CEN October 2008

Here is last month's Church of England Newspaper web-watching column.

Free food? Unless you are the sort of person who likes credit crunch with sugar and cold milk it is possible you may want to check out sources of free food to sustain you through the possible, deniable, alleged current crisis.

Freegans pride themselves on only eating free food, although they are not so proud as to avoid searching in the bins behind supermarkets. Follow the links from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage site to find what freely-available seasonal food you can go out and pick right now. Why not become the local database of public fruit trees, berries and mushrooms in your village, town or city? The Channel 4 site also tells us about the group of people who are working to make Todmordern (in Yorkshire) a place renowned for its public fruit trees. Follow their example?

Big Green Smile will tell you about, and, of course, sell you, '...an extensive range of green, ethical, recycled and eco-friendly gifts and gadgets that will help you save water and energy and reduce your carbon footprint.' Generation Green is a schools and community programme from British Gas. Over 6,000 schools have registered to collect green points (portrayed by leaves) which can be exchanged for green rewards such as a wind turbine kit, a PC integrated weather station or a camera nesting box.

The Church of England has updated its vocations and weddings web-sites. Call Waiting is worth a visit for all either pondering the idea of ordination or who ever have cause to help others ponder. Your Church Wedding has all the information you need to help you understand if you can take advantage of the relaxation in the rules about who can marry where. It is a very user-friendly site for churches or couples to use.

If, on joining the same Church of England, you ticked the humour by-pass box then don't, whatever you do, visit ASBO Jesus. I said no. I warned you.

Delicious is a social bookmarking site. If you have a long list of favourite sites then this service will enable you to get to it from any on-line computer. The same service is provided by Linkagogo and Windows Live Favorites (but you'll need a Hotmail account for the latter). The American spelling is important or you'll end up in the wrong place.

Each week this year writer, broadcaster and cultural critic Ziauddin Sardar has blogged a different verse or theme of the Qur'an. Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting has helped frame the debate. Visit their work at Blogging the Qur'an.

It's amazing how many wonderful on-line publications there are to plug the cultural life of various cities around the UK. For instance Cardiff has The Sprout, Created in Birmingham links up Brum's creative and artistic communities whilst Leedsmusicscene is... oh go on, take a wild guess. Find one for your home. Someone will be promoting it. You have to watch out because some of the sites are not much more than glorified Yellow Pages, but there is treasure to be had for the diligent seeker.

I've enjoyed dropping in to Revgalblogpals. It's '...an Open Table set for a diverse group of people - women pursuing or discerning a Christian vocation - and their friends - all are welcome!' It's American but when I read, 'Some of us who love the church long for the church to be different. We call ourselves 'Loyal Radicals' in that we choose to stay in the institutional church while seeking to change it. And some long for our nation to be different - longing for a day when waterboarding is not possible and Hummers are not parked in our driveways....' I can only cheer.

Game of the month is Red Square. Simply avoid the four blue squares crashing into your single red square by moving it out of the way with the mouse. First few goes you'll only survive about 2 seconds so it's hardly time-consuming. Unless of course, you get a bit hooked.

I tried to visit Drywipeboard.com but got a permanent error.