My heart beats for you.

Arrochar Cave

2009-01-10T15:28:00.003+01:00

I went to the cave again with some friends. Check out the videos:

Alternatively, you can view then through the YouTube site.

This is work

2008-07-07T23:24:00.001+01:00

This is work
Originally uploaded by theken

I took this picture of myself at work today. It sums up how I'm feeling about programming right now.

Snowboarding at Glencoe

2008-02-08T00:27:00.000+01:00

How It All Ends - A video on global climate change

2008-01-21T19:35:00.000+01:00

I found this video on YouTube and thought it was quite good. Rather than debating if global climate change is real or not, a better question might be "Which risk should we take?" Should we risk doing nothing or should we risk doing something we didn't need to? Watch the video - he puts it a lot better than me.

Longboard + Bike = Fun

2007-08-28T19:49:00.000+01:00

On Sunday I went to the shops with my friend Stephen. It wouldn't have been too unusual, but he happened to have his bike and a tow-rope. I had my longboard. What happened next? Take a look and see...

Bike & Longboard Intro

Going to the Shops

Napoleon Dynamite Tribute

Sweet Revenge

My photo is in the Schmap of Glasgow!

2007-08-08T20:34:00.000+01:00

This is completely random. I got an e-mail recently from someone telling me they were constructing a "schmap" of Glasgow. They had seen one of my photos of Queens Park on Flickr and asked for my permission to include it in their guide to Glasgow. Sweet.

So, now if you go to the Schmap page for Queens Park, you'll see the photo I took of the park. How nice.

New job - new future

2007-07-26T01:31:00.000+01:00

Well, today has been a very interesting day indeed. I had an interview with ACS Clothing, who desperately need some help in their IT department to upgrade existing software to use web applications and fun stuff like that. After a 3.5 hour interview they sent me on my way with the assurance they would be in touch very soon. (The fact that I had mentioned interviews scheduled for Thursday and Friday might have something to do with it!)

When I got home, I got a phone call from the agency who had arranged the interview to tell me that I had been offered the job! I was so pleased to hear it. She said it was amazing because they offered me the top of the range they had quoted to her which she said was unheard of. In fact, she said she's never seen that happen at all. So thanks to God for that. I'm truly blessed and highly favoured.

It's a strange feeling to be about to start another job. I think I'll actually enjoy being around people again. It's like coming out of hibernation or something like that.

I'm now finding myself wondering what to buy now that I actually have an income. I think a car might be a worthwhile investment. Stay tuned for more details to follow!

This doesn't look good...

2007-07-21T01:09:00.000+01:00

Ok, so even the least "computer-savvy" individual can tell this image does not show a good situation. A few weeks ago I was playing Swat 4 (a thinking man's shooting game) and all of a sudden it froze and rebooted my machine. That had happened once or twice before, however this was the first time I saw what you can see in the photo - a rather ominous line of plain white text in the top-left corner of a very black screen announcing "Operating System not found". I thought to myself, "Hmm, that can't be good" as I turned off my computer.

Thankfully when I turned my computer on again, it had an Operating System after all. Phew, thank goodness for that! I can just imagine the call to a client now, "Umm, no, the software's not finished. Yeh, my computer broke when I was... playing a game."

According to Microsoft's website, it could be a problem with the hard disk, so I suppose I should check that out...

Alan Johnston is free!

2007-07-05T14:25:00.000+01:00

I was so excited yesterday to hear the news of the release of Alan Johnston. I had been following the news and praying for his release. It's so brilliant to see that prayer answered. It's great to have some good news in the media.

I don't have malaria

2007-07-03T00:32:00.000+01:00

Good news everyone - I definitely don't have malaria. You might wonder why on earth this is relevant information, so I will explain. Many years ago (1999-2000) I lived in Pakistan for a year. Although I was living in the mountains where there is no malaria, I often went to Islamabad which was at a much lower altitude. It is considered an area where malaria could be present.

Well, when I came home I wanted to give blood as I have done in the past. However, I was told that there was a risk I could be carrying malaria so I was to wait six months and then come back. I dutifully waited the six months and returned to the blood donor centre only to learn that they didn't actually have any test for malaria so I couldn't give blood until they did.

Fast-forward to a few months ago when I saw an advert on the TV saying they were desperately short of blood. I thought I would check if they were now able to test for malaria. It turns out they do now have a test. I got the test done and the results came back today. I do NOT have malaria so I can give blood again. Let the good times flow!

Action Man vs. G.I. Joe vs ... Action Ken?

2007-06-23T23:15:00.000+01:00

I just signed up for Facebook a couple of days ago there, as I already mentioned. I was uploading photos of myself and organising them a bit. I made an album called Action Ken which contains a variety of pictures of me engaged in a number of activities such as rock climbing, longboarding and so on. A Canadian friend (one Mr. Robert Augi) asked the question, "Do they make Action Ken dolls?" It got me thinking a bit.

First of all, I realised that Rob probably didn't realise the genius of what he was suggesting. I say that not to be unkind to my friend, but because being from North America he probably had no experience of Action Man while growing up. He more likely had exposure to G.I. Joe. (If you're interested in the history, you can follow the two links to compare them. They were made by the same company and G.I. Joe came 2 years earlier.)

The other aspect of Rob's genius was of course the Ken doll, from the Barbie world. Unbeknownst to Rob, my friends and I used to speculate about the difference between Action Man and Ken. If you put them side by side and had a look, Ken was pretty pathetic and a bit of a pansy really. We came to the conclusion that if they went to school together, Action Man probably beat up Ken most playtimes.

So, now we come to the crux of it all - Action Ken! With all the sad history and the over-feminine Ken role-model for boys who play with Barbie (hmm, dubious target audience, mind you) it's time for a more masculine, adventure-loving Ken. The kind of Ken who could give Action Man a run for his money and the occasional shiner in a lunchtime brawl. I think we could be on to something here.

Peeling Spuds

2007-06-22T00:40:00.000+01:00

Do you ever find your brain working overtime when there's really no need to? I had this experience today. Mum's been away this week and it's fallen to me to be the official spud peeler for the troops. I can't speak for anyone else, but I imagine most people might daydream or imagine they were in a happier place while peeling the potatoes. Personally, I was trying to work out the best, most efficient, most accurate route to peel in order to achieve a suitably rounded spud. Here are some of my findings.

1) One approach I like is to take one long strip round the "middle" of the spud. After that you have two hemispheres which can be tackled one at a time. I try to go for a spiral from the edge of the area towards the middle and award bonus points for achieving it without the peel breaking.

2) A variation on this approach is to go all the way round the middle and then continue to tackle the first hemisphere on the same move. That way you could theoretically do the whole spud in two pieces. I suppose, now that I am actually writing this down, it could be possible to start at the top of one hemisphere and spiral out and then back in the other side to achieve the utopia of potato peeling prowess - the "oner".

3) The angle of cut with the knife affects two things - width of strip and amount of potato removed with the skin. Think of the extremes - a slight shaving will barely remove the tiniest bit of skin, whereas a 90 degree attack will cut the unpeeled potato in two. I don't know which part should be discarded in the latter case. I suppose it is generally agreed that the shallower the cut, the better. This maximises the amount of potato you are left with and that is, after all, what we're all about in the potato peeling business - delivering the peeled potato to you, the consumer.

Finally, I would just like to announce that this week is in fact the first time I have "made" (that should really be "prepared") potatoes from start to finish.

Just a Pump

2007-06-21T21:55:00.000+01:00

I've been feeling really bored lately. I mean REALLY bored. So bored in fact it could border depression. Ever since I came home from France I've not been doing a great deal of anything. I've been looking for some programming work and following up some leads, but on the whole I've been sitting at home waiting for something to happen.

When I was thinking about how to describe the state of my heart just now I thought of the phrase, "just a pump". I don't feel a great deal of anything good or bad. I just wake up and then wonder if I should bother getting up - if it'll make any difference to anything.

Yup, pretty miserable post but that might explain why I've not written for almost two months until today.

Friends - Quality or Quantity?

2007-06-21T21:47:00.000+01:00

I finally gave in today. I signed up for Facebook. It is quite a nice system with lots of cool features. I especially like the "Where I've Been" map which lets you show all the countries of the world you've lived, visited or wanted to visit. USA and Canada are split into States/Provinces respectively but the rest of the world seems to be just the countries.

I have been looking through all the contacts of all my friends and it's been pretty tiring work. It's made me think of whether it's all worth it. I mean, I could easily end up with a hundred contacts through the different groups of people I've met over the years. You only need to live in the Marmac warehouse for a year to meet about 100 new people.

I realised that there's no way I can keep up with everyone. It's already a bit hard updating my blog, flickr and youtube accounts before now adding Facebook into the equation.

I want to know how people are doing, but I also want to actually share life with people. It's easy to have a full Facebook but an empty life.

Wanting or Wishing

2007-04-27T15:17:00.000+01:00

Today I was thinking about the different between wanting and wishing. I was thinking about how so many of us make statements like "I want to be successful in business" or "I want to be more healthy". Often these statements reveal good intention, but do not result in action.

I think that often we are really wishing more than anything else. Most of the time I feel that when we say we want something, we really mean we just wish things were that way. We are not actively involved in changing our circumstances, but if someone offered to come along and suddenly fix everything then we wouldn't stop them. Thinking about this made me wonder just what we mean when we say "want".

Literally, the word "want" only communicates a desire or wish for something. If I were to say "I want a drink of water," it simply reveals my desire to drink some water. In reality, though, this would imply I will now go and get some water or I expect someone to give me some. It would be odd for someone to say "I want a drink of water" and for no action to result.

I suppose "want" and "wish" are similar, yet in everyday usage "wish" is more likely to be used in situations where there is no hope of it happening. "I wish I was at the beach" might be muttered under one's breath during a board meeting, for instance.

The reason I was thinking about this so much was the realisation that my life is full of "wants" that don't result in any significant action. I want to be more like Jesus. I want to have more clients with my business. I want to understand God's plan for me better. I want to speak French better for my girlfriend. I feel as if I'm kidding myself when I think of all these things. Desires that don't result in action are nothing more than well-intentioned imaginings.

I've decide that I need to change that. I must consciously choose to be active and not passive. That's something I'm choosing to do from this moment on. I'm going to challenge myself whenever I think or say something that starts with "I want...". It's time to act on the things that I think are important and not just wait for them to happen. Life doesn't happen by accident.

Collin vs. Fruit

2007-04-23T14:07:00.000+01:00

I was visiting my good friend Collin the other day there and he was getting a bit frustrated with his final year project/dissertation. After a flash of inspiration, Collin moved to the garden to try a "stress relief" exercise involving a variety of fruit and his father's antique golf club.

Hope

2007-04-23T13:57:00.000+01:00

It's taken me several weeks to actually write about this, but there's a very special person in my life now. Her name's Hana (or حنان [Hanen] in Arabic) and she's the most amazing person I've ever met. We're getting to know each other and learning all kinds of great things along the way. She lives in Marseille and I've been apart from her for a week now. It's been a lonely time without her, but I'm going back to see her in a few weeks so that makes it a bit easier.

It seems a bit surreal. You wait your whole life for something and then when it happens you don't feel ready.

Back in Scotland

2007-04-17T22:46:00.000+01:00

So it's been a while since I've written in here. Sometimes I just get fed up with documenting my life online so I had a wee break.

Last night I flew home from Marseille and am currently adjusting to my parents' place, which I tend to return to from time to time.

My flights home were a bit of a nuisance as both of them were running late. In addition to that, it seemed to be the first really hot day in Marseille this year. I say "really hot" from a West of Scotland mindset here. I was in jeans and wishing I was in shorts. The airport was a bit warm as well, right enough, which was a bit uncomfortable.

My first flight was delayed by an hour and a half. At first I wasn't too concerned because it would cut down my wait at London Gatwick from 3.5 hours to "just" 2 hours. However, when I arrived at Gatwick my second flight was also delayed. It would be half an hour late in leaving. By this time, the shops were all closing as well so there wasn't much I could do to pass the time.

I started wandering towards my gate, not in any great hurry. At one point I took a wrong turn and ended up heading towards a dead end. There was a flight leaving to Dubai, but no other signs of life. As I walked on the moving walkway there was a guy in front of me on a micro-scooter, scooting along. He was black, dressed in a light brown tracksuit and listening to an iPod. (or using the white headphones at least)

As I walked to the end I realised my gate was no longer one of the options so I started walking back the way. This is a lot longer when the walkways are moving in the wrong direction. As I walked, one of the ladies from the Emirates gate for the Dubai flight was walking in the same direction. She asked if I was lost and we started to chat as we walked. Then the guy on the scooter passed again, this time towards me on the carpet. I thought he looked familiar and she said, "That's Chris Eubank, trying to draw attention to himself." It was then that I realised where I had seen the face. It really was the English boxer, Chris Eubank. Fancy that, I thought. She the proceeded to tell me about how he's always trying to draw attention to himself. It was funny to hear her rant. Personally, I would have really liked to have a micro scooter at that time. I think it's quite a good idea for these long corridors.

I Ate Frogs' Legs

2007-03-20T23:23:00.000+01:00

Tonight for dinner at Jesus Revolution they had Frogs' Legs of all things. I wasn't especially excited about them but felt somewhat obliged to try them at least. My mum's words of wisdom came to mind, "You won't know if you like it unless you try it." That said, she was probably thinking more of mince and tatties or steak pie and almost certainly not frogs' legs.

