For those of you not in the know (which included me up until a couple of days ago), a ‘Macro’ is apparently a new word for images which have got text superimposed on them – usually for humurous effect. So, basically captions, except written on the image.
Apparently there are a lot of these with Doctor Who – see Anne-Marie’s post here for a few good ones.
I decided to have a go, because… well, I just can’t resist a bandwagon.
Can’t wait for the next episode 🙂
Last night we had a few people round to watch “The Beast with a Billion Backs”, the new Futurama film (it’s only just been released on DVD in the UK).
It was brilliant! Incredibly random, more so than “Bender’s Big Score”, but very funny in places. Some lines were absolutely hilarious. I don’t want to go into too much detail in case I spoil it for anyone who’s not seen it yet; however – it’s definitely worth watching. I will be watching it again soon, methinks!
The title says it all really! On Friday evening went to help out with ’21’, the Fordham youth group, which was good fun. On Saturday morning, we went to Colchester Food & Drink festival in Castle Park. It was packed with stalls selling lots of lovely things – we managed to spend quite a bit of money almost by accident! We bought some lovely cheeses, including one which was tomato and basil flavour, also root ginger! So we’re looking forward to having those. We also bought some chocolate, an organic veg box which is going to be delivered on Wednesday, a couple of loafs of unusual bread, and a few other bits and pieces. All in all it was a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning!
On Saturday afternoon we went to Anne-Marie’s to watch this week’s Doctor Who, ‘The Stolen Earth’. Wow, what an episode that was! I know the guys at Behind the Sofa have highlighted a few flaws in the episode… still, wow. I can’t wait for the conclusion, I really don’t know how they’re going to get the Doctor out of the predicament he’s in! All I can say is: “I’m Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister”… “YES, WE KNOW!!!” And, of course: “TO. BE. CONTNUED”…. sweeeet.
Aaaanyway. On Sunday morning we went to Fordham, and we heard Mike speaking about Proverbs 31 (the passage beginning “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.”) I thought Mike’s talk was excellent, and conveniently enough it’s now located on the Fordham Website so if you’re into that kind of thing it would be worth a listen.
In the evening we went round to see Matthew and watch Top Gear. Top Gear was very funny, as usual! And then we spent a bit of time discussing a new website which Matthew and I have planned. Nothing solid on it as yet, but watch this space!
Right, that’s enough for the time being. I’m off to se what people think is going to happen to Doctor Who…
We watched the film “Blood Diamond” the other night. It was really good! – probably not the kind of film you want to watch a lot though, because it was quite harrowing in places. The film focusses on Solomon Vandy, a man who gets caught up in the civil war in Sierra Leone in 1999. His family are taken away from him by the rebel forces, and his son is made to become a child soldier. In fact, some of the most brutal moments of the film are seeing the young boys being turned from normal children into killers – it’s particularly tough because that kind of thing really goes on.
All in all I think it’s a very worthwhile watch, certainly quite eye-opening in places!
Anyway. The other thing I wanted to mention was, I was watching tennis yesterday – specifically the match between Chris Eaton and Dmitry Tursunov. I found the “Henmania” surrounding Chris Eaton quite hard going this time… I don’t mind that level of cheering when the match gets interesting, but some people just seemed to cheer about anything. Even Tursonov getting a double-fault (not very sporting to cheer then, surely?)
I blame this all on Tim Henman. If he hadn’t had such “rollercoaster” tennis matches (up and down, up and down, up and friggin down again) people wouldn’t be so accustomed to screaming every time “our man” gets a point.
I know, I know, I’m moaning again… it just annoyed me. That is all (for now!)
Ok, that title made no sense, other than the fact that I want to mention sox: (if you don’t know what sox is, you can probably skip this post).
I use it in a script to upload CDs to Fordham. However, when I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.02, it seemed to stop working – it kept coming up with the error message “unknown file type ‘auto’”.
