Author Archives: Anthony - Page 2

You wont relent – Jesus Culture

Posted by on June 22, 2011 No comments

Marie had a Jesus Culture song in her head yesterday so we got the album of iTunes and been listening to it today and heard this great tune, it’s a song about how God wont stop chasing us until we give our hearts to him and how we should respond by asking Him to dwell in us more, I thought the words were quite poignant given Andy’s preach on Sunday where he mentioned the sheer statistics of people who wont have run the race well by the time they get to the end of their life and how people can do all the “right things” at church but lot be giving our hearts to Jesus

You won’t relent until You, have it all
My heart is Yours
You won’t relent until You, have it all
My heart is Yours

I’ll set You as a seal upon my heart
As a seal upon my arm
For there is love that is as strong as death
Jealousy demanding as the grave
And many waters cannot quench this love

Come be the fire inside of me
Come be the flame upon my heart
Come be the fire inside of me
Until You and I are One

I don’t want to talk about You
Like You’re not in the room
I want to look right at You
I want to sing right to You

Summer is here… I think!

Posted by on June 17, 2011 No comments

Wow! haven’t blogged here in a while and thought I should post an update. It’s been pretty pretty hectic for me the last month or 2 with studies, exams and work, I’m not complaining though! It has just meant that some things have taken a back burner while I focus on the priorities in the right order (God, Wife, Study, Work, Other). So roughly in that order :) .

ChristChurch has been good, Marie and I got to witness Andy Tilsley being officially “prayed in” as an elder and the general comings and goings of church life, Marie has joined the crèche team to help combat the current and further impending baby boom! and they couldn’t keep me away, am back serving Sundays on the sound team now technically called the tech team (excuse the pun) which encompasses the visuals team also which i think is a brilliant move purely because the 2 teams were quite small on there own and trying to organise social events was rather difficult because normally what ended up happening is 2 guys end up meeting up for a beer (which is not a bad thing!) rather than 5 or 6 people meeting up having a meal and enjoying good fellowship.

Marie has been the usual busy with working for Newfrontiers, carrying on as usual despite all the ongoing staff changes that take place regularly, she is still knitting a woolly green scarf for me for Christmas, hopefully its ready in time although i wont need it because we are going to Zimbabwe for Christmas again, Woohoo!

Studies have finally concluded for the summer, I am still awaiting results and have one exam to do in august – due to the bad organisation of Uni which I have probably mentioned before. i had to spend 4 weeks at uni after my exams attending lectures which apparently had been the plan since the beginning of the academic year but we weren’t informed until mid way through our exam period despite several people including myself asking for clarification several times throughout this year (i think that shows how badly organised the uni is) in fact some were so badly caught out because they had already booked flights home for the summer and couldn’t attend the lectures. gladly though its all done, i cant wait to get this degree over and done with purely because it holds very little relevance to my day to day freelance work, and any content that did is already going out of date, that’s how fast paced the IT industry really is.

Work has really ramped up the last month or so, I’ve had the chance to meet and even work with some great teams like Made.com (new web infrastructure), Rackspace (got to see the Rackspace mini and got a goody bag) and have met the awesome GoSquared team and WooThemes just the other week, its keeping me busy which i like and importantly its earning money, I’m actually quite thankful to God for all the work as I had to replace my laptop a few weeks ago (the old one couldn’t take the load i was throwing at it) which cost a seriously painful amount of money which if it wasn’t for the work i wouldn’t have been able to buy.

Other than that, not much has changed, still busy busy busy, off to see my dad and Karen for the weekend next weekend which should be good as we will probably get to go to the village church too so that should be an experience for Marie (its not Newfrontiers!), the weather here has been pretty miserable the last few days but we got a couple of thunder storms that Marie and I both enjoy watching.

Mobile Broadband makes you efficient

Posted by on January 26, 2011 1 comment

Well i am back! just about, not been here posting lately and its not without good reasons too, the obvious one is i went to Zimbabwe for 3 weeks over christmas and GOT MARRIED!!!

some others may have wondered why its taken me so long to get this up and posted but that too is not without a good reason either. I wont bore you with the details but the shortest summary i can give you is that i applied for a phone line and broadband before we left at the beginning of december as a migration to take the existing line on, but when we got back BT had terminated the existing line and BeThere couldnt process that order so we had to put a whole new order in, which means BT openreach have to install a new line, and by install i mean pretty much plug it back in at the exchange. In BT Openreach’s infinitely efficient wisdom, i have to wait a further 6 weeks for the line to be activated (on my birthday no less), the ironic thing is. if i wanted to pay more to get less and went with BT direct, my phone line would probably have been activated in less time by the same external company (Openreach).

so i titled this post, Mobile Broadband makes you efficient, so i better say something about that! all i can say it does. My work relies on having an internet connection to be able to do my job, i need to communicate with clients often over skype or email and IM etc, i actually need to work on remote web servers (its funny how that needs an internet connection) among various other things. my options were pay £35 for access to a BT openzone wifi spot of which there just so happens to be one within reach of my flat (oh the irony) or about the same price for a pay as you go mobile broadband dongle with O2. I found out with some earlier research that the openzone in my flat’s range is not some proper openzone but a slightly dodgy openzone run off the back of someones BusinessHub and tends to only work in my living room or more often than not, only when i didnt want to use it. That left me with only one option, Mobile Broadband.