I have to say I wasn't too impressed. They were fried and there was garlic and other things in the mix but the overall consistency and the notion that I was eating the legs of a frog made me feel quite bokey really. Have a look at the second video for my facial expressions if you think I'm exaggerating.

Everything's Fine

2007-03-18T14:30:00.000+01:00

You might not know this, but my sister-in-law, Yvonne, happens to be a pretty fine musician and she's just finished her first music video. It's on YouTube but to save you the trouble of going to her profile and rummaging around for it, you can just watch it below.

Photos of Chateau d'If

2007-02-27T21:12:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned before, I took some photos of Chateau d'If last week and I said I'd post them here.

If in the distance

The front of Chateau d'If

North-West Tower

Marseille from If

You can see the rest of the set on my Flickr page.

Even Shorter Hair

2007-02-27T18:03:00.000+01:00

I don't know if everyone would classify this as "blog worthy" but it's quite a big deal for me. For about the last year I had been consistently growing my hair and wondering how long I could do so. At around Christmas time I cut it a bit but it was still fairly long.

Well, last week I finally decided to get it chopped. I was just getting tired of it getting in my way all the time. Now my ears and neck are a bit chilly and I do miss that feeling of the wind in your hair on really blustery days.

Change is good. It keeps life interesting.

Some videos of recent activities

2007-02-22T23:07:00.000+01:00

I've had some videos sitting around for a while and I've been meaning to upload them. Well, today is that day and I've uploaded them to YouTube. Here are some links:

Parkour Cat

Flea Market Armour

Halal Chicken (Warning - chicken being killed!)

Flower of Scotland on French TV

Finally, I have some videos from my visit to Chateau d'If a few days ago. I'll possibly say more about it and add some photos in another post soon, but for now here are some videos:

Praying for healing in public

2007-02-08T02:06:00.000+01:00

I had a kind of fun experience today. It was a bit intimidating, but somewhat fun and enjoyable overall. We have been trying a few different things for outreach to people here in Marseille and today we thought we'd go on the subway and just strike up conversations with whoever we were sitting across from. I was really nervous about doing this because I felt there was no way that someone would want to talk to some random stranger on the train. I know I wouldn't!

I had been having all kinds of doubts about my faith, what I really believe, whether God really is good or producing the goods in my life... really a big spiritual attack really but I just thought I was a rubbish Christian.

The guys prayed for me this morning and I had a kind of do-or-die attitude that went something like this, "This is going to be rubbish and useless, but I'll go and do it anyway because I'm meant to do it."

We were going in pairs which was a good idea. I got on the subway with Angie and we sat opposite a lady who had a girl sitting beside her, resting her head in her lap. She was stroking the girl's hair in a comforting way. As we sat down we said "bonjour" and she smiled and said "bonjour" back to us.

I started a conversation in French, asking if the girl was tired. The mum replied that she had a headache. I then thought this was the most obvious moment to offer to pray for her, but I sat there and kind of kept quiet. Angie complimented the girl on her bag. After a few moments Angie asked if I thought we should offer to pray. I said I agreed but was also a bit intimidated. As I waited, the lady smiled at me again and I thought it just seemed too easy an opportunity to miss. Nobody could have been more welcoming.

I said that I was a Christian and asked if I could pray for the girl's head. She responded by saying "if you want to". We laid hands on her and prayed (in English, sadly) for God to heal her. They were grateful and we talked a little more until the end of the line.

It was just a great feeling to actually do what I've always thought we should be doing. The rest of the afternoon wasn't as eventful, but I was excited that I had been obedient in something at least once. I felt God had given me a HUGE "window of opportunity" to get up the courage to do it and I was grateful for that.

Plodding along

2007-01-28T23:34:00.000+01:00

We're doing ok here in Marseille. We all survived the fast and my eating is now back to normal with no harmful side-effects. We've been going out a bit to talk to people and we visited someone at her home in Aix-en-Provence as well, which turned out to be pretty cool. It's a nice place. Maybe I'll put some photos on here later.

Marseille is an interesting place and there are all kinds of amusing things going on from time to time. I actually forgot to mention before, but I almost got my phone stolen by a couple of pickpockets. I was waiting outside the Jesus Revolution place for someone to come with the key to let me in and two young guys come along asking me the time and starting up a conversation. When they noticed my accent, they asked where I was from and we got talking a bit. They ended up talking to me about Zidane, the French footballer famous for headbutting an opponent in the chest during the world cup.

They were standing beside me, trying to demonstrate a move he does and reaching across in front of me with their feet. I thought this was a bit odd, but put it down to the friendliness of people here and the fact they're a bit more physical than back home. Well, as they were doing this I felt one of them touch my hip pocket with happened to have my phone in it. I instincively recoiled and checked the other one, trying to remember where my wallet was. I remembered it was in my bag and relaxed, realising nothing was gone. After that, they realised they were rumbled, although one of them still tried to show me the Zidane move one last time. When I backed off, they got the hint and left. It was funny, because they were very friendly and polite the whole time. I couldn't help thinking that a similar situation in Scotland would result in a knife being pulled or a bit of a scuffle after the cat was out of the bag but here they just went on their way. I'm now a bit paranoid about my hip pockets, though, and I tend to be a bit suspicious of anyone behind me.

I discovered with great interest that there's a tourist attraction here worth visiting. It's called Château D’If and it features in the story The Count of Monte Cristo which has been made into a film a couple of times as well. I've seen the most recent one with James Caviezel and I liked it. The château is a fort on a an island (called If, as it happens) just off the coast of Marseille in the Mediterranean. It's a short boat trip from the Vieux Port harbour and not too expensive either.

A wee bit hungry

2007-01-19T22:16:00.000+01:00

Well, I've been in Marseille for almost two weeks now and it seems like no time at all. I'm settling in quite nicely and the rest of the team all arrived a couple of days after me. I'm staying with a crazy bunch of French young people called Jesus Revolution. They're doing outreach in their own, unique way and they graciously allowed me to stay in their spare room while I'm here.

This week we've been doing a seven day fast to seek God's direction for the outreach. Primarily, we're trying to figure which area of the city to concentrate on. Three of us have been fasting from food and the others were fasting different things. I started off with the idea that I would still have breakfast every day but only drink water the rest of the time. I heard that this was a bad idea, though, as it's important for your body to get used to there being no food in it and frequently introducing some food every day could confuse matters.

With that in mind, after Monday I changed to only water. It was pretty hard going and on Wednesday in particular I was feeling really weak and faint. I've never fasted like this before so I didn't know what to expect. It kind of reminds me of when you give blood. You're just that bit slower and more easily tired. Some of the others were finding it pretty tough as well so we changed it slightly. I'm now drinking fruit juices as well as water. It's made a huge difference. I'm more alert and energetic, although I'd still love to get my teeth into a big steak right now!

Today we were prayer walking around the marché aux puces (or Flea Market to you and me) where they had TONS of food lying out on sale. Man, I wanted to eat EVERYTHING. Ok, so I wasn't too inspired by the squid, octopus and other generally manky-looking fishy stuff, but pretty much everything else was appealing to me. In fact, I even took a photo of a frightfully appetising looking selection of olives on sale. Check it out and let me know if you're salivating too:

The fast ends tomorrow at dinner time. I'm going to try really hard not to eat too much. My teeth are bored, though.

Landed in Marseille

2007-01-06T23:57:00.000+01:00

I'm now in France. Yes, it's true. I really am. I had a couple of flights today and arrived in the evening. It's a pretty interesting place already and I'm excited about the next 3 and a half months. I still don't quite know where I'll be staying, but it's going to be fun, I'm sure of it. I discovered they even climb here! How can I not like it?

A spot of New Year climbing

2007-01-05T18:19:00.000+01:00

I do like a spot of climbing, I have to say. Thankfully some of my friends do as well. I went yesterday with Stephen and Gillian to the Glasgow Climbing Centre for a spot of climbing.

The Suspects:

Steve

Gillian

Ken

The Videos:
Since I've been getting quite into the whole YouTube thing, I've got a playlist of some of the highlights here.

Corn

2007-01-03T11:17:00.000+01:00

A trip to the cave in December

2007-01-03T11:12:00.000+01:00

Just a few days before New Year, I went to the cave with Alan to get back to nature and all that fun stuff. There are five videos to choose from here that all contain some of my comments at different points in the trip.

Scare Cut

2007-01-02T02:49:00.000+01:00

So it's been a while since I've had a proper haircut and the other day there I was feeling like a change so I decided to get a bit of a chop. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it but it's good to have a change at least.

Heathrow Snack

2007-01-02T02:34:00.000+01:00

The last couple of times I've returned to the UK after some time across the Atlantic, this has been the snack of choice I've bought at Heathrow, before heading on to Glasgow.

A litre of water is always good to help re-hydrate, and the fact that it's nice and cold is a bonus.

A British Dairy Milk is a welcome change after being on Hershey's for a while.

Wheat Crunchies are just brilliant. I might be the only person that thinks so, but I really like them.

Some new pics and a video as well!

2006-12-14T06:17:00.000+01:00

I've been pretty busy finishing of a database application in my spare time and I'm finally out of the other end. I have some new pics and a video that I would like to put on here for all to see.

First of all, is a wee video of me doing some very tame version of Parkour or Freerunning. It's totally timid compared to the guys who are really good at it but I just saw the overhang recently and wondered if I'd be able to climb up there. This was about the fourth time I filmed it and it's the smoothest I've got it yet, although there's definitely room for improvement.

Next up is a picture of one of my earlier attempts of the same. The truth is that my friend Kevin was filming but we discovered afterwards he had it on "image" instead of "video". Oh well, not to worry. We've still got a video so all is not lost.

This one might seem a bit out of place, but it's still relevant. This is me reading a story to Kasey who is almost 17 months now. No, she's not mine before you ask. I know it's Christmas but no immaculate conceptions have been happening around here. Her parents, Kevin and Angie, are on the same course as me and it's been fun having a "small person" around.

Right, now it's time to go from the sublime to the proverbial ridiculous. I leave you today with a picture of me and what I have come to affectionately refer to as my "Biohazard Cookies". One of my hosts here in Kansas City works at a doctor's lab and he drives around picking up various dubious samples of different varieties. (He told me he even picked up a leg one time.) The disturbing part is that he uses the left over biohazard bags to present cookies to me. He told me the bag hadn't been used before, but I'm starting to feel a bit funn..#:;,...

Latest from Kansas City

2006-12-01T18:59:00.000+01:00

It's been about a month since I've written anything about the CPx course that I'm doing just now. Truth be told, I've been having a bit of a rough time. I don't know if it's culture shock, team dynamics or generally losing motivation for missions, but somewhere along the lines things got a bit tough. Some people tend to get more communicative at such times but I tend to withdraw and go quiet.

I'm feeling a bit better now but I still reckon God's challenging me by putting me in situations that make me uncomfortable to expose my heart and turn me to Him.

It's only three weeks until I go home for Christmas and I think it'd be a huge relief to be around people who understand me a bit better. I've been getting a number of odd questions from well-meaning locals saying things like "So do you celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December over there in Scotland?" There's only so much of that you can take before it gets annoying. I've also realised that after a while you start to feel like you're uniquely "special" in the oddness of your worldview. I remember one time coming home and being really excited about driving in Scotland because other drivers responded the way I expected them to. For instance, when I came up behind someone in the fast lane, they'd change lanes to let me past. It may be a small thing, but it's just one example of people seeing the world the same way.

I've got a few videos I made recently so I thought it was about time to upload them to YouTube.

The first one here is my attempt at a "Borat" impression while out in my kilt in Kansas City. You need to take my word about the kilt part, you can't actually see it in the video.

Video number 2 is a brief rant about the fact that they had a Christmas celebration in November and it wasn't even Thanksgiving yet.

Finally (for now) we have my thoughts on the possible onset of winter.

More about Peak Oil

2006-11-23T06:43:00.000+01:00

I realised last night's post was pretty brief so I thought I should explain more about what this whole "Peak Oil" thing is about. I have also read a few websites that reckon it's all a big conspiracy by governments to control people and that there's no problem at all. I would suggest that even if there is no shortage of oil, we should probably still use less of it to cut down on greenhouse emissions.

So why is Peak Oil such a big deal? Well, first of all we should consider what we use oil for. It's not just a question of finding something else to fuel our cars. (I always thought it was.) All plastics are made out of stuff derived from oil. Inks also come from oil. A lot of pharmaceuticals also rely on our supply of crude oil. Finally, almost all of our food industry in the west relies heavily on oil to exist. Tractors, farm machinery and of course the trucks that transport everything around are reliant on oil. If there is no oil, we have no food, medicine, transport or even ink. That's pretty bad.

The name "Peak Oil" refers to the global production of oil hitting the highest it will ever hit and then dropping off. Although that means we have only used 50% of the world's oil, it means the remaining 50% will be very expensive for a number of reasons. 1) The longer you extract oil from a field the harder it gets to extract the rest because it is initially under pressure. As the pressure drops off, water has to be introduced to force the oil out, which then has to be processed more afterwards. This is more time consuming and more expensive. 2) The demand for oil and the world's population have both been increasing so even though we may drop to a level of production that was sufficient 10 years ago, it might not be enough for today. Increased demand leads to increased price.

