Wedding

Here are some black and white pics I took at the wedding - and the infamous bridemaid dress.

Max - looking very smart I thought but very concerned for some reason.












Will Moore - Emma's brother












The Ladies of the party with the Bride, Emma is on the right.












Emma's Brother sorting his dads suit out.











Lisa Moore, Emmas new sister in law with her mum



















Lucky couple already having an argument over the cake ;-)

















And making up again very quickly












Will again.













Most beautiful women on the planet.

















I took this as fog began to descend. The Light is a house spot light in the background


















Same here - just created an interesting shot I thought.

Bridesmaid Dresses

On the Thursday 17th of November the car load of three of us finally travelled up to Bromsgrove (near Birmingham) for Emma's brothers wedding.

The journey was fine until I missed the M42 turning on the M6 and proceeded in my shear madness and stupidity to think I could drive through Birmingham City Center at 4.30pm without minimal conjestion. How wrong I was.

Not only was I drove to mad distraction because I missed the turning, everyone seemed to be on the road I had to be on. Naturally there was the road work etc. So for 13 miles we dragged along for ages. Only to encounter my next "issue".

Just as things were picking up, traffic was moving, there was a hollow scream from my passenger. It wasn't Max! It was my wife. In a nice calm manner I asked "What the bloody hell is wrong man you've just cut my life in half" - her retort proceeded to sink my bum further into my seat and finally remove any nails I had left leaving them embedded on the stearing wheel.

SHE HAD FORGOTTEN THE BRIDESMAID DRESS.

To cut a fairly rude and unpleasant story I said "Oh well dear, no problem, I will simply drive back tonight and pick it up". This I did after copious amounts of caffiene. I returned back at the hotel with the dress and ready for breakfast at 8.30am - not bad going I reckon.......

Been busy

Well the past couple of weekends have been manic for both myself and the other two.
In short:

Course in Ipswich followed by:

Wedding in Midlands which involved me driving back to Norwich (much to the amusement of my friends apparently) followed by:

Worshipexperience Conference in Eastbourne.

So I have a few things I can talk about at least thats for sure.

Ranworth

Went walking around Ranworth on Sunday 12 th - here are some photos taken with my camera phone:

What is evangelism?

I think this is an interesting question for which I have no clear answer when I think about it. I guess probably like a lot of things I will try and put things into a box but I am learning that this is not so.

In my younger Christian life this might have been seen as going out and preaching on the streets, or performing a church service on the street corner, or even some kind of drama (oh I certainly have done that several times believe me).

But I was prompted by watching something on the God Channel today. On here there was a middle aged, very smart looking well pronounced man talking to a muslim via a phone in. I struggled to understand the conversation for various reasons, but every now and again, the presenter would ask "Can you see my point of view though?"

Its this that made me wonder why we as Christians feel the right to have people "see our point of view". I think everyone both in and out of Christian circles have the right to there own point of view, which is what gives color and vigour. However I wondered if "getting our view across" should ever be needed. I am sure Jesus at time was quite direct, but my high level view of His ministry was of servitude and action. He did things simply and clearly and never tried to persuade people - he just asked them to come and see.

So for me, evangelism is more than just getting out on the street and trying to persuade a message onto people, but about living and breathing Holy lives from which the Holy Spirit can bring and draw people to us. I wonder how many of us if we tried to simply be the person God wants us to be, instead of trying to portray an image to others, the more the Lord will work in our lives.

Wireless

Wahoo - finally got my wireless working today. In the end I had to get a wireless dongle for my laptop whereas I has persued attempting to get a mini PCI card.

The later resulted in a threat to the small claims court because the company in question kept sending the wrong one. After I contacted Dell they decided enough was enough and refunded me.

I know have a PCMIA slotted into the side of the laptop and I am sitting downstairs with Star Trek Voyager on and no modem cables - yet still accessing the internet. I am hoping I may be able in the shade in the summer work outside - that would be champion.

Armistice Day

Armistice Day

Been surprisingly moved today by some of the images of Armistice. A couple of those are from opposite extremes of the media....

The first was the images of a 109 year old laying a reath in memory of those that died. The other one struck me by watching Eastenders.

In the latter, the story of Nana Moon was relayed about how she met Alfie's dad. It went on to explain that he was lost in the war like the many others. It showed her receiving the bad news and her realisation of becoming a single mum.
This made me think how informal people's deaths were communicated to the loved ones. I am sure there was no better way of doing it but it seems such a cold hearted thing to do for such an expense. Its message is lifeless and the transport of the message is just as lifeless.

The other part made me think about how many people must have been brought up fatherless in this generation, and although I do not have an answer to it, wonder what the long term social impact was on that.

