Category: Uncategorized

This week, I have been mostly doing… not very much! On Tuesday evening we went round to Alex’s for dinner, who made us a Lasagne (thanks Alex – it was very nice!). Yesterday, we went over to Wivenhoe to have a drink with Alex and Phil P. It was good to see Phil as we haven’t seen him since the wedding! Doesn’t seem like it was almost three months ago…

Tonight, we’re heading down to Kent to stay with Philippa’s parents for the weekend. She is going to a dress fitting tomorrow (as she is being a bridesmaid for one of her friends from home), so we thought we’d make a weekend of it. Tomorrow I’m probably going to Foz’s house warming party, so … um … yes.

Those are my plans, check back next week to see how it all turned out!

So… what did we get up to this weekend?

Well, I’ll tell you. On Friday night, we didn’t do very much. On Saturday we did some shopping in town, we bought a new CD Rack from Argos (which is OK, but I wasn’t very impressed with the construction of it!). In the evening, we went to The Anchor in Nayland to meet up with my parents for a birthday / anniversary meal (it was my Mum’s birthday, and their 24th wedding anniversary). The food was lovely, and the portions were huge! I think all our dinners could have just about fed two people. The service was also good! In general, I’d recommend it to anyone – it was our second time there (for me and Phil, my parents hadn’t been before) and we’ll definitely go there again.

Yesterday, we went to Fordham in the morning, and in the afternoon went out for a walk around Highwoods Country Park. It was a really nice day for it, given that the middle of September is fast approaching!

In the evening, we went to Steve & Karen’s to watch a film called “Mirrormask“. One of the user comments on the IMDB described it as “A Labrynth for the 21st century”. I saw Labrynth a while back, and I thought this was better… although the whole fantasy genre isn’t really my cup of tea, some of the visuals were stunning and there were quite a few funny moments!

Anyway, I think that’s all for the time being…

I’ve uploaded our holiday photos! They’re now in a Yahoo! Photos album. I think there are a few duplicates on there, but not many!

Changing the subject complete, on a geeky note — I found this the other day which I think is a brilliant idea if you find out anyone is using your wireless connection without your permission (and you have the resources to do it!)

The time has come to write about what we got up to on holiday. The slight problem with that is, (1) I can’t actually remember everything; (2) we went on a lot of walks which – while they were nice – aren’t necessarily good to write about.

So, um, here we go. We set off on Friday, 18th August, and stayed overnight at the Kettering Travelodge… the next morning we travelled the rest of the way to where we were staying, near Ambleside. The place itself was lovely – it was situated in a little “holiday village” with chalets set on a hillside amongst trees. We were surprised with how busy Ambleside was – it always seemed to be full of people! I think when we next go on holiday in the Lake District, it would be good to stay in a place which is a bit more out of the way. On the first Sunday we went to the parish church in Ambleside, the name of which temporarily escapes me…

And, um, that will set the tone for the rest of this blog entry! We went on quite a few walks, and saw some very beautiful views. I’ve still got to upload the photos but I will post here when I do. The walks included Windermere (Bowness actually), Hawkshead, Coniston, Troutbeck, Tarn Hows, Elterwater… and some other places which I can’t remember.

We also dined in a few good places; if you’re up in the Lakes and want somewhere to eat, we can recommend the Skelwith Bridge Hotel (also known as “The Talbot”) at Skelwith Bridge (this was our local pub); the Tagore Indian restuarant in Ambleside (we had a very good curry there); the Black Bull at Coniston; the Wainwright Inn at Chapel Stile… aaaaaand, a few other places 🙂

We went to Sizergh castle with Phil’s parents, as they were staying not too far away from us. It was very interesting to look around. It’s a National Trust property, but it’s actually inhabited some of the time (when the visitors aren’t around!). If you’re interested in looking around some older stately homes / castles, then I’m sure you’d enjoy looking around Sizergh Castle!

Right, I think that’s just about everything. As for the weekend… I went round to Alex’s on Saturday night and we went to the chippie & pub, then watched most of “The IT Crowd”, which was very funny. Alex came round last night, and we rented a DVD (“A Cock and Bull Story” with Steve Coogan)… it was a very interesting film, quite off-beat and very original! It’s not laugh-out-loud funny but it was very amusing in places.

Right, I think that’s all from me for the being. Over and out!

I’m back from holiday! I would say, “We’re back” but Phil has a hen night to attend in London tonight, so unfortunately she can’t return until tomorrow.

The holiday was great – very relaxing! I won’t go into details here, but I shall post a full report with reviews and photos at a later date 🙂

All for now.

Last night, Philippa and I went to La Tasca on North Hill to celebrate my birthday 🙂 La Tasca is a Spanish Tapas bar / restaurant. I’d never been to a Tapas restaurant before, but I really enjoyed it! I’d definitely recommend it to anyone if they want a place to eat out in Colchester 🙂 The food was great, and actually not as expensive as I’d thought (it cost the two of us about £35 including about £15 for a bottle of wine!). I think we’ll definitely be going back there at some point!

The other thing I wanted to say was, we are going away on holiday for two weeks as of this evening. Because we’re going to the deepest, darkest part of the Lake District (well, not really, but still), I probably won’t be able to update this blog while we’re away. Just to forewarn you that things will be rather quiet on the blog front for a couple of weeks 🙂

Hopefully I’ll have lots of nice pictures to upload when I get back. All for now, see you in a couple of weeks!

