i am sparticus: Words

Where's the ball?

Standard back of a newspaper style event, the rule is that each row, square and column must contain one each of the numbers 1-9. I mean. No wait. You know what I mean.

For those of you reading any back papers today

Untenable: "not able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection" (New Oxford American Dictionary)

John Owen - A Recap

Currently I'm trying to pile my way through John Owen's the Death of Death in the Death of Christ, for those of you who don't know who John Owen is, there's a reason I just linked to his wikipedia page¹.

Here is a recap of what you've been missing so far given to you from my extensive notes on the book:

• By 'end' he means 'purpose / point / result / main aim'.
• That four-fold view of the Cross that Stott puts forth in The Cross of Christ? Stolen from Owen. Except Owen has another point. Burn.
• By 'expressions of the Holy Spirit' he means 'the bible'.
• Towards the end of the first chapter he reveals that the book is written to oppose the idea that Christ's death saves everyone in the world. He argues that Christ's death only saves those that believe.
• By 'chasma megas' he means 'I am a pretentious muppet'.

And so on. I have lots of notes, I won't tell you them all now, or it'll take all day. I haven't worked out whether he'd buy an iPhone yet or not, but I'm leaning towards yes.

¹ For those of you allergic to wikipedia, "John Owen (1616 - August 24, 1683) was an English Nonconformist church leader and theologian." He was very smart. He wrote some books.

Stuff

So here is my extensive review of my experience of an iPhone;

"Mark starting hearing about the iPhone about a year ago, though it was just rumour back then, he believed it pretty much straight away, but not for any rational reason. Mark's experience was perhaps most formed when he checked the internet after a youth club on the night of the WWDC to find out that it would indeed exist. Since then he's seen them advertised, read reviews and played with an iPhone touch..."

Actually, scratch extensive. Also if you mentally inserted 'humorous' as an adjective you can scratch that too.

In other news, John Owen is consuming my every spare minute at the moment. Or moment at the minute. Or whatever.

Negev

Or if this website had subtitles:

Words that maybe shouldn't be used in the non-difficult categories of made-up-as-you-go-along Bible Pictionary:

• Shem
• Propitiation
• Unrepentant (which, for clarification, is not an action and does not fit that category).
• The Negev
• Two capitals of cast bronze

For your time wasting, see also; The Canonical list of Bible games (if someone wants to buy me The Ark of The Covenant for Christmas that'd be swell).

Funding, Fighting, Free-Falling (I needed another alliteration)

If I still had a youth work Friday. Wait, this is my website, I'll do what I want...

• So Greg Stier (who founded something called Dare2Share) gave a talk"why-i-don't-think-some-people-liked-my-youth-specialties-talk-last-night" at the youth specialities youth workers conference, some people objected and sent e-mail and behold minor internet furor. But all in a nice loving manner, which is good. Interesting points are: Greg preached on the cross and how it joins us together, he used a illustration involving lesbians (wu-oh), and Youth Specialities often get people to speak they might not agree with (which is a common enough way of teaching, but not one I care to agree with much).

• Church and Community Fund for things like "employing a youth worker, renovating an old church hall for use as a community centre, providing hot meals for the homeless in a church room and much more!" (exclamation mark theirs). Max of £15,000, you've got to be Church of England and it seems that the more deprived an area you are in, the better.

Free Phone Give Away...

Part of signing up for a new contract when you have an existing phone because you want a cheaper contract is getting a new phone. Even when you have an existing phone, and ask nicely not to have a new phone. I have nothing to do with this new phone, other than subsidising it with my line rental. If you want it, comment this website or e-mail me at mark at thiswebsite-ican'tbelievewestillhavetoworryaboutspamemailinthisdayandage dot com. Best reason wins. Details of the phone can be found here, it's on the Three network, but unlocking it via your friendly dodgy cornershop shouldn't be too hard.

(Not) In A Coffee Shop

The problem with travelling with someone else is that you don't stop in a coffee shop for an hour at a time and write witty thoughts. You stop in a coffee shop sure, and definitely you make witticisms, but then you laugh lots about them and you don't remember why they were funny and they probably don't translate well to the internet.

The Colosseum? Large, but falling apart and you can't really see much, and in fairness, the whole large thing? We've got that nailed in the 20th century. A tour of Portman Road would have been more impressive, the distinct lack of information posted around the place led you to make up most of the facts about it for yourself, which, while fun, wasn't very enlightening.

The Vatican is pretty sweet though, the views inside are phenomenal, even if it does make you sad that so much money was wasted on such a thing. On our way to the roof myself and the girlfriend took the wrong queue and ended up going through the tomb of the popes, or whatever it's really called. That was weird. Don't die pope if you dislike the idea of thousands of people you don't know staring at your grave and crossing themselves. I felt I should tell the little old lady in front of us that touching some cold marble probably won't get her into heaven any quicker, even if John Paul I was underneath it. I didn't though, we weren't allowed to speak. On our second time around queuing we got the right entrance and made our way to the top of the Cathedral. The views are quite pretty really though if you don't like steps, or extreme thigh pain, maybe not worth the bother. The lift is a con too, as it takes you up a third of the steps, but only maybe a quarter of the height due to cunning stair dimension math.

Sizewell Beach

A Week In

So it's roughly a week since my copy arrived to the office and I stuck the dvd in the drive. A few comments:

• Everything feels faster and more responsive, even if that is just an illusion, it's still nice. Certainly there's none of the lose of control you occasionally felt like you got in the previous version

• It's very reflective and transparent. Not quite a Windows Vista sort of effect, but the excessive use of capitals and transparencies (which have been mentioned on a thousand other sites) are a tad annoying. This is proper software, not play school kiddy stuff.

• A lot of the fuss over different bits and pieces is just because people aren't used to them.

• It's nice to have Newcastle properly licensed, and I do love the fact you can play the formation straight off and don't have to always change Luque for Martins or Owen like you used to. Alan Smith is nice to have too.