I don't claim to be an expert on this subject. I'm just very interested in what it could mean for the future of our society as we know it. I already have been feeling that we have been very wasteful of the Earth's natural resources and this is one more thing to consider. It's naive of us to think that oil will last for ever and when you look at how much of our society relies on oil, it makes you wonder how we'd cope if we suddenly had no oil to run our lives.

I've read some articles by people who say Peak Oil is just a big scam. They claim that oil as actually being produced by the Earth itself and that oil wells are being re-filled, resulting in an endless supply. They believe Peak Oil is a scare tactic by our governments to prevent us targeting them when oil prices go up. One article goes far enough to say it's a Misleading Zionist Scam. Not being an expert, I can't claim to know who's right. It does seem, though, that each website opposing Peak Oil has a decidedly mocking, critical tone which makes the whole thing seem unprofessional and childish. I'm not saying they're wrong, just that the people who believe Peak Oil is reality seem a lot better at articulating their story in an objective, grown-up way.

Maybe the whole topic isn't as clear cut as I first though. I still think it's worth looking into. If nothing else, we should all try to use less oil anyway to fight global warming. We are meant to be stewards of this planet and we're not doing a very good job, as far as I can see.

Here are some websites I've found interesting on this subject:

postcarbon.org
Peak Oil page on GlobalPublicMedia.com
BBC Article on Iceland switching to Hydrogen energy
Anti-Peak Oil site suggesting it's a Zionist Scam

Peak Oil

2006-11-22T05:23:00.000+01:00

I heard an interesting thing in class today. It seems that the global production of crude oil is set to peak in the next couple of years. This is no trivial fact. The result will be that production will be slower and more expensive resulting in crude oil being more and more expensive. This will result in petrol prices being impossibly expensive and oil-dependent nations being pretty stuck basically.

I found a website that says much the same as today's speaker was saying: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Our speaker tied it in with God's plan for the end times. He reckons that as oil gets more and more expensive, there will be more and more wars over the countries in North Africa and the Middle East that have the majority of the remaining oil. It's not too unrealistic a connection to make that the great end times wars and rumours of wars around Israel could well be relating to the shortage of oil.

It's interesting stuff, although not one of the more cheery things I've commented on.

I spoke up about something - and it changed

2006-11-17T06:37:00.000+01:00

I've got a really cool story to tell that I'm pretty pleased about.

It all started with a new online game called The Ship. It's a game based on Valve's Source engine. If you're familiar with online games at all, that means it's based on the same world as Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source. If none of that makes any sense to you, don't worry. It's not important to the story.

The ship is based on the classic murder mystery scenario with the scene set on board a Victorian sailing ship. (Think of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile and you're probably close.) Each player plays the part of a passenger whose mission is to secretly murder another passenger whose name they are given at the start of the round. The tricky part is that at the same time someone else is trying to kill them. You don't know who's trying to kill you, and you should try to be as sneaky as possible in pursuing the person you're after as well. It makes for some pretty intense gameplay.

As if that wasn't all tricky enough, you also need to avoid security and take care of your bodily needs. You need to eat, drink, sleep, socialise, wash and even go to the toilet. This means there are certain times you are vulnerable. Someone could potentially get you while you're asleep or "on the throne". The game has a very humourous, cartoonish feel and it's a lot of fun to play.

The game has an inventory system and you find lots of clothes, weapons, books and so on scattered around the ship. Each item is accompanied by a witty description. Amongst other well-known books, the game includes the bible as one of the items you can interact with. Its description was, "Epic fiction about an angry, omnipotent guy known simply as 'God'." I was a bit surprised and saddened to see that there.

The reaction I had to this was just one of disappointment, more than anything. Up to this point I was enjoying the game but now it had turned on me and I felt a bit insulted, as if it implied my beliefs were intrinsically wrong. I felt that God was being misrepresented as well and I wanted to express this to the company who made the game. I don't see God as an "angry omnipotent guy" at all.

The game is published by Outerlight, who I was pleased to discover are actually based in Edinburgh. I e-mailed them to express my sadness about this unnecessary, anti-Christian remark in the game. My initial couple of e-mails were handled by Ed Wilson, their Technical Director. He assured me that they were taking my concerns seriously and that the team would discuss it further.

A week or so later I heard from Ailsa Bates, the Operations Director at Outerlight. We communicated back and forth on the issue over the following month. Her opinion was that it was only intended as a joke and that everyone in the office had found it funny and didn't really see why I wouldn't be able to see the funny side. She suggested if I was able to come up with a better description they could change it. I sent a few suggestions that I considered quite witty along with one that my mate Greg came up with simply saying "A good book." (I also suggested making the bible a weapon so you could "bible bash" people, but Ailsa reckoned that'd be even more controversial.)

Today is a special day because I finally saw the fruit of my labours. As of the latest patch that I installed on The Ship today, the description of the bible has now changed! It has change from an epic fiction about an angry, omnipotent God to "A good book." It was so cool to see that! It's not about being proven right or anything like that. I'm just feeling more like, "Wow! I expressed my opinion on something and someone decided to change it, just because of what I said. I feel strangely valued!"

It's making me realise that I do actually have influence if I have honest, respectful communication with someone. I could have easily written off Outerlight as a nasty, anti-Christian company but through talking about it, I found where they were coming from.

It's nice to be heard.

We're going to France!

2006-11-03T05:33:00.000+01:00

It was finally decided yesterday that our three-month church planting outreach will be to Marseille, in the south of France. We had been given a few options to consider including France, The Ivory Coast and South Africa. In the end we opted for France for a variety of reasons. Of particular concern, our group includes a married couple with a young baby and a second one on the way. Since Angie's pregnant, she can't get any vaccinations without potentially harming the baby. This ruled out The Ivory Coast and we also felt that the conditions in the South African location would be a bit challenging.

One of the cool things about Marseille is that they have a large Muslim population. We're going to be focusing on north African Muslims so that we can learn church planting in a Muslim community while still living in a stable and safe country. I'm excited about going there because I'll also be able to use some of my French which is actually my most academically studied language besides English, although I've never been in a French-speaking nation for any significant length of time.

We don't have exact dates yet but we'll be heading to France just after New Year and we'll be finished by the end of March or start of April. It looks like I'll be celebrating my 30th birthday in France. I daresay some of my Scottish chums could come to visit. I think flights to France are pretty cheap these days. :)

A great quote from "The Village"

2006-10-30T07:31:00.000+01:00

I was watching The Village on TV tonight and I noticed a great line that I had not appreciated before:

The world moves for love.
It kneels before it in awe.

Rainy Evening

2006-10-26T06:00:00.000+01:00

Tonight I was a bit bored so I decided to go out for a walk. I discovered there was an Einestein Brothers bagel shop nearby and although it was closed, I wanted to have a look around to see if there were any other shops nearby. It started raining but I stayed out for a bit longer anyway. Feeling somewhat peckish, I got a big bag of Tostitos and a can of Red Bull. The rain was pretty heavy and I sought refuge in a few interesting places along the way. Here are a few videos in case you're interested.

This first one is a commentary on my walk in the rain:

In this one, I talk about a potential Parkour feature I found:

Puja

2006-10-18T05:02:00.000+01:00

On Sunday evening I attended an interesting worship experience. It is called a "Puja" which is a Hindu term from the Sanskrit language. We were learning in class about contextualisation, which basically means presenting the gospel in a way that people can relate to in their culture. Too often, missionaries present the gospel as a very western thing, resulting in the indigenous people thinking it is a western God, when in fact no-one in the bible was western at all.

The analogy we heard about contextualisation was to think of the message as the water of life in a container. The container it is presented in might be different depending on the culture. In the west, we are quite familiar with mugs with a round handle and an image printed on the side. In India, though, this would be very foreign. Contextualisation is the technique of using a vessel people are more familiar with so they can receive the drink.

The whole setup of the meeting was very different from anything I've ever seen before. We were still singing songs of worship to Jesus, though. We were simply using a style that Hindus would be very familiar with. This has been really successful in India where people have felt comfortable and familiar with the surroundings and able to receive the message and understand what is being said.

We had communion as part of the Puja. Instead of bread and red wine, we used bananas and milk. These are both things that are very abundant in India and easy for people to get. The milk can represent purity because it is white and the banana can represent Jesus body which was broken.

We also heard the gospel explained using a coconut as an illustration. As Dag, the leader, explained that Jesus was bruised and beaten for our sin, he hit the coconut with a hammer several times. Eventually, it cracked and the clear milk poured out of it, reminding me that when stabbed with the spear, water came out of Jesus' heart along with the blood. He talked about how we can now be as white as coconut because of this. To someone in India, a phrase like "as white as snow" would not make sense as most of them have not seen snow, yet everyone knows what coconuts are like.

Another interesting aspect was the use of incense. As we worshipped it was interesting to engage the sense of smell as well as sight and sound. It reminded me that Jesus can be like the air we breathe, able to expand and rise to places we couldn't reach.

We sang songs in Hindi with the English translation alongside it so we could see what we were singing. We sang about the name of Jesus, how it is a powerful, beautiful name and we sang about how he is our ultimate Guru and even that his word is our mantra. All the time, we were using terms people would be familiar with to help them understand our faith better.

The whole Puja experience gave me a bit of a feeling for how it must be for someone from a different culture to come to a "normal" church meeting in the west which is in a different language with all kinds of new things happening. At first I was constantly reading the English beside the Hindi to work out what I was actually saying. After we had repeated some of the songs a few times I started to remember and I was able to focus more on actually singing.

I've learned that there's no one structure or pattern that is correct for worship. In our western churches we are so stuck on the pattern of having a band playing worship songs and us all sitting in rows listening to someone at the front. These things are not bad, but they are not necessarily relevant to all cultures. It would be wrong to re-create the same thing elsewhere in the world and expect people to be familiar with it.

Village Experience

2006-10-14T01:59:00.000+01:00

On Thursday and Friday we did an interesting practical exercise called the "Village Experience". We didn't know quite what to expect and we were told very little about what was in store for us. All we knew was that we had to bring a bag of overnight things including a sleeping bag and that we had to be able to carry everything. We were only allowed one piece of food each as well.

It started off late on Thursday morning when we were blondfolded and loaded into a van. We were instructed to be silent and to keep our blindfolds in place. We drove for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. It's hard to say how long it was because it seems longer when you can't see anything. Maybe it was some vague recollection of a Hardy Boys book or something but I started mapping our route in my mind. I memorised all the turns we took and tried to visualise a map in my head of the path of the van. In the end it turned out that information was irrelevant, but I suppose it illustrated that I still had to keep my mind active. Actually, if the journey was much longer, I might have just forgotten about it entirely.

Once the van stopped, we were told we could remove our blindfolds and get out. We assembled by the side of the road with our backpacks on and Randy explaned the procedure to us. We were given the first clue which would lead us to the next clue. Each clue would lead us to the next until we finally reached our destination. We were to collect the clues to give to Randy at the destination and we were to pray for the village at each clue.

The journey was a fairly enjoyable hike along a few country roads on the Missouri/Kansas border. The clues were pretty straightforward and they were easy to find as well. It was a bit weird praying for "the village" since we didn't know what that exactly meant. At the first clue, we were presented with 3 logs that we had to carry with us to present to the villagers. This proved to be quite challenging with the additional weight. Later one, we collected a jar of Jalapeño Olives which were also to be presented to the villagers. We also collected three more logs further on. This was really sneaky and deliberate of them. There were five people and six logs. The uneven load was a strategy to test our teamwork. Someone would need to carry more logs than the rest and that would test our patience and co-operation.

When we finally reached our destination, we were allowed to rest for maybe ten minutes before we were taken to "meet the villagers." The rest of the experience was far more bizarre than the hike.

As we walked down the path, we saw a secluded area of grassland up ahead that was surrounded by woods on three sides. We were confronted by two or three men dressed in middle eastern outfits with some kind of arab headdress. They blocked the path and looked inquisitively at us. They spoke amongst themselves in Spanish and didn't understand anything we said. Fortunately, we had two girls in our group who could speak Spanish so they translated for us.

It would take too long to describe each event in great detail, but we had all kinds of things happen. They didn't trust me because I wasn't married, and they got the girls in our group to each throw a log to see who could throw one the furthest. Then they tried to get me to marry the one who threw the furthest. When I refused, they gave her to one of their villagers instead.

When we first arrived, we gave them the Jalapeño Olives. They looked suspiciously and made us each eat one to show them that they were ok. They fed us roasted grubs (which we had to eat), chicken and "cat". (which was actually rabbit)

The grandfather-type character was sick and we asked a few times to pray for him. When they let us pray, he got worse and called for the Witch Doctor who relieved the pain for a while. Later on, when we prayed again he got healed. The Witch Doctor wanted to buy the power from us with one of his necklaces.

We slept in tents nearby and it was COLD at night. In the morning there was frost on the ground and on the tents. It had dropped to freezing during the night.

Here are some videos I made along the way:

You can also browse the video playlist on YouTube.

End of week one

2006-10-10T03:34:00.000+01:00

I've finished my first week of CPx. (The church planting experience) Today, Monday, is my day off so I thought this would be a good time for a brief update. We had class from Tuesday to Saturday with each session starting at 8:00 am. That's been a bit tricky to get used to. Usually we finish at 4 or 4:30 in the afternoon.

