Yesterday I kissed

Chris.

In the dark hallway at Heyford Park Chapel.

It was like being transported back to the very first time we ever kissed, in the hallway of her parents house in Westfield road, Croydon. We'd met just a few days previously, pretty much started off together immediately being close together, arms round each other. I'd then popped over to see her after work, and she was in her school uniform still (we were 17 and 16) and as I was leaving to come home we stopped and kissed in the hallway.

After 31 years of marriage, it is amazing that kissing my wife can take me right back to that first time. There has never been anyone else like her for me.

More birds (anyone seen Sid James?).

Euphemisms aside.....

PCC criticised over council role

I just read that headline on the BBC news website. Whilst criticism is inevitable, it turns out we aren't famous after all.

Smiley courtesy of the BBC.

Sinister goings on in Blighty?

I've not (yet) read Orwell's 1984, but the idea of a Ministry of truth does not seem great to me.

Bear in mind there is significant spin in the article too, never the less, curbing the freedom of the press is seldom a good idea in a democracy. Curbing their excesses, certainly, but not the freedom to expose unpleasantness and deceit. Hopefully this won't stick.

There is a bitter-sweet irony that it should be The Guardian that probably put a big enough weapon in the hand of the rich and powerful to take away press freedoms, but then the left often did want to regulate the press.

Sunday afternoon I managed a walk.

Caractacus Potts is alive and well in Upper Heyford.

So today we had a hospital visit.

After just over 7 weeks, it seems Ben is doing really well. His femur, that was in several bits, is knitting together nicely and the grafts and other holes that were stapled back together are all doing well. There's a lot of movement in his left leg now, and although the muscles have atrophied, he's able to hobble around without crutches a little.

There's a long way to go, including getting the scar tissue from all those wounds to detach from the bone below, but he's making good progress and we're very pleased.

Did I say it was snowy?

I've been trying a few new distros recently.

Ben reckons I change operating systems as frequently as many people change underwear. I HOPE that's wrong, because if so, there are a lot of seriously disgusting people out there, but I DO like to experiment.

I installed Pear Linux 6.0 32 bit 5 months ago (feels like longer) having run pear 3 as a trial distro alongside Sabayon and then moved across to Pear 4 about this time last year when Sabayon kept falling over (they sometimes ship mis-matched graphics drivers and kernels - I don't know why, but it's a long term problem). I've been happy with Pear mostly - it's reasonably quick, visually pleasing, does most of what I want. But it's also designed to look a bit like OSX, though with fewer annoying design flaws, and some versions of key software like DigiKam and GIMP were very out of date.

I happen to have a spare 320Gb western 2.5" drive (warranty replacement from my Macbook) so bunged that in the case and had a look around at what took my fancy.

Mint 14 KDE
This is a nice looking distro if you don't mind some of the same issues with Pear regarding old packages and slightly staid looks. It works really well from the 'box' with DVDs playing back, audio working correctly, recognising network connections and printers. DigiKam was at 2.8 (which was better than 2.5 in PL6) Libreoffice at 3.6 and KDE at 4.9. It's very nicely sorted to install, and went in painlessly. This is linux for the refugee from windows Vista, 7 and 8 who has a real hankering for XP again, but with modern functionality.

Also good - I hooked up a Fuji HS30EXR camera and it was immediately recognised, images imported into DigiKam and both .jpeg and RAW formats (RAF in this case) fully functional. The 3 images below including the woodpecker were all edited while I was trying Mint 14. However because this is an older version of DigiKam the correct data for correcting lens aberrations in RAW images wasn't available, and they showed distinct distortion.

Some of the standard KDE irritations were still present, like mounted DVDs not always ejecting predictably, but generally working very well indeed.

Open SUSE 12.3
I downloaded this on the first day it was released, just a couple of weeks back, and it was a big download at 4.3Gb plus another 340Mb for the non-free codecs etc (more of that later). Installation was reasonably easy, with a clean installer (new in this version IIRC) however it also failed to install the non-free software off the separate DVD despite that checkbox being ticked. It's really nice to have the option of different types of file system and security setup, so it offered Btrfs alongside ext for fs management and also LVM (which essential makes your HDD unreadable outside the OS).

This version has really upped the ante for SUSE IMO, with a much cleaner, darker desktop theme. All the usual KDE facilities to change EVERYTHING about the desktop and interface are resent and correct. Also correct were recent versions of software including KDE 4.10, DigiKam 3.0, GIMP 2.8.2 and Libreoffice 4.0. Kernel was at 3.7, and this seems significantly quicker than distros running 3.5.

