Google risk!

In a comment to a [previous post] Simon mentioned that the barycenter of himself (in Durham) to me (in Hong Kong) is likely to be somewhere over the czech republic. Whilst he's probably not far off and way more sophisicated than Google Earth, I did have a little fun playing around with the measurement tool on the aforementioned program.

It turns out that we're separated by 5,901.17 Miles (that's 5,580,571.57 smoots) give or take a few inaccuracies in my ruler!!

Most of you know I'm a real sucker for anything with a 'global' theme. Hence I've been closely following another Google revelation - Google Maps. The cool thing for programmers is that Google have opened up their mapping software, allowing them to use maps in there programs.

Obviously this has some immediate implications - Housing Maps can now provide a clickable, zoomable, accurate map of their houses for sale in the usa (incidently driven by Craigslist), during Hurrican Katrina people were able to post online information about their whereabouts and the condition of the area they were in - great for worried families, and useful in planning humanitarian response.

But by far the coolest and funnest use I've found so far is Google Risk Its awesome! Not only do you get to play Risk (I love that game!) but you get to do it on a *real* map of the world that you can click and zoom and play with. We're gonna start a mass game in the office sometime thanks to XP's remote desktop feature!!!

Steve is very happy! :o)

What to do...

This started off as a comment to Harriet's blog post. [ link ] but quickly grew into something more substantial as I realised the depth of my own time management problems. Thanks Harriet!!

Snippet...

The problem comes when my head becomes so full up of little things that need to be done that I don't do anything, other than try and sort through it. I'm procrastinating now. I should be filling in my UCAS form, or getting my head round my psychology project, or finding the email with Adam's address on so that I can post his birthday present, bought at the time of his birthday.

Adam's birthday was in August.

Ah yes! I know exactly what you mean. We're running up to a website deadline and there are so many things that people would like me to do. Post-it notes along with a book seem to work ok for me. Problem is, I get so overloaded with things to do that I don't know where to start. The main problem is that stack of email that is filling up in my inbox. Friends emailed me over a month ago and I still haven't replied. I really want to reply, but I want to find the time to do it properly...not just a quick 'hi' email. Plus, I only live a 2 minute walk from the office so I really have little excuse about traveling


People often say that we don't have enough time to do things...but that can't be strictly true because time is a continous thing. One day flows seemlessly into the next.

Maybe we just have too much to do sometimes!

For days like these...

"Love should give wings to the feet of service and strength to the arms of labour."

Charles Spurgeon (via a friend)

X marks the spot

"In a true moment of revelation, Brian Maloney redefines the foundations of geometry"

I wish logic was always this rewarding! Bring me back my Finals...

widescreen

I use a measly outdated dual-flat screen at work. This has to be upgraded NOW thanks to Dwaino! :o) Link

Fidi fidi FireFox

There's a lot of things I like about Firefox.

• Standards compliant
• Tabbed browsing
• Funky skins
• LiveMarks
• Extensions
• 'firesomething' has to rock. I'm currently on 'Mozilla Turbocheetah'
  

The list goes on...

But I must admit I have a real issue with memory leaks (not I won't go into the details, except to say that there's a bug in the FireFox code that eats up all your memory and won't give it back until you've shut down every 'flippin' last tab :o) Now that won't bother most people, but when, like me, your work involves at least 20 tabs all open at once then it can get rather painstaking having to shut them all down.

A mate of mine pointed out this site Mooz which is a set of Firefox's specifically compiled for your processor. In non-geek speak, that means you can get a version of Firefox that speaks the very dialect your processor was born and bred on. This makes it much faster, and ... with a bit of luck... hopefully more efficient with memory.

I've just installed it so its time to see what happens...

p.s. 'Fidi fidi' is the romanisation of a Cantonese phrase 'faster faster'

Safe?

Am currently reading through the Chronicles of Narnia in preparation for the movie coming out in December. Here's my favourite quote so far...

"Safe?" said Mrs Beaver; "don't you hear what Mr Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

check out the movie site

Bad day in the office

Man... I thought I had a bad day in the office. But no matter how bad, this kinda puts it all into perspective.

Paul's Hardships

We put no stumbling block in anyone's path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

2 Corinthians 6

Difficult miracles

From a friend -

"Difficulty is the very atmosphere of miracle--it is miracle in its first stage. If it is to be a great miracle, the condition is not difficulty but impossibility."

