Advent Thought 14 and Number 2

If...

Then...

I know nothing about computer programming but if I were a betting man I would take a punt on some version of if... then... being important.

If I press the x key then a letter x appears on screen. Bongo, which is like bingo only typed wrong.

A lot of people conduct their relationship with God this way. I'll do this for you 2 3 if you do this for me 2 3. The gospel of the business deal. We end up not understanding why our surgery had complications 'because we prayed about it'. Whereas believing God, somehow, in all the mess, has a bigger picture and will be faithful, liberates us from only trusting him when things are good.

Which brings us, rather niftily, to covenant.

The Christian gospel is not if... then... It's, 'I'll do this for you, whatever.'

What difference would it make to your relationships today if you covenanted not to make your behaviour towards the other person be if... then... but 'I will'?

... words will never show
The you I've come to know

Odd Socks Anyone?

There's a Facebook-connected game called Odd Socks which I play a lot. To get the truth out there, I have made getting on for 40,000 moves in this low-skill game over the last year or so.

If you haven't seen it don't worry. There is a washing line with socks on it. Touch two that match and they disappear. Random socks then appear from a washing-machine. You can swap socks from other players' discard piles and also with a gamebot called Susie. Swapping with Susie can only happen once a minute.

After discarding five socks you have to use game points to clear the bin. These points are built up 10 at a time by each matching. Clearing the bin costs 250 points. It is a well-designed and delicate game balance. If you don't want to pay real money to continue (I don't and never have) you will get about ten minutes play twice a day. Or one minute twenty times a day.

Why am I telling you this?

Back in the early days of PCs offices were full of people playing Minesweeper, Solitaire, Freecell and the like - during lunch breaks or while waiting for slow printers to work.

A chance chat with a colleague led us both to realise that we were using the games differently. Those games - and Odd Socks is the same - use just enough mental activity to keep your mind keen. But they also allow a lot of free left brain to ponder and think about other things.

I use these games, Odd Socks being the current help, to solve other problems. Whilst playing my mind is wandering over the day to come, anticipating things to look out for, stuff to say and tasks to do. I don't like surprises so try to avoid them. There may be something of the lawyer about me.

It is neither distraction nor displacement.

All non-players mock. They call me a time-waster. They joke that they would never have time for such a thing. Nobody who doesn't get it, gets it.

But I am a better-equipped person for playing. I almost don't expect you to believe me.

Browser

The computer I have borrowed has non-Windows software loaded and, do you know, it's really rather good. I have no idea what the operating system is. I think it is a version of Linex called Ubuntu but the words Mozilla Firefox come up every now and again. Sounds like an Italian cheese dish with chillies. All PCs speak Klingon; discuss.

Anyway everything loads speedily enough, which is nice. It will print to my printer without too much trouble but won't dialogue with it so I don't know what the printer is saying any more. Had to change three ink cartridges before I'd got the right one. I can use my two email addresses online but can't access my back-up drive with old emails on it (hopefully I'll fix that on Monday).

So it seems to be a day full of hope and optimism. There was a nice weather window for a wedding at lunchtime and a football season full of hope beckons, ignoring the current score against Chelsea which isn't the place West Brom will be judged.

I've made a nice fish pie and Mrs M has made a summer pud. I've got The Wire series five left to watch although tonight we might do a Mad Men episode.

Little things make a Saturday happy. I shall change for dinner.

E-reader

Mrs Mustard has purchased an e-reader. After a few initial skirmishes with the software she has now downloaded 115 books to read on holiday (which should be enough). I am surprised she was converted but I still find the act of holding paper is part of the reading experience I don't want to ditch, yet. I spend a lot of time reading web-pages but that is, somehow, different. Anyone else have views?

Space

The final frontier, as Kirk's Star Trek opening narration used to say. Well it isn't. The war over space going on at the moment is a battle for hearts and minds over cyber-space. And it's fascinating.

On the last Thursday of every month (yesterday) I have a quiet day in the company of a few, usually older, people. Average age yesterday was about 65 I'd guess. In the evening I have the town's Christian 18-25s round for a meal.

