Davo's Journal

swings.jpg

Fri, 30 May 2008 17:12:01 GMT

swings.jpg
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

A quiet day today: a trip to the park and an exploration of the Whitby Wizard - a great little hands-on science museum, lovingly put together by its owner. Mostly packed up and ready for the trip home tomorrow, with time left for a meal out for two tonight. Looking forward to internet access and trying out my new bread-making book when I get home.

ontrain.jpg

Thu, 29 May 2008 19:14:45 GMT

ontrain.jpg
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

More trains today - steam railway from Whitby. Joseph had a great time (even if he was a little nervous up close to the engine). A walk and an ice-cream finished off the day.

donkey.jpg

Thu, 29 May 2008 07:51:39 GMT

donkey.jpg
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

Yesterday also started with a swim. Joseph, with the help of a float vest is now getting the hang of moving around the pool, without holding onto daddy. Later, our relative peace and quiet was shattered by the arrival of two of my cousins, with five young children in tow! A trip to the beach, a ride on the donkeys, a run around the park and lots of fish & chips kept everyone happy.

27-05-08_1413.jpg

Tue, 27 May 2008 16:14:45 GMT

27-05-08_1413.jpg
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

The day started well - we went swimming with Joseph & Abigail. In the afternoon we got to wave goodbye to a steam engine and explore a few more shops. Sadly, Whitby has no cinema, so we won't be able to take advantage of babysitters to see the new Indianna Jones :(. Have got a couple of DVDs instead.

onbeach.jpg

Mon, 26 May 2008 18:31:14 GMT

onbeach.jpg
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

Today we had lunch, for Jane's birthday, at the famous Magpie Cafe. The fish & chips were excellent and the service was top notch (despite accidentaly charging £54 for Joseph's jelly & ice-cream - very quickly rectified) We then walked to the beach, where Joseph tumbled head-first into lots of sandy pools of water (much to his delight).

pict0671.jpg

Sun, 25 May 2008 16:45:43 GMT

pict0671.jpg
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

Have you worked out where we are yet? Joseph managed to walk up all 199 steps to Whitby Abbey and all the way back down again. Looking forward to going to the pub later.

24-05-08_1757.jpg

Sat, 24 May 2008 18:15:39 GMT

24-05-08_1757.jpg
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

Can you tell where we are on holiday? Answers may as well go on a postcard (or sms), as I will not be able to read any comments until Saturday.

Building collapse

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:45:21 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7352410.stm

The bottom half of our estate - I've seen 5 fire engines, 2 ambulances, 2 paramedics and 3 police cars in attendance along with a local news crew.

International barndance

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:06:27 GMT

International barndance
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

Currently at the international barndance - traditional British dancing, with students from all over the world. Also seeing if I can post from my mobile.

Front garden

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 21:52:44 GMT

Front garden

After a trip to the Valley Side Garden Centre we've finally made a start on planting some plants in our front garden. For those with good eyesight, you may be able to spot a fuscia, a couple of patio roses, some alpine strawberries and (just off the bottom of the photo) some lavender (along with a number of other plants I've forgotten the name of).

We'll see how this gets on, but I guess we may need to add a few more in time.

Back garden

In the back garden, I've made a start on flattening out an area to put the shed (which we haven't yet ordered) in (on the paving slabs, we haven't yet bought).

Stolen playground equipment

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:35:11 GMT

I was really disgusted today to learn that the fantastic ringing floor-plates in our local park were stolen last week. Apparently 6 of the 9 brass plates were stolen at the end of last week (the local council have managed to rescue the 3 remaining plates and store them away safely).

I find it very hard to understand what would drive someone to destroy what was one of the nicest (and certainly the most talked-about) features of the new playground. Related to that and possibly even harder to understand (given that there isn't even any money to be made from it) is the indelible-ink graffiti that has already started to appear on the new climbing frame.

Maybe I'm just sounding like a grumpy (young) man, complaining about the lack of respect that kids have today. Maybe I'm just trying to figure out what can be done to stop a small minority of people from ruining things for other people.

Continuing to settle in

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:54:28 GMT

We certainly seem to be getting settled in to our new home - next week we have invited around our Church homegroup for food on Thursday and our new neighbours for a barbecue on Friday, so we are pretty confident about being ready for that. Tonight we will be tackling the next round of boxes (containing books and DVDs).