Getting around Hong Kong

This post is actually so I don't forget how to get around Hong Kong - http://www.ypmap.com

Hope it helps!

hoops and yoyo

I've been going through a phase of sending e-cards to all my friends for their birthdays (really useful when you live in Hong Kong and they're in the UK). One of my favourite spots is Hoops and Yoyo from Hallmark

So was really excited when my birthday came around and a friend from uni sent through Hoops and Yoyo - very impressed ;o)

Lost and Found

Have you ever had that experience when you created a website, totally forgot about it and then a friend discovers it and emails it to you several years later? ... no i didn't think so!

I had completely forgotten about this, from back in 2003, am amazed its mostly all still there.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/steveyken

Freaky or what!

Where have you been?

A friend just showed me this cool site World66 where you can list all the countries that you've been too or have lived in. If you're like me and love charting the globe, you'll love this site. This sums up my last 5 years travel and work...



create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Celebration of Discipline update

No seriously...its about time I did a post on the CoD chapters - I'm several behind. I must admit though that I've struggled to keep it going due to having rather a lot of work at the moment (on going website development deadline for the foreseable future) So, I'm gonna have to take things a little slower, though I still want to complete the book and write up all the chapters.

Whilst I'm in confession mode, I must also mention that i did skip a long way ahead a feasted on the chapter about guidance - read it twice and then wrote notes on it...more to come on that!

Hong Kong Helicopter Flight

Aberdeen
Originally uploaded by Steveybabe.

It was my brother's birthday last week and given the fact that he and my dad are currently visiting me in Hong Kong, Dad decided to treat us all to a helicopter flight around Central. It was an awesome day and we all really enjoyed it. Check out the photos and I've put in lots of links to Google Maps so we can see exactly just where we went via satellite! Just roll the mouse over the images to see if there are any notes with links on them.

97%

Came across this amusing post whilst catching up on Bagga's blog today. (yes its been weeks since i've had the time to sit down and go through my blog roll...shocking!)

Baggas: "According to Oxford professor Richard Swinburne it is 97% certain that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead based on sheer logic and mathematics, not faith."

Now I do find that rather amusing, having studied maths at Ox, but I'm prepared to take a tongue in cheek look at it and not take it too seriously. I'm just glad that faith is based on who God is and not just what he has done for us.

If there's anything I've learning from my time in the "dreaming spires of Oxford", it has to be that Mathematics is an awesome tool that can be found in most if not all areas of life (e.g. science, nature) but without a Creator God, a God who created Mathematics, much of what it describes and defines would be meaningless. It takes the Creator God to turn it into something meaningful.

Btw. I love the cartoon on his post Very funny!!

London bombings...

Every one is talking about the London bombings right now. I've only had time to read/watch the bbc news and chat to a couple of friends. Its wierd for me being here in Hong Kong, 6000 miles from home, and to see and hear 2nd hand about what is going on.

Read the BBC post here to catch up...

I have quite a few friends who work in the city. I've only heard from a few of them so far, but it seems several had close misses.

• One friend who works in Canary Wharf usually goes through Liverpool Street station - one that was bombed. But on that day decided to go into work early to finish something off.
• A distant relative was travelling in London and stopped off in Charing Cross to have breakfast, if he hadn't done so, he would have been travelling on the affected tracks around the time of the bombs.
• [updated] Looks as if the sister of a lady I know from church is quite badly injured...praying.
  

Watch this space for updates as I hear from more people...

Celebration of Discipline: Simplicity

*Warning* This post is going to be slightly abstract and quite possibly confusing, because I'm rather tired right now!

This study is certainly getting deeper each chapter. The quote below from Foster's 6th chapter conveys a radical point of view.

The Spiritual Discipline of simplicity provides the ... perspective. Simplicity sets us free to receive the provision of God as a gift that is not ours to keep and can freely be shared with others.

If a gift is given to me, I'm supposed to keep it and enjoy it right? But with God, his gift is so great that actually I can't possibly keep it all to myself. Its such a big gift that simply by giving it away, I still get to keep it! There is enough to go round.

By simplicity, Foster means things such as:

• Not getting carried away with being important
• Getting rid of addictions
• Being generous rather than keeping
• Appreciate creation
• Don't oppress others, rather affirm them
• Seek the kingdom of God

Quite a heavy checklist if you look closely enough!

