New Year, New Layout

I decided it was time to ring the changes with the appearance of my blog. In a slightly scary correlation with what my Myers-Briggs personality type predicts, I get bored with things being the same all the time. I used to change the Chaplaincy website template periodically, and the blog gets the same treatment from time to time.

Quite pleased I have now managed to include a new photo and get purple words on to a grey background for the first time in the life of this blog.

Little things please little minds, I guess.

Schizophrenia Sideline

...was the code I had to type to post an item on facebook just now. It is fascinating to see what combinations of words come up at random as part of the anti-spam protection.

It sounds a plausible candidate for the title of an unreleased King Crimson album from about 1972.

World Toilet Day

Today is World Toilet Day! It is designed to draw attention to the fact that 2.5 billion people don't have one, and inadequate sanitation is costing many lives every day throughout the world.

You can do something from the comfort of your living room (or loo if you have wifi and a laptop)

Twitterers can tweet Michael Foster MP, the International Development minister here: http://act.ly/11s

Facebook users can go to Superbadger (which is a Tear Fund initiative) and send the minister an email http://apps.facebook.com/superbadger/index.php

Or you can sign an online petition at http://www.endwaterpoverty.org/

...or you could write him a letter...

Doodling

Fixing a date for anything - parties, meetings, socials, conferences, etc can be very frustrating. A brilliant site the Reverend Mrs pointed me to is Doodle. If everyone is on email, the organiser of a meeting can offer a number of dates and times via Doodle and then make invite everyone on the group. Each group member then follows the link in the email to their 'unique poll', clicks the slots they can manage, and Doodle records the results in a very handy table. It even keeps the total of the number of positive responses to each slot at the bootom, so you instantly know which is the most popular choice.

It's all free, and you don't even have to register (if you do, you get the use of additional facilities)

Technology for the end of the world

There are plenty of crazy Christian websites out there, but thanks to Mick Pidd for this one.

http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/

It provides online storage for you to send messages and data to relatives and loved ones once you've been 'raptured' It gives them a chance to respond - all for $40.

I love the confidence that everything, including their servers and the world-wide web would still be working.

Footnote: Rapture theology is dispensational premillennialism for the theology nerds. I think I'm a preteristic amillennialist. The link to Rapture takes you to theopedia.com, a conservative theological online encyclopedia. For stuff like this, it's very useful.

Successful test

Looks like everything worked as it should! I have even found how to switch off the text added at the bottom.

Test run

I am trying out a new facility, which I have added to Firefox. It's a blogging editor called PFF (Performancing For Firefox). You don't have to be looking at the blog to add an entry, if I understand it correctly. The text editor is also a bit more advance, and you can blog web pages. Whether it's better than simply using the one on the relevant Blogger page remains to be soon. Anyway, here goes with an online experiment. I'll just use the default options and font first time (so if this looks weird, that's why!)

powered by performancing firefox

Tagged

This is the blog form of a chain letter. The rules are fairly basic - you provide 5 facts about yourself and nominate five more people. I nominate Matthew (my chaplaincy side-kick), Andrew (used to work at smc before defecting back to Lancaster University), Emma (former SMC student) , Stephen (ditto) and Mark (he's a chaplain with a blog).

I have been tagged by Steve Tilley and you can refer back to his entry for more info on tagging. It should encourage a few new visitors, which makes the whole blog thing more satisfying.

So, here's an attempt at five facts.

1) I am an only child. Fortunately people don't seem to spot it up front, so it presumably didn't cause too much lasting damage. People say "didn't you get lonely?" I probably did, but thought it was normal.

2) One of my letters was read out on Home Truths by John Peel. Possibly my finest achievement.

3) I once sang through Helen Shapiro's tights. Perhaps I should explain.

I was helping a friend of mine, John Peters, to record some songs we used to perform at University. The studio engineer was adamant that the best way to avoid 'popping' on vocals when sings words with 'p' or 'b' in them was to use a metal ring with a pair of tights stretched over it in front of the studio microphone. The current pair belonged to Helen Shapiro. I still have the recordings, but seldom think about the tights.

Helen Shapiro had two number ones in 1961, and the Beatles first national tour was as her support act. Later on she converted to Christianity and has since recorded Christian music.

4) I can't stand the taste of beetroot.

5) I didn't drink coffee until I was twenty. The a friend of mine insisted I tried a black filter coffee and I was an immediate convert. I can just about drink a white coffee and keep it down on a funeral visit nowadays. (despite saying no milk, people often forget).

Ok, I will inform my friends that they are tagged, and I hope that's been worth wasting a couple of minutes reading.

Community or chaos?

I am beginning to get the hang of the interface for this blogging business, and I have also noticed some people making arguments which are apologies for blogs, or at least justification. Just how do you share in "real" conversations that you are a blogger?

Being an Anglican I ought to write a liturgy

The Lord be with you
And with your typing

Lift up your fingers
We lift them to our keyboard

Let us share our thoughts with total strangers
And may we suffer no humiliation

Apologies to non-Anglican or indeed non-Christian readers.

The question I am pondering is whether blogging is ultimate post-modernism - individualistic, I create my own universe, no meta-narrative, etc, etc. Or is it a new kind of being community - all sorts of links to people that I couldn't envisage any other way.