Turn off those lights..

Been up to the nursing home to do a bit of carol singing which I think the residents quite enjoy, though it is always the ridiculously high songs, usually written for children, that seem the most popular. Anyway, on my way up I went the back way out the bottom of my garden where I passed this house. Every year the light show is more and more over the top. It's the first time I've passed it in all it's resplendant glory this year. I'd noticed the sixty foot santa had disappeared from it's yearly resting place in the back garden. It's awful, really awful. This year alongside the myriad santas is a giant igloo from which a snowman moves up and down in an eerie mechanical manner. A giant translucent sphere which contains something, though I didn't venture close enough to find out exactly what. Possibly an elf or a bear - who knows. Goodness knows how much energy it utilises, and what drives people to such efforts to luminate their houses. I'm sure it's some kind of pitiful cry for attention. But back to the energy wastage not to mention the kilos of carbon dioxide pumping into the atmosphere as a result. I'm with dave walker on this one, turn off the lights before they kill us all!

Cartoon by Dave Walker.

Cartoon by Dave Walker.

Twelve Baskets

There is this superb new site called twelve basketsthat has recently been launched to share worship resources. It is part funded by the methodist church and I heard about it at greenbelt.
You create an account and upload any powerpoint presentations or movies or images etc that you have created for worship. Add some tags and a description and upload the media. Then should anyone else be interested in using your work they pay a small amount of money to download said item. This money helps to pay for the site maintenance etc, 10% goes to charity and a proportion gets credited to your own account. You can either use this money to download other material from the site, donate to charity or have sent in cash when you accumulate £20. Sounds like a fantastic idea. Please share it if you think it would be useful.

www.twelvebaskets.co.uk for more info.

The church using web 2.0 technology - whatever next!

Geographical spread of surnames

Sometimes I listen to radio 2 in the car on the way home, why?, cos i can't get 6 music and scott mills is annoying. So excuses out of the way, (actually maybe it's because listening to steve wright in the afternoon reminds me of my teenage years listening to him at this time on radio one or one fm or whatever it was called those days) tyhey have a feature called website of the day. On monday they spoke about an interesting site where you could track the geographical density of a surname. The site used data from a census in 1881 and the electoral role of 1998 to calculate these densities. It is interesting comparing the two maps. I've learnt that Iddon has a frequency of 27 in every million people. As I knew the name is localised in the north west around lancashire, and by 1998 had spread, most notably to the area around Durham. People of my great grandfather's generation migrated here to work down the coal mines and my own grandad originally came from this area. There is striking localisation of most names, which demonstrates how little migration has really occured in the last 100 years, and there is a very striking north/south divide too. This probably derives from the ancient anglo and saxon kingdoms that probably had slightly different dialects and therefore names.

Should you wish to check out your name, the site is here

Stuff to do

mow the lawn, pack my bags, watch the football......

talking of which it's made my life a bit more easy in a logistical way has this england defeat. It means that I now don't have to wait for the end of the semi final tomorrow to travel down to hemel. It also means I don't have the potential of missing england in a world cup final cos I'm in the house of a palestian family who are not interested in the football.

Anyway, met up with my m+d and sister on sunday to celebrate my mum's b'day and my m+d's wedding anniversary, pearl, and would you credit it, wilko's actually stock pearl wedding anniversary cards! They're a bit rubbish, but I had to get it. That shop stocks everything! nice to see them, but i was hoping to go and see my friend, he's very ill at the moment, and was too ill for visitors. His wedding has been moved forward, and thankfully i am just back from israel so shall be able to attend. His ill health has been a worry to me too, he's a very good friend, and we've know each other since we were small kids.

So what to do whilst I'm away and you are bored, waiting for additional blogs. Well i suggest you browse some of my links to the right. I'd also like to point out that helen c of made in deptford fame, has re-started her blog.

and if you've got some money to spend on clothes, why not take a visit to people tree, cos they have a sale on their superb range of organic and fair trade clothes.

see you all soon

Last fm

So I heard about this a while ago from ben askew. Then i saw something about it in some music mag or other and thought I'd check it out. So now you can see what music I'm listening to with this handy little chart thing in the side bar. It can also recommend other music from monitoring the kind of stuff i like to listen to. I'll see how it goes....

My last fm profile is here