The non-free codecs etc didn't install off the DVD, so a general hunt had to be made for libdvdread, LAME etc etc. In theory there's a one-click facility that should run the first time you try to play a DVD and fail, but the script that downloaded failed to work, so I had to manually add the repository for the non-free stuff & then choose to install. Not a problem for me, but a BIG issue for a total noob. Disappointing, because the guys at SUSE have put a huge amount of work in, and tried to make things like this work as easily as they can.

Next downer, importing images from the Fuji into DigiKam completely failed, and I had to copy/paste from the camera memory as if it were a USB drive to my hard drive. However the RAW file tools do include data for the HS30 to correct lens faults etc.

The same characteristics of KDE were present in openSUSE as Mint KDE, however KDE 4.10 felt a little slicker, possibly quicker, and looks classier in the SUSE livery. The toolbar icons and plasma control centre have been tweaked, and it *feels* more intuitive.

Sabayon 11
I have this love-hate relationship with Sabayon. It's the best of all the KDE-based distros, with the most bleeding edge software versions, sharpest screen images, greatest number of packages available and it just looks better than anything else.

But.

This distro just isn't stable, and I know that at some stage an update will break it. Last time it happened when it was my main OS I had to go in and rescue all my data using the command line to transfer files to external drive. And because it forces the user to have their drive partitioned under LVM then it's not possible to simply access the HDD externally & recover data that way.

So I ran it as a live DVD.

Sabayon is home for me, as Linux Desktop environments go. It's like XP but better, screen fonts are the crispest you'll see in any Linux system, everything looks really good and, generally, everything works really really well. All the negatives that go with KDE still apply, but this is where my heart is. Even as a live DVD it was quick and responsive, and that's not common.

Pear Linux 7 beta 2 Corella
Which is what I'm typing this from tonight.

This is the latest and greatest pear Linux. It's what OSX might have been if they'd not made some bad design choices in window management, and it's nearly as quick, running off a standard HDD, as Mountain Lion is running off an SSD on my dual core Macbook. If you're a Mac lover and you've got a winbox laying around then do yourself a favour and install this as a dual-boot option when the final release is made.

New in this version is a better dock, a take on Time Machine (not tried yet) improvements to system tools and a good polish to the interface. Software versions have been updated, so it's running the 3.7 kernel (hence the speed lift) DigiKam 2.8, GIMP 2.8.2, Libreoffice 4.10.

It's being released in 2 versions: desktop and server, both 64 bit only right now. Once the release candidate is out then I shall migrate from Pear 6, adding in Thunderbird for email (Gearymail - who?) Audacity, something to rip CDs and a few other tools I've come to use along the way.

Faults?

It looks & feels quite a bit like OSX. I also had to install libdvdcss manually, though that may be different in the final release. There are some inconsistencies (just as you find with OSX) with non-native applications not all conforming to the Pear interface. Overall though it's a good OS, and I'll probably stick with this for some time.



Nerdgasm over, normal service will be resumed shortly.

Borrowing from others again

From a Facebook contact in Africa, posted today.

One thing is quite evident with men; they are subject to similar condition as you, they change without notice if condition does not favor their continuous friendship. Their strength, knowledge and level of tolerance are very limited can snap at any time, but God is never limited in anything and His mercies endures forever. There is not situation that is above God’s knowledge and ability, none is too difficult for Him to address adequately according to His thoughts and plans for your life.

Quite. A good reminder we all tend to see things from our own position, and are susceptible to moods and feelings, while God knows the beginning from the end and is not subject to whims and offence.

Beware the undertow.

I seem to be borrowing stuff from other people right now.

Years back when the internet was a little younger there was a forum that consisted mainly of US Christian musicians and worship leaders with just a few non-American participants. Fernando with his desk off on the left there (pun half intended) was one such. Eventually the forum ceased to function, but I've remained in contact with some of the other guys from the US too, including Mikey Mahoney, and when I read his latest blog post on personal Christian development one particular section seemed very relevant to where Heyford Park Chapel is right now.