The class hasn't exactly looked like what I expected, although I didn't really know what to expect in the first place. We meet in a small house in a residential district of Grandview, which could be considered either a suburb of Kansas City or a neighbouring town. I normally get a lift to class in the morning from one of the others on the course, although I'm hoping to get a bike soon. One odd aspect of Kansas City is that a lot of the roads don't have pavements to walk on beside them. (sidewalks to you N. Americans) Even in residential neighbourhoods, I need to walk on the road or on the grass. It's a strange omission.

Each morning we start with an hour of prayer and worship. So far this has been a very quiet routine which I've found difficult to engage in. I think the point is to strip everything back to the absolute basics of what we might encounter when planting a church. Combined with the early start, I tend to find it hard to stay awake.

As for accommodation, I'm staying with an elderly couple who feed me and look after me. They have their own eccentricities but they are good to me. They have matching rocking chairs and a clock that sounds every half hour. On the hour it chimes the appropriate number of times and on the half hour it chimes once. (I noted this could lead to ambiguity around 1 o'clock.) Although this clock is in the living room, it has woken me up a few times in my room.

We've had a fairly interactive teaching curriculum so far. On the first day (Tuesday) we learned about prayer walking and then went out in pairs to walk through the neighbourhood and pray. The next day we learned more about contacting new people in the street. We went out again in pairs, this time to talk to people in the area and start to make connections. On Thursday and Friday we had testimonies. We each had to prepare a 20 minute talk about our testimony.

On Saturday we had a seminar on "What is church?" We looked at the different ways the word "church" is used in modern day English compared to what it actually meant in scripture. We looked at the Western model of church and noted some of the things that aren't actually essential but are still part of our image of church. When planting a church, you tend to reproduce what you are familiar with and care must be taken to avoid placing a Western worldview on a new church in a different culture.

On Sunday we had a small house church meeting before going out for lunch. It was fairly simple and community-based but it was still church nonetheless!

I uploaded some videos to YouTube

2006-10-04T00:13:00.000+01:00

I've been making videos with my phone for ages now but I've finally taken the time to learn a better way to share them with you. I previously uploaded them to a really obscure website and then added links to the files manually. It was pretty clunky to set up. Now I've got an account with YouTube, which makes things a lot easier. You can see my latest videos on my YouTube profile page: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kencares.

To kick things off here, I thought I'd share some specific videos of things that I've mentioned in a few recent blog entries.

Sailing on Lake Ontario

Windsurfing
There are two videos here. I made one each day at the end of each session in the water. In this first video, I discussed a few of the technical aspects of windsurfing.

In this second video you will notice I sound much weaker. That day was really cold and I think it shows in the fact that I look like I'm about to faint any minute!

Fun with Steve's Car
This first one shows Steve explaining how things work under the hood of his beast.

The second clip shows us flying round a dirt road on the way from Newmarket to Toronto. At one point, we skidded out pretty wide on a turn. Don't be alarmed by the extreme angle of the video. The car didn't actually tip! I temporarily lost control of the camera a bit as I was distracted by the slide.

After the fun and games on the dirt road, we stopped to inspect the damage.

Once we got to Toronto, we had a bit of fun doing donuts in the Colossus Cinema parking lot. There's not much happening at the start of this video but I couldn't find a good way to edit it.

This is the second video of donuts in the parking lot. We got quite fast in this one and you can even see the smoke from the tyres coming into the car.

We went and looked at the parking lot after the donuts.

Kansas City

When I arrived in Kansas City, I saw a tetherball which I found really amusing. Here's my Napoleon Dynamite impression.

First Sunday in Kansas City

2006-10-03T04:04:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was my first Sunday in Kansas City and it was a day of several "firsts". To begin with, I went to Metro Christian Fellowship for the morning meeting which was preceded by "biscuits and gravy" because it was the first Sunday of the month.

I was introduced to a number of people including a few of the students who had arrived already. The meeting was good and I particulary appreciated the pastor's message which was about the way God makes us wait to allow the issues that are inside us to come to the surface. He communicated well and I identified a lot with what he was saying.

In the afternoon I visited the International House of Prayer for the first time. I was really excited to do this because I've heard so much about it. It was really great to experience firsthand the atmosphere of the constant harp and bowl worship with people pacing around praying and others singing along with the band. I also saw some of the faces I recognise from the podcasts such as Mike Bickle, Misty Edwards, Dwayne Roberts and one of the drummers. It was strange to see them in real life but I suppose it's only because I've seen them before. I'm not going to get distracted by the people. The house of prayer is for God and he will be my focus as I go there from time to time.

Flight and first experiences of Kansas City

2006-10-03T03:01:00.000+01:00

The flight from Toronto to Kansas City was really easy going, especially compared with the Customs experience earlier. The plane was really small. It had 13 rows with a total of four seats across. There were two either side with one aisle down the middle. There was one toilet at the back of the plane. A few times when I stood up, I hit my head on the ceiling.

This time I was able to take my laptop and small backpack onto the plane and I managed to fit them both in the overhead locker without a problem.

A pretty cool thing was that I had an empty seat beside me. I effectively had two seats to myself with the aisle to one side and the window to the other. That's the same as the other flight. God has been good to me in that regard.

When I arrived, I was greeted by someone from the Metro Fellowship who offered to take me for something to eat because my host family hadn't prepared anything for me. I suggested Perkins and we set out on a mini-adventure.

We pretty quickly found an exit that claimed to have a Perkins at it. For whatever reason, though, we missed it. At this point my driver decided to take a brief detour via the school she worked at to get something from her desk. It was there that I saw this pretty sweet Napoleon Dynamite-esque tetherball.

After the stop at the school, we returned to our quest to find Perkins. We drove about 3/4 of the way round Kansas City and none of the exits from the highway had signs for Perkins. We ended up using Google on the cell phone to find the number for the restaurant to call ahead. We got there in the end but I felt kinda bad that I hadn't asked for McDonalds or Taco Bell in the first place. I really wanted a tremendous twelve, though. It was definitely worth it in the end.

Fun and games getting into America

2006-10-03T02:43:00.000+01:00

On Saturday afternoon I made my way to Pearson International Airport (or Toronto Airport to those not in the know) to fly down to Kansas City. When flying from Toronto to the US, you go through passport control prior to boarding the plane. That way you can arrive at the domestic arrivals in the US and go straight to baggage reclaim and out of the airport. I'm never sure what to expect when entering the US and so I approached this experience with interest.

The first assistant wasn't the frendliest I've ever met. He asked me a series of questions without ever actually looking me in the eye. He seemed a bit unimpressed that I intended to spend 83 days in the US without actually having any documents I could show him about the training course. I had figured that since I would be staying less that 90 days I could get in with a visa waiver and, consequently, without too much scrutiny. It seems they are still quite cautious, even with visa waivers.

At the end of our conversation, he asked me to put my index finger on the pad to take a fingerprint sample. I concluded that he had decided to let me in since he was checking me over. Unfortunately, his camera wasn't working, so he passed me on to the neighbouring booth. The lady there asked me a series of very similar questions before redirecting me to a separate room for more questions.

When I got into the other room I was greeted with another fairly grumpy individual. He sent me through to another room which appeared to be for agriculture. The man there made me wait a good distance from his desk for a few moments before calling me over to deal with me. He x-rayed all my bags and then sent me back through to the other room.

I waited there for a while and wondered just how long they would keep me waiting. It seemed I still had some time before my flight was going to leave, but still I didn't want to wait too long. I still had a sense of peace, though. I really didn't care if they were going to deny me entry or whatever. I decided if God wanted me in America it'd happen.

There was one guy behind a desk who didn't appear to be doing anything but he didn't call me over either. A couple came in and he called them up straight away. I found it strange that he hadn't called me up so when he had finished with them, I went over. I was holding the large yellow envelope that they give you containing your passport, customs declaration and visa waiver. He took it from me, announcing that "you're never going to get seen if you don't hand that over." I thought to myself that it might have been an idea for someone to tell me that in the first place, but I knew better than to point that out to him.

I then waited five or ten minutes more before he called me up again. He had gone away to another room and come back again in between times. I don't know if he was checking up on me by calling someone or if he was just going to the toilet. I sometimes wonder if the whole process is just to make you wait for a while to see what you do.

When he called me up, he stamped my passport and gave me my visa waiver and told me to enjoy my day. I noticed with amusement that he didn't actually check my fingerprints or take my photo but I didn't think he'd appreciate it if I reminded him.

I'm here now, though, so that's all behind me. Now I have my three months of church planting to look forwards to.

Windsurfing

2006-10-02T05:33:00.000+01:00

Keeping up my theme of going places outside of the city, I spent some time with my friend Marcel in Barrie. His house is quite nicely placed on the shore of Lake Simcoe. As if that wasn't cool enough, they have a wee dock beside the water with a canoe and a windsurfing board. Indifferent to the somewhat chilly late September weather, I decided to give windsurfing a shot. I always like trying new things and, well, windsurfing is a new thing.

I need to be honest here and point out that I wasn't entirely unprotected from the elements. Marcel lent me a wetsuit-vest thingy. I don't entirely know how to describe it, but it was a short-sleeved t-shirt sort of a garment with a zip on the back. When you zip it up, you have your own "Keira Knightley in a corset in Pirates of the Caribbean" moment but you do forget about it after a while. Actually, by the end I didn't want to take the thing off because it really did keep me warm.

I was also given a pair of water-shoes (or river-socks or some combination of the two terms) to protect my feet. I was warned about a curious creature called a Zebra Mussell. It seems these strange little things amuse themselves by sitting on the floor of the lake and sticking a sharp pointy thing up the way in the hope that some unsuspecting windsurfer might step on them. Odd, I know. I think they might be a product of The Fall.

The windsurfing itself took place over two days. The first was fairly windy. In fact, as we were in the water we noticed the clouds were getting darker and we expected a storm to come in soon. I actually saw lightning in the distance but I didn't mention it to Marcel until afterwards because I didn't want him to call a halt to things. We went in when it started raining. (As if that would stop us in Scotland!) The second day was much more placid and I found it much easier then. Having said that, I did have a day of experience under my belt, as it were.

As with a lot of sports, windsurfing has a bit more to it than meets the eye. You have to keep your balance on the board and you have to point the board in the right direction. The mast must lie at right-angles to the board on the surface of the water. You also need to lift the mast out of the water with your back to the wind and ensure that when it gets close to upright your body is counter-balancing enough that you can hold it at arms-length. Then once you can do that all you need to think about is rotating the sail to catch some wind and steer it in the direction you want to go. What could be easier? Well, pretty much every other water sport ever invented, except that kiteboarding one. It's wack.

I managed to stand on the board. That was ok. It was quite hard to get onto it in the first place because the board has a hard surface and kneeling on it is sore on the knees. Once standing, I had to be sure my feet were equidistant from the mast. (Great word) This meant I was applying equal pressure to both sides of the board so it wouldn't rotate either way.

The next thing was to raise the mast out of the water. This is achieved by picking up a rope that is attached to the mast and pulling it towards you, leaning back and using your bodyweight rather than your arms. As you do this, it might get interesting. Hopefully you have positioned yourself with your back to the wind and your board across the way. If so, the sail will point directly away from you as it comes out of the water and it won't catch any wind. Think of this as being in "neutral". Now imagine an automatic windsurfing board. That'd be weird.

If the wind is NOT directly behind you, it gets fun at this point. The wind blows the sail until it points in the direction the wind is blowing. Think of the sail here like the classic "Dad's hankie prior to launching a kite". If the sail starts to turn, you can no longer rely on it as a couter-balance and the chances are you'll fall in. If you don't fall in, you can correct the situation by rotating the board until it is perpendicular to the sail.

Rotating the board is achieved by putting more weight on one foot than the other. Whatever side you push will go forwards, so left foot goes clockwise and right foot goes anti-clockwise. This is a bit weird at first but after a while I found myself instinctively using my feet to correct the angle of the board to the sail as the wind changed or the board drifted.

As the mast gets closer to you, you need to grab the bar. The bar goes all the way round the sail and it's what you hold on to while riding. It's not possible to raise the mast out of the water by pulling on the bar in the first place because you wouldn't be able to keep your balance wrestling with the force of the wind, weight of the mast and your own balance on the board.

Once you have the bar in your hand (I managed this a few times) you start to rotate the sail to one side. The first time I did this I got a fright because it was the first day I mentioned and the wind was STRONG. I suddenly caught the wind and thought "Oh no! What do I do now?". I answered my own question by promptly falling into the lake. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the next thing on the list.

All in all, I had a great time. It was tricky and demanding on my balance, co-ordination and physical endurance but I liked it. By the end I was becoming quite confident with the first couple of steps like correcting the board angle and raising the mast out of the water. The part I was finding tricky was leaning back enough so that I could hold the bar at arms-length. I was standing too upright and pulling the mast completely vertical. This meant I didn't have much stability and my arms were weakening fast.

The other bizarre thing of note was that I got slashed by a tiger mussel, despite my protective footwear. The blighter got me on the hand. I think it was actually my very first attempt and I fell backwards off the board. I instinctively reached out my hands behind me to break the fall and cut my right thumb in the process. I didn't feel anything but when I was about to climb onto the board again, I noticed blood coming out of my hand. The cut seemed to be fairly deep. When I looked at it the area inside was white with a few red dots of blood on it. It looked odd to me. Someone later suggested the white stuff was called "bone" but I don't think it was that deep.