Joseph has settled in well and has been around to the local park most days this week (well it is only about 1 min walk from our front door). This seems to be a great way to meet other parents in the area - we have already been offered some strawberry plants by someone we randomly met there on Thursday night.

Our New House

Tue, 29 May 2007 20:42:35 GMT

Our New House
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

We're now settling in to our new house. Fridge-freezer and washing machine are in place, our lounge is looking reasonably liveable-in (although the shelves and cupboards are still mostly empty), the kitchen is getting tidier. We have beds and a wardrobe, TV (but no aerial - that is arriving tomorrow), telephone and broadband. We have had a lot of help from both sets of parents (without whom the whole move would have been much harder work).

Not quite all sorted yet, but we are certainly getting that way (even the garden is looking great after a massive weeding endeavour from Sarah's Mum).

Eurovision

Sun, 13 May 2007 13:10:07 GMT

Well, we stayed up last night to watch the Eurovision songs, but didn't bother staying up for the voting. I showed off a remarkable inability to pick a winner - the songs I liked were from France (down at the bottom with UK, only just above Ireland), Romania (half way down the table) and Bulgaria (down at number 5, more that 100 points behind the winner).

Conversely, I have no recollection at all of the winner (a quick search on YouTube was needed to even work out what they had sung) and I am completely horrified that the Ukrainian song came in at number 2 (it was significantly worse than even the UK offering in my opinion). For anyone who missed it, and is wondering what I am going on about, most of the songs can probably be found on YouTube ('Eurovision 2007 ', seems to work well in the search box).

Washing up

Sat, 12 May 2007 20:38:07 GMT

Washing up
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

I think it is a good idea for children to be helpful around the house.

Ubuntu very unhappy

Sat, 12 May 2007 09:19:08 GMT

As I had nearly run out of space for Ubuntu, I thought it would be a good idea to do a bit of HD repartitioning.

Unfortunately, I don't think Ubuntu liked this very much, as it refused to boot its GUI, insisted I used FSCK to fix the errors and then decided the entire partition was corrupted and unreadable.

I'm sure there's something I should learn from this, but for now, I've wiped the corrupted partition (after only 1 week, there wasn't anything too precious on there yet) and I'm now watching the progress bar on the Ubuntu installation screen. Hopefully, once that is done, I can quickly re-install everything I'd been trying out and get back to where I was last night.

Anyone know of a good incremental backup program for Linux (that can keep writing multiple backups to the same DVD until it is full)?

Ubuntu 7.04

Tue, 08 May 2007 21:09:58 GMT

This must be a record. I've actually managed to use a version of Linux for more than a couple of days and not get completely annoyed with it and formatted the partition.

I have to say that, so far, I am pretty impressed with the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. It is actually easy to install, has most things set up sensibly from the start and mostly seems to pop up with friendly and helpful messages when you try to do something that requires additional downloads (particularly when wanting to watch MPEG videos or play MP3 files that have patent restrictions on them).

Some of the usual Linux gripes are still hanging around though - getting it to output to the TV hasn't been very successful (even after lots of messing around with xorg.conf), I haven't dared try out video editing yet (I don't know of a decent, fully featured, open-source video editor), f-spot doesn't let you edit photos' titles & descriptions and I've had a few lock-ups (probably when trying to do too much at once, and I probably should have been a little more generous with the swap partition).

On the positive side, though, there is Beryl (which might also explain some of the lock-ups) and I may be convinced to switch over to it as my main desktop OS (especially as I have a college laptop for those times when I absolutely need MS Office, VB .NET, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.)

Unity, diversity and a coincidence

Tue, 08 May 2007 17:15:32 GMT

We spent the weekend down in a village just outside Cambridge called Bar Hill. On Sunday we went to Bar Hill Ecumenical Church. It turns out that when Bar Hill was built in the 60s, they decided to build just a single church and encourage involvement from a number of different denominations. It is a place where Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, URC members and Quakers all meet together and share in their different traditions (this Sunday was the turn of the Methodist order of service). A great example of a diversity of traditions all meeting together around a united faith in Jesus.

What particularly amused me is that when I spoke to my Dad afterwards, it turns out that my Granddad was involved with the church when it first started, taking some of the services (I had a feeling that my Dad had lived somewhere nearby at one point, but not that there was any actual connection)

A4 Paper art

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 07:56:52 GMT

Just found a link to a page full of fantastic A4 paper artwork. It has all been created by cutting and sticking an A4 sheet of paper and is well worth a look.

