i am sparticus: Words

Fully functional

I've owned my Mac iBook for a year and a half now and my copy of Microsoft Office for Mac for not much less time than that. Today though, I finally unleashed it's full capabilities. WORDART!

For a moment there I didn't think Mac Office had wordart, but oh-no, it does. It's just been moved to an entirely separate pane all for itself. WORDART!

It's a light week for news.

Getting Lost and Other Stories

I've arrived home from the conference now, but I've got a bit of a back log to post. So apologies for the change in tense and what not. Hopefully it won't confuse you all too much.

The conference centre here, being a converted mansion, is one long winding maze of passage, stairwells and doors. It's not unusual to follow signs marked "Meeting Room 1" hoping to find some sort of meeting room only to meet similar signs pointing the way you came from. I'm so sure that if I looked hard enough I'd find a sign attached to a corridor ceiling that has "FIRE EXIT THIS WAY" written on it on both sides, but I'm not going to look because I don't think I'd ever find my way back to tell you about it.

The journey from my room to the main meeting area not only involves three staircases, eleven doors and six hallways but also a short journey out of the building and back in through the old conservatory. And that's just the way I know it from. In fact, I've found about four other ways of getting there that all involve completely different routes and quite possibly some inter-dimensional travel (I have more evidence for this than you might think, when I woke up this morning my feet felt like they were in Antarctica). The only thing that remains the same in them all is that at some point you have to go out the side door and in through the conservatory, which strikes me a tad lacking in design forethought. Again, there maybe a way of getting to the main meeting room without going outside but I'm not going to look because I don't think I'll ever find my way back.

All in all this lack of navigational ability is actually getting quite embarrassing. You spend a few minutes arranging with someone what time you're meeting for breakfast tomorrow (you can't go into breakfast on your own at one of these things, you might have to sit with people you don't know or worse, with people who eat grapefruit for breakfast), go your separate ways and then promptly run into each other three minutes later going opposite directions down the same corridor.

Still, I figure I may as well use this to my advantage, already I've positioned my laptop so that half of the processor exists in a dimension where everything is happening slightly ahead of this one. This may make my computer that much faster but so far this has only served to make me slightly depressed when I realised that I was destined to spend another fifteen minutes writing this and at the end of it all I still wouldn't have a half decent punchline.

The Bible Centred Youth Worker (Day Something)

One of the larger themes of the Bible Centred Youth Worker Conference was the role of youth workers and parents, which was interesting because you never really think about it that much yet it's such a prominent role in the Bible. The idea is that in the Bible the family is seen as the natural unit of life and the parents are seen as the people responsible for their children. Obvious I know but clearly understated. Interestingly a lot of this seemed to tie in with the covenant theology that has baptism understood as paedobaptism (that's infant baptism for the record), though I think, and this is just a thought, that I disagree. Isn't baptism a sign of death and rebirth (cf Romans 6:1-14) and therefore salvation, not of entering into a covenant relationship as paedobaptists would have it? I don't know the answers, but at least I've written about it.

iamsparticus in almost linked by A-list blogger shock

Kottke writes about the effort it takes to moderate comment threads. The third dated post down contains a link to a discussion on intelligent design with reference to a very witty comment. That very witty comment was me! Ha! Result! Except I get no mention or no link. Which is that much better for my ego I suppose.

Dear me, I should be off socialising

The Bible Centred Youth Worker (Day 3)

Gosh I don't know how people cope with this non-stop reporting on events, my mind is fried and it's only just turned 10. I'm guessing that if you had an editor who could fire you for this sort of thing or you really cared about what people thought of your writing you'd be tempted to make something up incredible just to get it over and done with.

I'd like to take this moment to point to my incredible will-power in not filling the rest of this entry with the incredible story about the Giraffe walking in on the seminar on worship.

The Bible Centred Youth Worker (Day 2)

This youth worker is trying to get this gamecube working on a TV screen, he's going in through SCART but can't switch it to the AV channel. "You can't get the AV channel working on a TV? looks like you're youth work skills are slipping. Next you won't be able to remember which pool balls go where and then you won't be able to get the net to stay up right on the table-tennis table and then you may as well just quit because you're youth work skills are dead and gone". Mental note; don't insult a man's technological ability at the same time as insulting his ability to do his job.