Heidi and Brian's Wedding

2006-10-02T04:37:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I'm totally on a roll with this blog-a-thon thing, but my battery is running out and I can't connect to the Internet and charge my battery at the same time, so this is going to be some pretty rapid blogging...

The wedding was really cool. I had a great time. It was outdoors in an apple orchard. They had a grassy area set up with two sets of chairs and the obligatory aisle down the middle. At the end was a nice canopy/gazeebo kind of set up with flowers and what not. The whole area was surrounded on three sides by trees on the left, right and just beyond the aforementioned canopy thingy in front of us. They also had some leaves and other autumnal things strewn on the ground for the bridal party to walk on as they entered.

The most noteworthy thing in the ceremony itself was the prayers of the nations. I'm not just saying that because I was part of it. I thought it was a really cool idea. They basically called up lots of people of varying nationalities and language skills to bless them in their own tongue and to welcome them to their nation as a representative of that place. Lacking the Gaelic for the occasion, I prayed in a Scottish accent. Many wept at the beauty of my words and thousands got saved. Ok, so I made that bit up, but it was good anyway.

The reception was unlike any I've ever been to. As well as the expected speeches, Heidi and Brian took time to individually honour each of their bridesmaids, groomsmen and parents. If you're not familiar with "honouring" just think of it as the opposite of a Scottish wedding. They said really nice things about each of the people I mentioned, and they meant it. (Compared with us saying nasty things and not meaning it.)

All in all, a great day was had by all. My battery's about to die so I'll sign off now.

A house in the country

2006-10-02T04:30:00.000+01:00

Although I've lived in the city (or town) all my life, I still feel like I'm a country boy trapped inside an city boy's body. Is that bizarre? Probably. One of the places I got to stay on my travels was in the blip of the Ontario map known as Baden. My friends Chris and Lorri stay there and it also happens to be really close to Stratford, where the wedding was.

Chris and Lorri's house is in a new area where some of the houses on the street are still wooden frames and one is still a big muddy bit of ground. Theirs hadn't even had the driveway paved yet. The coolest thing by far, though, was the view behind their house. The back garden was freshly laid turf (covering all manner of building refuse I wouldn't wonder) with a fence at the end. Beyond the fence was a rather large corn field. Yes, corn. I looked at it up close and I could see them on the cob, on the plant. Weird. So that's where that stuff comes from. I kept expecting Mel Gibson to burst out and annouce "you won't get famous doing this". From the upstairs window, I could see across the field to the rest of the farmland. It's nice to get out of the city.

Eating in my favourite places in Toronto

2006-10-02T04:25:00.000+01:00

It's funny the things you miss about a place. Most people who have spent significant time at TACF could be excused for listing things like "the presence of God" and "the Father's love" as things they miss when they leave. Well, I missed all day breakfasts and quirky Japanese food. I suppose we're all different.

Within my first day or so back in Toronto, I had eaten at a number of my favourite establishments. First of all, I had a Beef Teriyaki at the infamous Woodbine Mall, near TACF. Later on, I managed to make it to Perkins, where they do all day breakfast, 24 hours a day. What a deal! I always think of breakfast food as very special. It's kind of like my equivalent to caviar or lobster. What is the reason for this accolade? Well, basically, places like McDonalds stop serving it at 10 or 11 so I'm never there in time to buy it.

Sailing on Lake Ontario

2006-10-02T03:58:00.000+01:00

The day after arriving in Toronto, my roommate-for-a-few-days, Maciek, offered to take me out sailing on Lake Ontario. Although it was September, it didn't take me too long to agree. It was pretty good fun. I liked the fact that all of the odd looking wee bits and pieces on the boat actually served some function or other. It was also pretty cool to all of a sudden be very interested in the direction of the wind, relative to where you want to go. Too often these days we take for granted that we have motors and engines to take us wherever we want to go regardless of the environmental conditions.

We sailed out of Port Credit and headed towards Toronto. Although it was quite far away, the CN Tower still dominated the skyline from our position. We headed towards it for a while. I took a turn of steering (or should that be "navigating" or "piloting"?) and it was a strange feeling. Whenever I turned the tiller one way, there was a short delay as the new angle of the rudder caused the water to deflect off it. I would then realise that I turned it quite far so I would compensate in the opposite direction. For a while the boat was wiggling from side to side as I tried to keep the CN Tower in line with the bow. As time went by, I tried a form of "prophetic steering" where I turned it a bit and then guessed how far I had oversteered before the boat actually turned. Either that or I made smaller adjustments, I don't know which.

On the way back, it was more tricky. This was because the wind had been at our back on the way out and now we had to sail into the wind. "How do you sail into the wind?" I hear you ask. Fear not, I shall explain. It seems that a sailing boat can still use the wind by pointing diagonally past it. In other words, if you were facing into the wind, you could turn say 45 degrees to the left or the right and the wind would propell you in the direction you're facing. How exactly does that work? Well I think the wind kind of pushes past the boat, causing it to move in the direction that has least resistance in the water, which would be the direction it's facing. Also, I suppose you can turn the sail a bit. I don't actually know what I'm talking about. I'm just guessing.

In order to get back to where we started, we had to adopt this 45 degree angle to the wind that I was just talking about. The only problem with that was that we really wanted to go into the wind, rather than off at some angle to a different destination altogether. For that reason we had to do some tacking. This is simply a technique where you travel to the left of the wind for a while and then turn 90 degrees to travel right of the wind for the same distance again. You then keep repeating this until you get to your destination. Think of the direction you want to go as a straight line up and down the way, and the actual path as a zig-zag line that veers off to one side and then turns back across but gets to the end eventually. Ok, that was a rubbish comparison. I basically repeated what I just said. Undaunted, I carry on...

Sailing into the wind is a bit slower than having it behind you, as one might expect. For this reason, we changed the front sail to a bigger one to help speed things up. This was pretty good fun. I had to go to the bow (front for you landlubbers) of the ship and lower the front sail, unclip it and gather it into a big bag. I then had to repeat the process in reverse to attach the larger sail. It was great fun. All that bouncing up and down made me slightly sea-sick but it was good to feel alive again.

The return trip was much bouncier and the boat tended to lean to one side quite impressively. Maciek assured me that it would be impossible for the boat not to right itself in the event of an extreme "leaning" (?) situation. The reason for this is that the keel is very heavy compared to the weight above the water. Basically, that means if it capsizes it'll right itself. Thankfully no capsizing occured, although a jaunty angle was entertaining in its own way.

Blog catch-up

2006-10-02T03:54:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I'm about to splurge lots of stories onto my blog as fast as possible. I don't want to do them as one big super-post, though, because then it's harder to find them in the future. I will post them as separate posts, starting with the topics I promised in my most recent post.

Having fun in Canada

2006-09-24T15:20:00.000+01:00

I realise it's been a few days since I've written anything but that doesn't mean nothing has happened recently. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I've got so many fun photos and videos from my adventure so far that I want to do them justice when I write about them here. Until I get round to doing that properly, though, I'll give you a sneak peek just now of the things I'm going to be talking about.

1) Sailing on Lake Ontario
2) Eating in my favourite places in Toronto
3) Staying with friends in a house that looks out over endless fields
4) Going to Heidi & Brian's wedding

I don't know if this is worse than not posting at all, but I just wanted everyone to know I've not forgotten about you and I'll write more details soon.

I have slept

2006-09-19T18:01:00.000+01:00

I'm now part way through my first full day in Canada. I got up at about 10:15 which was a fairly reasonable time to get up. I had gone to bed at about 11 o'clock the night before. Oddly enough, despite my being awake for so long, it still took me a wee while to eventually get to sleep.

I was trying to figure out just how long I had been awake when I did finally go to bed. I had got up at 4:10 am (Glasgow time) the morning of the flight. I then went to bed at 11 pm (Toronto time). That's about 24 hours all together!

This morning when I woke up, I had no idea what time it was because I was in the basement and my phone which is my only clock was in the other room. I thought I would probably wake early since I've moved 5 time zones to the left. :) The first few times I therefore went back to sleep.

The other odd thing is that my throat is really sore today. It's possible it is from the flight but I don't think that could be it, because I had already been in Canada 12 hours since the flight without any problems. I actually think it's an odd sleeping characteristic of mine. I know that I can snore for Scotland and I think this is especially true when my body has missed out on some slumber. Perhaps I have a "snore quota" that needs to be fulfilled and the lack of recent sleep has left my body with little option but to compensate. I'll keep drinking lots of water and see how it goes from here.

Kenada

2006-09-18T19:49:00.000+01:00

I have arrived safe and sound in Toronto. I had a direct flight from Glasgow. It was cool to get a direct flight rather than having to change planes somewhere.

The flight was scheduled to depart at 8:15 am which all sounds very civilised, but in reality I was meant to be there three hours in advance. Yep, that's 5:15 am. Well I was a couple of minutes late but it was fine. Checking in was a bit slower than usual because they were being very strict with the security measures.

First of all, passengers were only allowed one carry on item each. Secondly, it had to fit in a wooden box near the counter. They were very strict with the fact that the bag had to completely be contained within the box. This meant a lot of people had to re-pack certain items. I had to move my musical instruments from my backpack to my suitcase.

I had a bit of a silly moment when waiting to board the plane. They were boarding by row number which was fine. They started off with rows 1-4 or something like that for first class. Then they did something like rows 22 to 32. My boarding card said row 33 so I groaned inwardly and then waited for my row to be called. Next they said something like rows 16 to 32. I thought it was odd that they were going in the wrong direction. It was then that I noticed that 33 was actually the GATE number and I was actually in row 22. I could have gone earlier!

I got a whole row to myself which was so cool. There were three seats, from the right windows to an aisle. Unfortunately the nearest TV screen wasn't working so I had to watch the one a bit further down the plane.

All in all the flight was good and the cabin crew were very cheerful and helpful which always makes a difference.

Stay tuned for more updates of my antics!

Crazy Week

2006-09-17T00:27:00.000+01:00

It really has been a crazy week in more ways than one. We have had an amazing prophetic conference at our church this week with Patricia Bootsma and her team from Jubilee Christian Fellowship in Stratford, Ontario. It was especially busy for me because I was doing sound. This meant I had to be there early for each session and available for the band during sound check as well as being there throughout the sessions. I also knew a few of the guys in the team so we invariably hung out together when the evening meetings finally finished around 10:30pm or thereabouts.

As if this wasn't enough to be keeping me busy, I was also packing everything up. I've been getting ready to finally move out of my flat and today was the day. I am writing this at the home of my good friends Phillip and Sarah who have let me stay here tonight. I am currently of no fixed abode! Well, ok, technically speaking my parents' address is the one I use but I'm in transit already, although my flight doesn't leave till Monday morning.

I'm starting to get pretty excited about going to Kansas City. Even though it's been a really busy week, there's something I love about being active. I feel kind of reluctant to say I like being busy because I know the whole School of Ministry thing was so much about rest and not striving. I would say, though, that it's being active rather than striving that I enjoy. :) I like feeling tired when my head finally hits the pillow (or cave floor) at night. It's good to have a sense that I've actually done something today!

With that thought I'm going to leave. It's late and I AM actually tired! Nice one!

Blog of the Day, apparently

2006-09-06T09:41:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed my previous post was a bit more techy than my usual ponderings in here. Part of the reason for that is that I wanted to follow up on a my post about the new look for the blog. It seems that entry earned me the title of "Blog of the Day" on the aptly titled blogoftheday.org website.

Here's a nice wee link to it so you can see for yourself:

For those of you who were a bit perplexed at the complexity of my discussion on CSS and HTML, I want to reassure you that normal blogging will resume momentarily. Thanks for your patience!

Slight tweak of layout

2006-09-02T13:38:00.000+01:00

I noticed that the "Edit HTML" feature of Blogger Beta was now active so I've been trying to make a few small improvements to the layout of my blog by hacking the CSS and HTML a bit. I say "hacking" just because these changes weren't possible through the layout editor itself.

Today's shopping list contained two items:

Change my Dari Blog Description to be right-justified.

Change the font of the Blog Description to one that looks a bit nicer.

Right-Justifying the text

The Blog Description is written in Dari, which is an Arabic-based language. It is read from right to left and, consequently, should really be right-justified on the page for normal situations. (Granted, in English we sometimes right-justify things that are written in English, but that is in special cases such as the header of a letter or something.)

There are two ways I knew of to right-justify the text. Firstly, you could use the CSS attribute of "text-align:right". I was able to do this by editing the Template HTML and finding the rule for "#header .description". However, this isn't really the best solution. Why do I say that? Well, because the direction of the text is implied by the content, not just by style. As we are all starting to catch on to these days, Style=CSS and Content=HTML. Therefore, an HTML solution would be better here.

The HTML solution I had in mind was to use the dir attribute. It is used to indicate that a piece of content is either ltr (left to right) or rtl (right to left). To make this change, I had to check the "Expand Widget Templates" checkbox above the HTML editor, because the HTML for the Blog Description is hidden inside the Header widget.

Inside this widget, I tried applying the dir="rtl" attribute to a number of different elements but it didn't work. Now as I write this, I'm wondering if it only affects the direction of the characters while not implying a change in justification of text one way or the other.

A quick check on the web reveals this W3C article which suggests setting the directionality on a block element should change the justification. Oh well. I've stuck with the CSS option for now, but I don't like it.

