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Next Gig with Peter and the Wulf
A spot of advance notice for my next outing with Peter and the Wulf — we're due down at the Isis Tavern by Iffley Lock on Sunday 21 February at 6:30pm. I know that is still a little way off but I was proud of having got round to posting it in Daily Info more than a couple of hours before the event, which is probably a more effective strategy!
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Marmalade
Yesterday we were glad to have Jim and Mary round and help them as they cooked up a huge batch of marmalade. All it took was seville oranges, sugar, a bit of water, plenty of jars and lots of time.
Apparently it should really be allowed to sit for a couple of weeks but I opened the first jar of our shared this morning and was very impressed — a pefect blend of sweet and tart in a glossy orange spread.
Robin Whitebreast
Working out in the garden recently, I have seen an odd-looking bird. It looks like a robin but is pale, almost desaturated of colour. It turns out it isn't an old robin or a ghost robin but one with a condition known as leucism. You can see a picture in an article from The Times. Hopefully, at some point, I'll get a few photos of my own.
Light in the Evening
In Oxford, we have enjoyed a day blushing with the promise of spring. I hope that not too many plants are fooled into budding as I expect there will be some more cold spells to come but, nonetheless, it was an enjoyable change after a rather damp, chilly week.
What I enjoyed most was the opportunity to cycle home in the light. Partly that was down to having had a couple of slightly later nights this week and then an early meeting to start the morning. However, that just meant that I was early enough not to have to stick my lights on and there was still ample light when I arrived home. Roll on spring!
eBooks
I thought I would follow up my earlier post on eReaders as today I downloaded a free eBook. This was Growing Deeper by Chris Smith, a volume about how church communities can make "... connection in a disconnected age". I might review it sometime although, to be honest, it is quite nice to get a free book that I don't have to review!
So, I have all 9.4MB downloaded to my computer desktop and I am considering when I might actually read it. Ideally, I would like it available in more than one place as lunchtime at work is probably a good location but having it at home too. I could download it directly there but each time causes a bandwidth hit for the supplier and, since I'm not sure I'm going to donate any money for it, I am trying to think of alternatives.
My bright idea was that it might be another opportunity to use Google Wave (I have some invites available if you want to try that out, by the way). It would then be available wherever I have an internet connection and I can use the wave to jot down some notes at the same time. The trouble with that concept is that it is taking an appreciably long time to copy the file up onto a new, private wave. The same would be true if I'd picked Evernote or just emailed it to myself. Isuppose I could put it on a memory stick but I suspect I'd forget to open it up.
Meanwhile, I have taken a quick look through the book. Most of the fifty ideas it delivers look quite short; I suspect it is the use of lots of images that has pumped the size of the file up. Wouldn't it be more convenient if this was on a website rather than presented as a "book"?
There, I think, is the rub. HTML would be a perfectly good format for most eBooks, particularly ones that are being shared for free. Production and distribution costs would be lower and the content would be readily accessible using a simple web browser. I haven't read the book yet (and, since it still hasn't uploaded, might not get round to it today) but I'm definitely having my doubts about the medium even if the message is still to be tested.
Applying Margins
It was a long time ago that I last redesigned my website. I think at that point, 800x600 was still a fairly common screen resolution and I had also been experimenting with accessing my site on my Palm Pilot. I decided to ditch side columns and allow the content to stretch all the way across.
This liquid layout worked with smaller browsing windows but resulted in uncomfortably long lines at what became more common settings. From a visual point of view, it also made it impossible to judge what a paragraph of text would look like - a page filling monster or a measly line or two.
Last night I finally got round to tweaking the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) that creates the visual appearance of the site. I have opted for a single, relatively narrow, 560px wide column for the main content block, although the top and bottom of the page are still allowed to stretch. Along with a larger font, I think the result is more aesthetically pleasing although a little bit more browser testing is still due.
I might make a few more tweaks before I am done but I think this has been a worthwhile step forward. What do you think?
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Prophets
My housegroup has been following the ambitious plan of covering the entire span of the Old Testament across three weekly meetings. Obviously it is not feasible to get into great depth but that is enough time to develop an overview, understanding the sequence of events and how the different books fit together.
We started by covering "The Law" and "The Histories": everything from Genesis up to Ezra and Nehemiah. These cover the chronological length of the Old Testament from Creation until the re-establishment of the Jerusalem Temple about five centuries before Christ. Last night we were looking at "The Prophets". These are the last sixteen books of the Old Testament but the time period they cover begins perhaps as far back as nine centuries before Christ.
To start and close the evening, I read a poem that I had spotted linked to in my twitter feed yesterday afternoon. I will give the first three stanzas and a link for more if it whets your appetite:
prophets awake exhausted from their dreams.
their beds soaked in sweat,
the ebbing fever of their visions
still ringing in their ears.they arise each morning
to a world made anew in love;
a love that frightens us like a drunk
passed out on the sidewalk.
we turn away from our chance to live.prophets see and hear this world,
not as they would wish it,
but just as it is. they do not turn away.By Roshi Doshi on Open Windows & Unlocked Doors
