Happy Christmas

Well this will probably now be the last post this side of Christmas, in fact quite possibly this year so thought I would update you briefly on the thinking about the blog and where it will be etc. Having played around with Wordpress there are some features I really like and on the whole I think it probably has the potential to be slightly better than the new blogger, that said though, so far I have only worked with wordpress.com the hosted version which is quite restricting in what you can do and I have to say from having looked at that I think out of the two blogger wins hands down if you need a hosted blog (or at least the software as I host the blog myself but use blogger’s engine to write it). I hope in the new year to have a little play around with a self hosted copy of wordpress which I think is probably going to be better for me in the long run as this gives all the advantages of the wordpress engine with none of the restrictions of the hosted version. To give brief comment on other options voxtropolis appears to be the new kid on the block, I’ve had a brief look wasn’t all that impressed to be honest, doesn’t appear to have the power or ease of use of blogger. Typepad and SquareSpace both look very good, very similar in some respects to wordpress in terms of power and format, although remotely hosted I think you get away without having the restrictions that you get with wordpress.com the thing that stopped me looking too closely was the fact that you have to pay, I would suggest if you want power, hassle free and you don’t mind paying give these two a look, if you want almost as much power but not complete freedom but for free and easy to run blogger is the place to be, however if you want it all and you want it free wordpress look like filling that gap but you have to know a bit more about what you are doing with servers etc (or find someone to help who does). I’ll let you know how I get on soon.

For now though have a great Christmas and New Year, take it easy and I’ll see you here soon.

God bless

9 years on

Yesterday was our 9^th wedding anniversary, wow 9 years, and pretty good ones at that I have to say, so to celebrate we went out and saw the new Bond film last night, I had heard quite a lot about it some good and some bad but I have to say most of it quite accurate. On the whole I liked it, a good story, good acting etc but I did miss some of the humour of more recent Bond films. On the whole definitely worth seeing, and probably worth seeing on the big screen but I wouldn’t get too upset if you miss it I think it’ll be ok on DVD. If I were to be buying bond films would I include this one, not sure probably but it wouldn’t be a priority.

To make up fir the lack of humour in the film here’s a great game found via youthblog (and he found via Gim D)

Thinking of fun games for Christmas, here’s a couple of others:-

Baseball (just press the left mouse button you'll soon get the hang of it!)

Bowling (this one you have to download but there are now three versions and there all free.)

I may update you on the whole blog hosting front soon (but then Gill said that was boring and she didn’t want to read it)

PS. as I logged on I noticed that the new blogger is no longer in beta so if you've not upgraded yet it's about time you did!

The Christmas txt.

Yesterday as our last group before Christmas we had mince pies and drinks and I set my group on the task of telling as much of the Christmas story as possible in a txt message format so 160 characters. I think they did quite well and it has given me some other ideas as well but that’s for another post!

I thought I would share the winning entry with you hear:-

“d bby Jsus wz brn in a stbl n mry n jo wr wid im d wis mn came n ofrd gfts n d shprds came n ofrd shp. d angls wr singin”

This entry coming in at just 120 characters so room to spare.

An honourable mention must go to my 2 assistant leaders yesterday, 1 for her grasp of txt language and the others for managing in 140 characters to get the story using proper words.

It’s that time of year again.

I am currently sitting in my office with a big cushion up my jumper and dressed as FC (although I have just pulled the beard down as it was causing my glasses to steam up!) yes it’s the playgroup Christmas party again and I have been drafted in for the second year, I suppose this is one of the problems with being married to the chair person of the playgroup that meets in the building where I have my office! Anyway I was just finishing getting dressed when was asked if I could come 10 minutes later hence now typing dressed like this.

On a more serious not I have just got myself invited into the secondary school carol services (they have to do it in two sittings) to do the prayers, prayers and carols will be the only Christian content so I am wondering if I should ask if I can say a few words before the prayers just to get something of a challenge in there, I think I’ll drop them an email.

Ho Ho Ho.

PS. if you promise to be good boys and girls I might see if I can add a picture latter.

Update: 2 things that came out of being Father Christmas:-

1. Jonah was a little better this year than last, he came up to me after the handing out of gifts and said “look Father Christmas what you gave me, your not the real Father Christmas your daddy.”
2. One mother who insisted on telling me three times that she had been a good girl and could she therefore sit on my knee.

We have moved 2

To take full advantage of the new blogger I have moved my hosting back to the blogger site hence the change in address to www.onmebus.blogspot.com, I’m obviously not so keen on this as an address and am currently looking into other options, even with the changes with the beta version I’m still not completely convinced that Blogger is the tool for me and I am currently therefore also playing around with wordpress as well. I will keep up the redirection but take of the time delay in a few days so don’t feel you need to alter details for that, however if you are using the RSS or Atom feeds to read it you may now not even find out about this post but may need to alter something.

Cheers for now and please bear with me during these changes!

Update: ahhhggggg I’ve just noticed that in moving to bloggers hosting it has lost all my pictures, I might be able to bring them back but I’m not sure, not happy!