The day-time group got talking about their suspicion about the internet, reluctance to own music that wasn't somehow holdable in a box or sleeve, inability to conceive owning a book without owning paper and basically all the hang-ups you would expect from a generation who grew up before the information technology explosion. The language they were using was about exploration, 'I couldn't go there.' They made the world I'm blogging in now sound like a jungle full of scary creatures (hmm, good point).

The evening group have grown up with access to computers as a right not a privilege, use texts and mobiles to communicate all the time, get suspicious if someone hasn't updated their Facebook status for a while and find out if everything is OK, and so on. They have found a new space and gone in there fearlessly. Poisonous snakes? We'll see.

Hasn't it always been the case? It is the young and fit (with some exceptions) who explore, climb mountains, navigate river sources and go to the Moon. Part of being young is having less knowledge of risk and therefore being more interested in the exploration than the possible consequences. Some find out how fast you can drive round a corner safely by killing themselves, which is sad but will probably always be true for a few.

In the new digital world some may have their identities stolen or drop their e-readers in the swimming pool. By that process (of error and trial) devices will be made waterproof, shockproof and DNA protected (or something better).

Anyone can go on safari now. It's safe. We get the jabs. We have a guide. We can photograph lions. Only because some people were sick, lost and eaten. The unlucky got all three.

Cyberspace. It's just space. You can keep things there, own things there, explore things there. It's getting safer and safer. Come on in. Meanwhile the savvy are thinking, acting and working digitally and only making hard copy available if absolutely necessary.

(This essay will be available in paper form if I hear about demand.)

Twitter

Any of Mustard's followers want to extol the virtues and benefits of Twitter to me. I registered a while back but never did anything about it. What's to gain from it that Facebook doesn't have?

The Hermeneutics Cafe

Andy Larkin and Ali Mepham have set up this cafe franchise for theological and minstry-based banter. You need a facebook account but that won't hurt you. Drop in here.

It Deceased

My very faithful and reliable servant PC is dead. A moment's silence please. Everything should be back up and running properly pretty soon but there will be inevitable hold-ups whilst old accounts are activated on new hardware. If you want to email me use the godstuff address, which is much more reliable than the htnailsea one as attachments seem to get a bit lost/confused in the forwarding process for the moment.

The population of our house, which increased rapidly from last Wednesday's 2 to Sunday afternoon's 23 and 3 animals, is now back down to 2 and 2 animals as the Japanese visitor has hopped off to visit his girlfriend's family for a few days and the other visitors were only here to see him. Cookie and Muffin are here again though. They are guinea pigs. They keep the lawn down and eat dandelion leaves as a treat.

I haven't had enough previous on laptops and this mouse is taking a bit of time.

Some good news. The car indicator cost £1 to fix. Some very surprising news. Saab indicator bulbs are easy to access and change. Some remarkable news. I did it myself.

Crashing

With a crashing sense of irony, or make that an ironic sense of crashing, the arrival of the Japanese boy seems to have coincided with everything breaking. They come in threes these things - car indicator, computer and (get this) the beer fridge. All knacked; same day.

So, if you want something try calling or texting. I will only be doing emails about once a day. Thankfully I have a very nice Fujitsu laptop in the house and the PC Doctor is coming for lunch on Sunday.

The last thing my computer did before its final demise was to help the PC Doctor by searching for curry houses in Dumfries. At which point crashing irony rolled out its bed-mat and decided to stay for a few weeks.

Speech

If you have nothing better to do with 10 minutes this morning click here and read the sort of after-dinner speeches computer techies get at their conferences.

Googling

Wonderful piece in The Independent's Science and Technology pages on Wednesday. It's had a good week, the Indie, what with Bono's work on Tuesday to promote Red.

