Well, it’s been a short while since I made an entry, so I apologise for that. I have been quite busy at work, developing away as I am paid to do. Coming to the end of a quite major project, I have developed my PHP skills quite a bit, and yes I actually enjoy writing code. I will endeavour to continue writing PHP, at least until I am proficient at it.

One of the things I have noticed in this skillset improvement is that I need to learn more. The combinations of PHP and Javascript can be quite powerful and lead to some complex site solutions. As a Christian, I am praying for more opportunities to develop the custom code side of things.

I’ve uploaded a few more photo’s, some new, some old. Most were taken with my Nikon D40, which I love to use. It’s an entry-level D-SLR, and even so, it’s a very good camera. I’ve recently purchased a 55-200mm zoom lens, and the picture of the Jackdaw was one of the first I made with it. Not bad for the first day’s use, huh?

I’d write more, but as is becoming a trend with me, I write this on the laptop first before posting to the blog. It just gives me time to mull over what I actually write. That, coupled with the fact it’s 1:30 am, I really should be asleep. But working on this recent project has caused a few 3-4am finishes, and I haven’t yet recovered my sleep pattern. I am a twilight hacker, bathed in the luminous glow of the TFT screen. So goodnight, and sleep tight.

The eternal question now arises, as the latest news I read shows OpenSuse 11.0 only 14 days away. The screengrabs I’ve seen with it running KDE 4.0.1 looks well nice. I was an original Suse user, shortly after stating with Storm Linux, Slackware, but stayed with Ubuntu for some time.

I had seriously thought about signing up and becoming part of the dev team, you know, giving back to opensource software after taking it all for free. And I still think that. Maybe I will. Not for this version, but will sign up anyway and get on the bandwagon for 12.0, or, as is more likely, 11.1!

It’s a great opportunity to reflect a good Christian principle - to pay in kind those who pay you in kind… What do you think? For all the good quality free software (I’m not talking dodgy bittorrents here), should you make an active contribution, even if only to give user feedback? There are many aspects to being involved, from submitting a bug report to writing documentation to programming…

Just had to post up this clip from youtube featuring the iPod and running…

Well, it’s been a few days since my last entry. I’ve been pretty busy, scaling up a website like the recent BBC makeover, optimising the content management system for 1024×768 resolution. It’s been quite hard work actually, because there seems to be a fair bit of CSS tweaking, plus we’re adding some more features to the site which should help it’s rankings in Google a fair bit. (Not that it’s doing too badly, as it’s around end of page 1/top of page 2 for most of it’s target audience.

Which brought me to thinking, what am I really doing with richrock.co.uk? What can I do with it? I really saw it as a personal blog project, optimising the text and gaining readership, maybe a few more comments than I’ve had. It’s not worked out fantastically, as my interests are diverse, and I felt I’ve never really had a proper direction for the site. So I’ve sat down, and thought, ‘what are the core elements that I would consistently blog about?’ and also had a bit of thinking along the lines of ‘how can I implement my own changes without a week’s worth of work?’. I do have in mind to write my own custom Wordpress template, although that’s only in the sketching/planning stages. I would also like to expand my pages, creating some fixed content about things. I even thought about using the Content Management System (CMS) I do web development with, but again, that is quite a bit of work. It takes me three-four weeks to complete a CMS project, and that’s with eight-hour days. Which I don’t have in the evening.

So, building on that, I initially decided on a set of core elements from which I should not deviate. And here they are:

• Christianity
• Web Development
• Mountain Biking
• Media (mostly music, film, photography and interesting net oddities).

I thought I could narrow it down more. It seems that good blogs only tend to use a couple of core subjects. They provide a more focused reading, and yes, initially would have a reduced readership, but would grow with the following of people genuinely interested in those subjects.

I struggled. I really did. There wasn’t much chance of me not talking about any of the subjects above. Seeing that I could not change much about my subject choice, I decided to set priorities on what to talk about. So here is the revised list, in order of priority (most important first):

• Christianity
• Media (see above)
• Web Development
• Mountain Biking

Subtle changes, but changes nonetheless. Even though I am a web developer, I don’t have much time to write howtos or guides about CSS, HTML or PHP, and similarly with mountain biking, I enjoy it very much, but don’t really have much to write about it. Speak to me, and I will talk passionately about riding trails. At least until I’ve saved enough for my next bike, which is looking like a Norco Shore 2.

Media is quite wide and encompassing, and allows quick-fire entries about cool things I see on the net. But the most important topic, and one which is personal to me, is Christianity. It’s my faith, my lifestyle. When I write about it, I get a passion rise up in me, It excites me to write about something that God has done for me, or some small teaching, an insight to the glories of God.

So that will be my primary subject. I’ve been on something of a restorative path, having drifted and almost lost my faith some time ago, but God has other plans for me. I am starting to hear the Holy Spirit’s voice of conviction again, because I’ve done my own foolish things, and I expect my life to change radically again, like the moment I got saved. If I wrote that, it would be a long blog, but I am planning to write it and put online as a separate page. Watch this space for my testimony there.

I don’t have much else to say. I got up early to write this on the laptop prior to publishing online, so I could really think about what I was saying. I may do this for the teaching entries. I’ll have to look at the previous posts and see if I can reduce the categories for the older ones, or find some other way of archiving them.

Lastly, I have been thinking about writing an entry regarding the human/animal embryo research that has just been approved by our government, but not sure what to say about it. It’s a work in progress, like we all are in life.

Now I remember. I’m gonna try and post something each day. See what tripe I come out with by the end of the month. Hopefully it’ll be a useful selection of web development/programming tips, geek advice, mountain biking reports and teaching notes based on my Christian faith. That reminds me, I must re-write my testimony to go on a separate page.

