Monthly Archives: November 2005

Computers/Technology

Blogging Guardian and the Geek Dinner

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Todays Media Guardian took a look at the growing blogsphere, including an interview with Hugh MacLeod, who is co-hosting the Bloggers/Geek Dinner on 10th December.

In the article he talks about how blogs can be used for limited marketing, highlighting both Stormhoek and English Cut, who are building business models based on blogs. Certainly it seems that media companies are starting to take notice of blogs and blogging, however the article also highlights the uproar when Cillit Bang produced a fake blog and linked it into a real blog, effectively using that blog for free advertising. Certainly something that we may see more of in the future I expect.

Anyway, the guest list for the dinner is looking good, currently up to 135 people, so still plenty of space. It’s a real mixed bunch too, with some names that I recognise from previous dinners, plus various self-confessed geeks, media types and bloggers, there is even a “Interactive Love Coach and Sensory Artist”, and another blogging priest.

It certainly looks like a good bunch, and for the cost of £20 plus drinks looks like it should be a really interesting party to attend. (Oh and not forgetting that it is also the day that Dave Oliver hits 35…) If anybody else is keen to attend, all you need do is add your name to the list, and turn up at the Texas Embassy (just off Trafalgar Square). Robert Scoble, the other host and guest speaker gives some tips on how to get the best out of the dinner, especially he highlights that it’s not just for techies and geeks:

Tell me about yourself. What are your dreams? What do you do? I haven’t found someone with a boring job yet. My brother-in-law drives a bus and passing through town you can see he has made that job interesting. Lots of people recognized him and said hi. Why is that? He’s a good storyteller and he is interested in the people in Newport.

Also, in common with his first tip, we’ve put in an order for some Blog Cards, which certainly saves on having to write out our URL if anybody wants it at the dinner!

General

Namesakes

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So after Sarah getting confused with a Methodist Minister near Norwich, and Pete being locked out of the building at work today when the security team decided that he and an employee in Reading with the same forename, surname, middle initial and date of birth as him were really the same person, I wondered if there were any other people called Richard Peat out on the Internet.

Now I know that there are at least two others in the country. One phoned me a few years ago when I had a letter published in a magazine, however we swiftly discovered that aside from reading the same magazine and having the same name, that was about all we had in common. I know about the other, because his ex-wife contacted me thinking that I was him, having looked me up on the internet. It was a little embarassing for her at the time, but anyway.

Certainly when I’ve looked around before, there hasn’t been that much aside from my own stuff come up on any search. Peat being a relatively rare name, I wasn’t expecting much, so I put my name into Google.

The first matches out are my own stuff as usual, but the next link is quite interesting, the John Armitage Memorial to help composers of the future, awarded to Richard Peat, he looks to come up again as a visiting staff member at City University, and as a composer listed in some concert details.

Also on a musical topic, there seems to also be a Richard Peat providing information about deleted recordings.

Looking at the others on the first page of results, if you want a lawyer, I have a namesake who is a barrister, specialising in the areas of financial services regulatory, company and insolvency law. Further down I have a namesake writing about the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.

So pretty broad mix of namesakes, although what is quite amazing that in amongst all of those, it is my blog that comes out top of the pile on the search!

Church, Pictures

Cracking Up

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Cracking Up

Currently at St James we are midway through the final push to get our 1930’s Compton Organ restored and rebuilt, having spent the last couple of years raising money to rehang the bells, those having not been rehung for a good ninety years. However sat in the choir stalls in the north aisle, during a break in rehersal yesterday afternoon I thought I’d snap off a close up of part the big one, the really big problem that we are going to have to raise money to sort out next, when you look at it as a whole, a pretty frighteningly big job.

What you can see in the picture is just a small patch of the west wall of the north aisle, and you can clearly see the thick layer of Victorian plaster, through to the core of the wall. Essentially the walls have been sucking up water since the Victorians took off the medieval ‘breathable’ plaster, and slapped on victorian plaster. We took the plaster off the outside walls and replaced it a couple of years ago, inside is more complicated as the damp has caused all sorts of problems with the woodwork, as anyone who has sat on any of our pews will have discovered!

At the end all the crumbling plaster and stonework will be restored using the original techniques that allow the walls to breathe, the woodwork will be replaced or restored, and in addition we’ll have decent modern electrics, including light and sound system, and most importantly a heating system that will ensure that the internal woodwork is kept safe by maintaining a constant temperature.

But of course all of this will cost money, and whilst the Church seems flush with money on paper, the reality of the wishes of those who left us the money means that it isn’t that simple. Cost wise estimates put it at least double the combined cost of the organ and bells, at over a quarter of a million pounds.

Church, Computers/Technology

Mistaken Identity

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Amongst the friends and fellow bloggers on our links is Sarah, a Youth Worker in High Wycombe who we know through the Diocesan Taize Pilgrimages. Her blog is called Deep Thought.

Anyway, she put up an interesting post this morning. Apparently her picture had turned up on the front of November 18th issue of the Missouri Annual Conference Review, a bi-monthly magazine covering Missouri’s United Methodist Churches. Slightly mysterious as she hasn’t ever been invovled in Methodism in Missouri, and was described in the article as “a probationary elder from Sedalia now living in England”.

The source of the reference came from a post by another blogger featured in the same article called Andy Bryan, who doesn’t actually know Sarah, nor the Sarah Hamilton mentioned in the article, but had evidently done a search for Sarah Hamilton. Certainly when you do the search, there is only our Sarah who comes up.

This all was starting to become quite a puzzle. Reading the article in the newsletter, (made slightly confusing by the PDF being print ready) Sarah Hamilton was mentioned on page 6A. It was fairly obvious that the other Sarah Hamilton had a blog, and yet none of the searches brought up anybody except the Sarah we knew. So, back to the beginning, what did we know about this other Sarah.

From the article, it said that this Sarah Hamilton was working for the Methodist Church in Norwich, so I tried putting “Sarah Hamilton” Norwich into Google, and top of the pile is a list of the staff of the Norwich Methodist Circuit including one Rev Sarah Hamilton.

So I was halfway there, however it was still a puzzle that I couldn’t find her blog. Then I read on to the boxout after the blogging article in the newsletter, at the advice to would be bloggers, one part of which was not to use your surname. So I tried various combinations but still no luck, until finally I came across a blog by RevSarah, ironically on the same blogging service as both our Sarah Hamilton, and the source of the incorrect link. Interestingly she seems blissfully unaware of the confusion going on in the blogsphere…

So, mystery solved – a bit of practice in search stuff out in Google – and an interesting looking blog by a Methodist Minister spending a year in England to add to my blog roll for a bit. (Have a read of her Proud to be American post for example.)

Church

So You Think Your Sermon Went Badly?

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Ship of Fools has updated it’s regular selection of Church Blunders.

In amongst the usual selection of typos and reported slips of the tounge, is an example of the latest high-tech way to donate slip ups to Ship of Fools. Blake Bergstrom, a youth pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Parker, Colorado, talking about Sodom and Gomorrah, and finding their influence slipping into his sermon rather unexpectedly.

Later on in the clip he rather prophetically says “I hope this isn’t on videotape as I’ve got no job now” – bad news there then… 😳