Month: August 2012

30 Aug

*pigeon noise*

I can make a rather convincing pigeon noise, apparently. I don’t do those other things pigeons do though. That would be gross. My other bird noises suck.

Onto more important, sensible, matters, I’m currently investigating the possibility of live-streaming our church service. If anyone has any experience in the legality and cheapness of this endeavour please let me know. And if you’re interested in listening, also let me know.

Back to the first point, loosely. Still being sensible though. I was at The Word last weekend, a PCI Young Adults conference thing. It had some of the more interesting talks I’ve listened to… And you can listen to! As soon as I can get the talks appropriately edited. That’ll be a while. If you’re interested in learning and growing and building up your presby friend network outside of your home church, please do go next year.

And this links nicely to my next point, you should volunteer for MAD. I know that other denomination has that other thing at the same time, our t-shirts are Red. Everybody looks good in red. Nobody looks good in Yellow. Plus, you get to see dozens of tired looking mad crew, finding entertaining ways to stay awake. Not that you’ll be tired. I’ll make sure to provide you with lots of sugar and caffeine. And a pillow. Not for sleeping, for screaming into and punching. It helps.

I may have gone too far there. That last bit wasn’t true. In fact quite a bit of that wasn’t true. But everyone does look better in red than yellow.

OH! I got my glasses. I have been having much merriment pretending I’ve always worn glasses, and confusing people. Its mean. But its fun.

Todays magic number, as referenced in the last blog, is 250! Its going up! Next time, it might go down. Maybe. That hasn’t been decided yet. It is not the number of people who’ve called me weird minus the number of people who’ve called me normal this year so far, but thats a decent guess.  That number is closer to 122. Half of those happened within a 24 hour period last weekend. Turns out pigeon noises are weird.

When you have a correct guess, let me know in secret. That way, I can confuse everyone else.

Thank you and remember, if I’m weird, what does that make that duck staring at you through the window? Go on. Open your curtains. Take a look.

Dave.

 

Still haven’t started that something else. Should really get a move on…

 

18 Aug

And so it ends. And begins. And something else ends. There’s lots of ends and beginnings right now. Lots of middles too.

Long title is long.

Things happened in the last week, like Tech Camp ended! I have absolutely no idea what happened on the last day. I was knackered and trying to burn/cook things while real stuff happened. After church my memory is fairly blurry, but apparently a good number of the kids REALLY enjoyed their time there, and are already looking forward to next year, so SUCCESS.

OTHER THINGS HAPPENED.

I started utilising Farset Labs, a hackerspace in Belfast. There’ll be a project log here soon for a nice little R.O.V. I’m building, though I’m having power issues and need to reduce the current going through things… anyway, good place, good smart folk.

I took a week off work! This was initially for New Horizon but I ended up using it primarily for recovery, popping up when I felt able/economically viable. This was the first time I’ve been to NH, and it was pretty awesome… even just the 2 nights I was up were pretty great, though it wasn’t exactly cool in that tent.  Definitely gonna aim for the full week next year. Saw some old friends… and got the same feeling I get at missiony things.

And thus my week off is over. And then comes 10(?) months of having to read and listen to seemingly random hate and stupid rhetoric from my football loving friends. Every time I see this crap it makes my head hurt how they can consider themselves fans and talk about these people like they hate the very ground they walk on, and would gladly flip the switch on their electric chair if given the chance.  ‘The scum’ is a phrase I hear far too often, and the genuine hate and disgust in peoples voices when talking about certain players  is just sickening, especially when it involves the players private lives. I don’t see how this is the slightest bit relevant as to how anyone but the players live their lives. We are not involved. We shouldn’t even know about this crap, why on earth are you getting so angry about it? In the years I have been observing people supporting football, I have only seen one instance where I can be proud of anyone in football, and that took a miraculous recovery.

The fact is, football is so unbelievably corrupted by hate and over valuing of individuals, that it takes a full miracle to see any good in it, and knowing that my friends happily accept this, and even join in with the hate, is scary. Particularly when they encourage their kids into the same pattern of hate. I long for odd numbered years when theres some freedom from this crap.

So the other thing that starts today is X Factor. This is…. stupid. I could say more but I think I’ll only annoy some of my friends tonight.

And finally, if you got this far, how is the number 238 relevant, at the time of writing? Get it right and you might get a prize. The prize may not exist yet. Or ever. In fact, if OfCom’s listening, there is no prize. But if they’re not, there is. Trust me.

So, yeah. Thats it.

 

Though, on a side note, I wanna begin something else.

12 Aug

Tech camp – day 4

You’re not wrong, there was no days 1, 2, or 3. I just figured all you folk who have taken the time to remember us in prayer deserved an update.

