matthew henry john bartlett

BJW: Oppression, Truth, Postmodernism and St Paul
Work = Worship
BJW: Image-bearing vs. idolatry
Barbarians, Wimps and Men [via Sam M]
RDB: Drugs, learning, communication
tic tac tetris

Last month I got a ticket from the Council for having my car parked outside my house without a warrent of fitness. I haven’t yet paid that off. I got the things fixed on the car that it failed the warrant on last time. This cost $520 all up. I took the car back to the garage. Since I last went to get the warrant, the mechanics have gone on a course to make them better WOF inspectors. Hence my car failed again. This time with hundreds of dollars more work to do. This is a pity, as i was really hoping to sell it to a friend who was keen to buy it. That is a pity because i wanted to use the money to pay Massey for the summer paper i am doing. I will ring Massey after work to see if they might be gracious, but i’m afraid they won’t let me sit the exam next week Tuesday without having paid the whole bill. It will be interesting to see how this is all resolved.

Update: one of my favourite people has lent me the money for Massey, huzzah!

Last night we restarted our Tuesday night flat meetings. We sorted out all the little things that come up like why does the bathroom always smell, and won’t everyone please rinse and stack their own dishes. We read the first chapter of 1 Timothy and talked about that for a while. Best of all, we wrote down some things on wee bits of paper about each of us to pray about, and each pulled a bit of a paper out of the hat and resolved to pray for that person this week.

I’ve been listening to and singing along with Weezer’s song Say it ain’t so for ten years, and i never realised till today that it was a serious song. I went a-googling and found that Rivers Cuomo doesn’t talk about that song, cept that yes it is about his father and stepfather.

LifeBalance todo-list software
Gnoosic suggests new bands [thanks Aaron]
Weapon of Choice, stick-figure style [flash, via Sam E]

Eberhard Arnold said

We are now in a crisis; our actions no longer fit our words. Those who call themselves atheists bear witness to the future of love and to solidarity with the deprived and dispossessed, while those who call themselves Christians are for the most part the possessors and preservers of the status quo.

[via Bruderhof Daily Dig]

Wendell Berry – In Distrust of Movements [via Brian M]
Flash men in flash suits [via Sam E]

St Francis of Assisi said

A man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in action, and a monk is a good preacher only so far as his deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is known by its fruits.

[from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience]

I had a meeting with a web development firm today. It went rather well. They seem like great people, and they’re going to give me a trial project to complete in the next month or so. Lush.

I’m rather fond of the gently gorgeous girls Belle & Sebastian put on their album covers:

I spent about five hours tonight doing experiments for an introductory chemistry paper. Afterwards i played around for a bit with dye and bleach in water. I used a pipette to drop one drop of red dye into a glass of still water. I was amazed at the supercomplex prettiness. The world is too beautiful to be meaningless.

Eastborne today, from Sam E’s friend Robert’s sister.

BJW: Talking with trees
Photo by Jono of me and the sea
Hulls of public space
Lyrics: Grandaddy/The group who couldn’t say
Webcam: Courtenay Place
Fill in RadioActive survey, get 2 Reading Cinema tickets

The Wierengas gave me some music vouchers for my pseudo-birthday, so i borrowed Tim’s scooter and went and bought Air’s new album Talkie Walkie. It comes with a bonus DVD with a twenty-minute documentary about them. And if there’s one kind of TV I like, it’s music docos. The album name apparently comes from the telepathic communication the two frenchies who make up the band experience while working together. I think that’s great. I’m having first my proper listen now.

Auto-pick colours for your website
The Crimson Room [flash puzzle, via Deb]
Lyrics: Godspeed you black emperor/The dead flag blues

Yesterday evening Casey Aaron Jonathan Richie Mr Heeringa and I went to Chris & Elaine‘s and talked with and listened to Brian J Walsh for a couple of hours. He talked about his upcoming book Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. He identified what he describes as contemporary expressions of the ‘principalities and powers’, i.e. global consumerism/capitalism (greed a virtue) + pax americana. He told us that dualism is the enemy of a useful Church. And he liked Fast Food Nation!

I read today that US has a national debt of $7 trillion. I wonder who to. I found a table of NZ national debt through history which appears to show that current NZ debt is approximately $6.5 billion. NZ’s population is approximately 4 million. The US’s population is about 292 million. So US debt per person is about USD24,000, and NZ debt per person is around NZD1,600. Feel so free to check my working.

Menstruation, the Pill & Dualism [via Deb]

I made pumpkin soup again yesterday. Here’s the recipe I made up:

Get a pumpkin. Peel and cut into wee pieces. Boil in water. Fry up some red onion, garlic, fresh basil and cummin seeds (I’d add bacon too if I had some). Drain off the water when the pumpkin is soft. Chuck the onions and stuff in there with about a cup of milk. Add a load of curry and boil the crap out of it for a while. Done.

WikiCourt idea
A creed i could align myself with
Kit robots [via /.]
Short story: Slow Glass
The world as a blog
Amusing ad for NZ-made vodka [flash, via my boss]
Utility: PC off after X number of minutes/winamp tunes
Trouble in Moscow, Idaho

My nice boss gave me a nice bonus today and I had green tea with my sister Kathy and went to a play which wasn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe and bought some new shoes behold my new shoes:

sister Kathy & I (good-looking cats)

Lent started yesterday (thanks Aaron), so no more booze till Easter Sunday.

Today I have been blogging for one year. Fancy that. I would say that it has been a pretty much thoroughly worthwhile experience. The first post. This time last year there was a war on. And that was about all of the outside world (apart from a new album here and there) that made it into my posts.

I’ve been recording some of my FruityLoops’d experiments lately. Here are two which would work as backing tracks for some solo instrument or voice:

Sarah.mp3
Welcome home Tonga.mp3

Consider downloading them and recording (Goldwave works well) something to float over the top.