We had our Yoof Cell last night. A bit of a poor showing from the ladies, it must be said: the gentlemen (Ben, Mike, Fat Mike and Sam) dealt with their absence with great fortitude.

We had a look at Galatians, in particular, chapter 5, where Paul talks about how things that are wrong are pretty obvious, and are completely opposite to what we do if we're walking with the Holy Spirit. Above all, the test for our behaviour is not a written law, but love.

So if we're being loving then we are automatically fulfilling God's law, and nobody can tell us we're doing the wrong thing.

Being the proud father that I am (of Benjamin, 23 months, and another due to arrive in May, who is known in the family as "Holly" for reasons we won't go into now), and being also a geek, I naturally wonder how I can teach my children about computers, IT, the internet, and all that stuff.
This isn't because I want to push them into becoming like me (heaven forbid!?), but because I want to teach them stuff I think is cool and because this particular cool stuff is going to be very handy stuff for them to know as they grow up.
As it happens, Benjamin doesn't need any encouragement to use a computer. In fact, anything with buttons holds a magnetic attraction for him.
A mouse which has buttons on top _and_ a light underneath is just too much to handle!
Keeping him away from a keyboard is just impossible. It's cute _some_ of the time, and intensely frustrating when I'm trying to actually use the PC.

"No, Daddy, you need to press _this_ button." ...Of course. How dull of me. Why didn't I think of pressing ESC in the middle of a download?

Well one of these years I'd like to get him into a little programming - not so he can grow up to be a programmer, but so he can understand computers (?and understand is father?) a bit better.

I'm thinking that the best way to go with this is LOGO, which has been out of mainstream fashion for a couple of decades, but I know teachers who still rave about it. I've even read (although I haven't been able to confirm this yet) that LOGO is part of the National Curriculum.

What do you, oh esteemed reader, think?
How can I teach my children about IT?
Is it ever too soon to learn programming? Or should Benjamin have written his first compiler before he goes to school?

Went to the dentist this morning (cracked a tooth on Sunday).
The tooth didn't hurt - it's just that there's a really sharp edge which catches my tongue, and felt like it was shredding it into tiny pieces. No matter; the marvellous Mr. Foy sorted it out with a temporary filling today. The bad news is that it will have to come out at some point in the fairly near future. Still, the pain has gone! (enabling me to see clearly now ;)

I have started meeting regularly with Richard and Duncan. We're working with alternate Mondays at the moment. Last night, Dunc was ill, so it was just me and Rich. I wasn't there at all. I'm feeling yuk cos I've cracked a tooth. I'm going to the dentist tomorrow to sort it out. I can see a crown in my future, but it's not a crown of spleandour!?

This year's birthday present arrived on Friday. 5 disk LOTR (Return of the King) DVD. The only bad news is that Sq wasn't in when it arrived, so the postman took it back to the depot. Usually they just leave it in the cupboard outside the front door, but perhaps he thought it was too valuable. Good point.

Lovingly, Sq went and picked it up on Saturday morning. We have now watched most of the film. :0) Much extra stuff (I think it must be up to 4 hours now!). I definitely feel that I need a video projector in order to truly appreciate this kind of thing. Ah me, poor age, the problems I have to deal with.

Feeling better today. Throat still a bit dodgy, and I still feel a little bit weedier than normal, but it's definitely getting better. :0)

I re-read the bit about Matthew Levi on the train. You know what else struck me? In all 3 accounts (Mt9, Mk2, Lk5), it starts with "As Jesus was going somewhere, he noticed Levi, sitting in his tax collector's booth." It started with Jesus going about his Father's work. Most crucially, Matthew only got called because Jesus noticed him. I mean he didn't notice Jesus. What if Jesus hadn't noticed him? (I know that's the wrong sort of question, but still...). This is an example of what Jesus describes elsewhere when he says "You didn't choose me; I chose you." I don't know that I like the thought that Matthew's savlation (and my salvation) is contingent on Jesus making a choice. It makes me feel very out of control - very insecure. The truth is, though, that I am out of control, and I should be jolly grateful that it doesn't rest with me (cos I'd mess it up). Jesus isn't just the means of my salvation, he's the motivation and the very origin of it.

Yesterday on the train into work, I suddenly realised that my throat hurt a bit. I felt worse as the day went on, and went home with a slight temperature and a general feeling of weediness. Fortunately, my lovely young wife is v. understanding, and was undemanding and supporting.
:)
<3
I manfully worked my way through the steak she cooked for tea :)
After tea, I just about managed to stay awake through an episode of "Jeeves and Wooster" (I had the first series on DVD as an anniversary present - did I mention my wife's overall loveliness?).

