22 Sep

The back end of nowhere is kinda pretty

Its been a while!

Its September, the month of… something. What normally happens in September? Schools start back… but I don’t care about that anymore. OH. No… wait… I don’t care about holiday prices dropping… OH!I DO care about all my friends being in the country again! Except those that fled to England. Or Scotland. Or, in one case, America. Did I really scare you that much? I’m sorry! Come back! I won’t do it again!

 

Anyway…. today is the 22nd of September. Or the 23rd… if you’re reading it tomorrow. Or in Europe! Or further east! But more likely tomorrow… This means it is now 3 weeks till my 28th birthday, and I’ll come up with something to do then. Maybe. Its a tuesday, so… yeah.

So what did I do over the past few months? I did several things. lets go in reverse order, so I can remember them…

I got a promotion! I’m now a ‘Senior Software Engineer’. Appropriate as I’m about to turn 28…

I moved to Belfast! Again. This is likely explained better below. My dad no longer has a manse…(yay promotion!) so we get to live in the city now! A small apartment…

I moved to Greenisland again! For 3 weeks. That means parents, and that means less fun 🙁

I moved out of Belfast! Ruth came home and wanted her house back 🙁

The Word weekend happened! I have to do the audio… I should get round to that tomorrow… but it was awesome!

I bought a Drone! Its currently out of action after a… let’s call it an emergency landing. But it’ll be fixed up soon!

We started a Second RPG group! they were much faster than the other group… just saying…

Tech Camp happened! It was brilliant. I’m tired and running out of words…

Loughbrickland connect happened! People were shocked and amazed at my ability to get internet in the back end of nowhere… but I did! Kids were brilliant and it sucked to leave for the next thing… which is above…

July happened! I don’t remember July much… nor June. What happened in those 2 months? Did i get my car in June? No? It was May? Ok then. I got a new car! Its a DS3. Its not a girls car. Its awesome.

I went back in time! Wait. No. I’m not supposed to mention that. It hasn’t happened yet.

 

 

Smile, you’re not turning 28. 🙂

Dave.

 

 

 

Oh, yes, the title. I’ve spent a lot of time in the back end of nowhere. And managed to get signal there! I took photos. They were pretty. I’ll put them somewhere.

11 Sep

Summer – The other bits.

Other than a trip to Japan, other significant things happened this summer… I started a new job!

That’s right, I don’t watch youtube for a living anymore! I now make software for card machines in shops, for a company called Merchant Warehouse. We primarily make it for US machines, which are bigger and more capable than our card machines. I think if you use a machine in some stores where it says our company name on the screen, then you’re using software I helped fix a few weeks ago, though unless you’re on the east coast of the US, ythats unlikely. I could break our devices if I wanted to here though…

Before you ask, yes, I’m enjoying it, and its a definite step up.

OTHER THINGS.

For a few days in August I helped out in Loughbrickland Connect. So many things to say about this, but its late and I’ve already written an extensive blog tonight… so all I’ll say was: great people, great kids, a great experience, and a great God.

Next….

I moved out! I now live somewhere else in Belfast… Its great living by oneself. One can really start calling oneself one when oneself has no one around to stop one saying one a lot.

Lastly, I was at the Word weekend again! Another great weekend in another random place with another great speaker and more great people.

Another thing about living with oneself is I’m now supposed to do some form of organized abode temperature increasing event…. hmmm…

OH.

Yeah.

I did some abseiling for SUNI with some friends from church and SU. Please donate! https://www.justgiving.com/Dave-Stothers

 

11 Sep

Here, I should probably post something… Japan – The final Blog.

So, many things have happened since I last posted, and I should prob finish the Japan posts.. so, here we go!

Firstly… heres James in Japanese Pyjamas.

...yup.
…yup.

Moving on swiftly, on the Sunday we went to the church associated with the OMF center in Tokyo, called the Chapel Of Adoration. The entire service was in Japanese, so we sang the first verse then hummed the rest of the songs… we did get to see one of the missionary families again, and I think the kids really enjoyed that.

Fishing Net lights in the chapel of adoration.
Fishing Net lights in the chapel of adoration.

