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“Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played ’til my fingers bled
It was summer of ’69”

So begins the start of “Summer of ’69” by Bryan Adams.

Anyway, the reason I mentioned it is because Phil bought me a six-string for Christmas, which you can see in the image on the left. I’ve been learning it over the past week or two… I didn’t realise that playing guitar was so hard on the fingertips!

The poor fingertips on my left hand are taking a bit of a bashing. They’re beginning to harden up a bit now, which is good, and I’m beginning to (slowly) learn a few chords: I can now play C, A, G, E and D. Hopefully within a few months I’ll be good enough to strum along to a few tunes at church from time to time, but we’ll have to see.

By the way, if anyone reading this wants to learn guitar, these lessons are free and seem to be pretty good!

This weekend has been a fairly quiet one again, but there are a few things worth mentioning: On Saturday afternoon, we went to Orchard Baptist Church to record the very first Focus on Faith podcast! We had a good discussion about the Beatitudes, and I hope and pray that it will be useful for people as they listen.

In the evening, Matthew and I went to St. Botolph’s for a concert by Colchester Symphony Orchestra with works from American composers. The main event for me was them playing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, but they also played Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”, one movement from Barber’s first Piano Concerto, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and concluding with “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” by Leanord Bernstein (there was one other piece by Bernstein but I can’t remember what it was called!). All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening – the pieces were fantastic, and the orchestra (which, to my surprise, included two of my work colleagues!) played very well.

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and then in the afternoon we had Luci and Chris round for tea and cake (how civilised!). Afterwards we had dinner and watched “Mr Bean’s Holiday”… I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this (i.e., whether it had ‘jumped the shark‘), but it was very funny and a pleasant evening’s entertainment.

As some of you may know, I have a little bit of a history with Torchwood… suffice it to say, I thought the last series was a bit rubbish. If I was grading it as a school piece, I would probably put: “Could try harder” (Of course, that’s not really a grade, but still…) — it showed promise, but never realised its potential.

Yesterday’s episode, I think, showed a little more of that potential. The main thing that I had a problem with last year was the series took itself way too seriously. I can forgive a lot of things if it’s done slightly tongue-in-cheek, i.e. “we know there are plotholes and inconsistencies – but it’s just a bit of a laugh, isn’t it?” Torchwood last year was just depressing. Yesterday’s episode showed a good deal more of a sense of humour, and I actually felt like I cared about the characters (but just a bit).

OK, there were a few plotholes, and not everything made sense (it was a Chris Chibnall episode, after all). And yes, some of the dialogue was a little wooden and contrived (it was a Chris Chibnall episode, after all). And the whole gay theme just seems to me like they’re actually trying to be an ‘adult’ show by shoe-horning in a few ‘adult’ themes rather than because there’s a particular point to make there, or what have you (it was a Chris Chibn… actually, to be honest I can’t really blame that one on him).

But I could forgive all that because, for those 50 minutes, I did actually quite enjoy it. But ssssh — don’t tell anybody!

This weekend was pretty quiet. Phil wasn’t feeling well last week, and she still wasn’t 100%, so she didn’t feel like doing too much. She is feeling much better now though, so I guess taking it easy must have had a positive effect!

(On a slightly related note, one other bit of good news is that the car is fine – it was just damp! Because I haven’t been using it too much, it got damp, meaning that it was over-fueling when I tried to start it. I didn’t figure all this out by myself!)

On Saturday we went into town and did a bit of shopping for random bits and pieces. I think I mentioned before that Phil bought me a guitar for Christmas… unfortunately it was only a nylon stringed one, and I wanted to have a steel stringed one. So I went back to the shop and exchanged it for another guitar, which I spent a while trying to play afterwards… at the moment, my level of expertise with the instrument could be called: “I don’t know how on earth anyone manages to play this without using a thimble!” The fingertips on my left hand are red, I didn’t realise just how much pressure you have to apply to the strings in order to push them down. Hopefully I’ll get some tougher skin on my fingertips soon…

On Saturday evening we watched Shrek 3, which was a good film although I agree with a few of my friends – it was lacking something which Shrek and Shrek 2 had. It was also quite short – only about 1h20, although I can’t remember how long the previous films were so maybe it’s similar.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then didn’t do much for the rest of the day! So that was our weekend 🙂

I’ve been having a few car problems recently: In early December last year, one of the fuel injectors went. This wasn’t a hugely expensive operation to fix, but it still cost money which could have been used elsewhere! Yesterday, I got into the car and tried to start it. It stalled straight away, so I tried again – and nothing happened. The car turns over, but it’s making a strange sound. I don’t know whether it’s the starter motor or something like that, but either way I’m wondering whether it’s worth hanging onto the car much longer.