Death by Programming

I loved the following, this came via http://seehere.blogspot.com/ and http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,69355,00.html

July 28, 1962 -- Mariner I space probe. A bug in the flight software for the Mariner 1 causes the rocket to divert from its intended path on launch. Mission control destroys the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. The investigation into the accident discovers that a formula written on paper in pencil was improperly transcribed into computer code, causing the computer to miscalculate the rocket's trajectory.

1982 -- Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.

1985-1987 -- Therac-25 medical accelerator. A radiation therapy device malfunctions and delivers lethal radiation doses at several medical facilities. Based upon a previous design, the Therac-25 was an "improved" therapy system that could deliver two different kinds of radiation: either a low-power electron beam (beta particles) or X-rays. The Therac-25's X-rays were generated by smashing high-power electrons into a metal target positioned between the electron gun and the patient. A second "improvement" was the replacement of the older Therac-20's electromechanical safety interlocks with software control, a decision made because software was perceived to be more reliable.

What engineers didn't know was that both the 20 and the 25 were built upon an operating system that had been kludged together by a programmer with no formal training. Because of a subtle bug called a "race condition," a quick-fingered typist could accidentally configure the Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode but with the metal X-ray target out of position. At least five patients die; others are seriously injured.

1988 -- Buffer overflow in Berkeley Unix finger daemon. The first internet worm (the so-called Morris Worm) infects between 2,000 and 6,000 computers in less than a day by taking advantage of a buffer overflow. The specific code is a function in the standard input/output library routine called gets() designed to get a line of text over the network. Unfortunately, gets() has no provision to limit its input, and an overly large input allows the worm to take over any machine to which it can connect.

Programmers respond by attempting to stamp out the gets() function in working code, but they refuse to remove it from the C programming language's standard input/output library, where it remains to this day.

1988-1996 -- Kerberos Random Number Generator. The authors of the Kerberos security system neglect to properly "seed" the program's random number generator with a truly random seed. As a result, for eight years it is possible to trivially break into any computer that relies on Kerberos for authentication. It is unknown if this bug was ever actually exploited.

January 15, 1990 -- AT&T Network Outage. A bug in a new release of the software that controls AT&T's #4ESS long distance switches causes these mammoth computers to crash when they receive a specific message from one of their neighboring machines -- a message that the neighbors send out when they recover from a crash.

One day a switch in New York crashes and reboots, causing its neighboring switches to crash, then their neighbors' neighbors, and so on. Soon, 114 switches are crashing and rebooting every six seconds, leaving an estimated 60 thousand people without long distance service for nine hours. The fix: engineers load the previous software release.

1993 -- Intel Pentium floating point divide. A silicon error causes Intel's highly promoted Pentium chip to make mistakes when dividing floating-point numbers that occur within a specific range. For example, dividing 4195835.0/3145727.0 yields 1.33374 instead of 1.33382, an error of 0.006 percent. Although the bug affects few users, it becomes a public relations nightmare. With an estimated 3 million to 5 million defective chips in circulation, at first Intel only offers to replace Pentium chips for consumers who can prove that they need high accuracy; eventually the company relents and agrees to replace the chips for anyone who complains. The bug ultimately costs Intel $475 million.

1995/1996 -- The Ping of Death. A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed "ping" packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called "blue screen of death" when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well.

June 4, 1996 -- Ariane 5 Flight 501. Working code for the Ariane 4 rocket is reused in the Ariane 5, but the Ariane 5's faster engines trigger a bug in an arithmetic routine inside the rocket's flight computer. The error is in the code that converts a 64-bit floating-point number to a 16-bit signed integer. The faster engines cause the 64-bit numbers to be larger in the Ariane 5 than in the Ariane 4, triggering an overflow condition that results in the flight computer crashing.

First Flight 501's backup computer crashes, followed 0.05 seconds later by a crash of the primary computer. As a result of these crashed computers, the rocket's primary processor overpowers the rocket's engines and causes the rocket to disintegrate 40 seconds after launch.

November 2000 -- National Cancer Institute, Panama City. In a series of accidents, therapy planning software created by Multidata Systems International, a U.S. firm, miscalculates the proper dosage of radiation for patients undergoing radiation therapy.

Multidata's software allows a radiation therapist to draw on a computer screen the placement of metal shields called "blocks" designed to protect healthy tissue from the radiation. But the software will only allow technicians to use four shielding blocks, and the Panamanian doctors wish to use five.

The doctors discover that they can trick the software by drawing all five blocks as a single large block with a hole in the middle. What the doctors don't realize is that the Multidata software gives different answers in this configuration depending on how the hole is drawn: draw it in one direction and the correct dose is calculated, draw in another direction and the software recommends twice the necessary exposure.

