Twenty-Nine

Saturday was a special day for me. It was in fact the day I became twenty-nine! It's a fairly daunting age numerically as the landmark thirty is only one trip round the sun away.

I had a really great day, though. It started off with Collin waking me up by phoning me to invite me round for breakfast. (I had slept in because I was programming into the wee hours the night before.) After hurriedly getting dressed, Collin arrived and whisked me away to Chez Gibson where we enjoyed bagels with bacon and a soft cheese that I forget the name of, mixed with mint. (I think it was mint anyway.)

We chilled for a bit and most family members phoned me at some point or other to wish me a happy birthday.

Another highlight was the voicemail I got of Dad singing "Happy Birthday" to me. Ah, 'twas a special moment!

Later in the day I popped into town to get a Mother's Day gift - for Mum of all people.

Ali, my sis, then came up to Glasgow for the evening and we hung out for a bit before going to the cinema to see The Pink Panther. It was ok but not the best. I preferred the original series because they had more slapstick gags in them and also the humour was more innocent back then. The new one had all sorts of sexual innuendo and things like Clouseau dropping a Viagra tablet down the plug hole. I wish they could just make films that were FUNNY without having a sexual theme.

Anyway, that point aside, it was a great day. I felt special which is always a bonus on your birthday!

I was also glad that I didn't feel miserable or depressed about clocking up another year. I feel more peace now about the fact that God's ordering my steps so I shouldn't get in a flap about how much I have or haven't done with my life at this point. The important thing is that I'm following him as best as I can and you can't ask for more. I suppose the danger when you feel a dip, as I did recently, is that you start doing things motivated by your own frustration more than by God's timing.

The scripture that helped me get over the frustration of the tedium of my work was from the book of Colossians:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Pushing Buttons

Pushing the buttons in front of a screen
Morning to night and the hours in between
The sky's often grey, but sometimes it's blue
Always observed from the same window view

Making some money, my bread and my butter
Surely my feelings on work shouldn't matter
But somehow I find as I sit in the dark
I'd rather be having a laugh in the park

To like what you do, to love your vocation
Is this such a rare thing in our gloomy nation?
The only incentive - to eat and pay bills
Suppress fancy notions of "God's perfect will"

Snowboarding jumps in Queen's Park!

On Saturday night, Glasgow got a fair dumping of snow. It was really quite amazing, especially since it's MARCH! Well, I daresay this erratic weather is due to Global Warming or the like but I decided to make the most of it.

After church tonight, my good friend Collin and I went to Queen's Park to do some snowboarding. At first it was just going to be plain riding on a fairly unimpressive incline until Colin showed me a ramp he was building. Intrigued, I allowed the evening to take an entirely different direction! In case you're wondering about the colouring of these, they were shot in "night mode" and there was actually a surprising amount of light for 11:00 pm!

I was so excited to discover how much fun it is to do jumps in a park that I walk through all the time. I didn't need to travel, get a lift pass or even take time off work. What a great night!

This first offering is a commentary on the structure of the ramp we found and consequently improved!



Next up is a video of me jumping over the fence, using the previously mentioned ramp. It was a bit scary given the fairly steep approach and the small margin for error. If I missed the ramp, I'd plough into the fence!



We moved to a different area and built another ramp out of "borrowed" snow men. This clip shows me hitting the jump a bit too slowly to really clear it.



This was cool. I managed to stay standing after a jump. I didn't manage to ride it out because I got kinda stuck on a lump of snow that was meant to be the down-slope. Keep watching to see me perform a kind of 180 on the ground. I don't know the proper name for it. You lean onto the front and whip 'er round.



This is monumentous! I went over the jump, landed and kept riding! How sweet is that? It felt so good to land in control of my situation! Now I just need to add some finesse to the equation and maybe a bit more height. I love this stuff!

How to watch my videos

I realise I maybe skimmed over a few important details (quite unlike me, really) last night when I uploaded the first of my videos for my video blog.

In order to watch the videos, you will need to download QuickTime. The files my phone produces are 3gp files and QuickTime is the only program I know of that plays them. I'm sure there must be others but since I already have one installed on my machine that works, why would I bother looking for more? I don't do things like that "just out of interest" since it doesn't interest me!

Ok, so if you go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download you can download QuickTime. This might actually be a good opportunity to download iTunes which includes QuickTime but also lets you buy music online. If you don't care about that and you just want to watch the videos, go to the QuickTime page instead.

Once you get there, uncheck the boxes offering things like news subscriptions and click on the big "Free Download Now" button. The program will download to your computer.

After it's downloaded, find the file and double-click on it then follow the on-screen instructions. Usually this just involves pressing "Next" lots of times until it goes away. (Do you like the technical explanation from the programmer here?)

Once it's all up and running, you should be able to play my videos. Click on one of the links to a video, choose where you're going to save the file and then open the file once its downloaded. If everything's working, it should open the file in QuickTime.

Fun with a boomerang in the park!

My wee sister, Ali just got back from Australia a week ago and amongst other things she brought me a boomerang. The instructions were pretty amusing. At first I was going to type them in here but I decided against it.

What I do have instead is far more exciting! I have SIX videos of me playing with the boomerang in a popular park in Glasgow. Check them out:

Boomerang 1 (569 KB)

Boomerang 2 (133 KB)

Boomerang 3 (216 KB)

Boomerang 4 (214 KB)

Boomerang 5 (131 KB)

Boomerang 6 (128 KB)

Video Blog!

Introduction to my Video Blog (878KB)

Haha! Can you believe it? Just when you thought the Internet couldn't get any stranger, Ken goes and works out how to upload videos for all to see! Yes, up until now it was only pictures and text. Revenge of the Ken - this time it's multi-media!

Whenever you see a picture with a QuickTime player window round it like this one above, simply click on the image or the text below it to watch the video. What could be simpler?