a long time now Simon has had his blog behind a password protected area – including the RSS feed. Unfortunately, Google Reader does not like feeds which use authentication, so it just bails. I got around this by setting up a little PHP script which did the work for me. Unfortunately this means I have to host the PHP file on this server, not a massiv problem but I’d rather not have to do it.

Anyway, I’ve found a way you can subscribe to authenticated feeds in Google Reader without creating any scripts to do it for you: simply use FreeMyFeed. It very cunningly stores the username and password (encrypted) in the feed URL so that no authentication data is actually stored on FreeMyFeed.com. Pretty clever, huh?

The upshot of this is that I will be removing Simon’s blog feed from this site. From now on, please use FreeMyFeed.

When I got back home this evening, I found a couple of pieces of junk mail on the mat.

One was from Virgin Media, sending through their usual two-weekly advert for broadband. Seriously, does anyone know how one can get removed from their spammy junk mail? Virgin Media, if you’re reading: IF I DIDN’T WANT YOUR FRIGGIN’ BROADBAND THE FIRST TIME I GOT YOUR JUNK MAIL, I CERTAINLY DON’T WANT IT THE HUNDREDTH. It’s just a waste of paper – all that happens is it goes straight into the recycling. I don’t mind one bit of advertising occasionally – it might be useful. But to get a letter every couple of weeks advertising the same product is just bizarre and unnecessary.

I’ll try and contact them about it, although chances are it will just get lost somewhere in the corporation.

The second piece of junk mail we received was one we’ve received a couple of times before: “This number has drawn one of the gifts donated by local business”. There’s a reference number on there, a telephone number (01242 695001) and a “With Compliments” slip from a company apparently called “Survey UK” (address: Matters Consulting Ltd t/a Survey UK, Victoria House, 1 Gloucester Road, Cheltenham, GL51 8LN). I include this information so that people who are Googling for the information can find it 🙂

Anyway. My scam detector went to about 95% when I read it, but after Googling I’ve found some confirmation. Just check this forum post for more info.

So, just to make that absolutely clear: Survey UK (and ‘Matters Consulting Ltd’) are basically scammers and should be avoided!

There was one thing I found amusing though. The company name – “Survey UK” is plastered in big letters across one slip of paper. However, on the other slip, it says “You will not be asked to do any surveys.” Hmmmmmm.

… that’s actually a line from “Spaceballs” (The Movie), I thought I should probably point that out just in case you missed it. (It is a rather short quote, after all).

This weekend has been mainly very hot. So hot in fact, that we didn’t really do much over the weekend! on Friday evening we went round to my parents’ for a BBQ, which was lovely.

Then on Saturday we did a bit of shopping in the morning and then not much for the rest of the day. On Sunday we went to church in the morning (nice and cool inside the church), and then came back home and crashed out for pretty much the rest of the day! It was far too hot to do anything. I did spend a fair bit of time playing the guitar (not much energy needed – not the way I play it anyway!).

I feel like I’m gradually getting there with the guitar… bar chords still a bit iffy but I’ve been focussing more on fingerpicking the past few days.

We also watched “Black Gold”, which is a documentary style film about the coffee trade, from an Ethiopian point of view. Ethiopia are one of the world’s biggest producers of coffee beans, but their farmers are paid a pittance. Apparently the coffee roasters will buy a kilo of coffee for around $0.30. One kilo of coffee beans will make about 80 cups of coffee – each cup retailing for about $2.00 or so. You do the math.

I still can’t believe in this day and age farmers are still being treated so unethically – we’ve been buying fair trade tea and coffee (as well as other things) for a few years now, I would highly recommend others to do the same, if you don’t already 🙂

I bought “Soundsystem 01” by Hybrid last week. It’s not an artist album, it’s more of a mix album. There are two CDs: the first is an ambient, film-soundtrack kind of CD. The second one is more of a DJ set, reflecting the kind of tunes which are in their record box at the moment when they do sets.

As usual for Hybrid, it didn’t grab me all that much on my first listen – but it’s grown on me on subsequent listenings! The first CD is just the kind of thing you need if you’re trying to chill out. We put it on last Sunday afternoon, and it was just the ticket! Really mellow but plenty in there to actually keep you interested. (Hybrid actually did the percussion programming for the Prince Caspian music, I think there’s one track on there from Prince Caspian, and they have also done a fair bit of other soundtrack work so they’re quite experienced with it – and it shows).

The second CD is very tech-housey, apparently because of the lack of decent breaks around at the moment. Anyway, I’ve got into the CD more over repeat listenings, but I still don’t think it’s quite as good as some of their lives mixes that I’ve heard.