And I’m really tired. I’ve done quite a bit of riding this week, rode some forest trails on Little Skirrid (Ysgyryd Fawr), did a little bit of road before my front disc brakes disintegrated. £18.99 later, I rode the winter circuit of the Sugar Loaf, a nice little combo of road and forest track, with a nice smooth fast downhill. Great. Then I rode the 8.5 miles to my girlfriend’s house, and will have to make the same ride back on Sunday.

It’s been good for me, I feel better for getting out more, riding local hills, even attempting some trials stuff for a laugh. Alongside that, watching the DVD ‘Roam’ by The Collective just makes me think how fantastic it is to ride the local mountains, to see awesome views. God made this planet, He alone created the many hills, with minute attention to detail, and we can come along, ride those said hills, take in the views and marvel at His creation.

A time to laugh and a time to dance - Ecclesiastes 3:4

I laugh. When I make a mistake on the bike (usually at slow speed), I fall off, and I laugh. In my opinion, the quote above may be out of context, but to me it says enjoy other things. People who focus on one thing all the time end up being very miserable, or just people you don’t want at parties.

I do things in church, I am reasonably active, I work hard, I play hard too. Now that summer’s here, I can ride in the evenings. Now my flatmate’s got a bike too, I can take him on the trails, and it encourages each other.

I’m still not sure how much the girlfriend approves of my ‘toy’. But that toy gets me out, helps me enjoy life. If I was boring, what does that show people of my faith in Christ? That Christianity itself is boring? Because I have other interests, and I can be godly in those (I don’t swear when a chain snaps, or I fall off), I can show other people what it’s like. Sure the extra commitment of Church can take time off doing other things, but being in a Church is important. To be with others of like minds, can encourage each other, then go into the world and show them too.

I don’t know of any point as to why I have written this, but it felt a long time since I made a post about my faith for a while. Now, because I’ve written about my bike, I’ve got that scripture for ’some trust in chariots…’ in my mind.

These guys rule the roost with their DVD’s showing the best mountain biking action in the most creative way, using film as the media…

Watch… I can’t wait…

Well, I’m supposed to be teaching in my homegroup tonight. There is a preferred subject, but I’ve had no inspiration about how to go about it. The problem is simple - do a subject I’ve done quite a few times, but differently.

All I have is a sequence of events that I’d like to unfold the session with. However, the actual elements (quotes, stories, questions, practicals) have yet to materialise. Am I panicking?

Yes.

Don’t get me wrong. I like watching movie trailers from www.apple.com/trailers. But this metrics.apple.com just makes it hang. I can leave a page loading for about 10 minutes and still it’s ‘waiting for metrics.apple.com’ If anyone’s got any idea why, or if I can bypass it, please let me know. My system is Ubuntu 7.10, the browser is Firefox 2.0.0.12.

I’ll say I’m a dance music fan. I grew up listening to early 70’s electronic music like Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream, Didier Bocquet, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre. Then I found out about electro - I was fascinated by the concept that electronically generated music could become popular. It did. The rise of house in the late 80’s, with acid house, then moving into the 90’s with techno, then I got into ambient music around 94-95, never looked back. In fact, I have an ambient mix online for download here. I listened to all sorts, catching the wave of early pioneers of IDM like Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, any of the Warp Records posse. I never once professed to liking pop/rock music, although some bands held my attention, like Jansen, Barbieri & Karn (they of Japan fame), Bjork, Kubb, and even Fiona Apple!

Then I experienced Pete Namlook aka Peter Kuhlmann. A one-man record label, producer and produced more albums in one year than most people would in a lifetime. This guy did more for my musical interests than any other. He was a father figure to my view of ambient and electronic music, as he pushed the boundaries, exploring old school Berlin electronics, new wave ambient sounds, dance rhythms, and world music. It was a little hard to get his music though, but that was to change again.

I found the internet. Full of useful information, I trawled resources about creating music. When broadband arrived it brought two important things.

1 - The Creative Commons Licence. Without this, there is no legal way to redistribute music. This license comes in a variety of flavours, and it interested me, as I always stated on my own productions that the music could be copied, as long as my name remained as the creator of that music. I have a personal affinity with the CC license.

2 - The rise of the Netlabels. Netlabels are just that. They release music on the internet, for people to download, using the aforementioned Creative Commons license. My favourite netlabels are listed below :

• Sutemos - a Lithuanian netlabel dedicated to electronica in a variety of forms from, you guessed it - Lithuania. The site is available in english too.
• Laverna - An italian netlabel catering for electronica, with a leaning towards IDM. Pretty good, but not exceptional. Materaelectronics, Transient and D.a.f. are my favourite artists.
• Monohm - a netlabel from Vienna, mainly outputting material from Markus Brosel, who does some excellent ambient piano pieces, but also providing releases from other artists. They even have collaborations with mainstream artists like Vidna Obmana, Asmus Tietchens and Kraftwerk.
• Spheric Lounge - not a netlabel, but an improvisational/gathering/outlet for experimental electronic musings. The gist is this: Musicians gather at a location for a weekend or however long, create ambient noodlings over the weekend, then they are masterered and released on the website. Forthcoming gatherings are posted on the site too. Music varies from the sublime to the ‘why???’, but it’s a dropping in point for me every now and then.

So there you go. An update on my musical voyage. It’s going to continue for a while, what with Christian worship music and hiphop, plus the odd foray into classical tunes. A work in progress.

And look, I got through the whole post without mentioning Sigur Ros!