The problem is, it’s eight years old now. It’s been quite reliable up until this point, but it’s at the age now where things start going wrong and I don’t know whether it’s worth keeping around given that we only drive the car two or three times a week.

So anyway, I’ve been thinking about getting a new car. My selection criteria would be:

• Reliable, i.e. doesn’t keep going wrong
• Midrange size (my current car – a Hyundai Lantra 1.6 GSI – is a little big)…
• … but still safe enough on motorways (i.e., not a Metro!)
• Practical
• … but still a bit fun to drive!
• Finally, and probably most importantly, it can’t be too expensive (we’re talking second-hand here)!

On the basis of that, my initial thoughts were along the lines of:

• VW Golf
• Ford Focus
• Honda Civic

Interestingly, one of the houses I walk past on the way to work has a Honda Civic Type R for sale, I’ve just noticed it the past week or two.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions or comments then please leave a comment below or drop me a line!

For Christmas I bought Phil a Logitech Harmony 525 Universal Remote Control (now there’s a mouthful!).

I first used it last Tuesday, but it’s taken me until today to actually get it to work, via various support calls and so on! I don’t really want to bore you with the details, but just get to the meat of what the problem was — I couldn’t find any information on the problem I was having at all, so hopefully this will help someone else who’s having a similar issue.

I had two problems, the first one is more major than the second one. The first problem was that I couldn’t initialise the remote control. Each time I tried, this happend:

Initializing services
Getting remote control information
Logitech Harmony Remote Software version: 7.3.2
Hardware version: Board 2.5.0 (0xFF:0x12)
Firmware version: 2.0
Getting remote control information - Successful
Checking version information
Checking version information - Successful
Waking the remote control
Waking the remote control - Successful
Getting remote control states
Getting remote control states - Successful
Uploading remote control information to web
Initializing the remote control. Please wait...
Uploading remote control information to web : ServiceExceptionServiceFailed - The information was not sent. Check your USB cable and try again. If the problem persists, contact customer service.

Now, I’m not 100% sure what the problem was, but after contacting customer support I was (eventually) told to check none of the buttons were pressed down on the remote. Apparently, buttons being pressed down on the remote can cause the remote to stop responding, so you need to make sure that they are all up and not jammed down.

The reason I’m not 100% sure that this worked is because I also tried using the web-based software at myremotesetup.com (not members.harmonyremote.com). I also set up an HTTP Debug Proxy to check exactly what was being sent to and from the server and if anything was going wrong there.

Anyway, something of the above — and I admit it was probably unjamming the buttons — stopped the problem from happening, and I was able to initialise the remote.

The other problem I was having was not being able to login to the software. I could create an account without any problems, but I couldn’t actually login using the account I created! I just entered my username and password and the software would just hang, until I got a message saying that the connection had been reset (in a message format which looked rather like Firefox – the software you get on the CD basically connects to the website).

By using Fiddler2 (the HTTP Debug Proxy mentioned above) I was able to ascertain that there’s a page on the members.harmonyremote.com website which doesn’t seem to be working properly, however I’m not sure exactly why. It doesn’t really matter as I can use the web-based version of the software without problems.

Anyway, I hope that all this helps someone else!

Just a quick update on what’s been happening over the past few days. On Saturday we did some decorating, which was fun! We’d already taken down the wallpaper last Thursday evening, so on Saturday I spent most of the day painting. The little room now looks much better! – the wallpaper previously, although it only covered one wall, made you feel dizzy if you looked at it! Having no wallpaper is a big improvement.

On Saturday evening we stayed in and watched ‘Bullitt’ with Steve McQueen. It’s a classic film, famous for its car chase. If you haven’t seen it and like car chases in particular or cop films in general, this is well worth picking up!

On Sunday morning we went to church, and in the afternoon we had a few people round to watch series one of ‘Spaced’. It was a very enjoyable afternoon / evening! Afterwards, Dan and Alison stayed around and we watched ‘Spinal Tap’, which is another brilliant film… you forget just how good it is! Absolute classic.

Well, that was our weekend… all for now!

… I know I shouldn’t, but I found this absolutely hilarious!