Talking about moving in God's river, being waste deep:

Undertow is the ugly one.  You never see it coming.  It pulls your feet out from under you, pulls you down.  I’ll call this one “church politics.”  Part and parcel of having a church built of living stones is that those stones are all human.  Churches are populated with people – flawed sinners just like you and me.  And sometimes, things don’t go as planned, and the ugly comes out.  Jealousies, pride, power trips, offenses, cliques…  I’d love to say the church was immune to them, but it’s not.  Nor should it be.  The strength in the church is in it’s humanity.  But with all that comes the rough spots.  Navigating the undertow is part of what makes us better swimmers.

 Some of us were talking about being living stones last night, and how it feels like lumps are being bashed off so we can fit closer together. This carries the metaphor a bit further however. I'm not sure I agree that the strength of the church is in it's sinful and fleshly humanity, because that's often what ends up causing people to become broken and abused, depressed and discarded. But certainly a key aspect is that we are required to work things out among ourselves, and as we do that right, so we we grow in character (this makes me want to add a Calvin comment) and commitment together. And I guess too that it provides a place where those who need to flail around, to strike out because that's the only way they know to deal with things, can do that while those who have a bit more depth can keep trying to walk alongside.

But church politics is an ugly one, straight from the pit.

I've just started reading Frank Viola's Reimagining Church and it has reminded me why I left the institutional church more than 30 years ago, and why I was so horrified at having to rejoin it (and that horror was justified). But it's also reminded me of what my roots are in Christian faith, and a part of that is a church without politics, where people give themselves to serve God without owning their ministry and walk in deference to each other. I may not completely agree with Viola's view of organic church, but it's a good reminder of the places I need to go back to living as a Christian.


BTW I'd recommend reading the full series of 'Bumper Sticker Christianity' posts on Mikes blog.

Free - as in beer?

A friend on a non-mountain biking forum (the second fastest declining forum) had me thinking about my aversion to paying for software.

It's curious, but I don't mind doing so for business use, but hate to do so for home use. When it comes to work, generally I'll live with the same setup for a long time 'getting my moneys worth' I guess. At home things have been much less stable in terms of applications, and early on I had a lot of different programs (they weren't called apps then) to try that never seemed any good - PC Mag CD culture I guess. So although the applications I was able to evaluate that way worked, they mostly seemed like junk, and if I'd actually had to pay for them I'd have been pretty miffed (an example would be Serif for DTP - unstable and buggy, M$ word was a lot better simply because it didn't keep falling over). At the time I never had a problem paying for the PC games I played, but there never seemed a reason to pay for applications for 'doing stuff' when tools that were just as good and sometimes better were available free on the internet.

There's also the freetard counter-culture that I find myself drawn to, even if there's a side of me that is repelled by it. It isn't particularly simply being able to get stuff for no money (and I won't pirate software, music and films) but the whole ethos of the 'computer hobbyist' who does what they do for kudos instead of cash really appeals. This is how I am at work too, and will happily offer other people knowledge and advice for nothing where I'm able.

So it's a bit more complex that just wanting stuff for free as in beer, although that doesn't do any harm either. And we all use and enjoy 'free' stuff too, don't we?

Pictures from the weekend....

Spring is close and the goldfinches are getting uppity.

This was taken during the snow falling Saturday morning (it even settled on the woodpecker while it was feeding).

Beautiful sky.

Vicarious spirituality

I've written a much more extensive blog post, having read Hamo's A Vicarious Spirituality on the Backyard Missionary blog, but it's a bit too current to share, and is safely saved without publishing. However the original article is too good not to share still, so please click the link above and have a look.

The tiredness from yesterday

May have been a bit more than tiredness. Today has not been a good day, healthwise, and I'm not sure tomorrow will be either, though we live in hope.

I've not been this tired in years.

It's been a hard, busy week.

I've been running a production process since Tuesday close to capacity while trying to cope with the cold I developed last week, pretty much living on cold relief capsules. At the same time there's lots of church stuff on, so have been out every night except Wednesday, where I got home at 8.50pm after the longest day of the process, ate dinner and then prepared for the Thursday night meeting.

And so today.

This was the final stage of the process, after product has been dried overnight in a racking system at around 30'C and 7% humidity, with the room in which this is performed eventually becoming a similar environment. Interesting, if your eyes are already scratchy and burning, throat tickling and sore from coughing. Not so good if you've forgotten to bring the cold medication to work with you, and the effects of the last dose have started wearing off.

Sympathy? Nah mate, in a way this was self-inflicted.