One of the peculiar things about these sorts of conferences is that you keep on seeing people that you think you know and you've no idea how. Presumably you know them from another Christian conference or from some church event or something, but you're never quite sure. So you have conversations like this. "Do I know you from Soul Survivor?" "No, I don't go there, maybe it was Spring Harvest" "I haven't been there since I was ten, where did you say you were from again" "Nottingham" "Oh, well that's no help. You didn't do Careforce did you?" "No... but I did work with YFC for 6 months" "sorry, that means nothing to me. Oh wait, you didn't do Northern Cornhill did you?" "Yeah! That's it" "Oh, oh that makes sense" "Mmm" "..." "..." "So... you think of anything else to talk about?" "Nope" "Ho-Hum"

On a final note, how's this for a quote: God the Father showed his love for God the Son by sending Him to die on the cross. Not showed His love for us (which we all know to be true), but showed His love for the Son.

The Bible Centred Youth Worker

This week posts were supposedly going to be on the light, what with me being away at "The Bible Centred Youth Worker Conference" and all. However they have wi-fi at the conference centre so socialising has gone out of the window to be replaced by GEEKING OUT TO THE MAX. Nothing new there then.

Anyway, I figure it'll be good practice to any future writing skills of mine to report on the conference. Tell everyone what they're missing and so forth. So far I've managed to get here in one piece, found internet access and made approximately two friends. Nothing new there then. Reformed points are very excitingly through the roof here, with ESV's out-weighing every other bible by about two-to-one. If you don't know what that means ESV's are to Reformed Christianity what Converse Hi-Tops are to Emo Gigs. If you don't know what that means, get down with the kids already you square!

Predictions for the week? Given that most youth workers are extroverts who have to repress there tendencies when young people are around I figure that by the end of the week at least three people will be dead. DEAD CLEVER that is. Or more likely genuinely dead. Sad, but probably true

Rule Brittania

From discussion around British Colonialism in the pub last night
"Probably another one of those countries we founded"
"HELLO LOCALS! (I say that's a sharp spear eh?) JUST THOUGHT WE'D LET YOU KNOW WE'VE CLAIMED THIS LAND. CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING SUBJECT TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN. WE'LL SEND SOMEONE ROUND TO CLAIM TAXES SOON."
"You're got to feel sorry for them, not knowing they're lost for all those years untill we come along and find them."
"What do you call this land? yourstralia?, OUR-stralia more like it mate!"

Question

In the front of my New Living Translation of the Bible you can find these words "Deluxe Text Edition". Seriously, what does that mean? Now with extra serif's? Slightly more kerning on the italics? Guaranteed lack of Comic Sans MS? Or is it more to do with the content? 110% more divinely inspired than the regular text edition?
Suggests on a postcard in deluxe text please.

If Heaven Or Hell Decides That They Both Are Satisfied

This is mostly in response to thinking about what Sarah wrote about the BBC TV show "The Root Of All Evil". You may want to got there and read that post first or just laugh at her fringe or something for kicks.

So there are these things in America called "Hell Houses". Wikipedia describes them as "a haunted house-style attraction typically run by fundamentalist Christian churches or parachurch groups. These attractions are meant to depict the divine judgements that await unrepentant sinners and the torments of the damned in Hell." Personally I prefer the description from the official Hell House kit website though, "Shake your city with the most 'in-your-face, high-flyin', no denyin', death-defyin', Satan-be-cryin', keep-ya-from-fryin', theatrical stylin', no holds barred, cutting-edge' evangelism tool of the new millennium!". Word indeed homeboy.

If you haven't gotten the jist of these things by now, basically you walk through a series of rooms in each of which is a scene from someone's life showing how they've screwed it up. The penultimate scene is all the screwed up people making their way through the gates of Hell to the eternal hellfire and damnation that waits. The final scene is a pseudo-Jesus in heaven going "Want to avoid that happening to you? Follow me!"

