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Bloglines -> Technorarti -> Fair Trade

Following my earlier post about bloglines Robert put an entry on his weblog at F�r die Liebe des Denkens : Bloglines (The accented u does not seem to transfer via the quickpost bookmarkley). Anyway I found out about it today through looking at my Technorarti Cosmos.

So I went to look at Robert's weblog and found he had a nice graphic for fair trade, have to add one when I next play with the weblog look. You can see see the variety of banners here, even if you don't want a banner then a visit to http://www.maketradefair.com is a good idea.

Note that Sundayta have always used fairly traded coffee and tea just as we do at home.

Irritating PC Games

Andrew bought a new game on Monday, one the official Lord of the Rings games. But when he came to install it, only 6 video cards were supported (from 2 manufacturers only - GForce and ATI). This despite needing DirectX 9. I thought the whole point of these endless APIs from M$ was to ensure that games worked with all supported video cards.

So our 1 year old Dell is now unsupported by new games - that is very very irritating.

Install party

So tonight we are clearly going to have a Linux install party to celebrate the new year. Four machines dredged up from the office to be cleansed, purified and made useful.

Then with an extra 4 machines (albeit old and slow) what multi-player (linux) games will be best for the kids (ages 6 to 11) to play through the weekend? Only one I have played before is Civilisation call to power which I have in Linux and Windows versions (make sure the linux machine is the server for reliable saving).

No wonder Jane complains about the electricity bill - I guess that 7 PC's is not normal, even more unusual will be that only one of them will ever run windows (and with Knoppix around not all the time even then).

Max Design - Liquid layouts - the easy way

After a lot of articles on fixed layouts (which do seem more popular again) here is one (Max Design - Liquid layouts - the easy way) on liquid layouts albeit showing how nto include some fixed elements.

Crawley Methodist Church

Well done Max for a nice special Christmase home page for Crawley Methodist Church, mid you it will probably be gone by the time anyone reads this and follows the link. But the site is lovely and up-to-date (with pictures of the nativity and carol services from Sunday) which is a very nice thing to see.

Christmas starts

My best wishes for a joyful Christmas to you all. May you find truth, peace and goodwill as we celebrate the birth of Christ, our saviour.

For us Christmas has really begun with a full house and a full tummy. We have plenty of Jane's family arrived today and staying for the next couple of days.

In a couple of hours we will be off to the Christmas Eve 11:30pm service, then a quick sleep before I head off to the Whitechapel mission to help with the breakfasts. Back in time for a family Christmas dinner (at lunchtime ;-) and then the joy of the presents for kids old and young.

For now it is the bed and bag shuffle as we find sleeping space for 10 (hence keeping a low profile ;-)

Car servicing by Trike

Writing about the New ICE website (Inspired Cycle Engineering) reminded me of yesterdays trike rides.

Our car had started to make a funny noise (don't worry that's about as technical as it gets ;-), the two nearest Peugeot dealers could not do anything before the new year so I booked it into Sidlow (by the way checkout the url: http://www.peugeot.co.uk/cgi-bin/ppkfcwebuk/ppplp1502_00.jsp?_intDealerID=015449G surely worthy of a prize for uggliness) in Reigate.

Reigate is a bit far for comfort on my Birdy and anyway I did not have loads of time so I folded the back seat and my XXL fitted in easily. Then I drove there, rode back to work and then at the end of the day reversed the process.

It was quite cold out, so going back at around 5:30pm I was in cycling bib trousers (I wore jeans in the morning but it had got colder), t-shirt, jumper, fleece, waterproof jacket, gloves and wooly hat. I was very comfortably warm although when I got home realised that my feet were a bit cold - thicker socks were called for. One of the nice things about a recumbent trike is that yiou can nestle your chins in the collar of your fleece to keep them warm - one of the not so nice features is that you get a good view of the size of your belly.

I decided to not fully use the cycle path around Gatwick, due to the detours it imposes. On the way south in the morning I joined the cycle route at the terminal building rather than going round the houses to join the start in Horley. On the way north in the evening I just went on the main road all the way including all the dual carriageway around Gatwick. Fortunately due to the volume of traffic and some road works I overtook all the cars that had gone past me and some more, although on the road from Gatwick to Reigate they all went past again. In total it took me 25 mins to cycle to the garage and 20 mins to drive home.

The ride was very pleasant a nice reminder of how comfortable and relaxed the XXL is for gently, yet quite rapidly moving from A to B.

New ICE website (Inspired Cycle Engineering)

Try out the new Inspired Cycle Engineering website, now with no frames, a layout that is tested in proper (Mozilla) browsers as well as non standards compliant browsers (IE on windows).

For a team that rightly concentrate on their products this is an excellent, mostly in-house, design. The photos are great, this is the only trike manufacturer that can show close-ups of the construction, as usual and as in the flesh, the quality shines through. Not only that but they have detailed pictures of all the accessories as well. So if you want to know what a Cateye HL EL300 5 LED front light or the excellent Mudguards look like then this is the place.

There is a lot of information here, on gears and other details, so the site is well worth a visit, even if you own or are looking at a competitors trikes.

There are now some buyers guides (price, seat type, seat height, wheel size, and stability) to help you choose between the 16 models.

Amazingly enough despite all the work producing the web site, as well as the trikes themselves, they have also been developing the products with a number of improvements.

The proof of the pudding is of course in happy customers, you can see how happy we are with our XXL and X2 from the weblog cycling archives, FAQ and various photo albums (Bike Culture Week 2003, Hayling Billy trail, and XXL to Gillingham 2003), there are also a number of other peoples photos in the well presented (although not so brilliant for bulk downloading) picture gallery. From a speed perspective is is good to see that Ben won the BHPC multitrack class this year on his very lightweight (and definately not road legal) XXL.

bkmChk - User Guide

A neat little python tool to allow simple checking for dead links: bkmChk - User Guide

Forgiveness and grace

An original story at weblog :: jordoncooper.com on "The Pain of the Longview" found from such small hands: Grace Sucks.

When we see what it costs us to forgive and offer grace then how much more aware we can become of the cost that God was willing to pay on the cross for us.

It has been argued that in the Gospels Jesus caused a rumpus many a time by forgiving before people repented, that is a hard thing for us to grasp, a harder thing to do - certainly not a cheap and easy fix but a costly journey.

This is explored in some detail in Fiddes book "Participating in God". There are many issues raised that I find exciting and challenging. Certainly thinking about these issues is a good way to remove complacency. The pain of people needing to live with this battle and journey is not something to be taken lightly.

I was reminded of this need to embark on costly journeys of forgiveness while we just watched a horrific program on BBC2, Louis Theroux and the Nazis (probably a separate post coming). It gives a small gut wrenching glimpse of how it might be to live in a world without grace or forgiveness. I pray that these people may experience the love and forgiveness in their lives that only Christ can bring, that his healing may transform their beings.