So today I was feeling about the same as I got up, but have managed, through sheer determination, grit and Great British Bloody-mindedness to haul myself up the the metropolis and into work. While sitting on the train, I dragged out my Bible, and read the bit where Jesus tells Matthew Levi to follow him. It's one of those 1-liners in the bible where the brevity of the account belies the enormity of the event. Matthew's sitting there collecting taxes, and when Jesus says "follow me" ... he does! What's that about, eh? I mean, I can see why a fisherman (Peter et al) would be prepared to give the wandering preacher business a go: fishing isn't top of the economic ladder, is it? But Matthew's a tax collector: not the most popular of occupations, true, but he must be raking it in, right? So in a moment he's basically chucked in his old way of life (well, chucked away everything, really), and gone out completely on a limb. And remember, he doesn't have our advantage of 2k years of hindsight; he didn't know that Jesus was going to be someone great. All the information he had was standing in front of him. And what he saw was enough to make him put everything on the line. He was a rich man. A rich man typically loves riches more than life. Matthew gave up his riches.

Why?

In my mind, this event marks out Matthew as one of the heroes of the New Testament. I hadn't seen it before today, but now he's one of my heroes because he didn't hesitate to throw away what he couldn't keep to gain what he couldn't loose. [Appologies to Jim Elliott]. I'm not like that. I like to know all the facts before I step away from my comfort zone. I don't want to be like this, and by God's grace I won't always be this way, but for now Matthew is my hero. :0)

The weekend was pretty good, but a bit full:
Cat & Richard pitched up on Friday evening (with dogs) to stay until Sunday. It was, as ever, nice to see them! Jones wasn't too happy with admitting Misty and Rowan to his territory, and there was a bit of fisticuffs (and not a little whining Friday night), but they seemed to pretty much sort it out by Saturday.

Sat. lunchtime, we (humans!) all headed out to "The Spotted Dog", for which Sarah & I had won a GBP 40 voucher in a raffle. We had a jolly nice lunch, and the total bill was only GBP 60, so we thought we did rather well. Definitely recommended. :)

Sunday was fun. Church was good. God was there, and I was prayed for by a number of people, inc. Mark, Dave (who anointed me with oil) and Uffuk. I wanted prayer about the whole fear / confidence thing - basically, I think God thinks it's time for me to be free of fear of man. nuf sed.

After church, I was priviledged to be a small cog in a logistical operation the likes of which we have not seen since Market Garden. A large clan, including 14 related people from church and a number of their relatives were off on a mega-holiday together. I went to Gatwick with the Kings, and drove their car back to TW. I now have to drive it back to Gatwick in a fortnight's time and leave a message for them @ left luggage. Their flight arrives at 02:30 or some equally uncivilised hour.

Interrestingly, their car is a Fiat Multipla (1.6 petrol, basic spec). We're wondering vaguely about getting a bigger car (as we're hoping for another child at some point), and we'd like to get a people carrier. Dave raves about his Multipla - perhaps we should look at one? Having one for 2 weeks is certainly a good opportunity to check out that option. :)

After scooting back from LGW, we had lunch with the NCT crowd. OK, but I would have preferred a nice nap!

OK, so I haven't done a lot here for a while, have I? 

Well, I just posted a question I've been thinking about for a while over on Larkware (http://www.larkware.com), and I thought I might as well pop it here as well, so here you go...

----------------------------------

OK, so here's a question for you great and good who visit here. Before I ask it, if any of you happen to have a vested interest in the answer, I'm trusting you to put it aside for a moment... My team is not following most of the best practices we should be. I'm thinking about version control, unit testing, automatic documentation, help files, daily builds, ... I have just read (i) "Coder to Developer" and (ii) "The Pragmatic Programmer". Both books cover best practice, and recommend very similar practices (most of which I am very keen to start following). They do this with quite different styles and at different levels. Which book should I give to my team to read first?

Please don't feel limited to just those 2 books! tell me what you suggest. My team have varying levels of programming experience and aptitude, but they're smart guys, and I hope that they'll respond well to reasonned argument! What other books, courses, websites, articles, etc. can I use to educate them?

