On Saturday my brother in law and sister (Paul & Anne) arrive in the UK then on Sunday he enters hospital in prepartion for a 10hr operation on Tuesday.

He has “pseudomyxoma peritonei” (link) which is so rare (I’m told) that he is the first where he lives to get it / suffer it? Treatment has been going well but all along they’ve needed to consult with specialists, mostly in America.

Anyway, the long and short is that he has responded well to treatment to date and the operation is to de-mucus him, remove what is left of the tumour(s) and other organs. One of the side effects of the cancer is that it coats the internal organs with a mucus which if not removed can cause complications down the road. If you follow the link above Paul will be undergoing the “Sugarbaker technique” which includes removal of sections of his bowel, his spleen and gall bladder as well as removal of the mucus. As well as all this he will be undergoing a form or chemotherapy during the operation.

Paul describes it as akin to taking a bag of vegetables out of his insides, removing the skins and then replacing as much as possible.

Anyway, the reason for my post is to ask for your prayers.

Specifically:

• that the surgery goes well
• that the after effects are minimal
• that he is one of the 7 in 10 who respond well to surgery
• that his recovery is speedy and subsequent return home.
• for my sister, Anne, who will be in the UK throughout to support him
• for their son, Max, who has been left back home
• for myself who will spend the day with my sister during the operation.

From the very bottom of my heart, thank you.

Do the cheesy grins (aka Hollywood Smiles) on Church publicity annoy you? Do you think there’s a place for this type of picture? Well here’s a link to a post I wrote as a guest blogger on ChurchTechMatters.

It touches on usage of stock photos and whether or not we (as ministries) should use them or not. It then goes into a little bit of detail on my personal favourite sites for finding stock photos.

Would love to hear your opinions either as a comment here, to the post itself or on the associated forum – here.

I acquired a new follower on twitter today and they appeared just after I’d tweeted wanting to know if anybody wanted an independent review of hardware or software. Now the two may not be linked but shortly after Tim Cool (great name by the way) of Cool Solutions Group asked me to supply my ‘unbiased thoughts‘ on ministrEspace.

I was happy to oblige as anything that gives me something to write about is good for the blog and good for me as it keeps my creative juices flowing.

So just what is ministrEspace? Well in their own words it is “the low cost, web-based software solution for all your ministry space scheduling needs“. (more…)

Michael Gelb is the author of a book called “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci” and in it he expands on the ‘seven steps to genius every day‘ …

Now, I haven’t read the book yet but I’ve seen the seven steps listed and they’ve fascinated me enough to want to share them with you all. These principles need, so says Gelb, to be followed for success. Whether it be a new language, training to be a chef or just wanting to improve yourself in your current job.

Anyway, the seven steps are:

1. Curiosita: An insatiably curious approach to life.
2. Dimonstratzione: A commitment to test knowledge through experience.
3. Sensazione: The continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to clarify experience.
4. Sfumato: A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty.
5. Arte/Scienza: The development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination (“whole-brain thinking”).
6. Corporalita: The cultivation of ambidexterity, fitness, and poise.
7. Connessione: A recognition and appreciation for the connectedness of all things and phenomena; “systems thinking.”

I don’t know about you but these steps fascinate me and I will be getting a copy of the book when time allows. I understand that the book have some of da Vinci’s illustrations as well and the book references its principles to da Vinci’s accomplishments.

At my church our server’s UPS (uninterruptible power supply) has gone belly up.

After year’s of daily abuse from the poor building power supply it has finally died. The room it is housed in (which I have noted my displeasure to the management many a time) goes from freezing cold to way too hot. Every time a light or a PC is turned on or off on the same ring main, the UPS emits a loud clunk as it kicks in and protects the server.

No more. It is dead. It has shuffled off it’s mortal coil. It has joined the choir invisible… anyway, since technology in this area has moved on apace since it was first bought how does one narrow down what we need at a price we are happy to pay?