At least eight patients die, while another 20 receive overdoses likely to cause significant health problems. The physicians, who were legally required to double-check the computer's calculations by hand, are indicted for murder.

Oldies can be Goodies

Tonight I was watching Jamie Olivers Escape (or something like that where he is travelling around Italy learning about authentic Italian cooking).

In the programme he came to be in the presence of "granny". Apparently granny was the person that oversaw all the cooking in the kitchen and made sure it was done traditionally and properly. When Jamie Oliver (after hand killing a lamb, peeeling and preparing it) served it up her response was it stunk and he had used the wrong ingredients. Reality was it probably was lovely, tasty and wholesome.

It made me think about our attitude to church. What I love about church at times is the fact that it can be a mixture of both young people and old. For the old, they can often not want to adopt new ideas or new ways of doing things - they have a distinct opinion on something new and foreign. And of the younger members, think that the older people don't really understand todays culture and can't "get with it". This is probably a sweeping statement but I am sure I have seen it in my walk several times.

But watching Jamie Oliver tonight reminded me of two things. That wisdom and experience from an older generation is often good and quality advice and should be heeded and passed down. To that degree I have always disliked being in a church where the bias is on a youth based oritented structure. I am sure it works well, but it excludes those members of society that can contribute something valuable and constructive.

I don't want to live a church life where there is no input from those people that have lived life a long time. I am not saying they are always right and should be obeyed - but their wisdom at times should be treated more preciously than we give credit for......

Asthma Green, Black and White

Today I had to take a double take of the date, 9th November. (bit like advent calendars in Sainsburys on September 1st). In the EDP today there is already speculation that Green and Ashton are the targets of a Mr Moyes at Everton, as well as rumours arife about those that will be sailing in and out of the tyne waters in January.....

But you know what - again I found myself not caring. I have been a football fan for as long as I remember, with Norwich being my most recent supporting acquisition. But, with Newcastle's shenanigans over the past couple of years and the rise of fall of the might yellows I find myself become somewhat "lace fare" (I don't know how that's is spelt so your gonna have to forgive me - I have never been good at Inglish).

So this care free attitude is odd to me. I think if Norwich were to be demoted to Division 1 or the Toon demoted to championship I would be concerned but currently, I aint. Norwich continue to have a fantastic fan base and I am sure will entertain crowds of 15 - 19 thousand people plus when they play. That is huge in reality for championship clubs. Newcastle fans are not having a great time, but so what. They have the likes of Shearer and Owen and a whole load of other people that make the entertainment fantastic.

I guess what I am saying is that success is not everything - its great, but its not everything. And in the end if the people like Ashton and Green move on then fine - but lets not get overtly upset and concerned about it. There are plenty of youngsters and potential waiting in the wings.

So here is to Christmas and beyond and promotion - great else lets see some good football and good banter.................. Howay the Yellows............

Last of Summer at Blickling Hall

It would appear that the last of the nice weather this year came last weekend and I was glad I had my camera along. Here are a couple of shots to remember the years weather by as we head into months of wind and rain:

St Stephens (Boxing) Day

Most of the people I know that might read this probably know this already, but Boxing Day is also known as St Stephens Day.

What I didn't realise is that the reason it is there is meant to be a comparison between the birth of Jesus and the cost of following on from that (Stephen was er - um - stoned to death I think).

I will certainly remember this on Boxing Day about what the cost of the Christmas story truly entails.

Oklahoma Wife Swap

In some bizarre twist I was watching the American version of Wife Swap. One of the families lived in Oklahoma (hence the coincidence).

To set the scene one family was of staunch religious background, the other was a legally married gay couple (male) with two daughters. You can immediatley see where this was heading.

Now my Christian faith tells me that I am no different to someone that is gay, practising or not, which is cool - its merely how they choose to live that life that things become an issue and a challenge. However what disturbed me most was that the "Christian" husband of the wife swap refused to have the bloke stay in his house and insisted he stayed in a Motel because he was "inviting sin into his house". He also refused at first to eat / break bread at the dinner table with him.

I found this deeply shocking. Not simply because in my mind a Christian shouldn't be treating someone like that, but that a human would have such hate for another human. I couldn't believe such segregation existed and the level at which it was administered was justified by biblical passages. In fact, I got so annoyed with the "Christian" I thumped the settee in disgust.

Jesus wouldn't have this attitude I am sure, and I simply cannot understand why a "Christian" should behave in such a manner to anyone.

Makes me mad - damn mad (in a righteous champion canny bloke kinda way).