For months, we have been talking about little baby brother …and those last two months did seem to be very long!

Well Samuel can now talk about baby Joshua (Joshua James David Norman in full, though he probably won’t think about that for a little while).

Joshua was born at 8h48, on Thursday 15 January 2009. The precision of the time stated will give you an idea of the precision of the whole event, including very good pain relief. Oh yes, and he weighed 3.530kg and was 48 cm long.

Joshua had a good sleep soon after breathing his first breath. He and Vanessa are both well, and Samuel is getting used to the idea that he has a little brother – even if little brother doesn’t ‘do’ very much yet, Samuel has plans for some of the things they will do together later on.

We are so grateful to God for Joshua’s safe arrival, and his good start in life.

Thank you for all of your encouraging words and prayers over recent months.

In human history, from time to time heroes have arisen to meet the challenge of the times. At times of crisis this has been especially important, and not just in the age of the media soundbite.

Over the last few months a lot of focus has been on America, as the whole election process moves on from selection of candidates and soon to the election itself. This time period has seen no shortage of major news.

For the first time in recent history, America did not win the most medals in the Olympics. That honour went to the host nation of China, in a Games which has been described in ways which see it as China’s greatest entry onto the world stage as the new superpower, with America itself declining in a way paralleled by the relative success of its athletes. Even if Michael Phelps may have won more medals on his own than many entire countries, the showcase athletics sprint events which have been largely dominated by America saw victory for other nations and more than one American athlete reflected ruefully on the disastrous men’s and women’s 4 x 100m relay [and Britain, the reigning champions in men's 4 x 100m, were disqualified..., even if Britain had her most successful Olympics for a very long time]

Talk of credit crisis has spread around the world, seeming to stem from the corruption of the American dream bloated on the empty promise of cheap loans aggressively marketed by banks who now find themselves unable to meet their own borrowings. Capitalism itself has shown its evil under-belly, but is there a better way?

And in the middle of it all a hurricane hit Houston …

Who will step up and be elected on 4 November in the hope that he will be hero in this context of crisis?

Whatever happens in the US elections, many people are talking about the shaking of their confidence. What CAN we put our trust in?

In this context I find myself more and challenged by the ancient words:

“Do not tremble, do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.” (Isaiah 44:8 )

dadfest

Back in June, we held our second Dadfest father’s day event and we took ‘heroes’ as our theme. It is an evocative idea in many different realms – the battlefield, the workplace, the family home…

There are so many films which explore this theme. Dadfest was a lot of fun, and ‘heroes’ gave us a great opportunity to explore some of the exciting challenges that God presents to us all, particularly men. We had a great big garden party afterwards – in fact 200 people made even bigger than last year when we 80 people came along. It was wonderful that people had a lot of fun. Many from St Mark’s Church found it much easier to invite friends with last year’s experience to look back to.

I’ve been decorating and gardening recently.

Coming to that door which really (REALLY) needed repainting…

…I had in mind an hour or so of sanding and cleaning and then applying two coats of paint. But as I began to sand gently, the extent of the problem was revealed. So out came the scraper and I removed everything which wasn’t holding on properly

…two hours later, the loose paint was off but a little voice in my head was telling me that it just wasn’t enough to get that long-lasting smooth finish. It was the voice of my father from childhood …and I knew that I couldn’t ignore it ..shortcuts just won’t do. I had to get back to bare wood and start the whole primer, undercoat, gloss paint process.

…the whole job wasn’t finished after 4 days. Sure, I was able to do stuff in between as the coats of paint dried. I would so like to have taken a shortcut, but it wasn’t worth it.

…Gives me respect for people who do this all the time, and just do it well without complaining.

…Reminds me that it’s worth doing something properly if it’s worth doing at all

…And painting needs proper preparation for the paint to hold properly. Maybe this is about more than just painting.

The original plan for the late morning and afternoon had been for me and Sam to go for lunch at Kentucky Fried and then on to the swimming pool, but he woke up with a sore throat and a long time swimming didn’t seem wise.

So we went to the Jardin d’Acclimatation, and the ‘flying swings’ (‘Les Chaises’) were all that Sammy would talk about as he rode on the back of my bike. ‘The flying swings’ are like swings on very long, thin chains which are turned around on an immense carousel roundabout. As they turn they also go up and down. Last time he went, Vanessa came back saying that Sammy had been so scared that she had had to get them to stop the ride. And she told me that she and a friend agreed that it cannot possibly be strong enough to hold my weight (obviously the ‘new slimmer Tim’ is more in my imagination than in reality).

