Knowing the time and effort that we at St James put into our parish profile a few years back, in trying to attract the kind of person we were looking for, I always find it interesting to look at the profiles produced by other local parishes when they are looking for a new priest. However today, the Oxford Diocese has released the equivalent document written for the recent search for a new Bishop of Oxford – certainly interesting reading, especially with regards to our contribution to the process last year.
Monthly Archives: March 2007
Sermons on Slavery
With today being the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, I suspect that today was one of those days when pretty well every preacher in the country was preaching a similar sermon looking at the contribution of the Church and church people to both the abolition, but as importantly, their contribution to the trade itself. Certainly it was the subject of Rev Richard’s sermon this morning, and Mum preached on the same thing too, the text of which can be found over on her blog.
BBC Saving Our Licence Fee with Eastmas
Thanks to Dave for highlighting this little gem. Apparently, in a bid to save licence payers money – which does deserve some credit I’m sure, the BBC filmed the Easter Songs of Praise straight after having filmed the Christmas edition in Litchfield Cathedral last year. The Bishop of Lichfield inadvertently kicked off a bit of a storm over the move, when a speech to his Diocesan Synod was reported in the press. Ironically, he was just using the recordings as a minor example, however it does seem to have kicked off a minor storm over the move. But as the Bishop says, he knew about it in advance, and everybody was briefed. It is apparently quite standard due to the expense for the BBC to film multiple programmes in the same location. Of course it also gives Dave a chance to do a topical cartoon to make light of the situation.
Seriously though, if it is saving our money by doing it that way, who am I to complain? Perhaps they could do the same thing with sporting events as well – perhaps get the teams to change their shirts and film another game straight afterwards, nobody would notice I’m sure. Either that, or just get all the teams to come to one location and film games one after another to save moving cameras around, that would make things so much easier wouldn’t it?
Does Anybody Actually Pair Program?
I’ve just been watching the latest ScobleShow videos, which include a tour, demo and interview at Smilebox, a Seattle based startup producing a flash based platform for sharing photos, videos and music with friends and family. The service seemed quite interesting, although since the design aspect won’t work on either of my main machines here as one is a Mac (the service is PC only), and the other is running Vista-64 (the design software only works on Windows XP), it’s not really of much use to me.
However, what is interesting from a professional point of view is the point early in the video where we meet the programming team, who are developing using the Agile methodology, and more specifically, they are pair programming.
The basic idea behind pair programming follows the old adage that two heads are better than one. Essentially one half of the pair is the ‘driver’ who is the person actually using the keyboard, and the other is the ‘navigator’ who is thinking about the class that is to be written. The CEO of Smilebox makes a comment when he is introducing the team that he is sure that Robert Scoble has seen loads of people working like this during his visits, however Scoble doesn’t actually give an answer. Personally, I’ve not come across anybody working in a company that is actively pair programming, and I’d expect others will be the same. Even in organisations I’ve been involved with that have started to look at Agile Programming, pair programming is one of the most difficult ideas to sell to upper management, partly because to them programmers should be bashing away at their keyboards as much as possible, and in their eyes it will see a 50% drop in the amount of work produced. However actually seeing a team that is using the process, and hearing how quickly they can turn around new features, it certainly seems to be a good advertisement for the technique. Check the video out and see what you think:
Thank Heavens It’s Friday
Well at least it is the weekend tomorrow. As you can probably gather from my post from lunchtime, today was anything if not frustrating. After establishing that there was probably something installed on my development machine that was causing the problem, hence why the laptop was loading up the control I set about un-installing anything that wasn’t necessary. Unfortunately after an afternoon of removing one thing after another, and testing the project again, all with no success, by the end of the afternoon I was ready to drop-kick the whole PC out of the window. Hopefully Monday will shine a new light on the problem, either that or I’ll try and code around it.
Anyway, onto less frustrating things. I had a nice surprise when I got home, my copy of Shaggy Blog Stories, the book of UK blog postings put together by Mike Atkinson. For an internet published book, with effectively word-of-mouth advertising it’s doing pretty well. Apparently it sold over 250 copies in the first 40 hours, and the running tally on Mike’s site puts the current total at 410 copies, raising a fantastic £1821.22 for Comic Relief. If you haven’t ordered a copy, I can heartily recommend getting hold of a copy. Some of the names you’ll know, others you won’t, but there are certainly a lot of laughs. Incidentally, did you know that candles only burn if they are facing east? Neither did I – see, the book is educational too!
On a related point, this is the first book I’ve ordered from Lulu.com, the print-on-demand publishing service. Essentially it allows budding authors to publish their own work, and since each copy is printed when it is ordered, and the service handles all the production and shipping, it is a pretty straightforward way to get your book published. Certainly looking at my copy of Shaggy Blog Stories compared to a ‘normal’ book, aside from the missing barcode and ISBN number, it is pretty well indistinguishable, certainly in terms of the quality of manufacture. Having seen the finished article, it definitely seems like a good way to publish in small numbers, perhaps for books at the Church or something like that.
Since we’ve had a busy couple of weeks – I’ve had meetings, rehearsals, lent courses and all sorts meaning I’ve been out pretty well every night for the past few weeks – we had a catch-up session with programmes we have recorded tonight. We got through one episode of Heroes, two episodes of West Wing, and got up to date with this weeks episodes of EastEnders. I’ve mentioned West Wing loads of times before, and even linked in to clips, however I don’t think I’ve mentioned Heroes up to now.
The premise of Heroes has definite roots in the comic book genre with a large ensemble of apparently disconnected characters around the world starting to discover that they have strange powers. So we have a Texas Cheerleader who discovers that she is able to spontaneously regenerate, even at one point coming back to life in the middle of her own autopsy. There is also a Japanese programmer who discovers that he can manipulate the space/time continuum, tele-porting himself around the world and through time. There are also characters who are telepathic, characters who can fly and characters who can walk through walls. The show has been hailed as ‘the next Lost‘, in whose footsteps it certainly seems to have followed in terms of popular reception. It also seems to have followed along in terms of having a large ensemble cast, and in which the story is the main thing – so there is always the possibility that popular and apparently central characters will not survive. It is also similar in that there are many details to spot that may be missed by the casual viewer. Ironically, as Lost seems to be getting somewhat lost itself in it’s third season – certainly lacking the plot twists that kept you gripped before, Heroes seems to be taking it’s place in terms of complex and surprising plot twists. Certainly it’s got us hooked.
Anyway, thank heavens it’s Friday. We’ve not got much on this weekend, so it’s a good chance to sit back, read Shaggy Blog Stories, and watch the countdown to the new Doctor Who. 😀