The central point for the Discipline of simplicity is to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness of his kingdom first and then everything necessary will come into its proper order.

Ah ok, this is a much better principle to guide the checklist above. It makes it a bit easier to follow. If you keep this principle in mind, and focus on it, then I don't think you can go wrong with the Discipline of Simplicity somehow. Much easier said than done... good luck with it!

Celebration of Discipline: Study

He that to what he sees, adds observation, and to what he reads, reflection, is in the right road to knowledge, provided that in scrutinising the hearts of others, he neglects not his own. [Caleb Coulton]

For the 5th CoD chapter, Foster dives into the discipline of study. I love his opening quote [above] by Coulton. I think it pretty much sums up this chapter. As Foster says, "the mind is renewed by applying it to those things that will transform it"

Foster gives us four steps that he believes form the basis of study:

1. Repeitition - "Regularly channeling the mind in a specific direction"
   
2. Concentration - centering our attention on the subject in order to comprehend what we are studying
   
3. Comprehension - it is the knowledge of the truth that sets us free
   
4. Reflection - "defines the significance of what we are studying"
   

I often struggle to concentrate. There are times when I find music useful to concentrate - such as when I'm in the office and need to block out all other forms of distraction. But there are times when music gets in the way and I'm distracted e.g if reading or praying.

I think there is one more step I would add though - "regularity". It doesn't form the basis of study, but it does enables study to flourish. This is my biggest problem though. My life doesn't easily fit into a regular pattern, so its hard to make a regular slot for study. But I've certainly found it very rewarding when I have. There are some amazing gems in the 'old Bible if you dig down under the surface. (understatement of the century!)

I have to end this posting with my favourite quote of the chapter:

To read successfully we need the extrinsic aids of experience, other books, and live discussion

I think the CoD blog ring is a pretty good form of modern day 'live discussion'.

Celebration of Discipline - Fasting

Recap from last week's post on prayer:

I'm setting myself some targets to get on with prayer...30 minutes each day.

Well, I managed it for the first few days, though I was a bit silly and always left it to 12am ish just before I went to bed! Then I got a little slack over the weekend which isn't good. Am gonna try and keep it going this week though. There's no reason why I shouldn't be doing it anyway. Think I'll try and take the dogs for a walk each day in the early evening and fit it in then!

Moving on to this weeks topic of "Fasting". Foster gives us a good explanation and history of fasting in bible times. I particularly like,

"The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast." Matt 9:15

I agree with Foster that its one of the most important statements on fasting in the New Testament. It assumes fasting will happen, and gives a mandate for it to happen - because the 'bridegroom aka Jesus' has left. It makes Christ the focus for the discipline as/when it takes place.

"Fasting must forever centre on God. It must be God-initiated and God-ordained."

So what's the big deal, why is it such an unfamiliar thing? Why is fasting no longer (or was it ever in Western society?) a cultural norm? Foster mourns,

"Have we become so accustomed to 'cheap grace' that we instinctively shy away from more demanding calls to obedience? 'Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.'"

Crumbs! He's hit the nail on the head. For me at least, this is a challenging statement. What areas of cheap grace do I wallow in? Reaping the benefits of a Christian life, but ignoring the hard-slog it also is at times. I think fasting will 'bring out' those items of cheap grace in me and help expose them, so its time to find out.

Smuggleablity Of Suitcase

Smuggleablity Of Suitcase 005
Originally uploaded by Dave Kenworthy.

My brother is coming out here to Hong Kong to visit me in a couple of days time. Its good to see that he's started packing already (I'm a really last minute packer!) But judging by this photo, it looks as if my sister would really like to come to!!

Lantau Waterfalls

Monday being our day off, we decided to head out to Lantau Island (one of Hong Kong's largest inhabited islands) to visit the area where my friends used to live and also to see the waterfalls!

So we get to the bottom of the waterfalls, dump our bags, and attempt to climb straight up it to the top. As with most climbing expeditions, once you get to the top, you then have climb another harder section to get to the real top, and so on. So, finally, having reached the 'real' top we soaking in the view - 'literally'.

Hong Kong is renown, like many other places in Asia (Bangkok for one), for freak, full-on rain storms. (None of that UK drizzle I'm used to!) Of course, we ended up with a massive downpour, while we were at the top. So unable to get to any form of shelter, we let the elements engulf us. You know that feeling you get when you're so wet, its just impossible to get any wetter - yeah, so we jumped in, fully clothed, shoes still on... GREAT FUN! as I'm sure the photos show.

