New look for the Blackburn Diocese website

Occasionally I call in on our Diocesan website to keep abreast of news and developments. Imagine my surprise when I found that after years of the same gaudy template, we have a swanky new look!


I haven't had the chance to check out the navigation or the content yet, but it does look much better than it did!

All to play for

I wonder how many people across the land were, as I was, pacing around their living rooms as James Anderson and Monty Panesar defied the Australian bowlers for what seemed like hours!

When Pietersen's wicket fell at the start of the final day, I was predicting the collapse of England's middle order, and a victory lap for Ponting's men. Thanks to Paul Collingwood, this wasn't to be! His amazing innings (74 runs from 245 balls) gave the lower order some hope that they could resist the Aussies, and James Anderson proved again that he is no mug with the bat (21 not out from 53 balls)!

All in all, it was a shocking performance by England. They came out to bowl thinking that 435 was a good score, but not one of the top-order batsmen exerted any authority on what seems to have been a good batting wicket (look at the Australian batting stats).

Having said that, I feel we deserved the draw, which has set up the rest of the series beautifully.

I'll make no comment on the 'timewasting' tactics, apart from that it reminds me of the use (by England) of substitute fielders in the 2005 Ashes.

A very popular website

Those of you who read my earlier post and thought you would go and tell 118800 that you don't want your number to be included in their venture will have found the same thing I have:
I'm guessing that the company's servers are struggling to keep up with the demand for people opting out rather than people wanting to use their services. Either way, 118800 seems to be unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.

Privacy alert for all mobile phone users

I found out about this yesterday from a colleague, and then looked it up on the web. Apparently there are plans to put mobile phone numbers into a national directory (without asking permission), and these plans are advanced! If you want to opt out of this, you can:

To unsubscribe, you can either click on the ex directory button on the their web homepage, or you can text the letter 'E' to 118800 from the mobile phone you want to be made ex-directory. 118800 will send you an SMS message confirming you've been taken off.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/8091621.stm

Go to this website if you want to opt out. Though the website is down at this particular time!

Temptation!

My current personal mobile phone, an HTC touch, has been OK for the past 11 months; only OK though. It's a Windows Mobile machine and, on the surface, it seems to do an awful lot. The problem comes when you've been using it for a while; your email piles up, you fail to delete text messages, you have a few unwanted applications, and before you know it the phone freezes and needs to be reset. I've done this at least half a dozen times in the year, and unfortunately this involves putting the phone back to its factory settings and losing all your personal data. Grrr. Irritatingly, I have also managed to destroy the 2 styli that came with the phone, and am now improvising with miscellaneous pointy objects to avoid buying a ridiculously priced replacement. 

When I got the phone, it was Orange's best stab at an iPhone competitor, and whilst I'm sure that they have some better machines on offer now, the O2 monopoly means that when my Orange contract ends in August, I'll be moving to O2 for the latest iPhone.

As I already have a 5th Generation iPod for my music, I think I will be fine with the 16GB 3GS. I now need to wait for the end of my contract in August, and then go through the palaver of 'porting' my number across from Orange to O2. That will be fun.

Solid start?

A busy day of meetings at work yesterday meant that I couldn't stay abreast of the day's cricketing developments, but I managed to watch the highlights on Channel 5.

The thing that pleased me most was that Flintoff wasn't out for a duck, and that he took a positive attitude to the new ball. It was great to see the same kind of brutal play that I saw in Lancashire's recent T20 against Derbyshire.

Clearly, someone should have gone on to get a big score. I guess there are a few English batsmen who would agree! However, the Australian bowling attack seemed a bit tame apart from the odd bouncer directed at Bopara. Flintoff got a couple too, but he just seemed to swat them away.

If the England bowling attack meets its potential, I'm looking forward to an exciting innings when the Aussies come in to bat.

David Keen's Ashes Predictions

David Keen's Ashes Predictions are interesting.

I also predict that, in the event of a win in Cardiff, England will go on to win the series. Hopefully a decent run of weather will make for results rather than draws.

I also agree about James Anderson. I think he's peaking at exactly the right time for the Ashes. Hopefully he'll stay fit and take a couple of big hauls.

I think Monty Panesar will be disappointing (if he gets the chance). He hasn't performed well at County level this season, so I can't imagine his form is going to return just because it's the Ashes.

With the batting, I hope that KP will have a good one, and I'm also hoping that we'll see a continuation of Andrew Flintoff's craching return to batting form with a few big hits.

The long and painful death of 50 (and 40) over cricket?

I haven't watched a domestic 50 over cricket match for some time, but with Lancashire making the semi-finals of the Friends Provident, I thought it might be an entertaining watch. Unfortunately not!

Maybe it's sour grapes because Lanky lost, but I really felt that it represented something more significant for the one-day format. Here's my argument:

• County sides play an awful lot of competitive cricket and they have a number of very different formats to which they must quickly adjust (T20, Pro40, 50 over and 4 day).
  
• T20 has enjoyed a massive surge this year, partly thanks to the World T20 Championship. Therefore, T20 is not going away!
• The cricketing establishment is very fond of the longer and 'purer' form of the game so the 4 day game will probably always be there (more or less).
  
• Since the advent of T20, teams can score at over 10 runs per over, but only when their wickets are more disposable due to the length of the game. This has improved the 4 day game, with more innovative shots, better fielding, more creative bowling plans and higher batting scores.
• Players seem not to know how to play 40 and 50 over cricket, as shown by Lancashire yesterday. They seem to be happy with the long game and the short game, but not so comfortable with the in-between versions!

Why don't we just let the confusing 40 and 50 over games fade away, and concentrate on the exhilarating T20 and the more conservative and traditional 4 day game?

Unconvinced!