Anyway, it seems that you need to install additional packages as of Ubuntu 8.02 – namely, libsox-fmt-all. Install that package, and everything will magically start working again! (Well, it did for me, anyway…)
I mentioned in a previous post the debate held between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath. To be completely honest, I think Christopher Hitchens presented the more persuasive arguments – I think McGrath is more of a preacher and a writer than a debater! I just came across a series of letters (well, emails) between Christopher Hitchens and a theologian called Douglas Wilson.
In my opinion Douglas Wilson does a much better job of defending Christianity against Christopher Hitchen’s accusations!
I have yet to actually write a response to any of the atheist debates / articles I’ve read – mainly because there are so many already written! I might still get around to it someday, though…
I got a statement through from the Student Loans Company the other day. Apparently, during the period between April 2007-March 2008, I’d paid off £32. I’d also accrued £190 worth of interest! What the heck?!!! I know I’ve been paying my student loan off every month, much to my chagrin – seeing over £100 of salary disappearing every month isn’t exactly a wonderful experience.
I think the problem is the Student Loans Company act on data they receive from the inland revenue, and if you’ve changed jobs during the time then HMRC might receive the info from the companies at different times etc… in other words, it’s a right royal mess and is a totally cack-handed way of handling student loans. There’s no way I can ever get a current statement, because it’s all bound up with the data that HMRC get, and that’s never going to be more current than the end of the last tax year.
*sigh*… I did contemplate paying off my student loan with some savings that we’ve built up, however I’ve decided against that course of action after reading this very helpful article.
By my calculations I should finish paying off my student loan in about three years. Only another 36 months to go… *sighs again*
I would continue ranting about money and how everything’s so expensive these days (I nearly had to take out a second mortgage to fill the car up with petrol yesterday), but I won’t… it’s being so cheerful that keeps you going! 😉
This weekend was fairly pleasant! We helped out at ’21’ on Friday evening, which went well. On Saturday morning I popped into town to get a few bits and pieces, and then in the afternoon we went round to Anne-Marie’s to watch Doctor Who.
I thought this week’s episode was really good (again!) – Russell T. Davies’ scripts have been a bit hit-and-miss sometimes, but it looks like he’s really found his feet with the scripts for the past couple of weeks.
On Sunday morning we went to church, and then came back home for lunch before going into Wivenhoe in the afternoon: it was “Wivenhoe Open Gardens” weekend, so we had a look round about ten different gardens (there were around 34 gardens open to the public). It gave us a few ideas about what we could do with our own garden, as well as being a very relaxing afternoon!
So, I think that’s pretty much everything for now anyway…
I’ve finally got around to finishing my article on the third commandment! It’s up on FocusOnFaith – you can read it here.
We had quite a nice weekend this week! On Friday evening we went to see “Moths Ate my Doctor Who Scarf” in Chelmsford. It was really good, Tony Hadoke was very funny and did a great job at not isolating anyone who hadn’t watched every episode of Doctor Who about 80 times (not even A-M has seen every Doctor Who episode that many times…) All in all, if you get the chance to go and see it – go!
On Saturday we had my parents round for dinner in the evening to celebrate my Dad’s birthday. That was a rather nice evening as well – we made a three-course dinner which seemed to go down very well. Although I’m very glad we don’t make a three-course dinner very often – it’s actually quite difficult to manage the timing and everything!
On Sunday we went to Fordham in the morning, and then spent most of the afternoon preparing for Phil’s parents coming to visit for the week. They arrived at around 5:00, and we went to the Yew Tree in Great Horkesley for dinner. That was the second time we’ve been there, and it was very enjoyable again!
Oh, I almost forgot — we watched this week’s Doctor Who, “Midnight”, on Sunday. We thought it was a really good one – probably one of RTD’s best. I always like the Doctor Who’s* that focus on character more than simply spills and thrills.
So, that was pretty much what happened at the weekend. Not very exciting, I’m afraid, but there you go…
* I sometimes like to throw in an extra apostrophe to annoy grammar nazis.