Sailing Perspective

A couple of us went sailing the other weekend.

It was the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Holiday so we decided to have our own trip out to the sea, plus we really felt like we needed a break from work.

Here's a few photos as we headed out through Clearwater Bay and on into the South China Sea.

The first ones at a slightly odd angle, but I think it helps to show what it was like on the boat once we got the sail up. It was great to dangle our feet of the side as the boat tilted into the wind. The water was so clean and refreshing, even warm - totally not used to warm water, having been brought up in the UK.

We sailed out into the South China Sea, had we kept going another 15mins we would have gone out of Hong Kong waters. But instead we turned round and headed for a quite bay to take a swim and eat lunch.

On the way back we ended up with this group photo. The sun was just starting to set so everybody has a really warm glow.

We almost left DJ stranded out in the sea. But decided life just wouldn't be the same without him if we didn't bring him home.

The internet just got smaller

Some research suggests that if you take any two random people in the world, then you can link them to each other with an average of 6 people between them. So my friend knows this guy who knows this guy who...6 people later and you've found a connection.

I've heard of all this stuff before and it doesn't surprise me, especially in Christian circles where I think its probably more like an average of 4 degrees of separation.

Here's a random one that happened to me just the other day: There's this guy who works with me in the office called Mike, or "Dr Google" as I like to call him. Mike loves using google, in fact he spends most of his day doing it. He loves searching around finding the most random things on the net. So crazy is he about searching, that he even searches for other search engines! Which is why when google told him about Amazon's A9 search, he clicked through to Bagga's blog, which was running an article about it. Mike, along with a few friends including myself, is studying Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. He noticed Baggas was doing it too and thought "Hey cool, lets email my friends about it". So he did, and even got really excited when he noticed that a guy in Hong Kong (where he lives) was also doing it.

It just so happens that I'm studying the book with him and his friends and also with Baggas and the others at Messychristian.com Anyways, some time later... he returns to the blog to read some more, realises that the guy in Hong Kong was me, realises that he works with me, in fact sits about 10m away. Tells us all his amazing find and we all have a good laugh.

OK, so it might not sound that remarkable but was amusing at the time, to see that I'd been 'found out'! Thanks Baggas!

Celebration of Discipline - Prayer

My apologies...I'm supposed to be posting the next part of Celebration of Discipline but I'm not feeling too well at the moment. Hope to get it done in the next couple of days.

...next couple of days later...

Its been one of those weeks again, where there has been much for me to do and I also started getting a tad ill with a silly cold thingy. As a result, cultivating any sense of meaningful prayer has been a little difficult. Which is kinda ironic since the chapter we're studying in our blog group is all about prayer.

Foster starts the chapter by setting the bar high,

"Prayer - secret, fervent, believing prayer - lies at the root of all personal godliness. - William Carey"

OK, but do I really get the picture? He's saying that prayer is a crucial part of my walk with God, yet my actions this past week haven't characterised that. This is one reason why I found the following quote from Martin Luther so challenging.

"I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer." He held it as a spiritual axiom.

Axiomatics plays well with my mind since I was taught many a mathematical proof at university. They are the foundation or basis upon which a proof is constructed. They are the 'definites', certainly holding true in a particular space or field. And I agree with Luther, the same is true here. Prayer *has* to be the foundation upon which we construct our daily lives, if we want a solid, steady enriched life that follows the heart of our Maker. (note to self: I'm starting to feel rather guilty now at saying all these things but not doing them. Yikes! this is hard! And the quote below confirms this...)

"We must never wait until we feel like praying before we pray for others. Prayer is like any other work; we may not feel like working, but once we have been at it for a bit, we begin to feel like working."

Now I'm starting to understand. Prayer isn't supposed to be a struggle. Its supposed to be a delight to converse with our Maker, Creator, and Saviour, but for some reason its not. Sin is always trying to block my way into His presence; pure laziness, ignorance...the list goes on...all these things stop me getting on with it. But in the words of Stephen Curtis Chapman, "I'm diving in" its about time I got this sorted.

"I want a life of greater, deeper, truer prayer" - Archbishop Tait

I like that guy, he makes a lot of sense but its up to me to make these words real.