Our first stop was ‘Les Papillons d’Alice’, a children’s roller-coaster which had been Sam’s previous impossible challenge …where many a moment had been spent as he battled between the desire to go on, and the fear that he wouldn’t be able to do it (often in tears). But now ‘the Alice ride’ (as we call it), is old hat and we are moving on to new challenges.

I also had the same battle (with the Alice ride, and now with the ‘, but kind of feel that I should be able to manage this sort of thing. I’m sure that Sam can see I’m afraid (maybe that’s part of the fun for him), but I communicated it as giving him a chance to pull out if he wanted to. And then a second chance to walk away.

The ride was nothing like as frightening as it had looked – the acceleration is fairly gentle, and then there is a feeling like you are flying. We shut our eyes for a bit …and that made it more intense. He obviously enjoyed it, and so did I.

There was a determination in his attitude which made me proud as his dad. He is certainly growing up, and sees the gentle rides he used to live for as too babyish for him now. And I hope that this determination to overcome fear will grow as a useful life skill for him …though I fear it may take me to places where I’m not sure I want to go with him yet …maybe there’s something in it for me as well.

The Intelligent Dustbin ..Organising Life and Thoughts
A few years ago, I joined the crowd that believes that there is a better way to organise life than backs of envelopes, ring binders, and all sorts of other paper.
It’s been a bit of a journey..

It’s been a bit of a journey, the search for the ‘intelligent dustbin’ which will make anything you throw in it immediately accessible and useful..

I looked into Bento, Filemaker, Circus Ponies Notebook …and I found a general consensus that Devonthink Pro is the best software available for organising information of all sorts. So far I am enjoying it, and am in the process of importing the thousands of documents I have in AskSam 6. It is already starting to make it easier to study and to write, I have read others saying that Devonthink has accelerated development of ideas …sounds good to me.
Devonthink has the following strengths (click here for more details):
(1) Good text formatting
(2) File support for all sorts of files – I’m really looking forward to getting more into this
(3) Good word-processing and more sophisticated tools
(4) ‘Artificial intelligence’
(5) Structure / freeform flexibility for data

I love my Macbook …except for one thing.

I travel a bit, and have DVD’s from various different regions. My DVD player at home was sold multi-region, and I gather that most Windows boxes have multi-region DVD players as well. Why not Apple? After all they have got so many other things right…

And as I’ve looked into it, it looks like there’s not much you can do about it. Here’s what I found..

http://macnewbie.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/region-free-dvd-on-macs/has a posting which claims to have the solution, and is certainly a popular place to go to….

http://creativebits.org/toolbox/how_to_play_different_region_dvds_on_your_mac has these links, which looks useful. I haven’t dared try them yet:

http://www.iskysoft.com/article/mac-the-ripper.html

http://www.videolan.org/developers/vlc/NEWS

Useful tips on:
http://forums.macnn.com/73/mac-modification/295360/dvd-region-free-firmware/

Here is some really technical info:
http://www.powerbook-fr.com/dossiers/dvd_region_free_en_article30.html

Andrew J Fishkin, Esq, is a laptop using attorney in Los Angeles, CA. His page
(http://lowendmac.com/fishkin/06/0623.html ) is pretty thorough, and considers all sorts of alternatives. He comes to the conclusion that the best thing is to put in a new DVD writer. Pretty radical …not sure about warranty cover from Apple after this sort of thing…

Andrew has followed up with this http://lowendmac.com/fishkin/06/0912.html

does it really make a difference?
I am reading a fascinating book. In ‘The Year of Living Biblically’, A J Jacobs decides as a literary project to take the Bible literally for a year. This involves all sorts of dramatic changes for this New York writer and journalist. He goes to listen to all sorts of different people’s ideas on what it means to take the Bible literally. One of the most obvious changes is his appearance – as his beard grows and his clothes make him look more and more like a younger Moses (interestingly he is mistaken for a member of ZZ Top at one point…)

I haven’t finished the book yet, but it is certainly provoking a lot of thought and it appears to have provoked thought for a lot of others as well. Is it enough to live by a set of rules? Does living by a set of rules have an effect on your live …an effect that is more than external? When does self-help take over and subsume relationship with God? And prayer …does it just make us feel good …or does it make a difference? Would it be any different to pray to Apollo for example?