Normally this stage of the process is a 2 man job, one pouching product, the other sealing and boxing it. Usually takes a couple of brisk hours instead of all day, like today. By the end I could barely walk, and I still had to empty the suite I'd used, wash up containers etc. It's been years since I've been this tired, barely able to even talk.

Bliss was coming home to an encouraging, loving wife who let me collapse, eyes shut, on the settee while she got on with dinner, having just arrived back herself. I'm dosed up again and the body isn't shouting at me anymore, hence able to type now.

Tomorrow we stack logs away from the delivery that came on Tuesday. Wonder if Sunday could be a day of rest?

One of my fave scriptures

Proverbs 27 v6
Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

Sorry the blog is so quiet.

I'm just really busy with work & church and that leaves little space for anything else.

Except a cold :p

The only way to have much time right now is to stay up late, and that's not great on several levels, so things are just ticking along for a bit. I'd been trying to play guitar a bit more recently - strengthen the hands a little, but haven't picked one up with any seriousness in 3 weeks, so that's somewhat gone by the board.

Inside I'm OK, still the same, but just keeping going where I need to and not doing too much where I don't.

A couple more recent piccies.

Not perfect, but I'm learning.

And now for something rather similar.

The fruits of a little experimentation.

Lapland Bunting.

Pair of Reed Buntings.

You may be wondering what's been happening round here?

Well, to be quite honest I'm pretty sure I'm being lied to in a fairly free and manipulative manner, and am really hoping that God will graciously reveal what's going on and expose the manipulators for who and what they are. As for me, I'd rather sit back and watch what He does, rather than start passing judgement myself, since that's a fairly sure-fire way of being dragged down to someone's level and then beaten on experience.

Clear as mud? Yup.

But OTOH I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that walking on eggshells while talking to people who seem comfy driving the steamroller of their wants over the feet of those that might supply them isn't getting anyone anywhere.

There's something almost as good as punning over mixing metaphors. 

Some people may never know how they encourage me.

Tonight I bumped into someone I know through the church, while she was at work in Tesco. She talked to me as if I were a normal human being, as if I weren't guilty of abandoning children to hungry wolves, and as if she was just trying to cope with some of the additional hassles changes at the church have brought with good grace. I've not talked to her since Christmas, but she was just happy to chat for a few minutes, looking me in the eyes and being open and honest about stuff.

She'll probably never know how much being treated like that was encouraging and affirming.

Sometimes you can run, skip & jump

for happiness through life. And other times you just have to drag your carcass through it, but it's better to be dragging it forwards than being dragged backward.

Please feel free to enjoy my little observation.

And.... he's finally home.

Seems to manage the stairs OK, and has no obvious difficulty using his computer. Showering may be a little trickier.

Ben should be home tomorrow.

Or at least, that's what we're expecting anyway.

He's been recovering really well. This time 2 weeks ago he was still laying in bed, barely able to move at all, while the wounds on his leg wept so much fluid that it made both his sheet and pillow wet. His face was yellow from blood loss and the assault his body had taken, both from the accident and the operation (one more still to go to repair some of the gaping holes in his leg) and he had to ask for help just to shift the damaged leg around by a few degrees or back & forth.

One week ago he'd just started physio, but had almost passed out with the effort of taking just a couple of steps. His leg was being gently moved by a machine that flexed the knee very slowly up to about 50 degrees (any more was very painful). Although he was off the IV morphine line, he was still receiving morphine by mouth.

This morning, as well as managing exercises like pull ups and tricep dips in bed, Ben managed to take himself downstairs on crutches, did a circuit of the carpark and then 4 flights of stairs. He is pretty much his normal self again in terms of attitude and humour, which has taken a while to come back. He won't be in his own bed for a while, but he will be at his own computer.

We're quite looking forward to not doing the 2 1/2-3 hour round trip every day too.

And we are really thankful for such rapid progress. To those who've prayed, we really appreciate what you've been doing, and are grateful to see the grace of God at work in Ben's body. We really appreciate too the excellent medical and nursing care he has received at Oxford's JR hospital.

A review, kinda, for a phone, sorta.

Talking with someone the other day (Anjella - this is you :-) made me realise that a) other people do still read this blog and b) that I'd made a fuss about getting a phone replacement and then 'walked off' from the conversation. I'm a starter, rather than finisher, but sometimes it's good to put things to bed.

The Motorola Razr i 

Size comparison with an iPhone 4S

First off, let me say that this is my first ever mobile computing device.