One last note, I've noticed a sense of guilt creep in on me this week. Each time I come to pray I feel guilty because I haven't been doing it enough, and immediately I don't feel like praying because of that sense of guilt. That kind of guilt is unconstructive. I only want to feel guilty if its going to make me do something about the situation. So this week, I'm setting myself some targets to get on with prayer...30 minutes each day. I want to be held accountable by all the others involved in this study...check up on me each day during the week and see if I've progressed.

Funny pics

Came across this site on DB's site today. The photos labelled Why Women Live Longer really made me laugh. Check it out if you have 5 mins to waste!

The Discipline of Meditation

Its been a long week of deadlines (hence no blog posts), but thankfully I got chance to read this next chapter of Celebration of Discipline earlier on. My thoughts are recapped here:

"Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God's voice and obey his word."

Great! That sounds so simple...but I was struck by the reference Foster then makes to the Garden of Eden.

"Adam and Eve talked with God and God talked with them - they were in communion. Then came the Fall...Adam and Eve hid from God"

That got me thinking - just how many different ways do I try to hide from God? Too much work (particularly in my case this week), need to spend time with friends, too sleepy (often as a result of the previous two). I've listed some pretty lame excuses here, but the scary thing is - I've actually used them, and way too often. God isn't fooled by all this. What's needed 'down under' (I work with lots of Aussies!) is an attitude change. My heart needs to feast again on the delights of knowing God, to be struck once again by who he is.

I say the following with full-knowledge that I can only change with God's help. (But I know he wants to help me, so its time I got on with it!) Meditation is one way to get my heart straight. As Foster says,

"In meditation...The perpetual presence of the Lord (omnipresence, as we say) moves from a theological dogma into a radiant reality. 'He walks with me and he talks with me' ceases to be pious jargon and instead becomes a straight-forward description of daily life."

That's where I wanna get to. To experience the 'intense intimacy and awful reverence' of God, not some cheap idea of a mushy friendship which I seem to have been happy to settle with.

"For to be in the presence of God is to change." This echos the words on my heart.

"Regardless of how it is done, the aim is to center the attention of the body, the emotions, the mind, and the spirit upon 'the glory of God in the face of Christ' 2 Cor 4:6"

This will be my plumbline as I delve in deeper. Time to get on with it...

Pitfalls of Christian Disciplines

I couldn't resist a second post to list the 7 pitfalls that Foster warns about. I think they'll be useful for us to keep in mind as we go through the book.

Things to avoid doing:

1. Turning the Disciplines into law
   - legalism chokes the heart
   
2. Not understanding the social implications of the Disciplines
   - waging peace in a world of war etc
3. Viewing the Disciplines as virtous in and of themselves
   - instead remember that they are there to bring us before God
4. Center on the Disciplines rather than on Christ
   - He must be the focus of our attention, not a set of rules
5. To isolate one Discipline and to neglect the others
   - the Disciplines are an "organic unity" - I like that quote!
6. Thinking that the 12 Disciplines exhaust God's grace
   - God cannot be confined to any system
7. Studying but not experiencing the Disciplines
   - abstraction, argument, debate draw us away from the real need - the need to change
   

The Spiritual Disciplines: Door to Liberation

Having just read the introduction chapter of Richard Fosters book "Celebration of Discipline", here are a couple of thoughts running around in my head.

"...the Disciplines are best exercised in the midst of our husband or wife, out brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbours."

I'm working my way through this study book with a group of bloggers from all around the world. In a sense they are my virtual brothers and sisters. But it is also important for me to allow my friends and family who can see me close up to criticise the way I implement these disciplines. I need to open it up to them and invite their comments and criticism - so feel free to do so!

It is important to note as I begin this study that the book is based closely on the disciplines that have been practiced by Christians throughout the centuries. Foster claims the "devotional masters have affirmed the necessity of the Disciplines" which are "central to experiential Christianity". So these are not going to be some strange new-age techniques to 'enhance' the mind, but rather affirmed practices that have stood the test of time.

The requirement for these disciplines is simply a longing after God. Their purpose is liberation. One caution which Foster gives, one which I can see myself a victim of, is not to make the doing of the discplines the main goal. The main goal is to meet with God, to delight in him, to develop my relationship. How many times have I fallen into the trap of trying to fix my life myself. I've learnt in my head that giving my problems to God works, but time and again I have failed in action, failed to let him help me. Foster quotes from Heini Arnold,

"As long as we think we can save ourselves by our own will power, we will only make the evil in us stronger than ever."