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Welcome to the third edition of my sporadic Windows 7 tips …

This one covers backups and some more stuff to make life simpler.

One of the ways I’ve read over the years that folks should backup their system is by ‘imaging’ it. Why, well in short it allows you to setup your system the way you want and then you can take an exact ‘bit by bit’ replica of it and store elsewhere.

It’s been this store elsewhere that has caused problems over the years. But with Win7 you get a clean and elegant process. As with previous versions the backup icon is in your Control Panel. Once there click the “Create a System Image” in the top left corner and then Windows runs off and identifies where it can backup too (see image).

After selecting your appropriate image destination (I recommend not using a had disk built into your system) simply click next and follow the prompts. Note the hyperlink that takes you to a help page that tells you how to restore your image.

- Talking of images, did you know that Win7 is the first Microsoft O/S that allows you to burn ISO’s direct instead of having to use a third party application? Simply double click the ISO in question, pick the drive with your blank CD / DVD and burn. However, I still by far prefer to use ImgBurn.

-  To round up this set of tips here’s one for any who have ever struggled to work out what key combination works with external screens / projectors. Well fret no more as Win7 provides a ‘standard’ (I hesitate to call it this) way to access them. Simply press “Win+P” and all is revealed. There’s also a command line of “displayswitch.exe” that will do the same job.

I originally posted this some time back and elsewhere as a reminder for myself and as an aid to other parents / students. I present it here, in a slightly edited format but in principle the ethos of the original remains:

I never went through trying to pick a Universitymyself as I had grand plans to join the RAF at 16 as an apprentice electronics technician. I was amply qualified, I sailed through their tests but (as I later found out from a neighbour) I was only offered a job as a truck driver so that they could fulfil their quotas.

Anyway – enough of me. My eldest was in his final year at school and has determined what he wants to do as a degree. However he hadn’t a clue and nobody seemed to be providing that clue as to how one picks a university. After several fruitless attempts to get some help we sat down to surf a bit and found some excellent resources. In fact and as the title suggests there are precisely 3 of them and I share them now so as to help other year 13 (aka upper sixth) students or their parents.

1. Unistats – This was teh “Teaching Quality Initiative originally but it’s morphed into Unistats now. Search by subject, university, compare, etc
2. The Alternative Guide to British Universities – as it says on the cover but from the students perspective. This guide is produced by Virgin and you may need to search for a different year as this one links to 2010.
3. The Guardian University League Tables – as with Unistats – The Guardian have long produced an annual guide to Universities but also make it available online.

There are other resources, including other newpapers such as The Times but I didn’t like the way they laid out their results and this can lead to some confusion. It is also at odds with what other organisations have determined and furthermore it is at odds with those universities I have personally visited with my eldest.

There is a predeliction to keeping Oxford and Cambridge at the top of the rankings but without justifying why. The other guides don’t fall in to such short comings (to my eyes anyway) and note well, this is not educational jealousy as my son was perfectly capable of attending Oxford. To that end we went along to the appropriate Open Day and our feelings on the matter will remain private, but suffice to say it is not the place it pretends to be. Finally, and less personal is the fact that Oxford and Cambridge instruct their students to not reply to these annual surveys and instead the results are based on their own internal surveys – not at all suspicious!

Anyway, I hope these few links help you as they have helped my son and I.

I’ve touched on the subject of networking before but of late I’ve been really thinking about it and trying to find a solution as well. I’m no nearer but I will keep searching.

So let me ask:

Do you network?

Do you pay lip service to networking or do you actually involve yourself and get down and dirty with the process? I’ve got friends who run small businesses and they attend “network meets”. The process usually involves a gathering over food, typically breakfast and coffee with a talk followed by chat and exchange of cards, ideas, numbers or even a trade of services.

To me, this is networking.

• You are building contacts.
• You have an active involvement in the process.
• You give something up for the sake of the process (time / cards / skills).

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