This piece listed which countries recorded the most searches for particular items as noted by Google Trends. For instance:

Jesus - Peru
The da Vinci Code - the Philippines
Metatarsal - despite Rooney's injury, India is the origin of most searches for this

Some results are predictable:

Pasta - Italy
Chicken tikka masala - UK
Cheeseburger - USA

But why Argentinians are all searching for chop suey, the Irish for colonic irrigation (oh and facial hair) and the Aussies for haemorroids is beyond me. Perhaps the latter is the cause of their depression, a word for which they also search regularly.

Put the lists together under individual countries and the results are fascinating:

South Africa wins for - bestiality, Princess Diana, Aids, second coming and malaria
Singapore - slimming, Sony, vegetarian, sushi and body odour
New Zealand - climate change, toilet, Paris Hilton, sausages and underpants

Can anyone write me a sentence containing all those NZ words? Too easy.

So a quiz question. Where in Europe would you find the most hits for:

Grand Prix, Adolf Hitler, Steven Spielberg, Johnny Depp and James Bond? It's one country. It isn't us, nor is it Germany.

Whilst the Algerians click furiously on sardines and the Finns on Benny Hill (really), please ponder.

On Computers

I've been away for a bit. Not away from the computer. I've been away from doing anything useful exept trying to cure the computer for the last 36 hours and have emerged triumphant. On Thursday night my Norton anti-virus software decided that the Norton Firewall was a virus and quarantined it. It refused to allow any access to it even to uninstall all Norton programmes completely. Big up to Richard at PC Peace of Mind - pcdoctor@pcpeaceofmind.co.uk who talked me down and then through the process for downloading the softare to remove the programmes that had ceased protecting my computer and started attacking it.

A computer which is attacked by its own immune system can only be described as suffering from advanced HIV.

I now have free anti-virus and firewall protection and a computer that once again does the few simple things I ask of it. Nothing Norton anywhere. Or Symantec. Now I need to sleep without undertaking mental downloads.

I'll be blogging properly tomorrow then. Laters.

Computers

They keep me on my toes these computers. Never did computers at school. This was largely because they hadn't been invented. Worked in an open plan insurance office from age 18-26 (1973-1981). No computers on anyone's desk then. Asteroids and space invaders arrived in local bars. Learned to type whilst at college studying for the ministry. Got a typewriter. Used that and a spirit duplicator (eventually rising to the dizzy heights of a photocopier) to manage all admin in my first curacy (1984-1988). Vaguely aware of a mate who had an apricot computer. I think he'd built bits of it himself and had to keep the back off to avoid it overheating. He spent far too much time being distracted by it and cursing it when it went wrong which seemed like always. In 1989, in my second curacy the whole computer thing 'tipped' (see blog 2/8/03) and more people started to have them than not. Bought an Amstrad PC1512 and with the help of trial and error, some five and a quarter inch floppy disks (it had no hard drive) and a genius in the youth group called Davie I made my way into the world of pain that is IT.

Proceeded through an Apple Mac to various PCs whilst at CPAS and replaced Amstrad at home with a 458 or 456 or something like that and now have reached the pinnacle of having no idea what I'm using is called except that it is flipping powerful has broadband internet access and can play me music whilst researching the United Nations Charter on Human Rights and downloading e-mails from around the world before breakfast.

So it remains true that like a driver who has a powerful car and little idea what happens under the bonnet I have an oomphy computer and little technical knowledge. So this morning when I tried to log in to blogger for the ten millionth time a message appeared telling me my cookies were disabled and I couldn’t access my edit page despite the fact that nothing had been touched since I logged off and closed down last night.

Checked cookies on privacy toolbar and nothing had changed. Navigated back thinking I would try logging in again and instead of going to the log-in page it took me straight to a new post and the edit menu. I was in even though it told me I was out.

Maybe that is a metaphor for my life – I am so far out I have come back in again. Nice thought for a Friday.

Have by-passed cookie privacy rules for blogger to see if that helps with other things like photos and spell-checks (still not working). Someone will probably tell me this was a stupid thing to do.

By the way did you know the technical term for a front door painted psychedelically? It’s a way-out way-in.

Found the tent behind the wardrobe in the spare room but not before two of us had turned the entire contents of the cellar upside down. We own too many things.

Thank you. I feel better now.