Before you get worried I haven’t thrown in the Christian towel …but I do find that A J (his writing style makes me feel like we are almost on first name terms) is connecting with a lot of real questions.

christianity doesn’t really fit me…
One of most formative periods of my life was my teenage years in Guildford. And much of this was through the great opportunities to explore God questions at church and in the school Christian Union. And important foundations were laid with a group of wonderful people who wanted to live the great adventure of life with God. Many of these men are still friends, some of us have renewed acquaintance again 25 years later. A lot has changed – several live in different countries, most are married and have kids (thankfully no divorces yet), most of us have put on a bit of weight, several are wealthy, some have achieved their goals for life, a few are actively living as Christ followers, but others are not (including some of those who were the most zealous Christians as teenagers). Broadly speaking, a lot of people our age are saying that they believe in God but Christianity doesn’t really fit them.

One friend who is now a successful banker has been put off by the hypocrisy he has come across in church, and the way in which ritual blocks real relationship with God. A married couple (who were previously at an evangelical Bible college) found it very important to explore questions and doubts that they had, but this didn’t fit into the Bible study programme of the home group that they were in …after a long time they finally gave up, and now call themselves atheists. Another friend fell in love with a girl who is not a Christ follower and his church involvement soon tailed off.
renewing acquaintance, or meeting up for the first time…
friends reunited, my space, facebook, netvibe, bebo, wayn.com, Renewing acquaintance is a popular pastime which has spawned a veritable industry of new ways of keeping up with more and more people. I’m not sure how success should be measured in this department, I’ve even heard that there are people talking about quantity and quality measures of a person’s relationality.

Others are getting concerned that we live in too many ‘relational worlds’ to have ‘real relationship’. And so there is a move from ‘fast food’ to ’slow food’, from ‘catching up’ to ‘quality time’. And there is the question about what changes and what doesn’t change, about what you keep and what is disposable.

At school and university, I had the ‘Christian’ tag. Later this month I will go to a 20th anniversary dinner at my old college in Cambridge. It seems like only yesterday that we had a 10th anniversary dinner …and at that event lots of people wanted to ask ‘big questions’ about their lives. The ‘Christian’ tag has not always been a popular one, but it does mean that some people feel free to talk about these things. Achieving success, getting married, having children, meeting someone whose life just seems to work because they are a Christ follower, saying ‘goodbye’ and moving on, depression, the death of a friend or family member, suffering failure, living the humdrum workaday world, having cause to celebrate and wanting to thank someone ‘out there’… These are among many reasons that come up in many of these conversations which are often not just about renewing acquaintance with each other, but have an element of considering renewing acquaintance with God or becoming a friend of God for the first time.

irrelevant?
Having the ‘Christian’ tag can make aspects of my life seem irrelevant to others. Why would anyone want to go to church? Over the last few months in our services we have looked first at Genesis and now at Exodus. I am very much among the many others who have found that even these very old bits of the Bible have an uncanny way of speaking into the world of facebook and mobile phones. The lived experiences of our lives are actually not that different than the lives of Bible characters – making life work and keeping going, enjoying and celebrating, as well as suffering and commiserating … It is not always easy to trust in God when situations seem tough …just as the experiences of the Israelites in the desert when they ran out of food and water …faith is sometimes little more than gritting your teeth and choosing to trust …and then life gets better in some way or other.

I have in mind memories of life when I have been hemmed in and trapped …literally or metaphorically …and then I have come to a Wide Open Space …a moment of really living when everything feels good with the world …space to breathe and to enjoy a sense of space

The morning slot at the sports club works really well for me – having just taken Sammy to school, then straight on to the sports club to take some time prayer walking around the cricket pitch in the middle of the woods. And then to swim in a pool all on my own (except for the pool vac). Pretty close to heaven for me

The Intelligent Dustbin ..Organising Life and Thoughts
A few years ago, I joined the crowd that believes that there is a better way to organise life than backs of envelopes, ring binders, and all sorts of other paper.

It’s been a bit of a journey, the search for the ‘intelligent dustbin’ which will make anything you throw in it immediately accessible and useful..

Third Stop – (3) AskSam
As the data grew, and as I got sick of the time spent in filing things in the right sub,sub,sub-folder …I began to search for a better way …and so I found AskSam.

Result: A system that really worked, and didn’t use very much disk space …but moving to a Mac seemed to be the moment to see how the world has moved on …surely the computer should do even more to save time in indexing than the database I developed in AskSam, and surely it could handle formatted text better, and AskSam has to be run under Parallels because they don’t make it for Mac OS and I moved to Mac in Dec 07…