All polite suggestions welcome!
Thanks :)
- AJ
><>

 

Yesterday (28th) was our anniversary.
We had the best yet (of 4). :0)

I took the day off and booked us in for lunch at Thackeray's. It's a top notch restaurant in Tunbridge Wells. Their lunchtime menu is basically the same as their evening menu, but the prices are much lower, and we'd often talked about going there. So I organised Amy to babysit for us. I didn't tell Sarah until the evening before. It was all v. fun. We wore our nice clothes and (oh luxury) took a cab both ways! :)

It was a sunny day, and we sat out in their courtyard bit. The food was fab. I mean absolutely amazing. The service was some of the best I've experienced (we were addressed as Monsigneur and Madamme). I have already inflicted detailsed descriptions of the meal itself on too many people, ... but I'm still going to repeat it here:

bread: hot from the kitchen, half a dozen different types of bread roll. We chose the dried apricot ones. As soon as I finished mine, the nice lady popped up and enquired as to whether I would like another. I declined (good call, as it turned out).

pre-starter: we were served an amuse bouche, a fish consomme. I am surely a pleb, but a meal where they bring you stuff you haven't even ordered: how posh is that?!

starter: I can't remember what Sarah had, but I went for the smoked eel. It was a pretty tiny amound of breaded smoked eel on top of a small tower of grated vegetables in some kind of dill sauce. The tastes were beautifully balanced, but - not having tasted eel before - I'm still not sure exactly what eel tastes like!

main course: Sarah had a salmon thing, about which she made positive noises. I chose the assiette of Kentish lamb - a wise choice, if M'sieur says so himself! There was liver, some joint meat (not sure which joint) and some bits I couldn't identify - but they tasted great :0) The meat was all cooked perfectly. I mean it fell apart, but all the tastes were there. Amazing.
They slipped up minorly in that they forgot Sarah's side salad, but they remedied that in about zero seconds, so who's complaining?

sorbet: Next, my lovely new ladyfriend appeared bearing orange sorbet. Again, the real taste was there, not just a sugary cold lump, which is how sorbet often turns out. I think part of the secret was that it was served above absolute zero, so the orange juice and the water hadn't separated out into distinct layers.

dessert: We were both tempted away from the "cheap" menu for dessert: Sarah had a banana tarte tatin, and I had the assiette de chocolat. I really must congratulate myself again on a simply impeccable descision. I recieved: a mini baked alaska with chocolate ice-cream, a mini chocolate souffle (!? how do they do that??) a shot glass filled with layers of different mousses and a slice of chocolate torte. Somehow I ended up with a glass of muscat to wash it down. Oh well.

coffee: So: coffee. "How can they turn a cup of coffee into an upmarket culinary experience?" I hear you ask. Well, they managed: coffee was duly delivered, accompanied by petits fours, brandy snaps and a pile of truffles the size of East Sussex. How I managed to get up the stairs, through the main restaurant and into the cab, I'll never know!


PS. Huge thanks to Amy for babysitting. She did well under difficult circumstances! :0)


why was this our best anniversary yet?

This was the first year when we haven't been cross with each other about something. In the last year, we've talked about and dealt with some things that had come betwen us. We've been really helped in this by the marriage course (http://www.htb.org.uk/marriage/), which was top. I think the most useful thing was that it gave us time with no distractions to simply talk about things we needed to talk about.

The most exciting thing about this being our best anniversary yet is that if this year we love each other better than we did last year, then it's possible that next year we'll love each other better still. - that sounds worth looking forward to, doesn't it?

08:25 / 09:25
Got a lift to station (it was blowing and tipping it down) from Will (in-laws staying with us for a few days).

Bump still not happy. makes rather pathetic sobbing sound (cross between moaning and crying, really) when not dosed up on nurofen / calpol. poor little boy :-( His rather lovely mummy was up a couple of times in the night just holding him. Eventually, we took him to bed with us, and all slept most of the night. Still rather tired this am. Sq must be even worse! :-(

08:25/09:30

Still quite tired after Bump's bad time Sunday night.
Have now invested in bottle of nurofen for kids.
It comes with nifty syringe so they don't have to take it from a spoon (slightly tricky if you're very little). The syringe fits snugly into the top of the bottle so you can invert it and draw off just the right amount. cool :0)

Read some of Is 61, 63 this morning.
Don't have a lot of NRG to tell you about my thoughts, but I'll start with some notes I made the other day:

Colossians 1:9+

Paul prays for the Colossians. What is his prayer, in essence? That they be filled with the knowledge of God's will.
This, he prays, will happen by having all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Sounds cool.

The result, Paul says, will be that they live lives worthy of God, and please God in every way.
So, the way to please God is to be full of spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you are filled with the knowledge of God's will. I guess that sounds sensible.


How do we please God? Reading on, Paul explains:

• Doing good works which bear fruit.


• Growing in the knowledge of God.


• Endurance and Patience ...
  ... which come by being strengthenned with power from God.


• Give joyful thanks to God.

Glory! :0)

Most of this, then, seems to rest on what God does in me: strengthenning me with power, filling me with wisdom and understanding. The way to obtain these, then, is twofold: prayer and obedience.
I don't know about you, but I'm working on both of these ;-)

09:05 / 10:00
cold gone, but Bump was wailing distressingly from the time he went to bed last night. Rang TTDOC. Finally took him in at c. 23:00. Nice doctor diagnosed ear infection. Isn't that what wussy kids get who are ill all the time? Don't want any of that, thank you! Still, could be a follow-on from his cold. Doc said to give nurofen rather than calpol, as it's much more effective for this kind of pain. Dosed B up accordingly, and he slept after some TLC from his mummy.
I slept until 08:10.