The church was founded by the family of a racing driver, who used his money after his death to establish the church. Its not very big, but again, the members seem very dedicated.

From here we went on to the Edo Museum, which covers the history of Tokyo.

Amy was oddly happy to be locked in this box....
Amy was oddly happy to be locked in this box….

Tokyo used to be called Edo…

Hence the name of the museum…

It was pretty informative over the politics and general lifestyle of Tokyo since it took over being capital from Kyoto, though it was pretty vague about the mid thirties to late 40s.

It also covered this:

DSC02209…which seems very relevant considering Tokyo claimed this:

DSC02303

Following the museum most of the team who wanted to climbed a skyscraper, did so, and marvelled at the awesome size of Tokyo:

DSC02246

Seriously its huge.
Seriously its huge.

Meanwhile, Robbie and I toured an electronics shop that went on forever… and I bought a laptop for 30% cheaper than it would’ve cost at home. 😀 Robbie wisely resisted the temptation.

Finally  there was dinner, and glorious sleep.

And then I woke up with the worst cold I’d ever had, and slept most of the last day, so heres my account of the last day in Japan through what the others told me:

They visited a Shinto Shrine! It was similar in someways to the Buddhist, but much quieter and less… horrible:

SAM_1399They visited a park, where drew looked at birds.

SAM_1426And then visited the busiest junction in Tokyo. Maybe in The world. And played fun games on it.

See if you can spot Flic! Its like wheres wally but with a small ginger person.
See if you can spot Flic! Its like wheres wally but with a small ginger person.*

I found this photo, but I’m not sure of its significance:

SAM_1451

 

And thus, endeth our time in Japan. The following day, we got up at 5, 3 people threatened to kill me, we got on our plane to Copenhagan, and said goodbye to Drew, Helen, and a wonderful country.

Our first flight was long… Heather woke up somewhere over eastern russia and was confused as to why we hadn’t landed yet. Flic and Pip cried over the same movie. Robbie creeped out Amy every few hours. Our lsat flight happened, we got picked up at the airport, and welcomed back at Bloomfield by our friends and families.

One adventure over for us, though Flic has another adventure in mind.

She’ll be going to Japan for 3 months in January to help out OMF and support Helen. I’m sure she’d appreciate your prayers and support for her time there.

Other notable prayer subjectts:

  • Helen, as she does great work supporting the great missionaries with OMF.
  • The other missionaries we met at the conference and those who couldn’t get there. They’re great people working in some of the most difficult cultures in the world to be a missionary.
  • The missionary families. The kids are uprooted to a culture and language they don’t know. They’re brilliant kids, but that cannot be easy, and they need all the prayer and support they can get.
  • The churches and congregations we visited. From former SWAT team members, to elderly ladies, to students, to kids. These are all great people that are obviously passionate about their faith, and shining lights in a country that needs light.
  • And finally Japan itself. So many people lost and needing help, with a rising suicide rate and a growing gambling culture among men, they need to know they are loved and understand how unfathomable that is.

If you want to find out more about OMF and their work in Asia their website is here: http://www.omf.org/uk/

Thats it.

Finally, the Japan blog is over.

Wait… no, I’m sure theres one last embarrassing photo in here somewhere…

Actually trying to find an embarrassing one of me to make up for all the embarrassing ones of every one else… but genuinely can’t find any. There is, however, this:

Apparently, I'm being a tree. Shortly after this, Drew felled me. That sounds weird. But its true.
Apparently, I’m being a tree. Shortly after this, Drew felled me. That sounds weird. But its true.

If any of the team has an embarrassing photo of me, point it out and I will post it. I promise. Heres an embarrassing photo of James and Robbie to act as incentive.

I don't know whats happening here...
I don’t know whats happening here…

 

And… we’re done.

 

 

 

 

1 Jul

Japan – Final longer blog will be posted from home.

Hello!

We’re currently packing for our final flights home, and I don’t have time to find my proper laptop and transfer photos, so the final blog will be posted at some point after we get home.

Watch our twitter and facebook accounts for updates on our travel, as before, we should have WiFi at each location. We’ll be leaving tomorrow at about 6 JST, and arriving back in dublin at 1830 BST, hopefully a 20 hour journey.