I watched the documentary on FIVE last night about the Turin (or Da Vinci) Shroud. It was a very strange experience, mostly in a televisual sense. Somehow, the one hour programme contained only 20-40 minutes of footage, and there was a strange editing fault which resulted in large parts of the programme being repeated several times over!

In terms of content, most of it was the same as I had already seen or read elsewhere, though it seemed to be dumbed-down for the FIVE audience. The new content related to the hypothesis that the image on the shroud was created using a camera obscura and photo-sensitive silver substances on a sheet of fabric. I found this to be quite persuasive and I would have liked to have seen more of the demonstration experiment they set up. Instead, they seemed to concentrate on trying to link the whole thing to Leonardo Da Vinci. I found these arguments to be much less than convincing.

Ultimately, it makes no difference to me. I'm convinced that the shround is not the genuine burial shroud of Christ already. I was just interested to see how the image had been formed, as it's claimed that the evidence is not consistent with a painted image or print.

The big news in this story, though, is that this may well be the oldest surviving photographic image! Now that's interesting.

New Turin Shroud conspiracy theory

I spotted this on the Amateur Photographer blog. There's a documentary on FIVE this evening which claims the image on the Turin Shroud was created by an early photographic process involving silver sulphate. The programme claims that none other than Leonardo Da Vinci made the image using a sculpture of his own face.

I'll have to watch it to check out the validity of their arguments, but the notion of the image as a photographic one fits with some of the other evidence I've seen. For example, the fact that the image is best seen in negative form, as in this picture. We don't really see many naturally formed negative images which haven't been 'created' by a human.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the progamme - I'm a bit of a sucker for Dan Brown style conspiracy!

Vaughan to retire

David Keen has a post about Michael Vaughan's retirement. I think that Vaughan really brought something special to the England captaincy after what seemed like many years in the wilderness of international cricket. The main reason I rate him as a captain is the way in which his players have always talked about him as a leader. Cricket is one of those sports where there is a lot going on under the surface. In particular, field placements and bowling strategies often go un-noticed by the casual observer, but this was where Vaughan was strongest. He seemed to have an intuition for the game, and when to make those very subtle changes which would bring about a wicket. Then there was his batting. I always thought he looked massive at the crease. The bat seemed tiny in his hands, and when he was on form, he was a joy to watch; a truly graceful player. Finally, I respected his conduct. He always seemed to say the right things, even when there was a tricky situation. He seemed to grasp the bigger picture in the game; something that Strauss seems to be able to do too. It's good that he's chosen to opt out rather than being forced to retire, and I hope he makes the move into TV or radio where he would have a lot to offer.

Check your wallets

If you have a 20p without a date on it, keep hold of it; it might be worth £50 according to the BBC.

One I meant to post about but didn't... catch the pigeon!

I've been meaning to post a a link to this clip of a Lancashire T20 game where Jaques Rudolph managed to bring down a pigeon with a return throw from the deep. I had 2 immediate reactions: 1) Poor pigeon, though it probably knew little about it, and 2) What a good throw! I bet he couldn't do that again.

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?

Bank holiday weather

Let's hope this forecast for the coming Bank Holiday weekend in Lancaster is accurate.

Exciting developments in Lancaster

If you're a Lancaster resident, or if you're remotely bothered about the city, you may find this interesting.

Known as Lancaster Square Routes, the project aims to create a centre which both builds on the city’s history and heritage while still maintaining a modern outlook.Areas covered by the designs include:

• Market Square
• Signage improvements to the Castle Precinct
• Market Street Illumination / Lighting
• Sun Street Square / Sun Street
• Horseshoe Corner
• Castle and Quay green space
• Castle and Priory Precinct
• Key linking routes (Upper and Lower Church Street, Ffrances Passage and Gage Street)

If they get it right, this could be a very important regeneration project for the city's public spaces.

Anderson just gets better

I've posted about James Anderson before, but I thought I had to post again following his excellent performance against the West Indies. I've just checked the ICC rankings, and Anderson is up to 7th place in the test bowler rankings. I hope he stays free of injury in the upcoming ODIs. If he does, he's going to be very important in the Ashes. If Flintoff comes back, we may even be in with a chance!

Own goal for the BNP

I posted the other day about the BNP's annoying leaflet with photos of fine, upstanding, British professionals. Well thanks to Mrs Lanky's unfortunate addiction to the Daily Mail's website, I have become aware of this hilarious story about the fact that many of the models they used for the photos are of non-British origin! Maybe some prospective BNP voters might stumble across the story when they read their daily paper - not that I'm suggesting a link between the Daily Mail readership and BNP voters.

Angry atheists

Thanks to Phil Cooke for leading me to this article from the LA Times by Charlotte Allen. I like this bit:

I can't stand atheists -- but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores.

Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book, "Faith, Reason, and Revolution," take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") and political journalist Christopher Hitchens ("God Is Not Great") for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can't prove something, it doesn't exist.

And this bit:

Maybe atheists wouldn't be so unpopular if they stopped beating the drum until the hide splits on their second-favorite topic: How stupid people are who believe in God. This is a favorite Dawkins theme. In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com website, Dawkins described religious believers as follows: "They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do." Thanks, Richard!

I think she summarises some good points, and I actually like her combative style; it somehow seems fitting in the face of the vitriol of the atheist 'lobby'. I think she's right about the anger. People like Dawkins seem to be incredibly angry at a God in whom they don't believe. The other good point she makes is that the philosophical arguments often deployed by angry atheists are simplistic and naive. I'll have to see if I can find her book.

New Sony Reader - but when will it get here?

I've just been checking out some review sites before I buy a NAS drive for all our music and photographs, and I came across this review of the next generation Sony Reader. It looks like there are some crucial improvements; integrated backlight, touch-sensitive screen, faster page transitions. Interesting!