Day: 14 August 2007

Under fire

Fire
Photo by Aleksandr Greckas, courtesy of stock.xchng

I’m preaching this coming weekend at Newport-on-Tay (Fr David‘s old stomping ground).

Preparation has started already … I don’t have the luxury of being able to write sermons during the day any more, sadly. And I’m supposed to be in Selkirk on Saturday helping Mum, so even my ‘safety day’ has gone.

I can’t even “recycle” an old sermon for that Sunday as I’ve never preached on that Sunday before (Pentecost 12) — I know: I’ve checked. And my word! it’s not as if it’s an easy passage to preach about either. Have a read:

The Gospel according to St Luke 12: 49-56

  1. “I’ve come to start a fire on this earth–how I wish it were blazing right now!
  2. I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up–how I long for it to be finished!
  3. Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront!
  4. From now on, when you find five in a house, it will be– Three against two, and two against three;
  5. Father against son, and son against father; Mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; Mother-in-law against bride, and bride against mother-in-law.”
  6. Then he turned to the crowd: “When you see clouds coming in from the west, you say, ‘Storm’s coming’–and you’re right.
  7. And when the wind comes out of the south, you say, ‘This’ll be a hot one’–and you’re right.
  8. Frauds! You know how to tell a change in the weather, so don’t tell me you can’t tell a change in the season, the God-season we’re in right now.

Translation: The Message (also available free in electronic form as part of e-Sword.)

Prayers please

So your prayers please for me this week as I wrestle with the passage, and that I hear from God the right thing to say to the congregation in Newport. Pray that I may know how to interpret the present time!

Sony Bravia advert spoof follow-up

Sony Bravia advert

Most of you — at least those in the UK who watch television — will have seen the colourful Sony Bravia advert. For those of you who haven’t, or if you want to see it again, here it is (courtesy of YouTube):

Spoof

I discovered this spoof interview with a supposed resident. It’s very, very funny.

The making of the Sony Bravia advert

The advert was actually filmed in Glasgow, at Toryglen. Here’s a five minute documentary about the making of the advert:

You can also check out more at www.bravia-advert.com.

Today: 3 monitors; tomorrow: the world!

Three monitors, one PC
My desk at work, today.

Lunchtimes are fun here. In that one hour of freedom you can get on with fun little projects or try things out while your work colleagues are busily munching on a packet of sandwiches from Boots.

Today I stole borrowed my colleague Steve’s second monitor off his desk and plugged it into my PC … as my third monitor! Don’t tell him! Actually, he’s on holiday just now so I’m sure he won’t mind.

I’ve had so much going on these past two weeks that I kept thinking to myself: I wish I had an extra monitor. Now I do … for the next few days at least. In fact if I’d not already run out of graphics cards installed in my PC I’d have nicked his other monitor too!

I know that I’m going to miss monitor #3 when I have to return it to the other side of the office on Friday afternoon. Not least because Steve has better, bigger monitors than I do (19″ Sony TFT compared with my NEC 17″ TFT).

Development setup

For development work it’s really useful, here’s what I have on my monitors (from left-to-right):

HTML editor, FTP, browser

  1. Code: Coding window (WeBuilder 2007)
  2. Upload: FTP window (WS_FTP Professional)
  3. Test: Browser window (Firefox)

No more wasting time flipping between coding and FTP windows. Actually, a fourth monitor would be really useful to keep my graphics application open all the time … and a fifth for Explorer … and a sixth for Email and instant messenger.

Normal setup

For other, more mundane stuff I can use the setup in other ways. At the moment, to write this blog I have this configuration:

browser, graphics, comms

  1. Main: Firefox is open to write this blog post
  2. Supporting applications: I have my graphics application (Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI) in this window to edit photos and screenshots
  3. Communications: Email and instant messenger

I’ll check out UltraMon later to see what extra functionality that offers. (Thanks to David Healy for the tip.)

I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. I just have to make sure that before Friday I don’t accidentally shut down the internet, melt down the national grid or accidentally launch a space shuttle.