Thanks to Kyle.

In a vision John sees Jesus speaking to seven different churches.

I happen to just be back from an Alpha meeting, and so the closest book was Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel.

The rules for this meme thing are :

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open it to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

And now I get to tag 5 other people with the meme

Heather
Al
Jono
Aq
Phil

Enjoy, folks.

mrBen

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted. And there’s _loads_ of things I could say, but I’ll make do with a few catch ups:

• New phone - got myself a Nokia 6500 Slide phone on a contract from Orange, after my previous phone (an aging Motorola V220) lost the ability to put sound through the earpiece. First impressions of the new phone are good, although the keys feel quite small at times. And the preinstalled Golf Tour game is really addictive!
• Severed Fifth, which I have blogged about before finally released their debut album, Denied by Reign. If you’re into chugging heavy metal, then you might like it, although, in a weird twist, I find that some of the “clean” vocals sound a bit weird.
• Ubuntu have released their 8.10 edition, the Intrepid Ibex release. Came out yesterday - get it while it’s hot (or wait a couple of weeks for the servers to cool down, and initial bugfixes to be released )
• Classic Yak continues to chug along nicely. Episode 4 came out last Monday (just). We’re getting about 60-ish downloads for most of the episodes, which is not too bad. And the editing quality is getting better. Mostly
• Heather and I continue on the Invest course. But more of that to come at a later date.
• I’m finally getting round to building the relatively huge Django project that is the church website. Also more of that when there are things to actually see in production

That’s probably enough for now.

mrBen

(culled from The Resurgence)

A truly fascinating video (particularly the Q&A session at the end) of Tim Keller, a Christian author and apologist, speaking at the Google campus, as part of their Authors@Google series. He’s talking a bit about his book “The Reason for God”.

(or click here if it’s not embedding where you’re reading)

mrBen

Classic Yak Episode 1 (”Things to Sing in Lakeland When You’re Dead”) is now available!

You can download it direct from ClassicYak.org or listen from the streaming media player.

You can subscribe using your podcasting software from one of the links at the bottom of the main page.

You can find it on iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=286589056

You can sign up for the forums or email us.

If you’re in church on Sunday, you can get a free sticker!

For those who missed my original post, CY is a monthly podcast aimed at discussion real-world issues from a Christian perspective. Hope you like it.

mrBen

That is all

mrBen

PS - Why did no-one tell me about this sooner?

OK, so I’m a bit late blogging about this, but I wanted to do justice to the subject. Other people have written great posts on their blogs (not least Jono, Aq and Adam from the presenting team, and community luminaries kNo and davee) but I felt that I had to add something of my own.

Jono phoned me on the Thursday night before the release (which luckily meant I found out before I went on holiday, rather than a week after the show was released). LugRadio was finishing. I have to admit, I was quite choked up on the train home - it was as if someone close to me had died. I know that sounds melodramatic, but you have to understand that LugRadio has been a huge part of my life over the last 4.5 years. I’ve contributed (to date) 3193 posts to the forum, or over 2 posts a day for every day between March 10th 2004 (when I joined the forums) and today.

I’m not saying this to make me sound good. But the LugRadio community has been a real home for me over the last few years. And it’s been a community where I have become (rightly or wrongly) known and (dis)respected. I know that the community will not die, but I think it will become a very different place when the show stops being released.

So, for me at least, it is the end of an era. LugRadio has, to all intents and purposes, changed my life in many ways. Having that end is an extremely sad thing for me, but at least we have LRL in 10 days (10!) to celebrate everything that LR has become known for and done.

mrBen

[Footnote] I completely understand the reasons for the team stopping the show. I don’t blame them at all, or hold any grudge. This wasn’t supposed to be a moan - hopefully you won’t read it as such.

Got this in my inbox recently, but it’s so full of basic errors that it’s just not funny anymore. Hints in bold:

from London Metropolitan Police Dept.
OK - it’s a good start, but you should’ve checked that metropolice.gov.uk actually existed first…..
reply-to boc1473@gmail.com
And give a convincing reply-to address….
to undisclosed-recipients
Write to _me_ otherwise it sounds like you’re sending it to loads of people.
date Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 7:34 AM
subject Special Investigation Bureau (SIB)

At least host your fake image somewhere impressive. A url of http://onin.com/fp/fmiru/london_met_police_crest.jpg isn’t exactly convincing
Working together for a safer London

ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING UNIT
Wellington House 67-73 Buckingham Gate
London SW1E 6BE

Attention: Sir/Madam,
Dated: 05/07/08

RE: AN IN-DEPT INVESTIGATION INTO YOUR DELAYED PAYMENT

We wish to inform you that it has come to our notice through our online security service that a huge amount of United States Dollars was scheduled to be remitted into your bank account a few months ago.

According to the report we received from the paying bank here in London, it states expressly that you have been dealing with the wrong people who have used several fake documents to obtain money from you for payment of charges/fees which we consider to be obnoxious.

We have been mandated to step into your transaction and put a STOP ORDER pending until you revert to us for clarification why your money is been delayed more than is necessary. You are hereby advised to stop further communications with your partners in Africa and Europe and co-operate with us to assist you get your payment in record time.
Since when did the Police assist me in getting money?

The government of the United Kingdom will not hesitate to bring you to book if you ignore this notice as your payment is causing so much embarassment to our government and global financial Institutions who repose so much trust in the British banking sector for competence and accountability.
Hahahahahahaha

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

My direct telephone number is:+44 70457 17275
Direct fax:+44 8709 743597

We are glad to be of services to you.

