I had an idea for a poem a week or so ago, and this morning I finally got round to writing it down.  I’m not normally the type to write poetry, but every now and then the inspiration hits me and I just have to start typing.  See what you think…

I can see you
staring back at me
we are so alike, you and I
like two peas in a pod.
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Just recently I have been studying some of the Psalms, with the help of a big hefty devotional commentary.  It goes through the whole Bible in a year, and has some really meaty insight too, which is good.  Today’s theme, and actually a recurring one over the last few days, has been trusting in the Lord during times of trouble.  David, while on the run from Saul, persecuted, hunted, betrayed, attacked, always remained confident that no matter what happened that God would protect him and achieve His purpose in David’s life.  Today in particular I read of how David was hiding in a cave, and Saul his enemy happened to wander in on his own to relieve himself.  There was an ideal opportunity to kill Saul and take the throne, or so David’s followers though.  But no, David knew that doing wrong was not the way to become king.  God had promised that David would sit on the throne, and as such David didn’t have to worry about forcing that to happen – God was in control and would bring about his intended purpose in his own time and in his own way.

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Those, according to the BBC report I’ve just watched, are the words of Mr Blair’s ghost, words that will follow Prime Minister Brown around his new house. I don’t normally talk about political issues here, but on the occasion of our country assigning a new PM, it would be a shame to miss out on the opportunity to mark it. Gordon Brown certainly has a lot of work ahead of him – we may not have all agreed with Tony’s policies or decisions, but there is no denying that he was the most successful Labour leader ever, and that’s some trophy.

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I spent a fair portion of this morning looking at jobs on the Job Centre Plus web site – while I’m really happy working where I am I feel I could really do with a financial boost right now, what with my wedding just around the corner.  Just investigating at the moment, seeing what’s out there.  I did find one job that looked promising, although it was full time rather than part time, and after some thought and contemplation I started the arguous task of creating an attractive CV.  Ah, good old Adobe InDesign!

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Well, after many hours spent slaving over potential designs, I’ve finally decided to stick with my present blog theme after all.  I wanted something different, something snazzy, but in the end I was just so devoid of inspiration that anything I came up with didn’t have the pazazz or sparkle that I wanted.  I did come up with a nice design that used transparent backgrounds and condensed headings, but it didn’t grab me as much as I had intended, so I discarded it.  However, not to be completely defeated, I’ve fiddled with this design slightly, and will be approaching blogging slightly differently as a result – instead of fitting each post into one of four categories I’ll be assigning tags to each post, which means I can more easily talk about a wider variety of things without filling up the “Miscellaneous” category too much!  If any of you have any other requests for features, do let me know!

Most of the science I learned at school was reasonably straightforward – I understood it and accepted it, and most of the time remembered it too. Except for potential energy, which never made any sense whatsoever. In fact, I recently told a teacher friend of mine why potential energy doesn’t work, and he couldn’t counter my argument. The following is therefore my thought process in trying to understand and/or disprove potential energy, and may or may not actually include anything scientific.

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Sorry, but this rant really has to be voiced now and not left to stew, otherwise it will ingrain itself on my brain forever and I’ll never be rid of it. And I don’t like rants following me around, it’s somewhat disconcerting. So if you don’t like rants, read no further. You have been warned.

Right, today I got some post. Three letters in fact. Nothing unusual about that, except that on first inspection all three envelopes looked identical. That’s odd, I thought, why would my bank be sending me three letters all at once? It was only when I opened them that it twigged what had happened. They were letters informing me of a change to the interest rate on my savings accounts. But rather than sending one letter to the owner of the accounts, they had sent one for each account, regardless of the address! Not only a waste of paper but a waste of ink and postage too. And no doubt there was an innocent computer involved too, using valuable processor time and inconveniencing a significant number of electrons, all to no purpose.

Ok, not the end of the world, but still.

Rant over.

Something got into our pond recently. I’m not sure what exactly, possibly a cat. No one saw the attack, but the evidence speaks for itself – one of our fish was this morning floating on its side with gashes down its side. However, somehow it’s still alive, though only just. In fact, it’s been like this for a couple of days now, and despite its “playing dead” it still lives. Which poses something of a problem, because although it looks dead, it isn’t, so I can’t bury it. It sort of looks like it might be in pain, or ought to be given the wounds, but since it still hasn’t died I’m wondering whether it might survive after all. What do I do?

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In a recent survey it was revealed that half of Britons are addicted to their e-mails. This is not something that has been around forever, but a thoroughly modern form of procrastination, and one that is made all the more tempting by the technological advances of recent years. Our e-mails can include images and multimedia, our computers can be set to check for new mail every minute, and we can even access our e-mails on our mobile phones from anywhere in the world (with signal). And now, as if sending e-mails wasn’t enough, the world has embraced the concept of blogging, writing messages not just for a particular recipient but for the whole world. Free blogs allow anyone and everyone to post their ideas and thoughts on the web. Nothing is safe.