Found via The Cartoon Blog.

Serenity

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:33:57 GMT

Finally got around to watching Serenity on DVD last night.
It struck me that there were some parallels between the questions I was asking yesterday about the killings in Turkey and the questions the 'Reavers' bring up. What would drive someone to commit such brutality to another human being? In the fictional world of Serenity a 'scientific' answer is eventually given (watch the film if you want to find out) - but that still leaves us with the question in the real world.

Another thought that the film brought up was the idea of belief. It is stated several times that it is important to believe in something, because that belief gives you strength. The message appears to be that it does not matter what you believe in, or even if what you believe is true, as long as you believe in it.

Is this the answer? Or does it actually matter what you believe in, not just whether you believe it? I know what my answer is, but I am interested in other people's responses.

Killings in Turkey

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:50:23 GMT

Earlier today I received a disturbing email about the recent killing of 3 Christians in Malatya, Turkey (as reported by the BBC) - Tilman Geske, Ugur Yuskel and Pastor Necati Aydin. The details are horrible and I won't repeat them in full here, but these men were brutally tortured, by a group of Muslim men, for 3 hours, before having their throats cut. The Christians had met with these Muslims to study the Bible together.

Why am I posting this here?

Firstly, it is not because I am trying to show that 'Muslims are bad' and 'Christians are good'. That is not my intention and I am very sorry if anyone takes it that way.

There are several reasons for posting this. One is as a reminder, in our comfortable, Western lives that human brutality is real and terrible. These victims were not violent or aggressive, they had done nothing 'wrong', they merely offered to teach Muslims they knew about Jesus and the Bible. This occurred in a secular country which claims to have freedom of religion.

One reason is my own confusion at such acts and my inability to comprehend how anyone could do this to a fellow human being.

A final reason is to highlight the response of Tilman's wife, in a television interview, when she echoed Jesus' words on the cross 'Oh God, forgive them for they know not what they do'. In a country where blood revenge is normal, this has made headlines in Turkish newspapers.

Is forgiveness rather than revenge the right response?

Or is it just the only response that will ever bring about peace?

Stories

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:55:30 GMT

Stories are great. They suck us in and teach us things like no bare list of facts ever will. They can be grand adventures, or just little tales.

So, what are your favourite stories? Do you have a story you could tell? Why not add it to the comments on this page?

Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:13:55 GMT

I've been reading this book (which can be freely downloaded from Project Gutenberg). Lots of very helpful ideas to think through about how to live your life as a follower of Jesus.

Strongly recommended!

Oh and whilst I'm mentioning books, I've just signed up to a completely different type of book - Facebook, so if there is anyone out there who is already on it then you can always pop over and say 'Hi' (a search for 'Davo Smith' will find me pretty easily - I'm the one with the photo that looks like me!). For those of you who are already on Facebook and are reading this through my Facebook notes page, 'Hi' to you all as well.

Far too long since I've updated this

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:47:54 GMT

It really is time for me to say something.

At the moment we're still waiting to move house. Hopefully it'll be all sorted out soon and we can move into our new house, closer to church and several of the families we know there, with more space for the new arrival (except garden space, but we're going to be only a few meters from the nearest park).

I'm starting to feel that my college work is relaxing a little - my AS group is disappearing on exam leave in a few weeks time (we should have covered all the topics by the end of next week and now it's just revision). My BTEC groups are on to their penultimate assignment and some of them are rather taken with writing some simple games (e.g. matching pairs of images, snake or bat and ball games).

I've also been getting out on my bike a bit recently. Managed to cycle to work a few times and looking forward to collecting our new bike seat from Jane, so that I can carry Joseph around on the back.

For anyone out there with the odd bits of spare time in front of a computer, you may want to consider this helping out Project Gutenberg by proof reading some work-in-progress books for them (it's surprisingly good fun!).

Another baby on the way

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:48:24 GMT

07-02-07 2nd baby ultrasound scan
Originally uploaded by davosmith.

As we have already mentioned to a number of people, we are expecting another addition to our family in August. Here is the first and (until August) only picture of the currently unnamed child of unknown gender.

I am sure that at some point we will be able to reveal the currently unknown details, but we'll just have to wait and see how soon after the birth that is managed (at least it's during the school holidays - so I don't have to worry about any lesson preparation or cover work, but on the down side, we're not getting a summer holiday this year).