All in all, it’s a pretty solid CD which I can recommend 🙂

Well, when I say “my” PC, I mean, your PC. That’s right – you in the blue shirt. Quick! Everybody! Over to that guy’s PC!!! NOW!!! … *ahem* um, sorry, got a bit carried away there.

One of the mildly annoying things about Virgin Radio is the adverts they run. They’ve been repeating one a lot recently for a website – GoToMyPC. Basically, the idea is that you can access your PC (work or home) from anywhere with an internet connection and a web browser. On the advert, they have Peter Jones (of Dragon’s Den fame) talking about how it makes life easier if you’re on the move – you don’t have to worry about carrying around USB keys with loads of stuff on etc.

There are two things that annoy me about this advert.

The first thing is, remote access software is hardly a new idea! They present it (on the advert at least) as if it’s an amazing new thing. Well, Remote Desktop has been built into Windows now since Windows XP, Terminal Services before – in other words, quite a long time. VNC has been around for… oh, years and years.

Ok, so someone has made a website to hook up Citrix remote access so you don’t have to worry about NAT and such like. Fantastic. Except that you have to pay for it, and the same technology is readily available – for free – if you’d just spend ten minutes getting it set up. I remember using an in-web-browser version of Windows Remote Desktop a few years ago – the technology is there!

In the advert, they also don’t mention a few of the other caveats of the system:

1. The computer you want to access must be switched on and connected to the internet while you’re away;
2. You need to be on a pretty decent connection to get it working well. I’ve used a variety of remote access systems (PCAnywhere, Citrix, RDP, VNC) and all of them sucked on slow connections. I know these are days of ubiquitious broadband, but I think the advert leads people to believe that they can use their home PCs as well as if they were sitting at it. Not always the case, even these days.

This brings me to my second point: they’re taking advantage of people’s technophobia. I admit that it’s quite a good idea in the sense of getting rid of hassle, but by the time you’ve downloaded the software and installed it (and paid around £12 per month for the privilege), is it really much quicker than setting up Remote Desktop access? Or asking someone more knowledgeable to set it up? People just aren’t aware that there IS another way, which is kind of the problem.

One of the biggest issues in IT today is lack of education: people need to know about viruses, malware, scamming, firewalls – all of stuff, if they are to be safe on the internet. It seems to me that setting up remote desktop would be an ideal way to learn about some of it.

Setting up a website where you can just download some software and it “just works” seems to me to be exacerbating the problem. Why bother learning when you can just pay for someone else to do it for you?

Hmmm, well, I guess that’s the way capitalism works. Still… if anyone wants a hand getting remote desktop set up (if you’re using Windows), or getting VNC set up (if you’re using Linux), give me a shout, it will save you some money 😉

Not much to say this weekend. It was fairly quiet for once!

On Saturday afternoon we went round to Anne-Marie’s to help out with some gardening. I have to say, I think it went quite well. The garden now looks much more like a garden again (as opposed to a jungle), and although we couldn’t get rid of the brambles this time they do at least look like they’re more under control. All in all, we managed to get quite a bit of work done – six people over the course of an afternoon (not including a couple of people who helped out towards the end) knuckling down meant it all took shape pretty quickly.

Afterwards we ordered pizza and watched “The Shawshank Redemption”, which I hadn’t seen before. Really good film – I’d heard that the film was a bit bleak, but that isn’t the case at all. It’s actually quite positive towards the end … definitely worthy of being called one of the best films of the 90s 🙂

Oh, and I should also mention A-M’s backing – she baked us a banoffee pie for dessert, plus a lemon cake which we had during the afternoon. Delicious, particularly the pie.

On Sunday morning we went to church in the morning, and then in the evening we went out to church again for a Bach Cantata. It was Bach’s Cantata for the ninth Sunday after Trinity, performed by the Curlew Ensemble (well, I thought it was the Curlew Ensemble – it was the same people as last time but they seemed to have a different name which I can’t remember. Doh). Anyway, itw as absolutely beautiful, particularly the soprano’s aria.

Afterwards we came back home, had tea, and watched a couple of episodes of “Fawlty Towers” (because Rich is staying with us this week, while he’s doing a teaching job at the university). Anyway, it made me realise (again) just how brilliant Fawlty Towers is – it’s probably the only sitcom ever produced which has made me nearly cry with laughter. Particularly after having seen the episodes several times before! They don’t make ’em like they used to 😉

Right, that’s enough rambling for now.

You get some really bizarre things in the news. Such as this, for example. Apparently people have been using the internet to hire contract killers… one woman even put up an ad on Craigslist. How stupid can they be?