Changing the Blog Description's Font

The font for the Blog Description can be changed through the Fonts and Colours section of the Template area of Blogger Beta. You can choose the font family and size as well as bold and italic settings. It contains the following fonts:

Arial

Courier

Georgia

Times

Trebuchet

Verdana

While I understand that these are probably the only fonts you can assume a user has available, I would still like to add a font of my own choosing to the front of the list. With CSS, the browser will attempt to use the first font family specified and then roll over to the second if the first is not installed and so on.

In my previous Blog Description, I used the Tahoma font which makes Arabic characters look quite nice. I wanted to make that the first font it would attempt to use here, with Verdana and sans-serif as the other options.

Poking about the CSS in the template, I discovered the #header .description rule contained the following attribute for the font:

font: $descriptionFont;

This is using a placeholder which is later substituted with the values you chose earlier in the font settings. Very clever - a spot of dynamic CSS. I tried adding my font to the front of the list like so:

font: Tahoma,$descriptionFont;

This didn't work, though, because the $descriptionFont variable does more than simply state the font family, it specifies font weight, size, boldness, italicisity (?) and finally font family. My attempt to hack it produced this CSS:

font: Tahoma,normal normal 173% Verdana, sans-serif;

This isn't a valid CSS rule since Tahoma should appear between 173% and Verdana.

In the end, what I did was add a font-family attribute immediately after the font: $descriptionFont; line:

font: $descriptionFont;
font-family: Tahoma,Verdana,sans-serif;

This way, I can still use $descriptionFont to alter bold, italic and size settings, while my rule will only override the font family.

I think in the future, custom fonts could be supported through Template -> Fonts and Colours by allowing users to specify a font family in a text box while still forcing them to choose one of the generic fonts as well. Their own font would be put at the start of the list and ignored if the user doesn't have it installed.

Phew! That was quite a long post. Sorry about that!

Come Alive

2006-09-02T01:01:00.000+01:00

"Do not ask yourself what the world needs, but ask yourself what makes you come alive because the world needs people who have come alive."

- John Eldredge

Everythin's up to date in Kansas City

2006-08-30T23:33:00.000+01:00

...They've gone about as fur as they c'n go!

(If you have no idea what that's about, don't worry about it. Just read on. It's nothing to do with what I'm about to say.)

Well I'm on the move again. I've only been in Scotland a year since I was unceremoniously dumped by Canadian Immigration, but it feels like a long time.

I've finally decided that since I hate programming so much these days, I should really get on with it and do something else. In the words of Why Don't You (theme song), I'm going to "...switch off my TV set [or monitor in this case] and do something less boring instead."

The "something" I am going to do is a church planting course in Kansas City. I will be at the All Nations Training Center, doing CPx, which is the "Church Planting Experience".

I'm actually leaving in 2 and a half weeks which is not very long at all. There are still a few details to finalise such as my flat and... oh yeh.. all the money!

If you feel like supporting me financially by any chance, have a look to the right of the page here and you should see a PayPal donation button. You can use that to send me money. Isn't technology handy?

New look for the blog

2006-08-30T23:26:00.000+01:00

I've been looking at the new Blogger beta and I decided to switch over. To make the most of the new layout tools, I decided to switch over my layout to one of the new templates. Now the layout editor is much more simplistic. It seems that not everyone who edits their blog layout really wants to tinker about with HTML and CSS all day. I have to say that when I'm not getting paid for it, the novelty does wear off a wee bit.

The new layout editor is much more like a proper content management system with blocks on the page where you can add/edit/delete page elements. All very nice.

Being the details kind of guy, though, I still want to make a couple of tiny CSS tweaks that I can't seem to get at right now. All in all, though, it's pretty good.

War Wounds on Flickr

2006-08-17T23:11:00.000+01:00

For those of you who've been unable to play my video of my recent longboarding "war wounds", I've uploaded some pics to Flickr.

Go to this page to check them out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theken/tags/warwounds/

Käck

2006-08-17T22:35:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I ate a Käck. It was quite nice.

Reflections on risk, pain and failure

2006-08-13T23:27:00.000+01:00

I was reflecting for a brief second there on my experience yesterday with the longboard. If you didn't read yesterday's post, the gist of it is that I fell off and it was sore.

I was just thinking about various people's attitude to what happened. Someone said that it was time for me to start "acting my age" and that I can't treat my body like that. I began to think about what they meant by that. Was it simply the idea that grown-ups don't ride longboards (or any skateboards) or was it something else? Maybe it was an attitude that since grown-ups don't heal as quickly, we shouldn't risk things like that any more.

It just made me think, because I feel as if we lose our sense of adventure as we get older. Children are expected to take risks, to learn to ride their bike, skin their knee occasionally. However, if I, being 29, decide to take up a new hobby such as longboarding, there's not the same social acceptance of that. The general attitude is "ooh - watch you don't hurt yourself" and that sort of thing.

I was weighing up the two sides of my longboarding experience. I have had three months of fun with my board so far. I ride to church, I use it to get around and I really love the ride. There's something liberating about carving your way down the street with a smooth ride.

The flip side (excuse the pun) of my experience is the fall I had yesterday. Assessing how I feel just now, I have a bit of a sting on my left shoulder, elbow and hip. (Can you tell I ride regular?) I also have a bit of what I assume to be whiplash in my neck. I just realised today that I totally think all the fun I've had balances out the pain I've felt, and continue to feel. If I had never got on a longboard for fear of falling off then sure, I wouldn't be in pain just now, but I wouldn't have had the same great experences either.

Is this a pointless discussion? I don't think so. I think it highlights our attitude to risk, fear of pain, fear of failure and so on. I don't ride because I want to get hurt, that'd be pretty twisted. I ride because I love it. If I fail from time to time, I will learn from it and get up and start again. I reckon the only way you can guarantee you never fail is to never try.

I like taking risks. I think God made me that way for a reason. Time will tell!

War Wounds

2006-08-12T20:43:00.000+01:00

Today, I fell off my longboard for the first time. Hopefully it'll be the last time as well! I was carving and the board turned too far and stopped instantly. I think I went over some loose stones that made it skid. I flew off it, rolled a bit and then landed on my back, finishing off with a wee bump to the head as well.

Being the sharing sort, I thought I would let everyone else see the assorted scrapes for themselves. (Mum, you probably wouldn't enjoy this one.)

Note: I realise I look somewhat out of it in this video. I just want to reassure everyone that I was very tired, slightly sunburnt, possibly whiplashed and in no way under the influence of anything questionable.

Tentmaking

2006-08-10T01:11:00.000+01:00

I've been wondering about something lately. It's something about a biblical character that most people have probably never given a thought, or seen the relevance of. However, it kind of sums up where I am just now.

"Did Paul enjoy making tents?"

There's only one reference I could find to Paul being a "tentmaker" in the bible. (I used Bible Gateway, as opposed to a thorough personal study.) Despite the fact that so little is said of Paul's tentmaking skills, the word "tentmaker" has become a Christianese term for a job you do that isn't especially spiritual or enjoyable but you do it to pay the bills. I'm finding myself dying a bit each day as I sit in front of a computer in my empty flat. It really is rubbish. I'm convinced I should be doing something I'm passionate about.

This brings me back to the question, "Did Paul enjoy making tents?" Was it something he was passionate about or did it kill him on the inside? I only had a very brief look at the chapter where Paul's tentmaking was mentioned (Acts 18) but I can't help feeling the meaning was one of a brief, transitional phase where he returned to his previous trade because the people he was staying with also made tents. He didn't do it for years, desperate for something else.

Maybe the term "tentmaker" has been exaggerated from the original context, or maybe I just can't accept the conclusion that everyone else seems to have settled for, that fulfillment in your work is unimportant, and the paying of bills is all that really matters.

For me, I have this possibly naïve notion that we should be passionate about what we do. We'll see how it goes. I'll bet my income on it.

Snowboarding in July - God is good

2006-07-21T20:44:00.000+01:00

Last night I went for a lesson at the sno zone at the Braehead Xscape centre. It was pretty good stuff. For those who don't already know, it's an indoor slope with actual snow. The whole area is kept at a temperature of -5. (It feels so hot when you come out.)

I did a 1.5 hour lesson in Freestyle Level 1. Freestyle refers to doing tricks such as jumps and spins rather than simply riding down the hill. Level 1 refers to the fact that it's as basic as they can make it. I figured that since it's not a very big slope anyway, I'm not going to get too much of a thrill from just bombing the hill because it'll be over in 10 seconds.

In the lesson I did the following:

Nose press

Tail press

Ollies

Nollies

Flatland spins (both frontside and backside)

Switch (Fakie) Riding

It was pretty cool stuff. It was encouraging to find that my ollies were actually better than I thought they were. I was able to jump 3 rows of cones and my instructor was finally relieved when I clipped one because I kept clearing everything he put in front of me.

Another part that was really encouraging was when I started to ride switch. I found that once I got over my fear of putting my weight on my right foot (normally the rear foot for me) I was able to link a few turns and swing my back foot round pretty well. I'm still not quite ambidextrous by any means but I'm a lot better than I was.

The flatland spins were a useful introduction to riding fakie. The deal is that as you go down the hill, you keep rotating the board in one direction. This means that for half of the spin your usual front foot is leading and then for the other half, you're leading with your weaker foot. The trick is really to shift your weight from one foot to the other when your board is across the slope.

After the lesson we had half an hour of practice time on the big slope. It's not HUGE but for an indoor venue it's pretty impressive. I did a few runs riding fakie and only fell once. (and I was actually watching someone else fall when it happened)

Today I'm feeling a bit worse for wear. This usually happens the first time you ride in a season. My back's pretty tight and my triceps are a wee bit achey too. I feel it in the back of my neck - possibly from trying to jump and spin. My bum muscles hurt when I walk as well.

All in all, though, it was a grand day out, and I would heartily recomment a spot of freestyle riding to anyone who's getting bored with simply carving down the hill.

While writing this entry, I found an amusing list of snowboarding terminology.

Esau living as Jacob

2006-07-12T20:19:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about the two personalities of Isaac's sons - Esau and Jacob. I'm not going down the road of Esau despising his birthright or Jacob being a cheat. I'm thinking more of the notion of Esau being a wild man of the outdoors and Jacob preferring to spend his time around the tents. I feel as if I'm an Esau who has been raised as Jacob.

I became interested in computers in childhood when I didn't really get the chance to go "out" just for the sake of going out. I would go to friends' houses. Consequently we did Jacob-ish things like sit around computers for hours on end. Now, years later, I've developed a love for the outdoors that I really wonder what would have been different if I had found this sooner.

I have told friends before that I would love to go back in time to the day I decided computers were cool. I'd love to take that kid and say "Hey, here's a skateboard, a snowboard, a kite, a tent..."

I know God can still use what I've learned. I have skills that are useful. (Still don't know much about bo staff or numchucks, though.) I've realised, though, that my future is not yet written. I don't have to think down the narrow lines of computer programming forever and a day. I think there is a better way...

A week without Levi

2006-07-12T20:16:00.000+01:00

It's been an interesting week or so. I had to send Levi (Ken's faithful lappy) back to Samsung to get a problem fixed. It's interesting how different my life has been without it.

I've been listening to teaching tapes from when Graham Cooke was at our church last year. I've also been worshipping, reading my bible and basically doing useful, productive things.

God's been showing me some cool stuff about myself and my future as well which is all pretty encouraging.

Back from Rio

2006-06-04T01:11:00.000+01:00

I just got back from Rio a few days ago and I'm slowly adjusting back to life in Scotland. The biggest thing right now is trying to adjust to the timezone. It's 1:30 am and I'm not especially tired. I hope I get to sleep when I finally go to bed.

The trip was amazing. It was such an experience to see another world. The kids in the favela were so sweet. They were always smiling and happy to see us. They remembered my name and the second day they were shouting "Ken! Ken!" as they ran up to me. They really do love very easily.

One day I was playing a game with them where they would describe something with gestures till I guessed the name of it in English. (This game was motivated by my lack of Portuguese.) To begin with it was things like bicycle, kite, dog, bird and so on - the kind of things you would expect. Then things took an interesting turn when they said "granad". From their description it was clear that they were talking about a hand-grenade. It brought it home to me that despite their loving, playful innocence, they were essentially living in a warzone where violence and death were not uncommon.

Leaving for Rio in the morning

2006-05-21T00:25:00.000+01:00

Well, it's finally here - my last night in Scotland before the much-anticipated trip to Rio. I think I'm excited about it now. Some people get excited about things way in advance but I'm quite short-sighted in a sense when it comes to things like this. Once I'm on the plane, I'll be forced to contemplate what's about to happen. I find a change from your normal surroundings tends to prompt the brain to focus on what's about to take place.

We're going to be away for just under two weeks. We'll be doing some physical work on a school/orphanage of sorts in one of the favelas of Rio. I'm excited about getting away from the computer, actually. I have my doubts about being a programmer, as it happens. I just think I like the outdoors and people too much to make a true programmer. I mean, I can do it if I have to but generally it bores me to tears. Now professional snowboarder or longboarder might be a different story...

Longboard

2006-05-11T23:34:00.001+01:00

On Monday, I bought myself a longboard.

I've been riding it every day since then. In fact, it's been a bit painful on the right hamstring (my kicking leg) which took me by surprise a bit. I've been trying to learn how to stop properly. It seems the best technique for me to learn at this stage is footbraking. That doesn't mean breaking your foot, incidentally, but using your foot to slow down the board.