I think what he means is that, as long as I am trying to save myself from my sins, then I will fail, because salvation from sin can only be bought through Jesus - surely if there was another way, God wouldn't have sent him to die for us. So simply put, if I try to attack these bad habits of mine, or try to make my life better soley through my own disciplining, then I will fail. I have to give the disciplines over to God and let him become the focus of doing them. The disciplines cannot institute righteousness but they can help sustain it. The work has to be grounded in God first.

What I'm looking for in these next few months is to be able to say, quoting Foster,

"Divine Love has slipped into our [my] inner spirit and taken over our [my] habit patterns."

and

"To refrain from being good and kind would be the hard work because goodness and kindness are part of our [my] nature."

This sounds idealistic, and indeed it is. But its a good ideal - one that I believe can only be brought about by a total change in my inner spirit - and that is why Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit. I'm looking forward to seeing more of his transforming power in my life.

Here is Liz's roundup of the group blog.

Hong Kong Island

Hong Kong Island
Originally uploaded by Alan Blake.

I went sightseeing over the weekend with my mate Alan, who's come out to join me in Hong Kong for a few weeks. I really hate being a tourist, but always use the excuse of 'having friends over' to explore the usual places where tourists are seen.

Here's a shot from The Peak, looking down towards Central, Hong Kong Island. In the background you can make out the tallest building in Hong Kong, IFC 2, which also happens to be one of my favourites. And of course it was designed by British architect Norman Foster.

Came across this cool link that tells you the name of the famous buildings on the HK skyline - pretty handy when you want to show off your knowledge about each building in the photo. *cough*

Storewars

Episode I, II , III, IV, V, VI all in one day!

We started the fest at 6am and then watched right through the day to 10.15pm. Crazy! And to be really honest, I can't remember what actually happened in Episode III cause its all blurred into one long movie. Don't think the 12 hour flight and hence jet lag the day before really helped!

I'd like to say I'm proud of myself, but to be honest it was a rather long day and I doubt I'll do it again anytime soon. That said, I am a Star Wars fan, not the geeky, crazy 'I want to be a Storm Trooper' kinda guy, but they're good films. This isn't the place to do a 6 part review, there are enough of them out there on the web anyway.

I do have to link to this hilarious short-movie Mike showed me: 'Storewars' It just cracked me up! I'll never look at my groceries in the same way again.

A tribute to Tommy Kwan - Wang Lee Hom lookalike extraordinaire!

Wang Lee Hom


Tommy on the left

Well my mate Tommy Kwan is a special kind of person. I mean not everybody looks like pop-star Wang Lee Hom (no I'd never heard of him either) but suffice to say, Tommy does, and he's milking it in! Ladies and all!

'I find myself surrounded by adoring uni females!'

Check out Tommy's new blog to get the low-down of his exploits in China.

Now I'm off to reconcile the echos of Anthony singing 'triiii-i-buuu-ute' in that wierd song we used to sing in our late night uni guitar sessions that I can't remember the name of right now!

Celebration of Discipline

Starting on the 1st June, I'll be going through the book 'Celebration of Discpline' with some others. This will be hosted by Liz Tai over a www.messychristian.com We'll go through a chapter a week and post our thoughts and comments to each others entries. If you're interested in blogging with us, then pop over to here and leave a message.

Here's an extract from Liz's blog.

We've got quite a few people interested in blogging through Robert Foster's Celebration of Discipline. The book, as Baggas helpfully pointed out, is no.8 on Christianity Today's Top 100 books of the 20th century. (C.S Lewis's Mere Christianity, one of the books I'm reading now, is No.1!)

And here's an index of the articles I've written so far:

• Door to Liberation
• Pitfalls of Christian Disciplines
• The Discipline of Meditation
• The Discipline of Prayer
• The Discipline of Fasting
  

Nooooo...my car is dead

My old car

After many long years together (5 to be precise), my car finally gave up the ghost and died. So many fun adventures...so many tight spots to squeeze into (and out of)...so many friends (it could have been mistaken for a taxi)...so many late night trips to luton and beyond...we truly have walked down the road of life together.

I know many of my readers (at least he thinks he has many readers) will recall happy experiences with the white automobile of nissian. Whether its breaking down on the M1 late at night, going round a roundabout the wrong way, or knocking down a bollard in the Galaxy center, there have been many adventures. Check out a previous post

So ... may the tributes (comments) flood in.

