Northampton Jesus Centre Events
We have finally got an online events calendar for the Northampton Jesus Centre:
This will be kept up to date and has our weekly programme plus special events and activities. 
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-08-09 00:47:26 | |
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Jesus Centre
Leviticus - a Much Maligned Book
When I was young I attempted to read the Bible from cover to cover. I almost did it as well, working my way through all the old testament and most of the new testament. I got as far as Revelations before I got weirded out and stopped. 
Leviticus is a book of the bible that has a bad reputation amongst both Christians and non-Christians. Amongst Christians it is known as having endless pages of genealogy that is tedious to read. It also enumerates the Jewish law, parts of which are seriously out of context for today's culture and regarded with incredulity by non-Christians.
In fact Leviticus has some things going for it as well. One of my favourite blogs, Zen Habits about living a simpler life, mentioned it recently.
In a post entitled 18 Practical Tips for Living the Golden Rule he says:
"thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Leviticus 19:18
I love the simplicity of the Golden Rule, its tendency to make those I interact with happier, and its tendency to make me happier as well.
Like many pearls of wisdom it can sound trite when read at a glance, but is difficult, challenging and rewarding if really taken to heart.
This is the same for another of my favourite bible verses, also from the old testament:
"man looks at outward appearance, but God looks at the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7
This is from when the Prophet Samuel is looking for the next King of Israel. It is a pleasant enough homily, but difficult and life changing to take to heart. Both verses are also great antidotes to Western selfishness...
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-08-06 20:39:23 | |
Categories:
Life, Spirituality
Occam's Razor
I've been reading Wikipedia, it's an extraordinarily valuable source of information. Astonishing to think that this enormous resource can come into existence through the collaboration of people across the internet.
I've also read that some teachers are forbidding their pupils to use Wikipedia as they think it is unreliable. This seems almost criminal in that teachers should be jumping at the opportunity to engage children in the process of creating knowledge. Anyway, that is all besides the point. I stumbled across the page on Occam's Razor.
Occam's razor is a scientific principle that is often quoted. It is also often used in religious debate to argue that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. This too is besides the point.
What interested me was that (as usual) the common understanding of Occam's Razor is incorrect. Occam's razor in the Latin is "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", which translates to "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".
This is often 'simplified' to, "out of two theories the simplest is most likely to be correct" - which was my understanding of it. The Wikipedia page argues that a better simplification would be, "out of two theories the one that makes the least assumptions is likely to be correct". So between a simple theory and a complex theory it is not necessarily the simplest that is to be preferred, but the one that makes the least assumptions.
It is also interesting that it is difficult to provide any scientific basis for the principle itself that doesn't turn out to be circular reasoning.
I like Jerrold Katz's explanation though:
If a hypothesis, H, explains the same evidence as a hypothesis G, but does so by postulating more entities than G, then, other things being equal, the evidence has to bear greater weight in the case of H than in the case of G, and hence the amount of support it gives H is proportionately less than it gives G.
—Katz 1998
If theory H takes the evidence to support N entities, and theory G takes the available evidence to support less entities, then the available evidence provides more support for each of the individual assumptions (entities) in theory G than in theory H.
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-08-06 02:33:11 | |
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Life
Resolver and IronPython
After over a year of working as a programmer for Resolver Systems I can finally tell you what I've been working on.
We're now 'out of stealth mode' officially, and Resolver is in the hands of a few beta testers.
Resolver is a new spreadsheet program (a desktop application) for companies who push spreadsheets beyond what they were designed to do.
I won't bore you with all the techie details, but if you are interested you can read my announcement on the Techie blog. I've also launched a new website, with articles and examples on how to get the best from Resolver: Resolver Hacks.
Resolver is written in a new programming language called IronPython. I'm currently writing a book on IronPython for Manning. As well as this, I'm giving a couple of talks on the subject soon.
A talk on 'Python in Your Browser: IronPython and Silverlight' at PyCon UK in September. The following week I will be giving a similar talk (to a very different audience) at Mix UK, the Microsoft developer conference. Then in November I will be at another Microsoft conference in Barcelona called TechEd. I won't be speaking there but will be on the Microsoft dynamic languages stand. All more than enough to keep me busy. 