Yesterday I was riding through the park and a group of girls whistled and waved at me. It seems I'm drawing attention to myself, although that wasn't my purpose.

Nat and Nick's Wedding

2006-05-09T00:59:00.000+01:00

On Friday I had the pleasure of going to Nat and Nick's wedding. It really was a great time.

The wedding was at St Aldates Church in Oxford which is a very nice place indeed, although I did spot a masonic symbol on a wooden panel inside the building. That point aside, the place was very nice.

One amazingly awesome moment was when Nicky, the bride, entered the ceremony. It was the most spectacular entrance of a bride I've ever seen. No, she didn't abseil from the ceiling or ram-raid through the wall (although they would be fun) but she had the most amazing music ever.

In keeping with the North American way of doing weddings, the bridesmaids came down the aisle first. They came one at a time, interspersed with the occasional flower girl distributing petals on the floor and not quite seeing what all the fuss was about. Just as the last bridesmaid reached the front, the music reached its climax and in came the bride and her father, a beautiful sight to behold as the choir sang. The track they used was Benedictus from The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace by Karl Jenkins.

I played bass with the band, since Joel couldn't make it. I've played a few times before although not very much. The church had a bass so I just had to show up and use it. However, when I got there I discovered it was fretless. In case you don't know, playing a fretless bass means you have to get your fingers in EXACTLY the right position or the note will be out of tune. I'm not sure, but I don't think I'd ever played one before. Well, I played at the wedding all right. By the end of the practice I had a blood blister and a regular blister on my two "plucking" fingers. It went ok, though.

One of the other cool things that happened that day (though not as spectactular as Nicky's entrance) was seeing The Queen. Yes, I really did. It turns out that while the wedding was in progress, Her Majesty was visting Christ Church just across the road from St Aldates. After the bridal party left, some of us were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time as The Queen's car left Christ Church and drove right past us.

Being the organised sort, I had my camera phone close to hand and made sure to capture the moment as best as I could. The Queen was sitting in the back-right seat, wearing a pink suit and matching hat. She waved to the crowd as she passed but since she was on the far side, I didn't get the best view. Still, for one brief moment I saw her and that was amazing in itself.

I was thinking of how much we lowly people get excited about seeing the rich and famous. I don't tend to be really interested in the private lives of celebrities or any of that sort of thing, but it was special to see The Queen. We waited there for some time but there were those who had waited much longer. I'm sure there were those who waited for hours and their reward was a passing glimpse of the head of The United Kingdom - a genuine royal figure.

Although the experience was so transient, each person's life was changed for ever. I'm sure all of them would have told at least someone that they saw The Queen that day. Something of that magnitude has to be passed on.

Having said all that, consider our response in church when we meet with God. Do we really believe we've met with the creator of the universe? Do we honestly think that we've had a moment where someone more powerful than The Queen has not only passed and waved but stopped and interacted with each and every one of us on a deeply personal level? I think half the time we think we made the whole thing up.

I know I've had experiences of God. I have no doubt about that. However, I don't know if it's the invisible and therefore less tangible nature of God or if it's simply the enemy sowing doubt, but we feel incapable of talking to other people about it sometimes. Maybe we think they just wouldn't believe it. I don't know quite what it is, but I know I was much more of an evangelist for my queen encounter than I've been for any of my God encounters, and that's something that concerns me.

Being Judged

2006-05-02T12:17:00.000+01:00

I had an interesting experience on Sunday that I thought was worth mentioning. We were having a curry festival at church to raise money for our Rio Trip and we were all going to dress up in suitable curry-related clothes. Well, since I had lived in Pakistan before, I had my own Shalwar Kameez. I decided to wear that along with my Pakistani waistcoat and Afghani cap.

So, I walked to church dressed like that, not really expecting anyone to make a fuss about it. Well, I hadn't got far when I got a very extreme reaction in Queens Park. I was walking along a fairly wide path (wide enough for a car or two) and there was a middle-aged to elderly Scottish lady walking her dog, heading towards me.

As soon as she saw me, she did a MAJOR body-swerve and walked as far from me as possible, along the opposite side of the path. I think if there was a road in the middle to cross, she would have but given the fact there was only the path, she didn't have the choice.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it got worse when she actually passed me. I was going to smile and say "hello" or something like that if she looked at me but she actually turned her head away as she passed and actually slightly raised her arm towards me as if to protect herself from my obvious evil presence. It was SO bizarre. I've never seen anything like it.

Walking through Govanhill, a Pakistani man congratulated me on being well dressed. I'm not sure if he thought I was a convert to Islam or if he just liked seeing someone wearing traditional Pakistani clothing.

When I was at church, a number of people tried to joke about my appearance by saying things like "I'm surprised you didn't get arrested walking here dressed like that" or "Do you have a bomb vest under there?" It actually really angered me. I don't mind people poking fun at me if they think my hair's ridiculous or if they don't like my taste. I mean, whatever, have your opinion. I think what I reacted to so much about the comments was the ignorance and judgment it demonstrated.

I happen to really care about people from the Middle East - Afghanistan in particular. It's horrible to think that for many people here in Scotland, whenever they see someone dressed in middle eastern clothing they immediately judge them as some kind of scary terrorist. I feel for the innocent people who fled the horrors of war in their homeland only to be judged and treated as wicked here by the people who have offered them refuge.

Strong Bad E-Mail 150!

2006-04-05T14:37:00.000+01:00

This is tremendous! I can't believe they are at 150 already. I remember e-mail 100 like it was um, not very long ago.

Some amusing quotes from this latest episode:

"Oh-ho-ho! Swirly photo-shop magic! I bet this thing could release some serious kacko demons."
- Strong Bad, when The Cheat "mashed go" on his Alternate Universe Portal.

"Zounds! A sarsparilla swimming hole! Last one in's a freemason!"
- Old Timey Strong Bad, when Tiny Handed Strong Bad unearthed a massive mug of Root Beer in the "Dig to China with your ears" contest.

The song at the end is pretty good too - "Save the last e-mail for Strong Bad".

E-Mail 150 is waiting for you right here.

Twenty-Nine

2006-03-27T00:42:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-14T02:41:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-03-13T03:11:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-10T01:16:00.001+01:00

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!

2006-03-09T00:30:00.000+01:00

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:

Video Blog!

2006-03-08T23:59:00.000+01:00

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?

Update on Rio trip - Project Info Online

2006-02-24T11:20:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned already, I'm going to Brazil in May/June to help do some work on a run-down school in a really poor part of Rio. We've now got a page set up on our church website with a bit more information. There is also a link there to make a donation via PayPal, if you are interested in doing so.

The page is: http://www.glasgowelim.org.uk/rio2006/

The circle of life

2006-02-22T14:22:00.000+01:00

Years ago, a fish was born. Ok, it might have been hatched but either way it came into existance. It probably didn't have a name or indeed much of a life but it was a tuna, so it was well looked after and didn't lack much.

Elsewhere, in a seemingly unrelated story, a hen laid some eggs. I think the hen had a name but it was more like a number, "10937.7". (No, really - it did have .7 on the end!) It might have had the luxury of being of the "free range" persuasion but more likely it was cooped up in a ...erm..coop and didn't see any more of those eggs after they rolled away through a maze of complex egg-gathering contraptions.

Meanwhile a cow chews the cud and performs a number of other cow-like activities that I will not elaborate on at this point. Her name is Mildred. Hopefully Mildred has escaped the wrath of the "cow tippers" who can damage a cow's milk for life (so I hear) by the trauma infliced on the poor beast. Speaking of milk, Mildred happens to be in fact a dairy cow, and today is milking day. So along comes the friendly farmer and milky-milky there you go. Mildred-minus-milk carries on the rigours of cow life.

In the dark soil of another, quite possibly distant field, a potato grows. I would be very surprised if it had a name but let's just call him Bob. Well, Bob's been sitting around for a while and it is with some alarm that he hears a rumbling sound as a potato-gathering-device-ok-I'm-not-a-farmer-give-me-a-break came along and wheeched Bob clean out of the ground. I say "clean" because this was one of the state-of-the-art kind that clean the potatoes as they're plucked from the bosom of the earth.

Bob's encounter with the potato plucker was nothing compared to what would happen to him a few days later. You see, he was baked for a while in an oven along with some of his pals, introduced to some butter made with Mildred's milk, some mayonnaise made from 10937.7's eggs and the meat/flesh/edibles of the nameless tuna from Paragraph 1! They were all then promptly carried home and scoffed by me for lunch today, giving me the energy to write a meaningless entry in my blog just now.

It's good to know that your life serves a higher purpose. Isn't it, Bob?

The Cave - Take 2!

2006-02-22T01:19:00.000+01:00

This past week we made another bold attempt at finding the cave. Spirits were high and confidence in the nineties when we set off at 7 pm on Friday night. I know what you're thinking, "7 pm in February? Won't it be dark then?" Well...yes, it was. And I know we couldn't find the cave before and ended up sleeping on the beach in the rain as a result but this time was different. You see, we'd been back during daylight and found the cave then so it meant this trip was much more likely to succeed.

As it turned out, we found it really easily this time. There were no wrong turns or stopping for directions. It was a guys' navigational dream come true. We got to the cave at 9 o'clock and made a fire. Well, Alan and Collin made a fire while I sat about and wondered when I'd finally learn how to make a fire.

We ate some food and eventually went to bed, or "bag" as the case may be. It was a bit chilly and slightly damp, although very tame compared to the DELUGE we slept under that fateful night last September. There was the occasional drip but that was all. I was sleeping on a slope, though, and whenever I woke up I found myself half on top of Alan whose only response was a slightly different snore to the usual one.

In the morning we got up and made some rolls and sausage. The sausage meat was cooked on a piece of slate which was pretty impressive work on Alan's part. Again, I was more of a spectator than a real participant. I did participate in making the food disappear. I've been doing that for years so I'm quite good at it by now.

We had a wee walk round to the top of the cliff overlooking our campsite. Collin "happened" to bring his abseiling (rapelling to you N. Americans) equipment with him. After a look around, we found a pretty good spot to anchor the rope and he proceeded to set up the equipment and then cheerfully hurl himself into the abyss, slowed down only by his skill with a rope. I thought he was mental. Then he tied the harness etc. onto the end of the rope and sent it back up to me using the pulley. "There you go!" he shouted and all of a sudden I started to feel a tad uneasy.

You may be forgiven for wondering why a rock climber such as I would go weak at the knees at the thought of abseiling. The main reason is that I'm used to using a "GriGri" for belaying. This device has an automatic locking mechanism so if you suddenly let go, it catches you. Well we were using the "old school" option of the basic abseiling device. If you let go of the rope with this one, you fall at full speed. (Still reading Mum? It's ok, it's got a happy ending!)

It took me a considerable length of time to convince my body to roll over the edge of the cliff while holding the rope quite firmly in the "locked off" position. I was so nervous I almost backed out and gave up completely. Finally when I was hanging there, it was pretty good. I didn't do it exactly right, though. The proper way to descend is to let go your grip slightly on the rope to let it slip through your hand. Well, I kind of chickened out and fed the rope through my hands a few inches at a time. It was pretty pathetic really, looking back on it. I mean, Collin was bouncing off the wall (his feet, it was his feet) and there I was going down at about 2 feet an hour.

So there we are. That's another couple of "firsts" for me. My first sleep in a cave and my first abseiling experience. Hey, I just realised something. I wanted to do something new each year and I've done that already in February. I need a new goal now...

I leave you with a picture I took of a stream as we made our way back to the car.

Nutella is a dip!

2006-02-17T18:38:00.000+01:00

nutella
Originally uploaded by theken.

I realised today that the people who make nutella could probably sell a whole lot more if they marketed it as a dip instead of a spread.

Regarding my previous post

2006-02-16T15:41:00.000+01:00

In case anyone's concerned/wondering/at all interested, my previous remarks regarding Valentine's Day weren't motivated by a sense of loneliness or misery. I just happened to think, "Oh yeh, I suppose it could be single awareness day." I had barely thought about it all day. Actually my biggest concern was that I was meeting a potential client at a restaurant at lunchtime to discuss a contract and I was concerned that people seeing me with him could get the wrong idea. The situation was saved, however, by the presence of a third party and a large pile of business-like paper on the table.

Single Awareness Day

2006-02-15T01:34:00.000+01:00

I was just thinking about Valentine's Day (which has just passed in my time zone). I noticed my good friend Steve had the title "Happy Single Awareness Day" on his MSN today and it got me thinking. There are a lot of issues I have with Valentine's Day.

Here they are in no particular order.

1) It has very little or nothing to do with Saint Valentine. It seems the closest link was that he was martyred on the 14th of February. Rather than remembering someone who really loved God to the point of surrendering his body to whatever end, people now buy dodgy cards with sexual messages and we have a day more focussed on sex than anything else.

2) It's a social obligation. Everyone in a relationship HAS to buy something for their significant other on Valentine's Day. If they don't, the world at large would agree that they are an unromantic whatever and the other person is better off without them. What happened to spontinaity? I think a lot of people don't really receive their gift at Valentine's Day because they know it's being given out of obligation. Hey, here's a thought. It's become religous. It's people doing what they're meant to do when they're meant to do it, regardless of whether they really want to.