"But wait" you cry (well, you could cry it, just to help me) "didn't you have an HTC desire smartphone?"

And you'd be right, but the desire is a 3 year old design running Android 2.2 with the HTC sense overlay, and a very different beast. By comparison it was slow and glitchy, and the sense overlay made everything relatively easy to use as well as providing a bunch of built in tools and players (most of which worked, ho hum). This device is running Android 4.04 ICS (4.1 update is rolled out already, phones being updated according to when registered) in a state close to the naked android experience, and was very different indeed. Several times it's caught me out when trying to do tasks that were either obvious or automated on the Desire.

That's not to say it's bad, but it IS enormously more complicated than the desire ever was, requiring customisation and apps added to do all the things that the Desire would do. Thus I've had to download a 'torch' app to use the built in LED for a light source, a voice recorder app for recording myself when I speak, a media player for music and video. There were apps for these last functions, but they seemed to want to connect with the google play store in order to sell me content, and I'm not interested in that, so downloaded Doubletwist instead.

What else?

Well, many of the visual cues for functions are different, either in physical placement, name or colour, from what I've had before, and that has required more learning. Thus the backup software I used to transfer SMS data to the new phone couldn't find the backup file because it wasn't in the default place. There was an option to browse for the file, but because I didn't recognise it it  took a few goes before I twigged what to do.

But there are some great features Motorola have added, like Smart Actions. These allow you to alter certain settings for the phone according to various conditions. Thus I might have a location-based smart action that turns off wireless when I'm in the office because there are no open wireless networks, or (as the device itself suggested) one for night time that dims the screen, turns off sound and data syncronisation to save battery power and not disturb the user. I've set up 2 for power, one at 25% battery and one at 10% battery to reduce power consumption and stretch battery life even longer.

My impression of the operating system is that this is very much like PCs were between 8 and 12 years ago, with each new iteration of windows bringing greater complexity, more tools and flexibility and also the odd hiccup. I'd say smartphones were very much a place for the computer hobbyist right now.

Since we were talking about battery life, I have slightly mixed feelings. As a phone, on standby, this device is really good. over 12 hours from a fresh charge it dropped to 96% capacity, i.e. a 4% usage. That gives me a week on standby if I turn off all the stuff except phone. However intensive screen use depletes things much more quickly, and a couple of hours solid use could well use 50% on auto-brightness. The battery isn't fully conditioned yet, but even with considerable 'playing' I've been getting >2 days use from a charge.

The screen itself is excellent in terms of sharpness, and colours are very rich and vivid. However it could be a little brighter for daylight use. Generally the interface is extremely quick and fluid, scrolling through streams of text messages or contact lists being rapid and painless, however a couple of times it's obviously been 'busy' and screen actions have jumped instead of scrolling smoothly. I've watched an avi movie clip: image quality and playback really was extremely good, and the image was so crisp that I'd probably prefer this screen to those used in aeroplanes for longer journeys. Last night audio playback was fine through the built in speaker, but tonight I can't get any audio out and have no idea why!

Data connectivity is really very good. In London with HSPA working, web pages appeared to load just as quickly as over my broadband connection, and even on 3G it seemed very usable. Generally all forms of wireless connection worked well, and the phone seems to have better reception that the desire as well. Maybe it's this excellent connectivity that makes me view the Razr i as a mobile computing device, rather than a phone with clever bits, but for the first time, this is something that can be used without stress for emails, facebook etc. The 4.3" screen does no harm either, being so clear & crisp.

One further aspect  so often apparently overlooked by smartphone makers, but very pleasing with this model, is the small physical size. This is just a few mm longer than my old Desire, yet actually thinner and lighter - compare the iPhone 4S with the Razr i in that pic above. It sits in the pocket easily, but has a larger, crisper screen and (probably) better battery life. For sheer power and functionality I'd have loved a Nexus 4 or HTC One X, but this is so much more convenient.

So overall I'd say it's a hit. Not perfect, but certainly very good. I'm currently using a Giff Gaff £10/month SIM package, and it seems quite adequate, while being (eventually) considerably less expensive than the previous contract. Hopefully things will keep going well.