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Things have been pretty slow here recently, which has meant I have had time to look into a possible new design for my blog, and potentially my other sites too. I’ve been looking at several good web sites just recently, and something that caught my eye is that most seem to have a good sense of continuity in terms of style – if a site has several sections or areas they all retain either a corporate style or a common header to link everything together and make it all feel like it’s part of something bigger. So I started thinking about doing the same for my web sites, which incidentally are mostly completely separate but for their owner, and in so doing ended up rethinking the way I’ve been presenting all those sites.

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Following the recent Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where Steve Jobs demonstrated the up-coming Mac OS X Leopard, Apple presented the Apple Design Awards, showcasing the best software made for Macs this year. One program particularly caught my eye, and thanks to a 14-day trial I am now playing with Coda, an all-in-one web design tool that is built specifically for the Mac and combines efficient and useful with some pretty eye-candy. It includes a superb text editor, live preview courtesy of Safari’s rendering engine, a powerful CSS editor, built-in Terminal access, and even helps you get everything online by incorporating the Transmit FTP/SSH client. And all of that is accessible through one tidy window, complete with smooth animated effects, helpful bits of information dotted around in helpful places, and even on my old 1Ghz G4 it is reassuringly responsive.

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The next release of Apple’s Mac OS X will be available in a few months’ time, and Steve Jobs recently let the world know just what they can expect from it. Leopard is billed to have over 300 new features (though what actually counts as a ‘feature’ is somewhat nebulous), and at a recent keynote speech Mr Jobs went through a few of the most impressive.

It’s pretty safe to say that I was blown away by the demonstration – I was almost literally drooling, almost as much as when Apple revealed their iPhone. Many have already said that the new Windows Vista was still behind OS X Tiger in many ways, and Apple’s new version, Leopard, will raise the bar yet higher, leaving Windows well and truly out in the cold. So what’s all the fuss about?

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After briefly reading a headline on my BBC News RSS feed today about Google having a really poor privacy policy, I decided to have a quick look around at the other search engines available, something I’ve not felt I’ve had to do for almost a decade.

It’s a generally accepted fact that the Google search engine is by far the most widely used at the moment, having offered something refreshingly simple since its birth in the 90s, when every other web site was bursting with columns and extra information. Google’s revolutionary and speedy approach to web site listings was embraced by us all, and “google” has become a verb now too. The cleverclogs in the Google Labs have also been busy taking over the rest of the web too, with the now popular Gmail webmail system, the fast and easy to use Google Maps, Google Documents, and the rest, all interconnected and making good use of Ajax controls and Web 2.0 functionality. But in all that development, has the original search engine been forgotten? (more…)

Yes, that was the song running through my head most of today. Well, sort of – I had that line of the chorus on loop, which got rather annoying after a while. The cause? Ellie and I took possession of our new house this morning! It’s rented, so no scary mortgage to worry about, but it’s still pretty exciting! It came unfurnished, so we’ve got to buy lots of stuff to fill it with, but we made a start today by getting a sofa, armchair, bedframe and mattress! Obviously there’s plenty more that we’ll need, but we’ve got plenty of time between now and when we actually move into the house to get everything sorted out.

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Just recently I’ve been giving Flock a chance to impress me, following yet another investigation into the multitude of web browsers available. I was initially very impressed by Flock, but of course time tells a clearer story than first impressions. So, here is my report on the good, the bad and the ugly of Flock.

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This afternoon it was nice and sunny, and I thought it would be a shame to spend it sat in front of my computer again, so after much deliberation I decided to be spontaneous and go for a drive. This is a pastime I loved when I lived in Devon – those wonderful country lanes, beautiful countryside (I once went for a drive and found myself on the outskirts of Dartmoor, and couldn’t remember how I got there!) – so I figured it would be worth giving it a try here as well. I ended up taking some friends along too, as I was passing by, and the four of us wound up on Mersea Island, breathing in the sea air, enjoying the sunshine and the cool breeze.

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This morning in a bout of “nothing better to do”-ness I started reading some reviews about web browsers. Again. For those of you who have been avid readers of my blog for while, you will have noticed that this has been something of a recurring theme, with several posts over the years comparing various different browsers. Today’s foray into this particularly dark and dangerous part of the cyber-woods was initiated by a post by my friend Phill, who was commenting on Opera. I have had Opera installed for some time, though I rarely use it, but prompted by Phill’s comments I felt obliged to try it out again, just in case I had misjudged it before.

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