egeiro

I picked up a book at an Op Shop this morning called Diary of Kenneth MacRae (no point wasting all that printing on a leading “The”). As far as I’m aware I’d never previously heard of Kenneth MacRae. The thing that attracted me to the book in the first instance was that it was published by Banner of Truth. Banner of Truth is a publishing house based in England whose aim is to make available quality Christian books. They have, for instance, sought out and republished a number of books by puritan authors. The founder of Banner of Truth is Iain Murray – long term associate of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones and also MLJs primary biographer.

I had something of a revelation this morning about how I view God.

I tend to see or treat God like a petrol station. You pull up, fill up and then drive away to get on with life.

But the idea came to me that a more complete or holistic view would see God the Father as the petrol station; Jesus as the fuel tank in my vehicle; and Holy Spirit is the fuel.

Warning, very mild horror story ahead!

I woke up with a start at around 1:15 this morning when a bug fell into my ear. I tried to shake it away and push it off but it obviously felt the safest place to be was further in my ear canal. I jumped out of bed, turned on the bathroom light and continued shaking my head and poking at my ear to try to encourage the bug that my ear wasn’t a good place for him/her/it.

I’m currently working my way through reading Mark’s gospel. I read a bit, write comments on verses or ideas that strike me, read a bit more, write a bit more. Once I’ve identified three or four ideas that strike me, I then turn to look for and note what seems to be the primary application or relevance of these verses or ideas for me. Once I’ve tackled that I then turn to prayer and write a prayer that what I’ve read and identified as relevant or applicable may be seen in my life. This process usually takes 20-30 minutes.

Here are a stack of videos and websites that (hopefully) make your Christmas presents easier to use and enjoy:

A few links for Jez!

• Draw Happy for Jez
• Types of art journals
• Turning books into art journals
• A little spooky, but kinda cool, too

And info for the rest of the fam:

• Ink - Written by Hand
• Ahab colour range
• Noodler’s Ahab setup for beginners
• The Disassembly Line - Noodler’s Ahab
• Noodler’s Ahab review
• Another review
• Filling a Noodler’s pen
• How to adjust a Noodler’s Ahab Flex Pen
• Adjusting a Noodler’s flex nib
• Heat setting an ebonite feed
• How do you like me now?

And a bonus couple of pages:

This is not some generic post about the theory or philosophy of making a cup of coffee, but a specific point-by-point set of instructions on how to make a cup of coffee (ie. espresso) with frothed milk (a la cappucino, latte or flat white) for one or two people. The equipment in use is a Diadema (Junior Plus) La Valentina levetta heat exchanger coffee machine, and the grinder is a Macap M4 doserless grinder.

For the past two months I’ve been busy, unbelievably busy, ridiculously busy. I know how it began, I hope I know how it will end, but what I don’t know is when it will end. It all began with a prompting, I believe from God, to read 1 Peter - the first letter or epistle attributed to Peter in the New Testament. In 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 6 and 7 we read:

My wife, eldest daughter and I had the privilege of attending the Midnight Oil concert in Coffs Harbour on 19th October. In total the Oils played 23 songs and, at the time, I thought a lot came from their albums of the middle period from the early to mid eighties. I thought I’d work it out and let everyone else know, too:

I was surprised to discover just how many songs came from Diesel and Dust. The era from Place Without a Postcard to Blue Sky Mining are my favourites and twenty of the twenty three songs came from those albums. Two other songs were from earlier albums which I do quite like, and there was one cover which I also knew. I’m not as familiar with their later material (from Earth and Sun and Moon, Breathe, Redneck Wonderland and Capricornia) and there were no songs from that era!

My search for productivity tools that suit my platforms (linux @ home, windows @ work) and work philosophy (KISS, plain text preferred for transportability, not being locked into a particular tool or suite) continues.

I’m now using TiddlyWiki for general notes - one wiki file for home stuff and another wiki file for work stuff. I use minimal formatting in the tiddlers, but try to make good use of tags so I can track/trace ideas. I was using TiddlyWiki through Firefox but apparently a future release of Firefox (due in a month or two) won’t allow TiddlyWikis to be easily saved. As a result I’m now using Pale Moon browser for my wikis and will probably migrate the majority of my web usage to/through it.

I’ve often been intrigued by the moon. When I was a teenager I had a (very) modest refractor telescope and would spend parts of evenings outside in the cool inviting mosquito bites as I looked at the moon, jupiter, saturn and venus. I could identify a fair proportion of the southern hemisphere night sky (well, that “fair proportion” was probably 5% of what was visible).

But back to the moon: Around 250,000 miles from earth, sufficient to give light at night for at least half of the month, exactly the right relative size and distances from the earth and sun to provide eclipses, powerful enough even though inert to provide tides through gravity.