Yours faithfully,
Inspector Donald Boldman
Metropolitan Police Department
London, England

CC: British Home Office Logistics Department
CC: United States Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
if you’re going to include CCs on the bottom, you should probably CC someone in the email….

mrBen

OK - I’m back from a week away at my parents, and I have 2 big things I want to talk about. The announcement of the end of LugRadio could, I guess, be rolled up in this post, but I think it deserves a post of it’s own, so I’ll get to that soon.

However, my last post hinted at the arrival of something new, and then I completely failed at setting up a post to be published on Monday.

So - what was it all about. Well, the answer is Classic Yak. Classic Yak is a brand new project, put together by myself and Al and a couple of other guys in our church. It’s a monthly, discussion based podcast (definite LugRadio influence there) aimed at tackling real-world issues from a Christian viewpoint (less of an LR influence ). We released the pilot show last Monday, and will be releasing on the last Monday of each month for at least the next 6 months.

We hope that it will be an entertaining listen, and will stimulate some useful discussion. There doesn’t appear to be anything quite like it in the Christian podcast market, so hopefully there is a niche there we can fill. Our first episode talked about Big Brother, but we’re aiming on having a full blooded discussion about the Lakeland Revival as the main segment in Episode One (due out 28th July).

Feel free to take a listen (apologies for the odd audio glitch in the pilot) and give us some feedback on show@classicyak.org.

mrBen

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I spend a huge proportion of my time talking about computers, but every now and then I venture out into other subjects. I’ve talked in the past about Digital Rights Management (DRM) - the stuff that means that you can’t listen to the CD you bought on your mp3 player, or transfer your paid-for iTunes music when you get to your 4th iPod - and Creative Commons, the license for creative-types to release their works under to protect their authorship, but allow their works to be distributed.

Into this mix comes Jono Bacon, one of the LugRadio presenters, who also doubles as a heavy metal musician. He has just embarked on a new project called Severed Fifth, an experiment into seeing how far you can get by bypassing the existing music industry, and leveraging a little bit of internet and popular culture savvy. This will, of course, involve him releasing a load of music, but it’s about a lot more than that.

Take a listen to his introductory message over at SeveredFith.com, and, even if you’re not into heavy metal, if you’re into music at all then this is a project worth taking an interest in.

mrBen

My last post (Inoffensive Advocacy) made it in as a segment on the most recent episode of LugRadio. Hurrah!

(Apologies to the Planet LugRadio folk, who will already know this )

mrBen

Firstly, apologies for a distinct lack of posting in the last few weeks (months? ). I hope to improve on this. I do have a few projects in the works, which will be revealed here hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

Quick pimp for an excellent piece of software called Zattoo - it basically allows you to watch terrestrial TV on your PC over the internet (no TV card required, but you should have a TV license). A great way to add another TV to your house.

mrBen

Or why some things just don’t age well at all…

On a recent Internet trawl I happened upon this.

That’s right kiddies. Glen Michael’s Cavalcade.

Wow.

I don’t know how long it’s going to available on that link so enjoy it while you can.

This particular episode, one I’m sure I remember (although I would have been seven at the time and I can barely remember what happened last week…), has The Krankies, The Priesthill Puppet Group and the usual selection of quality cartoons.

I recommend that everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) checks this out.

BigAl

I spent some quality time with BBC’s iPlayer this evening catching up with The Apprentice, the only real reason to pay a license fee.

And I happened to notice that the volume control goes up to 11.

Aye, very good you Spinal Tap loving freaks..

BigAl

Those of you with long memories (pun intended) may remember me talking about Elephants Dream, a short cartoon built in Blender, the open source 3d modelling software.

Well - they’ve just released the trailer for their latest project, now named “Big Buck Bunny”, and it looks _stunning_. Hopefully it will also be slightly less mad than ED, which was madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of this year’s Mr Madman competition.

Enjoy.

Big Buck Bunny - Official Trailer from Andy Goralczyk on Vimeo.

(as with Jono’s post, bonus points for recognising the reference in the title)

mrBen

I have a MyMiniCity.

It’s here.

For reasons that remain unexplainable, it has become relatively important to myself, Ruthy and mrBen, that the city grows and continues to grow.

So every day (more or less) without fail, we go to the site and help the city grow. There are a handful of others we have managed to con into sparing precious seconds of their online existence to helping us build what is realistically a waste of bandwidth.

Nevertheless, we come to you, the dedicated followers of JediMoose, to help our city grow…

Why should you do this?

Well, do you really have anything better to do?

BigAl

Another good idea ™ from the stables of the ‘Moose. Actually - this probably isn’t all that original, but I wanted to post it online anyway.

I’d really like to see an online groceries shopping system which, rather than being tied to a supermarket, was tied into the local butchers, bakers, grocers, fishmongers, etc in your area (based on your postcode). The idea being that the suppliers subscribe to you, and the consumers do too, and you link them together in a single website that acts like a supermarket.

mrBen

For the last 3 years now, I’ve endeavoured to relisten to the entire back catalogue of LugRadio episodes in the run up to the awesome LugRadio Live. Last year, I got caught a bit short, but I wrote a little program to keep track of my listening.

This year, I’ve started a lot earlier (144 days to go), but I thought I should add something to the script. So I’ve included listening times to it. Hurrah. Or Something.

Enjoy!

Notes:

1. The % are still based on number of shows, not on listening times. So sue me.
2. The code for the original is still at http://mrben.jedimoose.org/listener.html - when I get around to it I’ll post the updated code (which is even uglier

mrBen

* Apparently this analogy is not, and has never been, accurate.

This one’s for Edgy.

BigAl

Found this video - a really nice explanation of the principles of the Creative Commons licensing - if you are a writer, musician, artist, or other creative-type then this is something you should know about.

Via LivingOS.

mrBen

Not sure if I should be happy or sad about this result

43

[edit]Did this one too
87% Geek[/edit]

mrBen