Did I miss a chance?

I returned from Portsmouth and I think the exams went well, however I can't make that last an entire post and if I did, it'd likely be boring. What I can tell is a story of my manly charm, swashbuckling manner and downright awesomeness of myself. Yes, a most magnificent tale, I shall tell it. The Hackers had very kindly allowed me to stay with them and rejected any and all attempts at me to offer them money. Well, I wasn't going to let them win, a thank-you gift was clearly in order, left in the room just before I left so they couldn't try to return it. I wasn't sure what to get them, they are so content and happy with what God gives them, reminds me a lot of the way Paul writes in his letters, minus the whole imprisonment stuff. Anyhoo, I decided that if they wanted something, Argos would probably sell it and there's an Argos near the Tesco I was buying my lunches from, so I sauntered over to the Argos. At this point it must be noted that I was wearing trousers, I forget why, I think it had something to do with rain, must have been feeling ill from all that revision. Me: I would like to buy a gift voucher please Young Lady at till: We don't do gift vouchers any more, instead we have gift card things, it's the same result, just a different system Me: (confused as to why this would matter in the slightest) - Ummm, okay, I'll have one of those then Young Lady at till: Is it for a special person or occasion? Me: Not really, some very nice people have let me stay at their house for my resits and I wanted to thank them Young Lady at till: Oooh, well, feel free to stay at my house any time you like! Me: Really? Give me your number and I might call you sometime Young Lady at till: Here you go Me: (Leaves store smiling) - Now, lunch time! Okay, I didn't ask for her number and I'm glad I didn't (no matter how funny it'd be to look back on or how much it'd boost my self esteem if she gave me her number). I would never have called her, she probably wouldn't have expected a call (we're assuming that I actually got her number, it's quite possible she'd have said yes) but if she had then I'd have been a letdown, it'd be a cruel joke which she'd suffer for. No, I am a true gentleman (ignore any comments that Emma or Lorna post saying anything to the contrary) and draw a much better and longer lasting satisfaction from it. Anyway, I felt you'd like to hear that story ;)

A good reason

I decided that I'd blog one more time before going to Portsmouth and possibly being without an internet connection for a week. Today at Church Jon talked about opposition when spreading the word of God. Normally any service on evangelism will focus on the good things and try to encourage you. Jon did encourage us, he just spent 95% of the time telling us about all the opposition you can face telling people about the word of God. He did reference the Bible well and explain how the Lord will stand with us, he also read a bit of a book I think was called "Fox's Christian Martyrs", I probably have the name wrong. Later today I then cycled to and from Ammanford to drop off a form to Becca for the Cheltenham Bible Festival which I'd managed to forget several times. Speaking of Becca, she was a bit disappointed to hear I would not be attending the Mission week/fortnight thing the Church is running, still, she tried to provide me with a good reason. You'll understand it better if you're familiar with the "why I joined the Christian Union" part of my testimony. Below is the exact reason that Becca thinks I should go to the mission. There will be lots of nice ladies there, maybe you could find a Girlfriend Granted, it's almost certainly not word for word, and yes, I have noticed that Christian events and settings tend to have a much fairer Lady to Guy ratio than my lectures (about 1 - 200 or more). I responded by informing Becca that though I at some point would like to meet a lady that likes me enough to date me, I've yet to find someone like that. I suggested that maybe if they were a little geeky it'd help, I then suggested asking them if they know the Fibonacci sequence or indeed, what it actually is, that's a good start. I'd write about how Becca then managed to embarrass Emma but I don't think Emma would appreciate it, suffice to say that Becca might not have thought it through completely.

Long Journey

I've completely forgotten to blog for the last week! On Wednesday I went to see my Dad affirmed as a probational police officer. Friday afternoon I found when my Referrals are, Tuesday, Monday and Tuesday. Yes, there's a week gap between the 1st and 2nd. However, the Hackers have very kindly said that I can stay at their house (thus solving the biggest problem of accommodation). So, the odds of me blogging over the next week and a half are very low as I'm going to be trying to revise a lot.

Structure and Organisation

Yesterday I didn't go to Church! I went to the Sunday School instead to help. In Portsmouth the children leave mid-way through the service, just before the main talk. The children in Portsmouth that I help with are a few years older than the ones in Wales and there was a marked difference. For a start, we're in a different building so the Children run around a lot and make as much noise as they please. Secondly, because they were younger and were allowed to run around a lot, they were quite chaotic. There was a very vague structure to it, we watched a DVD thing where some (admittedly fairly good) music was played along with dancing. At first I thought "Oh great, it's another rubbishy music thing with cheesy songs that hurt my ears with their sheer lack of quality". The first song was quite good, the second not very good and the third okay so I was surprised. After that there was a story from the Bible, Becca explained the story of Solomon and his many wives. Then there was a quiz and colouring in. In addition, Becca and I helped ourselves to some of the sweets used as prizes for the quiz. It was good. Filling out a form to be a helper at the Cheltenham Bible Festival I found something quite funny. Section 5: Emergency Contact Details Next of Kin: Address of Above person: Contact Details: Okay, I know why it's needed, however, I laughed a lot and thought you might too. In the evening my extended family came round and we had a big dinner. It was lots of fun and really nice (

Blogger isn't letting me put a proper title on this post...