Jeremy Clarkson has written an article entitled “Unhand my patio heater, archbishop”, in which he responds to a sermon by Archbishop Rowan Williams talking about global warming. The gist of his argument is basically that religion has killed far many more people than global warming ever has, and so we should give up religion rather than our patio heaters (etc).

I know that Jeremy Clarkson is… well, let’s just say I don’t think he’s beyond saying something controversial just to get people going. In fact, I think it wouldn’t be going too far to say that he actively courts controversy, just because it’s amusing. Given that, it’s probably not wise to dignify one of his articles with a response because it was written just to get people going. Having said that, I’m going to do a sort of response anyway because it ties in with something else I’ve been thinking about recently — whether religion is the cause of wars or violence. There are a few other points he makes though, which I also want to mention.

Firstly, Clarkson says “Many, many more people have died in the name of God than were killed in the name of Hitler.” Were they really? Could not there have been some other factors – politics, for example? I’ve found an interesting article entitled “Does Religion Cause Violence” (PDF), which has some interesting thoughts:

In the course of a detailed historical study of the concept “religion” Smith was compelled to conclude that in premodern Europe there was no significant concept equivalent to what we think of as “religion,” and furthermore there is no “closely equivalent concept in any culture that has not been influenced by the modern West.”

And then goes on subsequently to talk about the issue of religion and violence, which is worth reading and I won’t bother repeating the points made in the article here!

The other thing I should mention here is that you shouldn’t judge a religion by what its adherents do, you should judge it by what it tells them to do. Is Christianity a violent religion? I don’t believe it is. Anyone who has perpetrated violence in the name of Christianity surely has had another agenda.

Back to Clarkson: “I genuinely believe we are born with a moral compass and we don’t need it reset every Sunday morning by some weird-beard communist in a dress”. The whole point of Christianity is not that we don’t have a ‘moral compass’ – but that we often choose to ignore the ‘moral compass’. The problem isn’t that we don’t know what’s right and wrong, the problem is that we do what’s wrong rather than what’s right – knowingly. This goes right back to the garden of Eden – I’m rather disappointed in Jeremy here 😉

Well, I think I’ve rambled on for long enough now, so I’ll leave it there!

Zeth has blogged his predictions for 2008. I thought that I would post up a reply here, rather than leaving a comment!

There are a few of his predictions I wanted to challenge (so, when January 2009 comes round, I can either have egg on my face or, preferably, point and say “I told you so”!)

A single Linux distro, probably Ubuntu, will have more users than Apple OS X.

I doubt this will happen. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any statistics, but I believe the Mac market share is ~5%, and the Linux market share is <0.5%. For Linux — and not just Linux, one distribution — to climb up the rankings that much would require a seismic shift in the market (Ok, I probably shouldn’t use the word ‘market’, but I just did, so there :p) — the likes of which have never been seen before in the Linux world.

I don’t think this will be the year of Linux just yet, and although I think Desktop Linux will catch on – gradually – I don’t think we’re ready just yet to overtake OS X.

By the end of the year, more pre-installed Linux desktops will be sold than Macs.

See what I said regarding the last prediction. I don’t think Linux is going to grow that fast, particularly as there isn’t really a market for pre-installed Linux desktops at the moment. How many Linux desktops have Dell sold so far? Around 40,000. How many Macs do Apple sell? This page would seem to indicate it’s around 2,000,000 per quarter. So we’ve got a fair way to go.

Social networking will become a protocol.

I’m not sure whether Zeth here is a little confused as to what the meaning of ‘protocol’ is, or perhaps I’ve just missed something important about Web 2.0. But in my understanding, TCP is a protocol (cunningly demonstrated by the use of the word ‘Protocol’ in ‘Transport Connection Protocol’). IP is a protocol, HTTP is a protocol. But social networking? Not a protocol on a level I’m used to dealing with.

The dictionary defines protocol as ‘a set of rules governing the format of messages that are exchanged between computers’ — not as ‘a set of rules governing the format of messages that are exchanged between people’.

Now, I can see some elements of social networking websites becoming (for want of a better word) “protocolised”, but I think to say that ‘social networking will become a protocol’ is meaningless. Having said that, maybe I should have waited for Zeth to come up with his more detailed post on that one before making a judgement 😉

Well, that just about wraps up this critique of Zeth’s predictions for 2008. And if you’re reading this after 2008 – I told you so. I hope.