See you all soon, we’d best get to bed.

Dave – So nackered, i didn’t type the ‘k’.

29 Oct

This wasn’t Sparta, it was, however, MADness.

Now that I finally got the 300 joke out of the way, I’m now awake enough to type another awesome* blog.

So, the last few days have been… an experience. A good one, though I appear to be missing several decibels. Have you seen them? They’re small and fit in your ear. They were last seen running away from the ridiculous amount of bass I could hear from the massive speakers I spent a good amount of time standing beside, and been replaced by a slight ringing. My ears are probably the main concern after the last few days, other than the damage to my psyche from something I still struggle to talk about without laughing so hard I cry.

MAD weekend is what brought about this ridiculous scenario where I lack hearing and or the ability to talk about an un-named amateur hip-hop dancer, where I spent time either:

  1. With a camera, beside the stage, in front of a speaker
  2. In a hall, waiting for people to turn up so I could sleep on an uncomfortable sofa
  3. Giving a table quiz, 3 times and losing my voice
  4. Otherwise teching. I’ve made it a verb now.
  5. Avoiding my fan club. That’s right, I have a fan club. They’re all taller than me, and may be slightly crazy. The moment they discover this blog will be a problem.
  6. Watching one of the MAD crew shamelessly flirt with half the girls on crew. It was weird.

Thus, I am now going back to work tomorrow, and TESTING. Sometimes I wonder if I am being tested, if I’m a psychological experiment to see how maddening YouTube is. However, then the mushroom at the other end of the phone tells me that if I can watch more videos, I get to eat him, so I KEEP TESTING. If you want to know what I do, and haven’t read the blog where I explained it, it is here.

Speaking of YouTube, I’m now gonna do a semi-regular slot on good videos available,

This is the first episode in a pretty good web series:

Its a baby with a gun!

And now its a baby panda. Without a gun. Don’t give baby pandas guns. That’s just asking for trouble.

Lastly, the magic number today is now 310. Still getting bigger. A similarly related number (to some people, to me, its irrelevant) is 363. So, that’s that.

Dave out.

 *awesome according to several readers. Really. They told me. In person.

20 Oct

Weirdest thing that happened this week. And maybe other things too.

So, the other day I was in the Mace close to my work at lunch when someone beside me asks “hi, do you go to Bloomfield Presbyterian?”
To which I appropriately respond “yeah…?”
“wanna do a bible reading  some Sunday?”
“Um… OK?”
“Great!”
I turn to pick up a wispa, and hes gone, just as mysteriously as he appeared.

Right.

Another weird thing that happened is, for some strange reason, work decided to go out for lunch on Wednesday to a restaurant, in UU called The Academy. It was… different. We weren’t expecting this. Things were strange from the moment we walked in. Go there, and you’ll see. Food’s good though.

I’ll be partaking in MAD this coming weekend, I should be on cameras on main stage, and I’ll hopefully get the opportunity to annoy some people with said camera 😛 I’ll also be Comparé at the table quiz on Saturday afternoon. Some of you may already know some of the answers, however, I trust the ridiculous riddles I can come up with help.

Magical number is 301 today. Its a good number. Please, someone, work out why. It has significance. You just need to work it out.

In a more geeky aspect to the world, the end of this month has the 3 biggest tech companies announcing new products (again) with google phones and probably another tablet, a smaller, but still probably pointlessly too big ipad from apple (there’s no point shrinking down your tablet if it still won’t fit in a reasonably large pocket), and quite possibly the most useful 10″ tablets from Microsoft. The most interesting thing though is the ludicrous resolutions HTC and Sharp have developed, full HD 5 inch screens… yet why can’t we find QuadHD 20″ screens? Gah.

There’s also Windows 8, which should be a relatively cheap upgrade, though I would say its a try before you buy thing.

And finally, a really important subject for you to discuss: How does that guys guitar rotate like that in Back To the Future 3? Seriously, why would you mount a guitar on a rotating thing like that? And Marty never looks Seamus in the eye correctly.

Dave Out.

Well, I’m still at home, but I’m gonna stop typing now.

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.