A blogging curate?

It's been a while since I last posted. Lots of water under the bridge. Massive milestones. I'm now an ordained deacon in the Church of England. After a long time of discernment, upheaval and training, I am now a curate in Clitheroe.

Blogging as an ordinand was relatively simple, but now I'm a curate it feels different. Partly it's because as an ordinand you deal often in hypotheticals. Your practical work is controlled and contained. You can blog about the issues you're encountering in college quite easily. But once ordained, you are embedded in a real parish situation with real people. The issues you discuss, as an ordinand, in abstract terms are suddenly real people's issues. And unless you keep your online persona completely secret, your parishioners will be reading your posts. Anyone who knows what's going on in the parish will be able to join the dots.

So I'm a bit puzzled about where this blog will go from now on. Any ideas in the comments please. I feel I ought to continue, but I need to work out a way that can happen without it becoming very dull.

I should be doing reading for tomorrow's lectures...

...but I just discovered that a fellow Westcott ordinand is a blogger. Hurrah! Here's a link.

I'm still here (a different here)

For those of you who may have thought I had expired in the tumult of removals and starting theological college, fear not! We landed safely in Cambridge and are starting to settle in. Moving house was hard, and since arriving in Cambridge, I have barely had a minute to spare. First with house decoration, and then the start of the Westcott induction programme; it's been a bit of a roller-coaster. Things are starting to settle now, and I will have some more time over the next few days, so yo may hear a little more from me. The only complication is that Sky are still working on connecting our house to the information superhighway, so my only internet access is in my study in Westcott.

That's all for now. Come back soon if you're interested in a more detailed analysis of the last couple of weeks. I'll try to get something up tomorrow.

Rookie mistake

I posted recently about my problems with Google Analytics, and after much head scratching, I posted on the help forum. Within 1/2 an hour, a helpful and more knowledgable user pointed me in the right direction. It turns out my tracking code was lacking a very essential bit of information. I'm hoping that does the trick and I can get my data feed back again.

No-one loves me (or so I thought)

When I first set up this blog, I decided I would keep track of visitors using the wonderful (and free) Google Analytics service. This has provided lots of wonderful information about how many visitors the site gets, and even where the visitors have come from. It tells me geographical information as well as data about referring sites. I find I can spend ages wondering who from Japan might have visited my blog!

I was a bit put out, then, when my latest visit to the site told me that I have only had one visitor per day for the last week! I'm not claiming that the blog gets millions of hits, but it's rare that I get only 1 visit in a day. So I began to piece together the facts of the situation... What happened on the blog about a week ago that might have affected the link between my blog and analytics? Hmmm... Might it be a change in the template, which resulted in the loss of a few lines of HTML code? Might those lines of code be responsible for getting the information to Google? Indeed.

I think I have fixed it now, so my ego will be restored when I check tomorrow and find that my thousands of regular readers haven't actually deserted me. Unless they actually have, and it's just a coincidence that I changed my template.

All change, again

Following some constructive offline comments from DrLanky, I've gone for a change of colour scheme. I hope you approve.

Time for a change

Having come across a couple of new blogger-based blogs lately, I wondered where they had got their exciting templates from. Then I had a rummage on the dashboard and found a whole batch of new templates. This is one of them. Not sure about it yet - what do you think? An improvement or not? Please comment.

More on Brian Cox

I was just having a look at my previous post about Brian Cox's run in with the astrological types, and I realised that I didn't actually offer any kind of opinion on the affair! Not that I'm suggesting that I should always express an opinion on this blog, but it occurred to me that the original post is rather vacuous.

Therefore I thought I'd seek to remedy this by siding with the scientist. I think Cox was right to express his opinion that astrology was a load of rubbish in the context of a BBC science programme, because that seems to be the consensus view of modern science! I would find it most disturbing if a professor of Physics said anything else on a programme about the science of the solar system.

If it had been billed as a programme about astrology, I don't think Cox would have been invited to contribute unless they wanted to portray a devil's advocate view from the unbelieving scientists. As it was, it was a show about science, so the astrologers just have to deal with it. Perhaps they shouldn't have watched in the first place.

The other issue is whether I agree with Cox's opinion (rather than his right to express it), and I'm happy to say that I do. Though I'm aware of the view held by some that Christianity (and all other religions) are guilty of irrational stargazing. My own view is that astrology amounts to little more than a set of systems for guessing the future based on the movements of objects in space. I haven't seen evidence that it works, and in actual fact, I have no need for a prediction tool anyway. I'd much rather work on the basis that I can't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Simple is best!

Ubiquity

I've just realised that my last two posts contain the wonderful word 'ubiquitous'. How strange! Maybe I need to do a Wordle to see which other words I use on this blog.

Triple-cross posting

David Keen, whilst cross posting one of my posts about a post by Mike Peatman, has linked to a great set of graphical representations of some epic movies including Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

Back to work

Many apologies for the lack of posts over the last three weeks. The arrival and subsequent busyness have kept me away from the blog.

Anyhow, I'm back at work today, so normal service may just resume.

Friday fun

Many of the bloggers I regularly read have a habit of blogging a summary of issues on a Friday, and today I feel drawn to do the same. It's been a very busy day for me at work (Day one of a four day health and safety training course), and having scanned my usual internet reading list this evening, there seems to be too much to say today!

Cricket

A mediocre day for England. Seemed to start well, but then lost a predictable flurry of middle order wickets. Hopefully the tail can add on a few more in the morning before we see which Steve Harmison turns up.