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-07-21 16:07:42 | |
Categories:
Work, Technology
Visit to Cyprus
We hadn't been away this year, and with the book progressing slowly it looked like we weren't going to get away this year. Delia started to threaten me with divorce, so I found us a cheap holiday in Cyprus from lastminute.com [1].
We spent a week there and it was great. Cyprus is an ex-British colony. It is very hot but very tourist orientated.
It has some interesting (mainly Roman) history.
We did some fun things.
We met some of the locals.
Including some familiar faces.
Although quite a barren country there is some beautiful scenery. This is from the Troodos mountains.
| [1] | Checking out the hotel on Tripadvisor.com of course. |
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-07-21 16:02:17 | |
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Life
Grains!
I haven't posted for a while, but uhm... I've been busy. By way of compensation, here's a cartoon.
Well, I thought it was funny. In the next couple of entries I'll tell you some of the things I've been up to.
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-07-21 15:31:20 | |
Categories:
Fun
Feeling Old and More Idiots Inc.
Over the last few weeks I've done blog entries on companies that have annoyed me with their idiocies or have treated me badly: LloydsTSB, Virgin Media and Ashby Lowery.
With blogs becoming ever more popular I wonder if this will change the way even big companies view their customers? I hope so. Every time I make a major purchase I always check the web first. The power of search engines means that nightmares caused by bad service can usually be tracked down.
Perhaps something more is needed than just google (TM) to find these reports though. Delia and I have just booked a holiday. This is very lastminute (we leave in a week), so we used lastminute.com. Some of the very cheap holidays they offered looked like good value, but when we checked the hotels on Tripadvisor I found some real scare stories! We settled on Cyprus and I'm really looking forward to it.
The thing is, that whilst I find blogging about idiot companies a real release (much more satisfying than sitting at home and raging), I'm not sure I could find the motivation to contribute to an external site. Hmmm...
Anyway, all this is irrelevant to this blog. This week I felt very old, I arranged a pension. 
(Scary stuff, but I find the advice on Money saving expert very helpful. In the end I figured that any reputable pension was much better than dithering...)
Doing any kind of financial stuff like this (as well as being scary) is made more of a pain by terrorist hysteria [1]. You need to (in the UK at least) provide proof of identity and address with authorised copies of your passport or drivers license and a utility bill (or similar). They can only be authorised by certain people - bank officials, MPs, accountants and so on.
Whilst I was in town I visited Alliance and Leicester, who I have an account with. The lady I spoke to was fairly helpful and went off to photocopy my documents. After about ten minutes she returned, with my originals in hand and no copies. Her boss had told her that she wasn't allowed to help me, because sometimes people use authorised documents for other purposes - meaning that I might use them to move my account to another bank!
So if I was an annoyed customer, they would rather go out of their way to make me furious than provide me with any assistance whatsoever! Incredible. 
I wasn't in the mood to argue, so I went to another bank who would help, got several copies and am moving our account away from Alliance and Leicester.
Be warned though, if you are or become a customer of theirs, they will do their best to obstruct you leaving...
I guess I should balance this blog out by reporting on a few companies who don't annoy me. That doesn't happen quite so often though...
| [1] | Actually I guess they are fairly sane precautions, but they're still a nuisance. |
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-06-30 00:44:46 | |
Categories:
Life
Grains!
It's been a while. Uhmm... my only excuse is that I've been busy.
In compensation, here's a cartoon.
I thought it was funny anyway. In the next few entries I'll tell you some of the things I've been up to.
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-06-30 00:43:17 | |
Categories:
Fun
Technology: Social Networking and Webcams
This blog is supposedly about Cyberpunk, Technology and Spirituality. I usually reserve the geeky stuff for my Techie Blog, so I thought it was time for a technology related entry.
Social networking websites are now a dime a dozen, but they are something I have always resisted until recently. They allow you to maintain a list of friends or contacts and keep a profile with contact details interests and so on. All the different sites have a slightly different focus, but they all share one thing in common: the more work you put into developing your network and maintaining your profile, the more page views (and therefore income) you generate for the site owners. I'd far rather put my time into developing this site where I have complete control over all the contents.
