Sort Of Dunno Nothin'

We saw this on TV the other night. Very good. Sort Of Dunno Nothin' by Peter Denahy.

The Cat In The Hat short story

Robert J Lennon writes a short story using only words found in The Cat in the Hat.

"My mother was gone. It was a bump on her head, a big bump. I did not know; mother did not tell me. When she did, I fell. “No,” I said. “No, not you! Do not go!” But there was no way. She sank fast, that was good. I let her go."

The Cat in the Hat is designed to use only words a first grader could understand. A challenging task you'd think, to write a short story not for children using the same words. He does well.

Link (via boingboing).

Alvin Lim

It is with sadness that I report that Alvin Lim passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last week. I learned of this from this post that Hecta saw on sydneyanglicans.net.

I knew Alvin & Michelle from our days at St Barnabas Broadway when I was still at university. Alvin & Michelle were my bible study group leaders for a while, and I remember our friendship fondly.

I remember once at their house in Lewisham (after a few minutes of Alvin & Michelle discussing it) getting called in to offer my opinion on whether it was necessary to polish wine glasses after they had been dried with a tea towel. (I was on Alvin's side - polish them of course!)

Our prayers are with Michelle and family at this time.

Update: John Anderson reports that Alvin’s memorial service will take place at 2pm Tuesday 24/7/07 at St Paul’s Anglican Church, Menai.

Hello Pastor

If you are involved in music ministry at your church, or if you are the pastor of a church with any kind of music ministry I recommend you check out this phone message on Ship of Fools. From their site: 'This priceless voicemail recording was sent to us by a pastor who said, "Oh, have I been there!"'

That's my girl

Are you familiar with missed connections on craigslist? This blog ... kind of hard to explain, and it dates from 2006, but it's great.

Celebration of Shad!

Were it not for my good friends in Doylestown taking me to the Shad Festival in Lambertville New Jersey today I might not know what a shad is. A shad turns out to be a fish, and I have a t-shirt to prove it.

The Trentonian says that shad used to be fished at Lambertville as they swam upstream to spawn. Eventually the pollution in the Delaware river got so bad that they stopped coming. Now the condition of the river has improved enough that the shad have come back.

eTrex Click-Stick Fixed

My Garmin eTrex Venture has been pretty much unusable for at least 6 months now due to the rarely working click-stick, and only mostly working screen. Every time the Ebenezerling suggests we "go find a geocache" my mind turns to doing battle with the eTrex. Consequently we haven't been caching for a while.

I decided it was time to either get a new GPS, or fix the old one.

Given that I'm still hanging out for a Venture Cx, here's the procedure for fixing it. Note that the B&W eTrex Legend suffers from the same problem, and so the fix is probably the same for the Legend. Don't try this if your unit is in or close to warranty!

I carefully removed the rubber seal, and then didn't wash the sticky stuff off my fingers before proceeding. Then carefully removed the clear tape around the unit, and carefully prised the 5 clips open (2 on each side, and one at the bottom).

There is a ribbon cable connecting the screen & click stick to the rest of the unit. I think the problem with the click stick & screen is that this cable comes loose, or the connections start to get a bit dodgy (which is why a good thump can get it going again), rather than a problem with the click-stick itself.

I Carefully (there's that word again) removed the little clips at the side of the ribbon cable and removed the ribbon cable. Then I cleaned the end of the ribbon cable with some suitable cleaner (I only had metho) and stuck it back in. I did up the little clips at the side of the cable again to hold it in place.

A quick test (YES - she works again!) and time to stick it all back together again. I'm told that if you got the tape that was under the sticky stuff in a horrible mess you can replace it with electrical tape, but mine was pretty much in tact, so I re-used it. I put the rubber seal back on making sure that the buttons on the outside line up with the buttons on the inside.

Next I cleaned off all the sticky stuff on the outside that wouldn't have got there if I had washed my hands straight after taking off the seal, and before handling the screen and poking at the eTrex's innards.

It is so strange to have it working (reliably!) again. It feels like I have a new GPS!

Anglican Church "split"

The Herald's headline: Church is split, declares Jensen. I think it is fair to say that the divisions over sexuality in the Anglican Church are serious, to say that "Peter Jensen, aligned with rebellious evangelical prelates in Asia" is probably pushing it a bit far. Is Dr Williams idea of a "looser federation" a split? Probably in some sense it is.

St Barnabas Fire Photos

On Saturday there was a brief period where I was able to have a look inside the remains of St Barnabas. Thankyou to the engineers and Barneys staff that made that possible. (If you would like better quality copies if any of these, please get in touch with me.)

Barneys photos to come...

There was a brief window on the weekend where some people were able to enter the site at St Barnabas to take a look. (Fire at St Barnabas) I managed to take a couple of photos, but I probably won't have them online for a couple of days. Well, at least not until I find my computer amongst the pile of boxes at my place.

I know it was only a building, but I think part of what is difficult is the association between the building and the memories of things that took place there. It has been interesting reading other blogs about the fire and seeing some of the memories others have of Barneys.

Big Fire at St Barnabas Broadway

Very very sad news: There was a big fire last night at St Barnabas Anglican Church, Broadway. The SMH has a story about it here.

I think I'm still in shock. We attended Barneys for more than 15 years.

Lemony Snicket

In case you don't already know (for some reason), the latest Lemony Snicket "A Series of Unfortunate Events" book came out this week. We were hoping this one would bring closure to a number of matters, but now that I have it in my posession I see that it is called "The Penultimate Peril."

Mad as...

After several weeks wait I finally got my Tilley hat today. Why a Tilley hat? Apart from being an excellent hat they come in sizes appropriate for large-brained people such as myself.

Magnets

It seems that someone from AIC Magnetics in Hong Kong has seen my fridge magnet collection web page. I think they misunderstood, and sent me an e-mail asking me if I want to buy some flexible magnetic sheet.

TV-B-Gone

After reading about TV-B-Gone (a small keychain device that claims to be able to turn off virtually any TV) I decided I needed something like that. There are many situations where I find there is a TV blaring at me that noone can do anything about. Unfortunately TV-B-Gone is not yet available in Australia. It was only the other day that it ocurred to me that my HP iPAQ 2210 has a remote control application (Nevo) in it. I got to wondering if I could use it in this type of situation. Anyway, the annoying (and loud) TV in the baby change room at my local Westfield is Samsung #26 in Nevo, and it works nicely.

Dishwasher

Yesterday I was permitted to use the dishwasher in our kitchen for the 3rd time in the last 3 1/2 years. I thought that rated a post.

Farewell Naomi - for now

Yesterday we travelled to Canberra to attend the funeral of Naomi Atkins. Naomi and Felicity were born prematurely to good friends of ours Graham and Karen in December last year. It is always difficult to go to a funeral of a small baby, but we found the funeral very helpful. It is good to keep in mind that as Christians God knew us while we were still being formed in the womb. We look forward to getting to know Naomi when we see her again in heaven.

I just finished reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (web site about Margaret Atwood). It is fiction, but very well researched fiction, and kind of along the lines of The Handmaid's Tale. It deals a lot with genetic engineering, but is quite a thought provoking look at where our society is going, particularly with regard to the influence of big business and governments on our society. I highly recommend it.

Nasa's Earth Observatory has a great satellite photo of Zurich today.

Sad news today: My iPAQ met with misadventure yesterday. Serious misadventure. Terminal serious misadventure. Screen smashed, case bent etc etc. It has been really strange, because I keep going to look up stuff in it, but then I remember that it's dead.