I have issues with this on so many levels that I've had to install new elevators in my brain to get the neurons there, but fundamentally my issue with it is this: Isn't Jesus supposed to be good? I don't mean just good as in does right, which obviously He is, but good as in something you want. Good like sunshine and warmth and happiness are good. I mean, gosh, isn't Jesus meant to be the person we want to run to and turn to? Isn't He so fantastically good that everything else is rubbish when compared to him? I'm not objecting to telling people about sin and hell (hey, I'm writing my dissertation on why we need to) but when we start preaching of Christ the escape route as opposed to Christ the saviour then we're doing something wrong.

"Taste and see that the LORD is good. Oh, the joys of those who trust in him!" (Psalm 34)

January 18th

I haven't really had the much to say of late, so I was quite pleased to hear that today William Shatner successfully auctioned his kidney stone off to an online casino. Rather disappointedly for any potential mocking of this, he did it to raise money for charity and he mocked himself and the people who would pay money for such a thing.

If that wasn't enough excitement for one day, lets not forget that 228 years ago today Captain Cook discovered Hawaii, which probably came as something of a shock for the Polynesians, Tahitians and Spaniards already living there. Also on this day Francisco Pizarro founded the city of Ciudad de los Reyes in Peru. Ciudad de los Reyes didn't stick as a name though and instead everyone called it by it's original name of Lima, which makes you wonder exactly how he defined founding. Also on this day pirate / captain Henry Morgan captured Panama. Quite sensibly upon capturing it he decided against discovering or founding it, but rather plundering it for all it's worth, which turned out to be a grand total of 100,000 pounds. That may seem like a lot of money but in today's money after inflation is taken into account it's probably only worth around one kidney stone.

January 18th; a great day for history

Paul and The Incident With The Muffins

Exclusively, for the first time to the general public, to the amazement of dozens;
Paul and The Incident With The Muffins (1.6mb playable in Quicktime (Higher quality iTunes version suitable for iPods can be found here) )

May I thoroughly recommend you watch it all the way through many many times? I have!

And now for the future generations of teenagers who are going to have to write essays about this legendary piece of early 21st Century comedy, here's a play by play break down of it all.

Synopsis:

This movie has two key characters; Paul, a young man with a fine taste in clothes, is who the movie is obviously centred on. The camera rarely leaves Paul and the action clearly happens around him. The second key character is the director of the movie. This man is often heard but is never seen, he exists to drive the film along and provide someone with whom Paul can interact and bounce of with. As well as this, three other characters exist, Paul's two older siblings and a mutual friend of Paul and the director, who, for some inexplicable reason, is ginger.

The plot is deceptively simple, the director and the ginger friend turn up at the end of a party to pick up Paul and his siblings and take them home. Paul takes a plate of muffins home with him and causes much mischief with them.

Play by Play Break Down

• 0:02 Immediately the director shows us all four key elements of the movie; Paul, muffins, the director and Paul's stupidity.
• 0:07 The director decides that he does in fact, want a muffin. While at this stage a seemingly meaningless expression of hunger later on the true impact of this statement will become clear.
• 0:12 "Yeah, I want a plate of them". In an unexpected twist we realise that actually it was the director's greed who encouraged Paul to take the muffins in the first place. This serves three purposes, firstly it makes Paul seem that much more endearing in the eyes of the public (a feat already somewhat accomplished by picking such a rogueishly handsome young man to play Paul). Secondly it makes the director that much more evil, something which is otherwise only suggested at by his crude manner and uncouth accent. Finally it makes the muffin violence at the end of this play feel that much more deserved. It leaves us wanting to applaud Paul as well as cheer the downfall of the director, justice has been served, if only by a muffin in the face.
• 0:17 Paul takes the muffins. Nothing can add to the horror of this moment
  