so it makes me more efficient. Why? because i just so happen to live in that one flat in Zone 1 London that has a very poor 3g signal on pretty much all the networks :( this means that my 3g mobile broadband is more often than not working on low speed (boy am i glad that SSH is text based and doesnt require broadband!) and it tends to disconnect a lot, not to mention because i am a mac user, i am somewhat shunned by mobile broadband companies because i cant get access to any of the wifi points easily without using bootcamp, so am forced to just stick it out on mobile signal.

so i have to be more efficient for 2 reasons. firstly, speed, because the net speed is so low compared to modern broadband via adsl or cable i cant get as much done as i normally would, this means i need to multi task all my internet usage tasks as much as i can and basically queue up internet tasks to maximise my connected time, especially when i hit into free public wifi or into university (my uni just got hit with about 4GB of iplayer downloads this week alone!).

Secondly, mobile broadband accounts are generally all bandwith capped or charge per MB/GB, i use O2 and they charge about £15 per 2GB for 31 days and i seem to be getting through one every 2 weeks or so. because of this i have to be much more aware of what i do online, this means i have facebooked less, twittered less and more importantly watched less video and less random surfing. you would probably be surprised at how much time can be gained by cutting all that stuff out. its kind of scary that just doing the basics for work uses so much, imagine how much bandwith (and cost) i would be using if i was just surfing and working at full capacity as i normally would, thankfully the iphone has helped in keeping in touch via facebook and twitter so i have been making the most of that data connection as well, but it does highlight how in todays civilisation we are pretty much dependant on the internet for our way of life and keeping in touch.

other quick round up since december. Uni is ok, little boring and frustrating at the moment and i wish it was just over already (only 18 months left), i go on second honeymoon (because one is not enough!) for a week over the week of my birthday, should be a nice relaxing week after the manic start to the year, and i should also return to working internet amongst other things!

will try and post here as i can and as time allows

Here I Am – Village Worship

Posted by on November 4, 2010 No comments

found a new album by the guys over at The Village Church, TX in the USA, just been listening to this song and its awesome, got some stuff worth saying about this song in particular but will just leave you with the lyrics for now, more info about there album can be found over here

V1
Take me far away from here
Save me from this world of fear
Break me from the things I hold so near
they’re so far from You

V2
Reveal to me what You want me to do
Place me where Your will draws me to
Lord be pleased with the worship I bring to You
I sing to You, I shout to You!

Chorus
Here I am, send me out let me shine for Your glory
I will read, I’ll live out and proclaim Your Word
Take me now show me how I need to live not for me
But for You and Your glory.

Africa United

Posted by on November 1, 2010 6 comments

Went to see Africa United over the weekend with Marie, Marie told me it was supposed to be an accurate portrayal of Africa. the opening sequence when Dudu (Eriya Ndayambaje) makes a football with a condom it made me sit up in my seat straight away as i knew this film just wasnt going to be any ordinary film. The story is that of 3 children’s road trip across Africa to Johannesburg for Fabrice (Roger Nsengiyumva), a football prodigy in the making, to be able to go out on the pitch for the opening of the World Cup. They get on a bus supposedly heading to the Rwandan capital for an audition but end up getting on the wrong bus and thats where there journey begins, they head through several African countries and have to fight the odds with so many things such as wildlife and bad guys threatening there journey and they pick up a couple of friends on there journey.

They hitch through Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa to get there and it includes many issues other continents would associate with Africa: AIDS, child soldiers, lack of schooling, war and prostitution. But it deals with them in a matter-of-fact, occasionally light-hearted fashion. I have to say it was a sobering storyline. The film was excellent and from the limited exposure i have to Africa i have to say it is pretty accurate. Considering that the main 5 actors of the film were children i have to say that the film was very well done, and its great to have a different storyline for a change rather than the usual hollywood stories where all too often sex or violence feature in some way.

We had quite a debate after the film because the one thing it got me thinking is although its an accurate portrayal, the bit that got me was Africa’s belief that condoms will solve the HIV/AIDS problem, when in reality it wont, it only treats the symptoms when the root cause is hearts need changing. Sleeping around seems to be so prevalent in Africa and all condoms do is seem to say that its ok to do that as long as you where one you wont get HIV, i honestly believe that a heart change needs to happen before the HIV/AIDS problem is going to be reduced. God is needed in so many hearts to convict them that sleeping with more than one partner is wrong before this problem will get anywhere near going away. its sad to see a generation being destroyed because of this.

I will close with this, you really should go and see this film if you dont know what the problems in africa are, in one sense it cant capture the true scale of some of the issues in africa because it would make a very dark and depressing film, however it does highlight some of the big issues in a positive way which is so refreshing given that we only hear about these stories so often in a negative light or once or twice a year at fundraising events. It’s quite exciting to actually see positive culture shaping films making mainstream cinema