Images borrowed from anandtech.com (top) and digitalspy.co.uk (bottom)


*update*
The google play apps are perfectly adequate for playing back your own files, but are set to default to the play store. There are tabs at the top just below the menu bar for switching content source, but I'd not expected them to be there, so didn't see them. Several times I've looked in 'settings' to make changes, only to find the controls in another menu or tab. This may be a reflection of my eyes being poor these days, and I have to concentrate so much harder to see tiny menu items. I'd say that, with ICS at least, Android has become too much like a desk top computer to a good as a phone OS, although that might be much less of an issue if using a tablet.

An update on Ben's progress

After a week, boy-wonder seems to be doing well, despite trying to fly like Batman.

The pipes, wires and various feeds have been gradually detached, and are just down to one canula now, plus the pipe for taking wee away. On Thursday he was required to sit up, and was pleasantly surprised to find that his hips did still bend sufficiently to let him do so.

Friday (yesterday) they removed the dressings from his left leg, and if you're so inclined to see it, the pic is on his facebook page (Ben's icky leg). The entry points for the rods holding his ankle in place have remaining un-infected and the skin grafts appear to be taking. He said it was weird seeing the doctors touching them without feeling it, and I'm not sure he'll ever get feeling back in those areas.

The other bit of progress was that he started physiotherapy yesterday. He's been quite fit, doing gym sessions, climbing, mixed marshal arts & similar, so it was a bit of a shock for him to find himself shaking with effort, just trying to take a couple of steps before feeling faint and having to sit quickly before he collapsed. The whole thing was also enormously painful, despite having oral morphine beforehand.

These injuries have been an enormous assault to his body, and it's not surprising that he hasn't bounced out of bed. So I'm grateful for the progress that HAS been made, and the way he's well enough to get bored now, and to be restless with discomfort instead of only being able to lay still. There's months of work still to do, but it's heading in the right direction.

And it looks like

The stuff I made last week, at such great effort and costing a huge amount of money. Is junk.

Not ideal.

This has been the craziest week in a long time.

But I'm not grumbling, so much as grateful to have come through it relatively unscathed and with family intact.

We started innocently enough with a migraine/ickiness Monday, with work delayed being completed Tuesday. I knew that there was a big production job coming up at the end of the week, and so had to gear up for it. I ended up with a 2 hour hole in the end of the Tuesday because 'Ted' who I'd got to know recently, 'down on his luck', needed transport to go to the nearest branch of his building society for money.

Tuesday night I'd just got home when it transpired that Ted had been ejected from the house where he was living, and needed help. We desperately tried to find emergency accommodation, only to fail, & eventually decide to put him up in a motel for the night. It was when we collected him that we had some suspicions confirmed that things weren't quite as they'd been portrayed, and it became a little ugly, though not fisticuffs at least.

Cut a long story short, after a couple of nights being put up in different places, no help was forthcoming from local authorities because it couldn't be demonstrated that he was truly homeless. On top of that, a local Christian organisation recognised there were probably deeper issues, and offered help that was rejected. As the main contact I then had to inform Ted that we were no longer able to support him and he was 'on his own'. This went against some of my deepest beliefs, yet at the same time we were not equipped to deal with his issues and his presence would likely have torn our home apart.

Once the call was made I felt the first peace that I'd had for days. Even though the subsequent calls & texts tried to play on various emotions, the worst had passed.

Against this background I worked until 12.35am Wednesday and Thursday, and was pretty much expecting to do the same Friday. During Friday late afternoon my phone kept getting calls from an unknown number that I assumed was Ted trying to negotiate further, no voicemail being left. Finally around 4.50pm a message WAS left, telling me that Ben had been in a motorcycle accident, was not in a life-threatening condition, and was being taken to the John Radcliff hospital.

Turned out he'd lost the bike on a bend on the way home, and with a great sense of timing, had managed to slide both machine and his left leg under a van coming in the opposite direction. His left femur was broken mid-way, both tibia and fibula broken just above the ankle and right wrist also had a minor fracture. There were deep lacerations to his leg and heavy internal bleeding in his thigh. However apart from some minor scuffs and a badly bruised bottom there was no other serious damage, for which were were enormously grateful.

He was however in serious pain (9 out of 10, with 10 being the worst pain he'd ever known, even on repeated morphine shots) and was pale from blood loss, and around 10pm they took him away for around 3 hours of surgery, pinning the femur, sorting out the ankle and cleaning & closing some of the leg wounds.

We went home, made Chris a sandwich so she could go back again. I ate & then returned to work. Chris stayed until he was out of theatre, getting home around 4ish. Fuelled by Chris's fruitcake I then worked until 6.20am, having finished the production process and cleaned & washed up the equipment. After 40min sleep we were back out collecting Ben's past and probably future girlfriend to go back.