… you shouldn’t be.

Let me elaborate. Some of you may know, I am not a huge fan of our good friend across the pond (pond = Atlantic Ocean, if you’re not up to speed with British slang…) I disagree on a pretty fundamental level with some of the things he has said and done, not least the particular brand of “Christianity” he seems to be promoting which to me doesn’t look much like the Christianity I see in Christ.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, on Sunday morning Mike preached a really good sermon on 1 Samuel, specifically the story of Eli and his sons. If you’re not familiar with the story, what basically happens is that Eli’s sons go bad, Eli doesn’t really do much about it (and, in fact, perhaps even takes part in their corruption by enjoying some of the spoils). What happens is that God judges him for it. In other words, Eli was a bad leader, and God judged him for it. Mike went into a lot more detail in the sermon, and to be honest I can’t remember all that was said! But what reminded me of it was a passage I read in the Psalms this morning.

Firstly, I’d advise you to read through Psalm 94. Go away and read it now, I’ll wait.

Ok, read it? Right, now look specifically at verses 20-23. I’ll quote from the New Living Translation because I think it brings out the point I want to make the clearest:

Can unjust leaders claim that God is on their side–
leaders who permit injustice by their laws?

They attack the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.

But the LORD is my fortress;
my God is a mighty rock where I can hide.

God will make the sins of evil people fall back upon them.
He will destroy them for their sins.
The LORD our God will destroy them.

Is that topical or what? When I read through that passage I couldn’t help but have GWB on my mind. “leaders who permit injustice”? It would seem so. “They attack the righteous and condemn the innocent to death”? Hmmm, well… it would certainly seem that way! I think what struck me most about that passage was the very first line in the passage I quoted: “Can unjust leaders claim God is on their side.” GWB definitely appears to believe God is on his side.

What is comforting is what happens after that — although I don’t want God to destroy GWB (to be honest, I’d rather he were to repent and be saved ;-), I certainly think that God will deal appropriately with those in positions of leadership who do like that. In fact, Jesus himself said that if a leader was responsible for leading people astray, it would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around their neck!

I guess what I’m trying to say is, God’s in control, our place is to do what we can in the here and now to love God and love our neighbours.

It’s fairly unusual that I make a “The Weekend” post on a Tuesday – normally it’s Mondays! But still. The weekend is now far enough away that I can’t actually remember what I did in much detail. On Saturday, Rich came round for dinner in the evening, and then stayed the night and came to Fordham with us Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon, we made lunch for Rich and Chris I, and afterwards we played Scrabble (I lost!).

In the evening, Alex came round for dinner, and we chatted for most of the evening.

So, there you go! Nothing much else to say really. All for now…

There has been a slightly disturbing trend recently. Firstly, I hear Ronin Keating’s version of “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Then, just now, on the radio I heard a very familiar song come on: “Don’t Stop Me Now”, by Queen. Except it wasn’t performed by Queen, it was McFly.

Nothing particularly wrong with that in itself… except that in both cases, the songs sounded almost exactly the same as the originals! What the heck were they thinking? Oh yeah, let’s be really original – let’s rip of someone else’s song using the same arrangement as them… in fact, let’s make it sound almost exactly like the original! Well I’ve got a newsflash for you: THERE ISN’T A SINGLE OUNCE OF ORIGINALITY IN THAT!!!

Copying someone else’s work — and making it sound almost exactly like theirs — isn’t just poor form, it’s probably the worst form of ‘music’ you can get: ripping off a popular song so you can get a song in the charts, get a few more $$$ in the bank… Cover versions I can hack. Good ones that have an interesting take on the original are very creative… but not this. Grrrr 🙁

Well, it’s been almost a year since I migrated to Linux. I’d experimented with Linux in the past, but I’d always gone back to Windows fairly soon after!

So, how has the year gone? What are the good and the bad points?

Well, I don’t really have time to do more than a quick review. If you want some good and bad points, just browse through the Linux category of this blog 🙂 But I guess if I had to summarise my experiences with Linux so far, it would have to be: “Pleasantly surprised.” I always thought of Linux as being a vastly different country to Windows… and in some ways it is. But, as I have discovered, it’s different in a good way. It’s far more powerful – yes, you have to use the command line at times; but at the same time I do think using the command-line can be far more productive than a graphical environment (in certain situations – in fact, perhaps a lot of situations).

I’ve managed to get everything up and running on Linux which I had on Windows, and in fact migrating my email across was the most painless process ever – Thunderbird basically just picked up my email settings straight from the files I’d copied from Windows! I’ve managed to setup a DVD player, an audio recorder, development tools (Eclipse etc)… it’s a fully functioning system. But what really impressed me was the vast amount of software which is available for Linux — with a distribution like Ubuntu which has a large package repository, the chances are you’ll be able to find a piece of software compiled for your distribution without any problems.

I have also lost my fear of compiling stuff… it really is a painless process, provided that you have all the required libraries. If you don’t — well, that could be a problem. But you don’t have to do it too often anyway 🙂

Anyway, I’d better stop rambling. But what I wanted to say is: would I ever go back to Windows? Never. I’m experienced the power of the Open-Source side, and I have to say I am a convert!

All for now…