Apart from that, had a busy but effective weekend.
Sale thing went OK.
Fun Evening was fab. I really enjoyed myself. My contribution seemed to go down well.
Lots of talented people did turns - most of whom hadn't done this sort of thing before. All really encouraging. Also, I got to know more people - several from the Calvery crew, which is really cool.
I used most of my verbal gags - forgot all props for the visual ones! ... mainly as a result of the general level of hassle of the day. Still, it all went well. Next time (if I get asked to do it again - which, in all modesty, I think I might - although, it's good to give other people a chance too), I must recruit assistants to be in charge of marshalling the acts, humping the microphones, etc.

It occurs to me that I ought to blog my daily bible readings, and my thoughts on them - as well as what God says about them.

So, I've been reading Colossians (after Dave gave a short talk from bits of chapters 1 & 2 about the Trinity).
I haven't got too far. Tomorrow I plan to go into more detail.

Until then...

08:25 / 09:25
throat slightly better.
sq drove me to station, cos poor AJ so ill and it was raining.
I'll walk up to yoof from High Brooms tonite - I'm sure RMump will give me a lift home afterwards.
not sure what to say in my 1-minute talk. Will probably say that we all have a Jesus-shaped hole in us, and that if we let Jesus fill it, life will go right.

Only 3 more yoofs till end of term (plus the last one, but I can't make that).

tomorrow is a bit of a packed day: sale thing in the am (yoof - in the persons of Sq and self and a few kids) are doing "guess the name of the cuddly dog", "guess the number of sweets in the jar" and helium-filled balloons - He He He! :0)
Then I've got the Fun Evening in the - er - evening. Hope my throat is OK - I'll be doing a lot of talking. I'm sure the Lord is well in control, and will work it all out for his glory - which is what we want, isn't it?? 0;0-)

got the 08:01, but only because it didn't arrive til 08:25.
into work 09:20
definitely got a sore throat.
eating loads of strepsils.
prayed that God would heal it, but clearly I have doubts. What's the way around this? Pray about it, obviously. God seems to be delivering answers to so many prayers, that I can't see any other way of tackling problems.

Incidentally, there are some people for whom I try to pray each week.
My prayer list is:

Mon - RHGJ & CMJ
Tue - Fluf & the girls
Wed - SH
Thu - C,M & J (may take these guys off now, as I'm not really in contact)
Fri - K & S.

Also, pray for: Liz & Roshan, Sq & Bump and occasionally David & Marion.

got the 08:25.
into work for 09:20!
the train must have been speeding.

Sq went to family meeting last night. had great time of worship, which took up most of the meeting. Also, S & C are now officially Youth Pastor (& Pastoress??!), which is great. Still, we had a not-short chat about yoof stuff afterwards.

Had coffee with K today. fab. chatted about things bothering him, things bothering me. Great chat. I found it really theraputic! I'm sure K found my advice as amazingly great as I thought it was.

Did actually replace brakes last night.
(a very oily experience).
This morning, I found, novelly, that I am able to arrest progress with some efficiency!
Chances of living to 100 now significantly improved!

btw, last wed. was birthday (37).

Have spoken to Sq.
Seems that my bd prez has at last arrived: 4-DVD LOTR 2 Towers :0)

Spent an hour or so @ church last night with Richard and Prill, rehearsing our illusion for Saturday.
We'll be on as the last act of the first half (I think it's a bit off to put yourself as the closing act of the whole thing! Plus, I'm not quite confident enough to do that ;). We came a long way - it definitely looks good if it works. I'm really glad we rehearsed - we found some dodgy angles, and were able to work out how to handle everything - where to stand, which hand to pick things up in, etc. Most importantly, we were able to work out and practise the details of how Prill gets on. I would tell you, but that would rater spoil it, wouldn't it??? ;0)
If you fancy, come along - it's this Saturday (22nd Nov 2003) at New Life Church, Speldhurst Road, Tunbridge Wells. ;0)

Got the 08:25.
On time. Into work for 09:25.
I REALLY must replace the brake blocks on my bike before I kill myself.
I think Sarah's going out tonight, so I'll do it then.

I really ought to use this blog thing.
I could just post about what I'm doing / how I'm feeling.
don't know if anyone would be interested, but you never know...

I think I'll start doing that.
perhaps tomorrow... ;)

First post to my Blog. :0)
Please forgive my over-use of smileys! ;-L