Anyway, if you fancy earning a bit of cash on the side at weekends, why not try being a hitman (or hitwoman, if you’re going to be like that)?

By the way, there’s something else I wanted to mention – Flight of the Conchords. If you haven’t seen any of their stuff, you really must. They are a a folk comedy duo from New Zealand, and are absolutely hilarious. We were introduced to them by Alex with the song The Humans are Dead. It’s utterly briilliant. However, you may also want to have a listen to “Jenny”, “Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros”, “Issues”, and various others you might find on Youtube.

This weekend was mainly spent travelling to and from Manchester! On Friday night we did ’21’ at Fordham. As the youth leader was away we had to prepare and lead the study ourselves. It seemed to go pretty well anyway, I think most of the kids enjoyed it.

On Saturday morning we drove round to pick up Phil and Jenny before heading off to Manchester for Joe and Gail’s wedding. Despite the best efforts of traffic, roadworks, and red lights we managed to get there in time for the service (although, this was mainly because they were a bit late in starting). The service itself was really good, as was the reception afterwards. Quite a lot of Essex Uni folk had made it up to the wedding, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a long time, so we managed to have a good catch-up.

Anyway, we stayed over at a Travelodge on Saturday night which didn’t go brilliantly due to some rather noisy people banging around and shouting in the small hours. Still. The journey back to Colchester was fairly uneventful, and we all managed to get back safely.

I think that’s just about it really for this weekend, other than to say: congrats to Joe and Gail on getting married, thanks for a very enjoyable wedding, and God bless for the future 🙂

I watched “Lab Rats” last night. It’s a new comedy show on the BBC, set in a research lab in a university. I thought it was quite a good idea for a comedy show, I don’t think the lab has been done before in a sitcom (well, I can’t think of anything other than the Fast Show), so the concept is quite original.

The show was written by Chris Addison and Carl Cooper, if you have good memories you will recall that they also wrote “The Ape That Got Lucky” which I was raving about a while ago. It also stars pretty much everyone who was in “The Ape That Got Lucky” – as well as Chris Addison, you also have Jo Enright, Dan Tetsell, and Geoffrey McGivern.

Anyway, as for the actual episode – I thought it was pretty good. It wasn’t the best comedy which I have ever seen, it was very silly, but it had plenty of laughs. I think this episode was a bit “first episode” ish, i.e. it will get better once they settle down.

Oh, and before I finish this, I need to link to Chris Addison’s biography on his website. Some bits are just… well, bizarre. But funny. I’ll use probably my favourite one as an example:

Once back in England, Addison became the victim of a booking mix-up (the third since his four nights at the Moulin Rouge in 1997) when he was awarded the tender for the restoration of the west front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was relieved of the project after coming to blows with two of the residentiary canons over plans for the installation of a waterslide and a wave machine.

It’s been a fairly busy week! I’ll try and remember what we’ve been up to… on Friday night we helped out at ’21’. That was the penultimate study for this term – the last one will be on Friday, which we are leading (scary!).

On Saturday evening we went round to Anne-Marie’s to watch the final part of this year’s Doctor Who – “Journey’s End”. I really enjoyed it – they haven’t been particularly kind on the Behind the Sofa blog, but I really enjoyed watching. (Note: if you haven’t seen it, this may contain a few spoilers…) Donna has definitely been my favourite of the new companions, and her story at the end was just heartbreaking. Catherine Tate really silenced all her critics, she was absolutely “fantastic”! Bernard Cribbins has been a real asset throughout the series as well – I never realised before how good an actor he was! He really nailed the scenes, particularly memorable to me are in the first episode, the scene with him and Donna; in ‘Turn Left’ with “That’s what they called them before”; and in the final episode on the doorstep. Oh, and Julian Bleach was fantastic as Davros.

Right, that’s enough Doctor Who for now, roll on the Christmas Special!

Aaaaanyway. After Doctor Who we went to Zizzi’s in town for a meal with Alex, Elisa, Dan, Alison and Tom. It was sort of a celebratory meal because Alex has got a promotion at work (well done, Alex!), and sort of a “catch up as we haven’t seen each other in ages” kind of meal. It was a good time anyway, and the food was delicious!

On Sunday we went to Fordham in the morning, and came back home to watch the Wimbledon men’s tennis final in the afternoon. Unfortunately we missed the third and fourth sets because we were out at a youth service (again at Fordham), but — what a match! I’m so glad that Nadal won, he had worked so hard and really deserved it. Federer, too, played an excellent match – I hope we see more of them both in the future!