I do use one actually, LinkedIn. This site focusses on developing professional contacts. I don't spend much time on it, but I've actually made some useful contacts through it. (Recently someone from Mozilla contacted me through my LinkedIn profile to see if I was interested in a job - I wasn't, but I did put them in touch with someone who was. It is an extremely interesting project and hopefully readers of my Techie Blog will be able to hear all about it soon.)
About a week ago my webby friend Justin started experimenting with some of the social networking sites and invited me to join Facebook. I signed up but didn't think I would use it much.
It turns out that five different circles of friends I know are using facebook: some of my family, people who go to my church, colleagues, friends from town and some of my programming contacts. bizarre
So within a short period I've got quite a long list of friends. Not only that but it is surprisingly addictive. You get to see all the recent news from people in your friends list, hunt for new friends and send silly messages to each other.
Of course all this activity means that the big social networking sites are in a battle to the death to be the biggest. Most of my friends use facebook, so I will stay with facebook. Whichever site becomes the biggest will gradually sideline the competition.
I thought it was cool that my church was getting so technologically hip. Facebook seems like it could be a useful way of keeping in touch with friends and contacts. Uhm... that was until I read this article:
The article claims that the different networking sites divide along the lines of social class, with the middle classes favouring Facebook and the poorer classes going for MySpace.
Personally I always find MySpace pages loud and difficult to read with all the strange background colour and picture business going on.
This is also terrible news for my church friends, the Jesus Army prides itself [1] in being a church of the poor. Looks like it's time to switch to MySpace guys! This doesn't include our Coventry folk of course, who are that bit more intellectual than the rest of us.
Anyway, all that guff is just the first half (but don't worry - the longer half) of this blog entry.
The second half is about webcams.
Technology can be a controversial subject. On the one hand it is fun and exciting, but some would say it is leading to a fragmented and more isolated society (more obsessed with updating their facebook profile than real human contact).
The webcam I bought months ago finally got put to use. Delia (my wife) comes from Romania where her parents still live. Her family don't have a computer, but the next door neighbour does, and today Delia talked to her family over Yahoo Messenger [2].
Being able to see and talk to her family regularly is going to make a big difference to Delia. Maybe technology isn't all bad. 
| [1] | And rightly so... Jesus had a lot to say on the subject of money, and the core of the Jesus Army live in Christian Community together - sharing their income. |
| [2] | Not my choice! |
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-06-30 00:35:17 | |
Categories:
Technology, Life
Places I've Been
Well, this is cool - even it just shows how few places I've been:
The actual countries are:
- USA (for a Python programming conference, but we managed to see three states in one day in a driving trip)
- UK - well uhm... most of the time in fact (I've been to Belfast, but never south of the border - so not Ireland)
- Denmark (a family visit as a teenager. I was on the cusp of puberty and the most memorable thing about the country was the prominent bosoms on huge billboards, oh plus the incident with the jellyfish and discovering that mayonnaise goes with chips)
- France (several family visits)
- Holland (an ill fated trip to Amsterdam whilst I was going mad)
- Poland (two programming conferences)
- Romania (to visit my wife's family)
- Italy (to visit a university friend of my wife)
And that's it.
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-06-24 23:11:16 | |
Categories:
Life
Spider versus Bumblebee
Today I was witness to an epic struggle, as two bitter enemies fought to the death in mortal combat:
Unfortunately the most exciting parts happened before I fetched my camera. The bumblebee got snagged in the web, and the spider (a hefty brute) saw its chance for a week's worth of dinner.
The bee managed to break free, but obviously still had silk on its wings and couldn't fly off.
The spider lunged several times, presumably biting the bee, who was making a desperate attempt to escape on foot! In the end the spider seemed to get bored. Either it gave up (bumblebee fur a bit tough to bite through?), or perhaps it just settled back to wait for the bee to tire or die.
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-06-23 16:40:34 | |
Categories:
Life
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Archives
The Old Blog Archives
There was so much ancient wisdom distilled into my old blog, that I couldn't let it just creep ignominiously into the pages of cyber-history. More to the point I'm still getting some hits from google with the old entries. Here are the archives of my previous Blogger based blog.
IronPython in Action