• 0:25 "I hope you don't post this on flickr". Paul here is worried that his reputation as an upstanding gentlemen will be compromised by having these images uploaded to the image sharing site http://flickr.com. No chance of that then.
• 0:27 Here we get the first proper view of the ginger friend. As you can see, she's ginger.
• 0:25 "Ssssh Get in, Get in the house!". At first glance it seems that Paul is eager for the director to get inside so as not to cause a disturbance. Later on though we realise that the only person Paul care's about disturbing is his parents. This makes Paul's words encouraging everyone inside very suspicious. Was Paul planning something?
• 0:27 Here we see Paul huss the first of three muffins over the director's head and at the foot of his brother. It's a very technical shot, perhaps hinting at a level of training and skill that Paul never admits too.
• 0:46 Muffin two hits the director of the head and bounces off. Paul manages to keep his nonchalant appearance up despite obvious guilt. This is in obvious contrast to the rest of the cast, who are variously in hysterics, confusion and anger. As the video heads towards it's climax we can see the director artfully weaving an atmosphere of chaos together.
• 0:53 The director slows it down here, giving the viewer time to pause and giving himself time to build up the tension. Something's going to happen here. Although Paul taking off his coat is fairly exciting.
• 0:58 "He just threw a muffin in my eye". This phrase serves two purposes. Both of them are too much effort to report upon here though. Needless to say, directing genius!
• 1:00 KABLAM! That's how to pull of a money shot! An argument could be made that the director didn't actually go down to the muffin in the eye, as a muffin in the eye doesn't really hurt that much, but rather he went down because of the fits of laughter he was in. This is a very valid argument, but it misses the heart of the movie; someone getting hit in the face by a muffin. Pure comic genius.

Find Me A Job

So apparently in 6 or so months I'll be a fully qualified degree'ed up youth worker, and with this new found power and/or responsibility comes naff all in the way of getting free money off the government. What's that about? Haven't I given enough already? So apparently I need to get a job and earn some money. This is not terrible lost as I'm guessing early retirement would bore me, but this does raise the issue of actually getting a job. Doing a job I'm not to worried about, seeing as I've been doing a job for the last four years of my life, but to do a job it turns out you have to have a job, andto have a job you need to go out and get one. Something I have very little experience of. Therefore, I figure I can finally put this website to good use. You people surely know people interesting in employing a hip young youth worker. I surely know I can at least pretend to do the job! Everyone's a winner!

Here's the deal then. I'm a qualified youth worker with good references and a witty website in look of work. You find me some sort of job you think I'd be good at and if I end up in said job, everytime I mention it on this website I'll call it "The Job That XXXXX Got Me". I'll even point xxxxx to a hyperlink of your choice! Bargain.

And just to show I'm as good as described, here are some quotes from some young people about me:

"He's cool, seriously, like everytime I see him I go, GOSH, he's cool. How can I be more like him" - Stephanopolis, 14
"Whenever he speaks to me I seriously re-evaluate my life. Without him I'd be taking crack through my eyeballs while living in a box on the streets. Now I'm picking up my third degree from Oxford" Jerry, 12
"When he told me about Jesus it felt like I was being washed clean there and then. I can't express it in words, but it blew my mind. Seriously. I'd follow Mark to the grave. I mean Jesus. Yeah." Orthobert, 15
"Ever since I spoke to Mark I've never sinned." Natashasha, 17

For child protection reasons all names, ages and quotes have been changed.

If You're Going To California

Did you know I have three songs in my music collection that are called "California"? Add to that Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" and that's four songs all devoted to going to California. On top of that, I have a song by the Beach Boys called "California Girls", which while not about going to California as such, certainly provides a good reason to go there.

I say this all as some sort of introduction to the story of me booking tickets to go to San Francisco.

There is no middle or conclusion. Hooray for brevity!

Hairdressers Part II

I had my haircut last week. I got the same hair dresser as I normally get, however as I've resigned myself to having my hair cut by him, I prepared a cunning exit strategy. Unfortunately, I realised I couldn't keep up the pretence of having my mouth sewn shut AND tell the man how I'd like my hair cut.

Looking at my hair, in retrospect I shouldn't have tried to kid myself with the second choice.

Winnie The Pooh and The Mechanical Claw

You know how they have those prize machines in arcades where you have a big glass cage and a giant mechanical claw and somehow you're supposed to get the mechanical claw to come down and pick up an object off the bottom of the cage? And though it seems really easy you soon realise that the claw has all the gripping power of a fish and anything heavier than a feather or smaller than a coffee cup will just fall out of the things grip. You know how you can never ever win on one of those things? Ha!