Ben was looking better & in less pain. We stayed for a couple of hours, took Laura home, slept a couple, then returned with her again (and were really grateful to Sue & Ian coming to see us there & show us their love). Eventually we had to leave to pick up a friend from Canada returning after visiting her family for a funeral. It was really great to see Janet again, and despite the crazy, crazy stress of everything, having her there was like a little piece of normality and relief in the middle of all the fuss. Some good friends from the church had blessed us with a meal too, and we really appreciated not having to cook after all that. Hit the sack at 9.30pm.

And so today.

We took Janet to the bus station for 9am & saw her on the bus, dropped off the laptop at the chapel with the song list and words ready to go, went to the lab & worked 4 hours, then headed home & ate before popping into Bicester to collect my mum so she could see Ben (if we'd stopped, we'd have been lost at this point). Spent a couple of hours there, then back to Bicester, then back to the lab for a final clear up & floor wash (sucrose solution is VERY sticky when partially dry) finally home for dinner and down time. Today Ben was much better, but two of the wounds from surgery on his thigh were weeping profusely enough to have made the bed sheet & pillow damp after a couple of hours.

Chris is now in bed, and I'm going to follow.

Tomorrow (Monday) he should be having skin & tissue grafts to his leg. This will enable the other wounds to be closed and reduce risks of infection, plus hopefully also reduce scarring and deeper damage.

It's interesting to consider some conversations I've had recently, about Ben on a motorcycle. I've been able to say that I trust that God IS in charge, that He does protect us, and that whether Ben was on a bike, in a car or even safely tucked up in his bedroom, if God has decided it's time for him to die then he will die. It's not a blind fatalism - a life tossed on the whim of a capricious god - but a recognition that no man can add a day to his life by worrying about it.  But having said that, I would not mind if the boy didn't ride a bike again.

And tomorrow is another day, this time with more wee.

I'm not the most socially progressive person

But when I read this report about Chinese factory workers, even my conscience was touched.

See, the thing about it isn't the children - bad though that was - that were working in the factory. No, it's the whole manner in which this industry operates by using oppressive labour practices in order to make goods as cheaply as possible.

Here in the west we have an insatiable hunger for new and shiny stuff, and all for less and less money. There was a time I'd look at a motherboard and wonder at the amazing complexity of the thing, all shipped to the UK and sold for about 30 quid or less, yet at the time I'd sleep easily knowing that it couldn't be knocked up in some dirty sweatshop somewhere like the tee shirts that get sold for a quid or so.

Only it seems I was wrong.

Not that the sweatshops are dirty, but we in the west are indirectly profiting by stealing from the poor, even if we aren't the ones subjecting them to long hours for little pay. Yes, they may be glad of the opportunity to earn money, possibly being able to have dreams and aspirations that were unthinkable for people of a similar social background 30 years ago, but that doesn't mean that we aren't still guilty of causing the grinding oppression now.

The ethics of this are deeply troubling, because we've set in motion a train of events that we don't control. If the west were to suddenly be conscience-struck, stop buying the products of that oppressive system then the result would be even greater hardship- poverty and starvation in all likelihood for real. Yet by continuing to buy we're just perpetuating the system. Certainly companies like Apple, HP, Dell and many other household names are all guilty of helping create this system in their willfully blind pursuit of profit, but there doesn't seem any way we can make them turn round to put it right. Stop buying Apple stuff and Samsung's phone business will increase. Don't buy Dell and Lenovo will reap the reward instead.

Unless the mega-corps get a sudden attack of conscience, I don't see how things can be changed. And they certainly don't mind which countries workers are oppressed - worth bearing in mind for the future of our children and their children too.

I'm not a scaremonger or conspiracy theorist, seeing illuminati and capitalist power-brokers behind every curtain, but there is a legacy building up, and it's not looking good for the future.

I don't often quote the bible on this blog, but I'm going to do so here:

James 5
³ Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days^{. 4} Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. ⁵ You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.

NIV via biblegateway. 

You know what gives this teeth - I'm trying to buy a new smartphone. :p as they say.

So today I will be mostly

Finding those quiet places so beloved of Randall. Having a day of prayer and fasting with some of the other guys responsible for leading HPC.

When I've more time I'll talk about discovering I've switched from being an extrovert to introvert, but right now I need to get away.