The theme has been connect, which we’ve been using in worship sessions and devotions everyday. We’ve got 9 kids and have 4 local leaders, and up until this afternoon had 4 americans that have been doing random PCI teams helping us out. They have been VERY useful, and will be very missed… though they have been fairly bored of the tech talk. They left for Larne today for another team, so, naturally we’re praying for their The field trips we’ve had have been fairly interesting:

On Wednesday we paid a trip to the Ulster Museum, which the leaders scouted out earlier to get some nice quiz questions for when they went, followed by a full, proper table quiz I wrote, and it went pretty well. found out one of the leaders likes Justin Bieber a bit too much. We are, of course, monitoring the situation, and attempting to fix that.

Thursday we ran a short video workshop (which I guess is still ongoing as they’re currently editing the videos they made) followed by a fairly interesting trip to production house group’s warehouse in east Belfast. The kids got to see the kit being prepped for tenants vital and new horizon, and the guys were kind enough to ‘test’ one of the Subs they’d be using for skrillex, deafening a few of us for a while. That night a few folk who use tech in industry were kind enough to sit answering a few questions we fired at them. They carefully brushed off the Mac or PC question. Mostly.

Yesterday ( or friday if i don’t publish this in the next hour) was possibly the most interested they’ve been so far. Though I may be slightly biased as I was the most interested then too… Anyway, I gave a short workshop detailing the innards of desktops and laptops and tried to explain how they work. It was pretty much the first time I’d given a presentation like that, and I’m fairly shocked at how well they listened, and the questions they asked. Gave me some hope for future gamers and system builders.

After that we went to a fun little place called Farset Labs, where people do Awesome things with electronics. Apart from 2 of the kids getting a little obsessed with the nerf guns, it went very well. They build random computer and electronic based projects, like a wheelchair that goes 40 miles an hour or adding random things to r/c helicopters. Seems fun, and I think they may feature here again.

Following this we went to UCBs radio station in Belfast, called commission radio. They make one of their digital evening shows here, and drama series with a fairly complex studio. Pretty cool stuff.

So then we come to today, when I woke up unable to speak, and we had a graphics seminar that I unfortunately had to sleep through, followed by bowling and laser quest. And now we’re watching Up.

That’s a sumup of the past few days, which have been tiring, but fun. Few prayer points:
most of the leaders are sick/wounded from previous endeavours. Energy and health would be appreciated.
Kids are great, we’re seeing them grow, and it would be great to see more on our last day
And finally, that the parents are appropriately impressed by their kids hard work when it’s presented tomorrow.

I’ll attempt to update again tomorrow… 😀

6 Aug

Its not ridiculous if it works.

Right now, the Olympics is happening. And it gives an… interesting perspective.

1 man can run a hundred meters in 9.63 seconds.

Now, when you think that many men and women, working off the shoulders of many more, fired a rocket at Mars, and successfully softly landed a 1 ton automated laboratory on a planet tens of thousands of miles away, using the most ingenious delivery system ever devised, with a margin of error so small it makes my head hurt, does this achievement by one individual not pale in comparison? I wish I knew someone who was involved in designing, testing, or even scrubbing a part on the curiosity delivery system just so I could congratulate them. Instead my tax money goes towards a project 5 times as expensive that I feel about as involved in as… well… a rover on Mars.

Anyway, the title is most specifically about the delivery system. It is… insane. All the last set of rovers were delivered in similar pinpoint accuracy using a bouncing ball method. This involved being slowed by parachutes, then the capsule is completely surrounded in air cushions so it becomes a ball. This is fine for a 100kg capsule, that could sri-mech itself flat then release the tiny payload to run around mars. Its not fine for a one ton behemoth that would’ve needed massive cushions and massive parachutes.

So someone then came up with the idea of using rockets to slow it down, as a parachute would need to be the size of a lake to slow it down enough.

But rockets would kick up a LOT of dust at the surface,  and would be unpredictable close to the surface so a traditional rocket based landing would be risky.

So some genius had the fantastic idea of using rockets to hover, and lowering the one ton rover, naked, down to the surface.

When I first saw this plan I thought there was absolutely no chance it could succeed. Well… it did.  And thats the greatest achievement humanity has made this year.

So, when I read this, less than an hour after the rover successfully touched down on Mars, it rang through my head all day (link may not work, try this). The quote, “nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do” (or something along those lines) is taken from Genesis 11, verse 6, when God chose to scatter us around the earth and give us different languages, as we were progressing too quickly.

I wonder what it means, that we seem to be beyond that limitation. Russell Kirsch imagined digital photographs, and the internally programmed computer, and made it so. NASA thought up a delivery method for dropping a ton of lab equipment softly on Mars, and actually did it. We live in a great time when these things are possible. The list of impossible things is getting shorter everyday, and that’s fantastic.

So, I address this last point to myself, more than anyone. If you think that great thing you want to do is impossible, make it your goal, and strive for it. It could just happen. And it definitely will if God wants it done.