So I'm walking past a row of those arcade machines and I'm not particularly paying much attention to them what with all the glitz and glamour of Felixstowe to look at. As I walk past I brush the controls of the Winnie The Pooh machine and much to my shock the claw moves! Oh so reticently I press the button again, and lo! It completely and utterly fails to move. Disappointed slightly I press the other button to move the claw along to the right and it moves! Good grief I have a free go on the machine! Yay and indeed Hooray! However, all is not good, having neglected my chance to significantly move the claw up along the y axis I'm left with moving the claw to the right, and there is only one toy in the way; a Winnie The Pooh teddy. So gathering my courage I start to move the claw to the right, and just when I think the moment is right I let go of the button. The claw comes to a juddering halt, pauses, and then starts to descend.

It stops exactly on top of Winnie The Pooh and the three prongs on the arm start to close in. Two arms sink under Pooh but get not real grip, as the arm starts to head back up they flop off. But the third arm catches underneath Pooh's red shirt. As it lifts Pooh starts to move off the ground, first his head, then his arms, then, just as the legs start to move it all slips and Pooh falls back down on his face. Denied.

Disappointed I started to turn away from the machine. I then, I saw before me, the most glorious sight. The display showed two more free goes! That afternoon, I proudly walked away with a Winnie The Pooh toy.

If you're seeing this message...

Normal service has been restored. Good news for people who like bad websites.

Winnie The Pooh -Piece

While I was explaining this story to Paul in the pub last he was all "Dude, you should so make the story about how you got hold of Winnie the Pooh and he had a Mechanical Claw-piece^* and was giving it all this**" and I was like "Dude, this story doesn't need any lies or exaggeration. This story stands on it's own! Now get a round!". And you know what? He didn't because the pub quiz wasn't and we were going to Crug's house to play Poker instead, but he did get pizza which is very decent of him, especially if he forgets I owe him £3 for it.

Winnie the Pooh's been postponed, maybe till tomorrow, maybe till Monday as I'm moving website servers over the weekend. Instead, go read a book or something. Or buy me cake. Or Flowers (I'm not a girl). I'm off climbing now, deal with it.

Footnote

Felix-to-the-stowe

Sarah with her new 'friend'

Yesterday myself and the kid Sarah went in search of shenanigans in rainy felixstowe. Okay, so there were more people involved than just me and Sarah, but they either lack websites, or I'd need parental consent to write about them so for all extents and purposes they're dead to this post. I feel at this stage it should be pointed out, if you don't know Sarah, this is how dumb she is. YOU CAN'T LEAN ON THE SHOULDER OF SOMEONE WHO'S NOT THERE SARAH!. It's no wonder my website is superior.

In the distance there are monsters. They don't like to come into Felixstowe itself though, apparently it's too tacky

Continuing with the photo thing, if you've never been to Felixstowe, this is how it looks. If you're British, you'll understand exactly what sort of place this is. If you're not, it's hard to explain, but here for fun people swap £1 coins for 50 2p coins so they can put them in machines that, if you're very lucky, will dispense more 2p coins. If you don't get cold, wet or abused by teenagers in the process of doing this you probably get an official award saying "Congratulations, You just had the best day of your life at Felixstowe" with a voucher for one free 2p coin.

There is nothing in this photo that the British Gambling Commission needs to hear about.

I was hoping that Sarah would write extensively about all the boring parts of the day and make them sound exciting so I'd be able to skip them all and just write about the amazing adventures of Winnie The Pooh and the giant mechanical claw. However she hasn't bothered and so I'm going to have to write at least a thousand words (plus the caption!) on the subject and consequentially you're going to suffer by having to wait till tomorrow for the amazing Winnie The Pooh Story. Sorry, but that's the way these things work.

New Years Partee

This New Years Eve I lived out a long held desire of mine. I went to a party dressed up as a robot. How cool is that? Very cool, that's how cool. If you're interested in photos of the party then you need to check out this link. If you're interested in how to make a robot costume, then I have some advice there too. If you're interested in amazing stories of the night then tough! For the things that happened there are the things that will be exaggerated in pubs across the land night upon night until one day people will remember the time when a mighty robot came to a party and used his laser death rays as disco lights. To write them down now would not help mythologising my Robot.

All that said though, walking down the street dressed as a robot gets you so much love.