Is Natalie Wood a country western hero or villian?

I decided to check out my stats counter the other day. Its been trickling up over the last few weeks or so, so I thought it was high time I had a look at the big picture. I found some amusing results and thought I'd share with you some of the best ones...

Some unfortunate soul was searching for 'country western heros villians' and for some reason the search engine, in its anxious deliberation to serve up at least some 'results' churned up my blog. Poor soul...I really feel for them. I mean...who in their right mind would ever search for such a topic. That said, I can think of worse!

One result which pleased me, sought to highlight the usefulness of my birthdays section. Someone actually thought Yahoo could tell them 'Natalie Wood's birthday'...and it did, thanks to my birthdays page. The 12th October is that prestigious day (I write this just so that it will come up again in the search engine, hence increasing my rank.) Natalie is, by the way, a fellow student from my previous life in Keble.

*Quick plug* - if your birthday isn't listed on the right, and you'd like it to be, then drop me an email and I'll stick it up. I have a serious lack of dates for January, May, and December.

Graduation Day in Oxford

Benny Claire and Steve
Originally uploaded by Steveybabe.

Bit of a strange ceremony in Latin, I must admit. But it was good to get my degree and catch up with all my uni friends who I haven't seen for the past 9 months.

This is a photo of myself with Benny and Claire who are soon to be married. A great couple. Benny is actually part of the reason I ended up in Hong Kong...but that's another story!

Grandparent's Wedding Day

Grandparent's Wedding Day
Originally uploaded by Steveybabe.

Its my Grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary tomorrow and I'm very excited. Mainly because I'm very proud that they've actually made it through 50 years. You don't hear about many of those these days, which I think is really sad. I'm always encouraged when I hear of marriages that have lasted a life time.

Faithfulness is a virtue through which love blossoms.

Celebration of Discipline

Note to self: Messy Christian has now bought this book and will read it within hours of buying it (where does she find the time?!) I've had it on my shelf for almost a year now... get it out!

A rather late Christmas and Easter

I got back to the UK this morning, returning to a boxful of Christmas and Easter presents! I was rather surprised and it felt a little wierd opening all these things in the middle of summer! But it was cool - lots of nice chocolate eggs - which i really missed out on while I was in Hong Kong (somehow Easter just doesn't get much attention there. Why? Four words: Sam Nin Faai Lok! Chinese New Year is far more important to them.) Then there was the deoderant and shower gel - and ok, I'll admit that I did actually need some as I'd left mine back in HK - but I am returning in two weeks time, so its not that long a wait really!! I found the super-duluxe-red-flashy-sports-car-masquerading-as-air-freshner toy also rather amusing. But hey! Its nice to know people still remembered me while I was away, and its nice to be back.

Graduation beckons...

Lots of Links

OK, so the last few posts of mine have all been about links to friends sites. This is mainly to remind me of where they are and to visit them often. But instead of filling my blog with random posts like that, I'm gonna have a page that collects all the links and lists them. (Cause adding them to the right nav bar takes too long!) So here goes:

(in no particular order or genre)

• Ms MacFie - http://muchloved.blogspot.com/
• The eloquent Jude: http://judesmith.blogspot.com/
• The old stalwart of LCET, Chris Curtis: http://chriscurtis.typepad.com/weblog/
• Dave [the geek] Heath - http://daveheath.blogspot.com/
  And his photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveheath/
  [You can tell he's a geek cause he says so himself]
• Mike and Helen live here - http://fidi-mgoy.blogspot.com/
• Alina posts here - http://crownofsplendour.blogspot.com/
• Google Blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/
• My photos: http://flickr.com/photos/steveybabe/
• Gus - www.monohorn.com
  
• Hezza - http://www.angelfire.com/nt/frederickst/frames.html
• Messy Christian - real to life, down to earth http://www.messychristian.com/
  
• Quietly Harriet reveals what's on her mind - http://quietingthemind.blogspot.com/
• Sudan crisis ServLife blog - http://servlife.blogs.com/joseph_oloya_hakim/
• Jesus creed, the blog of a commentator - http://jesuscreed.blogspot.com/
• IT reader - really useful tips for work - http://itreader.net/
• One year Bible - http://www.oneyearbibleblog.com/
• Tommy Kwan - http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=chechung
  

Reconnecting

Ok, so I'm about to head back to the UK for a short two week stint there and today I came across a load of old friends blogs', anyway since I don't own a laptop, and my memory has the capacity of several small amoebas, I'm gonna have to write them down here.