3) It emphasises the solitude of those not in a relationship. As you get older and friends start pairing off it gets more noticeable. Trying to arrange anything on the 14th of February is pretty tricky because everyone (thanks to point #2) feels obliged to fulfill their social duty, national service or whatever you want to call it. In the end the "left overs" have to either sit and feel sorry for themselves or pretend that it's not really Valentine's Day and it's just another day (while checking the mail again just in case.)

4) It's a commercial rip-off. Everything is more expensive, such as flowers, chocolates and so on. First we have the social bullying to force you to buy things on a fairly un-special day and then we have the entrepreneurs cashing in on everyone's plight.

I'm going to stop at 4 because I don't want to appear completely heartless. I will say this. I am a romantic person. Really, I am. I just don't like being told when to be romantic. I'd much rather pick a random day each year to surprise that special someone in my life:

"Hey, happy Valentine's Day!"
"But it's September"
"So?"
etc...

Something as simple as choosing a different day would show that you are thinking about the person and being creative and maybe even spontaneous. Now isn't that so much better than being religious?

Another thought is that maybe if people were generally more romantic the rest of the year, there wouldn't be the same pressure to produce the goods on Valentine's Day. I think a lot of people cling to Valentine's Day as a lifeline of the last hope they have of receiving some kind of affirmation because their significant other will at least do something on Valentine's Day. Let's rise above this, people! Let's be romantic ALL YEAR ROUND! It doesn't need to be expensive, just thoughtful.

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now. I just need to check the mail. I think something might have got stuck behind the door...

I'm going to Rio!

2006-02-13T22:48:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's true! I am really going to Rio! A team of us from the church are going this summer to do some practical work on a school building in the City of God, a favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro. We will be there for around 10 days at the end of May. I'm pretty excited about it already! I've never visited the southern hemisphere before and Ali, my wee sister, already beat me to it so I need to catch up.

More importantly, though, it's really great to be part of something that actually matters. I often think to myself, "How much of what I do with my life really matters?" In the end, when all is said and done, what will last? I love snowboarding and rock climbing but it's not going to be these moments that count for much. It's going to be the times I showed kindness, compassion or love to someone who really needed it.

I've been learning about Rio in preparation for the trip. I've watched a few DVDs that are fiction, although they're based on the kind of thing that happens there. I've seen Cidade de Deus (City of God) and Cidade dos Homens.(City of Men) Both deal a lot with the day-to-day trials of children living in poverty and tempted by the drug culture as the easy way to make a lot of money.

Something that I realised while watching was that a lot of these kids don't set out to be drug dealers. They simply want to make money to survive. I know there are those who crave the power, the status and the notoriety but there are others who just want to make some money. It's so hard for these kids to make money any other way.

I really feel for the street children in Rio and I hope that by me going there I can show them love, maybe communicate to them that someone cares and the world's not forgotten about them.

Now would be a good time to mention that I'm raising my own funds for the trip. If anyone is interested in helping me out, please comment and we can talk.

Extra Thick Bread

2006-02-06T20:21:00.000+01:00

Extra Thick Bread
Originally uploaded by theken.

I bought a loaf of bread today that boasted the title "Extra Thick White". You can imagine my surprise when the "heel" turned out to be almost as long as my thumb! The rest of the loaf wasn't as thick, thankfully. It would probably have only had 6 slices if they were.

New Photos

2006-01-25T23:41:00.000+01:00

I uploaded some new photos on my Flickr account. I can't be bothered crfeating individual links for them all in here. If you want to see them, go to my Flickr page. Photos include Shocking numbers of empty bottles a new year (not mine), The Cave and Lego Hair.

Now I'm off to finish reading The Silver Chair.

xxxchurch.com

2006-01-12T09:10:00.000+01:00

I've discovered an amazing Christian website. It's called xxxchurch.com. I know many of you are already freaking out about the name because it has the "xxx" prefix. Allow me to explain, though.

The two guys who run the website have a vision for reaching people in the porn industry. They're pretty radical in their approach as well. While many Christians would just greet such people with the attitude of "you're sick, you need to stop that", their attitude is to show them God's love. After all, that's what Jesus did. He loved the people society turned their back on.

One of the radical things that Craig and Mike do is to go to porn exhibitions and set up a booth with the message "Jesus loves Porn Stars". They get all kinds of reactions but the message they're spreading is that Jesus loves everyone, whether that be pastors, nice Christians or even people in the porn industry. They write about their experiences on their blog.

At one such event they met a girl called Trinity who really wanted to get out of the porn industry but didn't have the money to do anything else. They launched an appeal for her on their website and raised enough money for her to go to college. Now she's moved to a different state, away from her old life. She's now studying cosmetology, which is what she had wanted to do all along. She has a blog where you can follow her progress in her new life.

As well as reaching out to people in the porn industry, Mike and Craig do a lot for churches to help people overcome addiction to porn. Let's face it, it's everywhere and being in the church doesn't make you immune. They do presentations at churches, talking about this issue. They also have a prayer wall on their website which is a forum where people can request prayer and discuss their struggles. They also have free accountability software which sends a list of everywhere you've been on the internet to an accountability partner every couple of weeks. I installed it on my computer. It's really simple and doesn't slow anything down.

I'm just so impressed with this ministry. They've got a really bold approach to the problem and I love it. I know it's going to bear a lot of fruit.

Ice Climbing!

2006-01-04T23:54:00.000+01:00

On Saturday (the last day of 2005) I had the amazing opportunity to go ice climbing. We went to a place called The Ice Factor. They have the biggest indoor ice climbing facility in the world! They have all kinds of technology that keeps the room like a giant fridge with lots of real ice on the walls!

It's quite strange after doing rock climbing. The things that hold you to the wall are the ice axes and the crampons. (sharp pointy bits on your boots) At first it feels quite clumsy, swinging these big pointy axes around but it started to feel a bit more natural after a while. I found that as I got more tired, it got harder and harder to actually lift an axe and swing it at the wall. My left arm got so tired that sometimes I'd swing and it'd deflect off the surface because I was unable to hold it straight. Other times it was tricky to get it OUT of the wall when I wanted to climb higher.

The funnest moment was when I was about a third of the way up the wall. I had one axe free because I was about to reach higher to stick it in there. Just as I moved a bit, though, the other axe slipped out of the crack in the ice that it was lodged into. Slowly, I started to rotate backwards, my feet still gripping the ice with the crampons. Instinctively, I swung at the wall with my right axe and it stuck in, immediately stopping the fall. It was a pretty cool moment, kinda like something out of a cheezy film.

It's all good fun, really. Doing something like that indoors is so much safer than out there in the REAL world. Man, it's a crazy sport, I tell you! We had the ropes anchored to metal girders which made up part of the structure of the ice room. (If you click on the picture you can see this more clearly in the big version.) When people ice climb "for real" they put big screws into the ice. Yes, THE ICE! The only thing holding them up is water. OK, frozen water but still. Man, it's water! I know that it was only ice I was gripping on my way up the wall as well. The difference is that when I did slip, the rope was attached to something more reliable.

Having said all that, it was a great experience and hopefully I'll get a chance to do it again some time. Now, if I can just find somewhere I can go snowboarding to try out my new bindings...

The gift of Christmas

2005-12-26T00:33:00.000+01:00

I was opening my presents this morning and for possibly the first Christmas in my life, I started to think of the symbolism of what we do at Christmas. In church life we're always careful to make sure everyone realises the symbolism when they take communion yet I find we don't think so much about it at Christmas.

What do I mean? Well, I'll explain a bit further. As I unwrapped my presents I wasn't focussed on the gifts themselves. I didn't even think of the kings and the gifts that they brought. As I peeled the shiny paper from various items, I thought of Jesus, God's gift to humanity, His answer to our condition. The gift of God, wrapped in flesh and blood, held together not by some cheap sticky-tape but by the love of the Father.

The gift was free. There was no persuading God or twisting his arm. It was his agenda all along to extravagantly give this gift to us. It's our choice if we just leave him under the tree.

That's not just a reference to salvation, either. How many times do we bang our head against the wall, forgetting the Christmas present we got a few years back that could solve the situation? How often do we call on Jesus? How often do I call on Jesus? Not enough. Not nearly enough. I complain to him a great deal. I don't think that really counts, though. I just find myself sounding more and more like a bunch of people that ended up getting eaten by the desert this one time...

Let's all remember the value of what we've got at our disposal.

Romulan Chief!

2005-12-24T19:54:00.000+01:00

OK, so last night when I took the pic of my straight hair, I thought I should do a profile as well, to give you a better idea of the shocking transformation that took place.

Straight Hair!

2005-12-23T15:25:00.000+01:00

I just got my hair cut at Mika on Kilmarnock Road. The girl that cut it encouraged me to leave the top to grow and she just trimmed the fringe and the back and sides. (Does that make it a short back and sides?) Anyway, she also STRAIGHTENED it which was quite a big deal, considering the amount of hair I have these days. The best part of all was that despite the time she spent straightening it, she only charged me £4.50 because she just cut the back and sides. Sweet!

UPDATE:

I should add that I actually took 30 pictures with my camera-phone before finding this one that I thought was good. Criteria were not cropping part of my head from the pic and remembering not to look too serious although really concentrating.

Also, every time I look in the mirror I think I'm a Romulan from Star Trek!

Hotel Rwanda made me cry

2005-12-15T00:13:00.000+01:00

I don't know what it is with me and REALLY serious films, especially with my last post being about Hitler.

Tonight I watched Hotel Rwanda and it really moved me. The story is based, I believe quite closely, on actual events during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. While angry Hutu mobs roamed the streets killing their Tutsi neighbours, one man opened up his hotel to welcome in refugees as they sought to save their lives from the massacre. The UN refused to stick around to protect them either. Foreign military only came to escort the white visitors to safety, leaving the Rwandans to fend for themselves.

It just made something inside me cry out at the injustice. I've no idea what it feels like to be in such a situation but you must feel so utterly helpless. I don't know what it must be like to watch people beaten and killed, knowing you can't do a thing to stop it. I felt it to some extent as I watched this film, though.

I think that seeing a situation of great suffering stirs something in you. It provokes a sense of compassion which maybe doesn't easily surface in me, at least. It prompts a response. It asks the question, "What do you want to do about this?"

I just feel more and more that here in the West we really have so much. We have it so easy in so many ways yet we still complain. God, let us appreciate the peace we have in our land. Let us be quick to run to those in need, regardless of the personal cost. Let our lives count for something.

Hitler was mental

2005-12-06T02:47:00.000+01:00

He really was. I know you don't need me to educate you on this. I just saw a film last night that reminded me of the fact, though. It's called The Downfall and it proved to be a very interesting and educational film. It is actually all in German with English subtitles which I found to be really interesting. I like hearing other languages and I feel that we're very guilty in the English-speaking west of isolating ourselves from other languages.

The film tells the story of the last days inside Hitler's bunker as the Red Army closed in on Berlin and Germany's defeat became apparent. It's told from the view of Traudl Junge who was Hitler's secretary during the war. She actually wrote the story so it's pretty authentic.

I just found it interesting because often war films tend to show America or Britain and not really tell you much about the Germans other than the fact that they're the nasty people we're fighting against. In The Downfall, you see the humanity of some of the German officers and it was reassuring to learn that some of them genuinely cared about their people and wanted to protect the civillians and so on. Don't get me wrong here, though. Most of them were mental. I'm not condoning any Nazi ideals at all, just pointing out that there were real people there too.

This maybe isn't making much sense. I'd recommend seeing it if you want to learn more about that part of history, though. I think we can always learn from the past. I'm glad I didn't have to live then, right enough. Thank God for peace in our time.

A week in England

2005-12-03T21:23:00.000+01:00

I just got back to my flat in Glasgow after spending a week catching up with friends south of the border. For my North American friends, I hope you realise I'm not referring to Mexico but England :)

It's funny being in a different country. Even though we're technically under the same government and all that, it's still in the forefront of your mind that you're different. Some of you might say I'm different anyway but I'm talking about accent in particular. As soon as you open your mouth, everyone knows you're not from there.

I was in Bracknell for the most part of the week and I went for a jaunt into Bath for a day and a half as well. It was interesting driving to Bath with directions from multimap.com. We got lost once or twice but we got there in the end and that's always good.

I got the flights for £20 because I had enough Aeroplan points from previous trips with Air Canada. The cost was the airport tax which sadly isn't covered by the rewad points. Still, £20 for a return from Glasgow to Heathrow is pretty good. Checking in for the return flight they used my bank card to verify my ID which was new. It's a strange feeling to be in a plane without anyone having looked at your passport. It reminds me of when I drove from Toronto to Pittsburgh for Christmas and when I came back into Canada the guy didn't even check my passport. Another cool thing with domestic UK flights is that I checked in with less than an hour to go in both cases and everything was fine.

It was good to see friends again and catch up as well. I never really think of much to talk about but company is worth more than information to me anyway. I'm content to be around people, rather than probing for all the latest goings-on.

My Company Blog

2005-11-26T15:11:00.000+01:00

I recently created a blog on my company website. You can see it by clicking on the big "blog" link at the bottom or by just browsing to www.tabletopsoftware.com/blog.

Why have two blogs, I hear you say? Well, they will both serve different purposes. This one is my fun fun fun "here's what's happening in my life" kind of blog. The other one will be more work work work "here's what I'm doing with programming" kind of blog. I want potential customers to be able to see what I'm doing programming wise to build trust in my abilities. There's also some book or other called blog marketing that some guy I know wrote. It suggests blogs are a good tool to communicate with potential customers.