Megrahi

I have a lot of sympathy with the Scottish politicians who have had to make the decisions on the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. I think it's a complex situation, and I'm not sure of the security of the original conviction. I think they've made the correct decision to let a dying man go home for the end of his life.

Swine flu and communion at Greenbelt

Maggi Dawn shares the news that this year's Greenbelt won't feature the usual Sunday morning communion service and asks for comments about how people are coping with swine flu in churches. As I think I've said before, we have fairly unconventional arrangements for communion at the University Chaplaincy we attend. These arrangements are more peculiar at the moment because the RC Diocese have not been as harsh as the C of E, and the methodists have their shot glasses. This means that our ecumenical weekly communion service (during holiday time) now has a buffet of choices, though denominationally restricted! Anglicans receive in one kind, methodists receive bread and unfermented wine from shot glasses, and the Roman Catholics are continuing as if there's no swine-flu. I can't imagine what newcomers from outside a church setting would make of this, but it seems to work ok.

SPCK

Great news for the former employees of SPCK, who appear to have been shafted by their incoming Texan bosses. Lots of reports everywhere in the blogosphere, but the USDAW action resulting in payouts to some of the people involved was covered on the BBC.

Jessops

The current management have struck back in Amateur Photographer. they are blaming the previous management. I think they're all to blame, along with uncontrollable changes to the photography market.

Back to the blog!

I've been 'enjoying' a break from blogging over the last few weeks. No doubt the avid readers of this blog will have been heartbroken at the break in inspirational and witty banter. The reason for the break has been something of a change in pace at work, which has been tiring, along with the ongoing pressures of Mrs Lanky's growing bump. Incidentally, all is well with the bump. According to the ultrasound scans everything is the size it should be for the stage we are at, and LittleLanky appears to be as near to average as s/he can be.

I felt as though today was the right day for a post for 2 reasons. The first is the timely return to batting form of Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff. Thanks to our Ashes-inspired resumption of a Sky Sports subscription, I watched Lancashire's victory over Derbyshire in the T20 championship last night. It's the first time since the famous 2005 Ashes series that I've seen him dominate a bowling attack in such an intimidating way. Hopefully the Aussies were watching and beginning to get a little bit nervous.

The second reason for my post is to mark the passing of the troubled superstar, Michael Jackson. I don't have much to say about him apart from that I feel sadness for him and his family. I know lots of people have opinions about his lifestyle and his alleged misdemeanours, but I can't help feeling sorry for him. There must have been reasons for the way he was, and they are likely to have been linked to his unconventional upbringing. Can we all just leave it there? Can we let him rest in peace and leave his family to grieve?

Dullness prevails

It seems Dave Walker is enjoying some delayed notoriety for his 'dullest blog'. Congratulations to Dave - a triumph for dullness!

Dave's back!

It looks like Dave Walker sensed my pain! Follow the link for his latest post.

Dave and the Brewers

The title of this post sounds like it could refer to a cheeky band from the 50s or 60s. in actual fact, it's a reference to Dave Walker and the SCK saga. It's apparently 4 months since the whole kerfuffle (I do like that word) concerning Dave and the Brewers kicked off. See below for further details.

The single most destructive thing that seems to have happened (though I accept there may be no causal link) is that Dave's Cartoon Church blog has been sadly quiet recently. Dave's blog has always been one of my favourites, and though he's doing great work with the Church Times, I can't help thinking that the 'kerfuffle' may have something to do with it all. Mostly, this is a selfish moan. I just miss Dave's cartoons and comments.

Here's some text from the Facebook group "We support Dave Walker" from David Keen:

It's 4 months ago - 22 July - that Dave Walker received his legal threat from Mark Brewer and was forced to take down his SPCK posts. If you have a blog, you might want to mention that today.
As you may know, Mark Brewer has been fined by the US courts for bringing a time-wasting court action for bankruptcy, and we now hear that his company is being investigated by the Charity Commissioners. These are all matters Dave would have reported if he had not been bullied and threatened.
If you'd like to do something supportive, you can sign a petition to Durham Cathedral to ask them to intervene over the SSG bookshop they host: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://spckssg.wordpress.com%2Fpetition%2F
Latest developments are online at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://spckssg.wordpress.com%2F%2C very interesting leaked email gone up in the last few days.
And finally, still no reply from Mark Brewer to the letter I sent (twice) on our behalf. Very disappointing. He expects Dave to respond within a few hours, and yet doesn't even bother to answer us within a month. Disgraceful.
thankyou for your ongoing support of Dave. Truth and justice will win, it's just taking longer than we'd hoped!
David Keen

How not to evangelise

Thanks to Dave Keen (and seemingly various others) for this post about how not to evangelise. I've been reading lots of things about mission lately as I approach my BAP in just over a week, and a lot of the observations in the original post echo the sentiments of what I've been reading. How can we expect anyone to take us seriously if we don't do the same for them?

Gods-on favourite

I enjoyed this story from Ruth Gledhill. The assertion that there probably isn't a God left an obvious area for a little fun. Well done Paddy Power.

the no-plastic challenge ends

Congratulations to Rose and Ele on completing their challenge to try to live without buying any new plastic for 3 months. Their efforts have certainly made me think a bit more about the choices I make on a day-to-day basis, and whilst I don't think I'll fully follow their example,  I like to think that my habits are a bit better than they were before.

Thanks to Rose and Ele for making us all think.

Yet more on Dawkins

Have a look here for some alternative suggestions for Dawkins and his fellow campaigners.