Today I mowed out the front of the house again. First off, I found a hedgehog. It made something crossed between a grunt, a sniffle, a snore and a snort. I sprinted back to the house (it was a good 100 - 150m away) and returned with a Camera and Cycling Gloves (you'd be surprised how thick they are). Suffice to say he was a prickly customer and even through the gloves it was quite possible to feel the spines! I got some nice pictures of him. All the pictures are larger than my screen so there's a chance they're larger than yours. The best way to get them is to right click on them and select "save image as" or "download image as" depending on what browser you use. Normally I'd put up thumbnails but there's a lot of pictures and the thumbnails tend to take up a lot of space on the blog. As such I've got a list. - When I found it - Close up, just before it curls into a ball - Distance shot of it sitting in grass - In a ball after being rolled onto it's back - Sniffing gingerly at the plate on which we put some cat-food - Closer up version of the previous - It's thinking about making a break for it after deciding cat-food wasn't good enough A bit later I found a frog. It took be about two minutes to actually catch the thing and then it leapt out my hands again, I managed to get it slightly faster the 2nd time and then got my Dad to take some pictures. Warning, they're pretty big pictures. Also, someone that studied physics fancies themselves as a wildlife expert and reckons it's a toad. On general principles I will both disagree and compromise with them. - Me holding the Tog - Close up of the Froad My Sister managed to find a Newt so we got some pictures of that. - Good overall picture of it in my sister's hands - It makes a break for freedom - What you'd think is a shot taken just before the last - Newt on the palm of my sister's hand - Close up of the Newt's head - Close up of the whole newt - Newt crawling over my finger - Closeup Newt in the palm of my hand - Newt in a (muddy) white bucket thing with water, again, it's first response was to try to escape We released all the animals into their preferred environment after taking the pictures.

FlyGesture

I watch a page called "I Use this". It's a site that lists new Mac software, lots of said software is freeware. Most of the stuff that appears there isn't of interest to me, however, once in a while something really cool appears there. That was the case with Fly Gesture. I saw that it was a mouse gesture program and thought to myself "this could be cool, odds are it's horribly hard to control and results in your quitting all applications by mistake". From my experience, mouse gesture things are not the best way to control your computer, mostly because they're not very easy. However, FlyGesture seems to work nicely. It takes a bit of getting used to, I suggest setting no modifier keys and starting it from a mouse button. There are a load of actions already there that you can edit or remove or add to as you wish. With Fly Gesture, you push a key or mouse button (you set which one it is) and the window shown to the left pops up. You connect the dots and it tells you underneath what you will be doing if you click. The window is actually a little larger than that on the left, I shrunk it to look nice on the blog. The disadvantage of a fast computer is that I cannot tell you how good it is on lower end computers. However, as luck would have it, I garnered access to a slower computer (768mhz with 600Mb of Ram, should be slower than most Macs) and it ran fine. I did have one incident where I was playing warcraft 3 and pushed the middle mouse button by mistake, when Warcraft 3 crashed about 20 minutes later I found that there were yellow lines all over the screen and Fly Gesture sucking up 99% of the CPU power trying to catch up with the mouse (you don't have to push and hold the button, just push it once). I needed to go into Activity Monitor to quit it as it doesn't show up if you Command + Tab your way through the apps (though by default it does show up, I just prefer it not to).

What it's like in my house

Well, with one thing or another I've forgotten to blog. Firstly, my house is inhabited by Coel, Gethin, Brecon, Cerys, Mum, Dad and Taz (Cat). Coel is home all the time as he's finished his first year of Uni, Gethin is also home having done all his A Level exams. Brecon and Cerys attend school so are missing for the middle of each day. My Mum is also home all day while my Dad has recently started his new job. I sit in a room on my own using my computer most of the day. Apparently thats a bit "sad" or "boring". Well, I worked on my CV today so hopefully that doesn't count as either of the above two (I found it a little boring). Additionally, no matter how old we are, we still manage to act like infants. Take Coel for example, today he had scrambled egg on toast and brought in some brown sause from the kitchen to put on it. We found brown sauce on the floor, walls, door, Coel's elbow and sleeve. We're not sure if he got any on the plate but we all laughed at him a lot. My music tastes are a little "odd", I like a wide range of music yet I also only like a few bands from each part of it. People will say "hey, you like so and so, odds are you'd like this group" and despite them sounding fairly similar, I don't. It's really odd. Recently I've been listening to Dance music. Is it sad and boring that I don't dance to it?