Update2: not happy with that so moved back! Still looking at alternatives though.

Sunday 10th

Preached yesterday, decided to go for the lectionary readings of Luke 3:1-6 & Malachi 3:1-4, I have to admit Malachi isn’t a book I know well and this passage is one that offers some challenges, it start by foretelling of John T Bap but then goes on to talk about Jesus ministry, the second half of Verse 2 reading:-

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap^[1]

This was the main focus I took in the end, I was a little nervous about doing so as to me this passage points out that it can be tough being a Christian and this is something that I think the church as a whole tries to avoid a little. Anyway I talked about the fact that sometimes things in life can be hard and can hurt and that if God is going to refine us like silver and clean us that can be a painful process, speaking of fuller’s soap being a Launders soap as used for cleaning the priestly robes, it would have almost had a bleaching effect to make the robes white, it was serious cleaning. I finished with a story about refining silver which I think gives us the key to this passage. When refining silver with fire (it is now more often done with acids) you have to watch it closely as if it is left for too long the silver will burn and be ruined. Although sometimes we struggle in our faith, we feel distant from God, he is always there watching us closely. But the real key comes in knowing when the silver is pure, the silver smith knows that it is pure because at that point he can see his own reflection in the silver.

Sometimes we all struggle with our faith, we feel that God has for some reason abandoned us, often when we look back at those times from a distance we can see that God was at work, and coming out of those times we perhaps reflected Gods image in our own lives a little better.

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^[1]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1996, c1989 . Thomas Nelson: Nashville

We have moved.

Well yesterday I updated to the new Blogger in Beta, it makes very little difference to you at this stage apart from it does mean that I can now start to use labels at the end of posts to help you find things on a similar subject. I probably won’t go through and add these to all the old posts as there are rather a lot but a few significant ones will probably be done at some stage. Other things may well be changing over the coming months but then I keep on talking about this and it hasn’t really happened yet so don’t hold your breath.

Great deal on DTP software

I don’t know about you but I do quite a lot of Desk Top Publishing (DTP) flyers, invites, programmes, magazine articles etc. and despite never having liked the programme I generally use MS Publisher, this is for 2 reasons:- 1. I have it (it comes as part of the MS office Pro suite) 2. lots of people I have to exchange documents with also have it. One last reason for using it is because most of the decent alternatives are prohibitively expensive, or at least they have been until now but you’ll have to be quick. Quark express is a professional DTP package, up until a few years ago it was pretty much the only package used by the industry for newspapers & magazines etc. (although Adobe InDesign is now also very popular) Quark is currently up to version 7 but you can get version 5 on the cover of Computer Shopper this month for just £3.50 (CD version). If you want a powerful DTP package at a good price I cannot recommend this highly enough.
I should give Credit to Martin Lewis the money saving expert for this, his site is also well worth a look if you haven’t come across it before and his weekly emails can be useful if you like a bargain!

Bizarre

Yesterday I was sitting having lunch with my wife and 2 of our children, plus another friend and her 2 children, in a local (Very Nice!) coffee shop (The Sadlers, if your ever dropping by I’ll let you take me there for lunch any time!). Anyway Faringdon is a small Market town (population about 6,000) about 15 miles outside of Oxford and on the edge of the Cotswolds. Whilst years ago it was on the main route from East to West England and hence has a lot of watering holes and old inns it is not somewhere that you would just pass through (although this is a shame as it is a really nice place). Anyway as I sat there having just finished a fantastic freshly made Bacon, Lettuce and Sun dried tomato Baguette and awaiting a superb slice of Carrot Cake I saw a couple of faces I recognised looking at the menu in the window. Now of course being a small town and especially with my work in the town it’s perhaps not surprising I know a lot of people around here, but these faces didn’t fit in, it was indeed the Famous Little Alice and Steve Price (who for those of you who don’t know either of them live in Croydon). I only managed a brief chat but it was great to see them and talk for a few minutes. If you read this I hope you had a good break and enjoyed the town.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM

I started this blog back in February 2005, almost 2 years ago writing has been sporadic, comments have been rare (apart from entries referring to Fat and Frantic which are still getting hits and comments including now from two ex band members!) but today I have for the first time been spamed (fortunately it was on an old post so I doubt anyone would have found it plus it has been dealt with quite quickly!), needless to say it has been deleted (if you are after somewhere to get a good deal on certain prescription drug types I’m sorry you have come to the wrong place) for this reason it is time to turn on the security things to stop this sort of behaviour, it’s a shame because I personally don’t like them, largely because as a dyslexic I can actually find it quite difficult to work out what the letters and numbers are some times and it can take several attempts to get it right, so I’m sorry to have to do this but I can’t have SPAM!

Update

A quick update, thought I should let you know the meeting on Friday went really well, we have a lot of work to do and I don’t want to publish too many details at the moment as everything is in very early stages. But I will say thanks for your thoughts and prayers and please continue, I will let you know anything else that happens as we progress things.