• First up its Ms MacFie - http://muchloved.blogspot.com/ much rambling verbiage to be found here
• Second its the eloquent Jude: http://judesmith.blogspot.com/
• And thirdly, the old stalwart of LCET, Chris Curtis: http://chriscurtis.typepad.com/weblog/

All guys from my past who really rocked and I regretted losing contact with...time to change that.

My Chinese Name

I dug up an old email from a friend today who had sent me my name in Chinese

��脫����穿��蝪∠汙憭�

Now you know! (Assuming of course that you have Chinese font's installed - trust me you'll know if you do.)

A mate's site

Dave Heath has a few links:

• http://daveheath.blogspot.com/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveheath/
  

My new photo website: Flickr

Tim Felicity Sarah
Originally uploaded by Steveybabe.

Flickr is actually turning out to be pretty cool. So cool, in fact, that I have moved my photo website onto it. Click on this photo and check out the 'notes' that I've added.

It integrates straight into Blogger, so I can easily blog a photo. Now that's neat

Lam Tim Friends

Lam Tim Friends
Originally uploaded by Steveybabe.

Just setup a photo account with Flickr that integrates straight into my blog. Check out this first offering of my friends in Lam Tim, Hong Kong

Blogging on...

Mike and Helen live here - http://www.geocities.com/fidi_mgoy/

Google sightseeing

Wanna go sightseeing on the net... http://www.shreddies.org/gmaps/

Interesting destinations:

• Bill Gates' house
• Area 51 !!
• A cool list of other places
  

Alina's Blog

Alina just started a blog - http://crownofsplendour.blogspot.com/

Looking good!

Online course

* Warning - only of interest to the geeks among you! *

I started taking an online teaching course about Security in Linux recently. There's about 8 people in total taking the course spread out across the world. I'm in Hong Kong, some of my class mates are in Australia and elsewhere, but the teacher is from the States.

We all chat via a program called Team Speak - www.goteamspeak.com which works on either Linux or Windows. We all get to see the teachers 'lecture notes' via a program called Tight VNC - www.tightvnc.com that lets you view someone else's desktop, again it works on either Linux or Windows - which is very useful. The cool thing is that we are using PuTTY (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html) to login in to several computers including one to do labs on.

We're using Microsoft Virtual PC to load an entire linux distribution from a single file on my PC and display it on my desktop while Windows it running. Its very neat because it gets it own space to live on the machine with its own ip address so I can SSH into the 'virtual' linux from any other box, even though that machine is not really running linux.

Anyway, this online course is neat, technologically wise and cause I'm learning loads about routing packets through firewalls and auditing.

Bebo

Found an interesting way to keep in touch with people.

www.bebo.com

You post your contact details and let your friends subscribe to them. If you change your address then you can update it here and your friends automatically see the changes. Ok so this is nothing new, but the cool stuff is that you can upload photos and journal entries and your friends can automatically see what you've done, plus they get an email each week with details - much easier for keeping in contact with lots of people.

Leave a comment here if you've signed up.

I'm at http://steveyken.bebo.com/

February

February 2005

• Started playing football on Monday evenings with some friends from Lam Tim. Its great fun but I need to learn Cantonese for 'pass the ball' and 'man on', and preferably 'shoot' too!
• Tommy, a mate from uni, is in town. (He's been teaching in China for a few months now) Was good to have a reunion and catch up over a game of football! Felt like the Keeeeeble football buddies were reunited and the old magic came back! But I won't bore you with stories of our 'wonder' goals!
• Happy Chinese New Year! Sam Nin Faai Lok!
  We had a grooving party on site. Matt and AJ were our DJ's for the night and we even set up a live webcast of the event via msn. Was a great evening!

January

January 2005

• I live 5 minutes from the largest man-made beach in the world. You'd think (and so did I once) that I would take every opportunity to head on down there and catch the sun, but alas no, for some reason, even though I've been here 2 months, I've only been there 3 times! Shocking...!!! ...all those plans to keep fit by jogging along the beach...oops!
  
• My friends Laura and Iain came out to visit. So did a bit of touristy stuff with them - went up to the Peak on Hong Kong Island, and showed them around my work place.