Time for a break from blogging, while other things take priority.
Have a nice day/night.
Meme: n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.*
Paul at fishers, surfers and casters tagged me with the task “name five reasons why you do (not) respond to memes”. So, here goes.
And sometimes I don’t want to tag anyone else. Nuff said.
Apparently, we had three earthquakes (tremors) last night. Didn’t notice them myself, though I may have thought it was a heavy truck going past the house.
More information at Earthquakes shake Auckland region – 22 Feb 2007 – National News – New Zealand Herald and GNS: Recent Earthquakes.
Or, in the words of Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads, ‘it’s all just a little bit of history repeating’. And specifically, we’re talking about the black costume in Spider-Man 3 coming out in the next few months.
So, if you’re interested in the history of the black outfit (which is making a comeback real soon now in the comics), check out this THE OLD BLACK: LOOKING BACK AT SPIDER-MAN’S BLACK COSTUME – NEWSARAMA.
Of course, it remains to be seen how they might incorporate the Venom storyline without completely botching the original origin.
Australia looks to phase out incandescent light bulbs within three years, replacing them with alternatives that last longer and use significantly less power. The NZ situation looks like it’s going down the same path, though not as fast. See Standard light bulbs to be switched off – 21 Feb 2007 – National New Zealand News – NZ Herald
Following on from Friday (NZ defeat Australia by 10 wickets) and Sunday (NZ 337/5 beat Aus 336/4), tonight New Zealand chase down Australia’s 347 (getting 350 in the 49th over).
Three – nil.
(That’s one day international cricket for all you non-Commonwealth people.)
And yes, Australia were short of a few players, but in that last game NZ were without three of their best (Oram, Vettori and Bond).
Three nil!
Woohoo! Bring on the World Cup.
Oh yes, and the Hurricanes beat the Blues at the weekend to cap it all off.
The antipodean Lent starts tomorrow with Ash Wednesday, where the nights, and not the days, continue to lengthen, and we move into autumn and towards winter. Not that you can tell at the moment, with all the heat and humidity.
In the past I’ve tended to give things up for Lent (coffee, I think) to serve as a reminder to myself to be more reflective as I approach Easter. In the past couple of years I’ve tried a different tack, to add something into Lent rather than taking something away. Recently, this has been to commit to a daily series of reflections specific to Lent. One year it was a book by Tom Wright, last year it was Faith Odyssey (see Greenflame: Star Lent). Sometimes not filling the gap left by giving something up, leads to it being unconsciously being filled by something else – like the year I found I had upped my cola intake without noticing, while giving up coffee for Lent.
So, yesterday I walked down to my local Christian bookshop to see what things they had that might be good to use this season. However, they had nothing (it was all arriving sometime soon, they said), and so today I tripped across town to another bookshop who had a selection of Lenten and Easter books on display and picked up a couple. I have no idea what they’ll be like, so it’ll be an interesting journey, I hope. the first is Voices from the Desert – A spirituality for our times by Leslie Griffiths (SCM Canterbury Press), while the second is Mirror of the Soul , a series of 40 reflections from the Psalms.
And speaking of filling things up, with today being Shrove Tuesday, we had pancakes tonight, cooked in the new frying pan I bought today. A bit of an experiment while I got the hand of the pan’s thermodynamics, and definitely no tossing of pancakes until I’m used to the pan’s weight. Pancakes turned out okay, and were eaten simply with lemon and sugar.
By next year, maybe I’ll have had some more thoughts on writing a Lenten series oriented around comic books – Lent by Lantern Light?
Related links:
Picked up a copy of Marc Prensky’s “Digital Game-Based Learning” today from the public library to have a skim though. I’m interested in the historical development of the digital games.
Recent related links:
This looks promising. Touch is much harder to simulate in VR than sound and vision. This development seems to bring it a bit close. See Haptic glove to touch on virtual fabrics – tech – 13 February 2007 – New Scientist.
Paul’s posted a copy of his Refresh article BLOGGING – A CREATIVE WAY OF EXPLORING SPIRITUALITY & SPIRITUAL FORMATION? over on Prodigal Kiwi(s). Well worth having a look at.
Connects also with the following article published a couple of years back in Stimulus (NZ journal/magazine):
Bednar, Tim. “Blogging: Report from a Grassroots Revival.” Stimulus 12, no. 3 (2004): 24-30.
Similar to Rob Moll’s article in Christianity Today if you have access to their web portal – see Blogger Predicts Revival via Web – Leadership journal – ChristianityTodayLibrary.com