Beautiful and useful

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”

William Morris

It seems to me that the philosophy of the arts and crafts movement is captured in this article on Subway Architecture (found via the Fast Company weekly). 

I realise that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that for some things function must take priority over form, but if something functional – like a subway/underground station – can be made interesting/beautiful as well, why not?  I’ve certainly enjoyed the emerging variety of stations on the London Underground in recent years.

Do you have a favourite station from the article, or from your own experience?

Fun Theory

I came across this at Steve Roesler's site.

Which got me thinking - if we look at things from a different perspective, how can we apply this sort of approach in work, in church - without trivialising core activities?

The answer, I think, lies in two key elements.

Firstly, ensuring that we don't lose sight of our objective (in this case encouraging people to use the stairs).

Secondly, and probably most importantly, to look at the required activity from the viewpoint of the participants. Lecturing people about the value of using the stairs would have had some impact, engaging them and allowing them to express themselves is clearly much more successful.

How cool is this??

This is such a great idea - I love it. Seems to me like the ideal decor for an office.

By the way - I decided to come back... but you know that already!!

Exist

if God exists


then


what's God like?



Discover



exist.org.uk

The greatest show on Earth?

I wasn’t going to watch it… and I didn’t want to enjoy it.

But I did… and I did.

The opening ceremony from the Beijing Olympics was truly amazing. Against the background of human rights abuse, with the inevitable excessive cost and consumption, and the element of hypocrisy in talking about these as the ‘green’ Olympics, how could I bring myself to watch it?

Well, I’m weak.

I know that I’ll get hooked on the sports action – I always do. So I was determined to resist the opening ceremony. But I was ironing and the cricket had reached the lunch break, so I just switched channels briefly.

I hoped I would hate it – that it would be jingoistic and militaristic in its approach. But it wasn’t.

Credit where credit’s due. The ceremony (before the boring parade of athletes) was a celebration of all that is best in Chinese culture. The achievements of learning and wisdom were highlighted. The scale of the production was awesome. The technical perfection was breath-taking. It was epic. And the Chinese know how to do a fine firework display (or five!). There were too many highlights to list here. If you haven’t seen it, try to find full coverage and sit back and enjoy! (BBC iPlayer is a good option, if you can access it).

coming together

It intrigues me how some ideas take a wee while to come together - and sometimes they arrive in unexpected ways.

A while back I stumbled across the idea of Praying in Color and re-kindled my interest in calligraphy.

Through reading Sybil MacBeth's book, I re-discovered the practice of lectio divina.

Speaking to a friend about calligraphy, I was introduced to Timothy Botts 'Doorposts' (note to self - must remember to return that book!) - a way of combining lectio divina and calligraphy.

More recently That Hideous Man introduced me to Wordle (see example above), which I've been playing with as an alternative to my own calligraphic efforts.

Then tonight I discovered the Jing Project which let's you capture Wordle images in a crisp, clear format.

All in all, a variety of ways to inspire and help my personal spiritual life, and through Nurture Group (at least), hopefully give others something to ponder on.

Pretty cool!

Play

Not much going on in this blog at the moment... but this is worth 2 minutes and 19 seconds of your time!

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/play/audiogallery/soundseen.shtml

Six word memoir

I want to play. I'm voluntarily joining in with Lucy's tag thing! My memoir (at least for today):

Seeing things positively. Still challengingly restless.

Please play - if you want to!

After housegroup

So we meet together every Tuesday night - have a chat, a cup of something, laugh together, study a chunk of the Bible, pray and then go our separate ways. Housegroup - for me the essential building block of the church. Intimacy, support, warmth - ye cannae beat it.

After a long or difficult day at work, it's sometimes hard to make the effort to go - and our group meets in our house! But it's always worth the effort. I may blog more about the significance of housegroups another time.

Tonight I want to briefly mention what I do after housegroup these days. We usually finish at about 10:00 p.m. and I head up to channel hop for half an hour before getting ready for bed etc. No channel hopping now though. It's straight to BBC2 to watch 'Later Live... with Jools Holland'. He presents a truly eclectic mix of music - some brilliant, some garbage. But fast becoming unmissable for me.

This week he introduced me to Melody Gardot - an outstanding young (22 I think) musician from Philadelphia. If you have access to the BBC's iPlayer - stop reading and go and watch it now...

... Are you still here??

If you don't have access you can find some of her stuff on YouTube. I've included a sample below. Enjoy!

A free lunch??

I was intrigued to see that Coldplay are offering their new single as a free download - for the next few days. I guess it highlights the role of the single in the modern music scene, i.e. a tool to promote the album.

The single is called Violet Hill, and it's OK. It's from their soon to be released album called "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends".

I've got no idea what that's about, but since my iTunes library is currently organised by album name there's a weird juxtaposition as Coldplay fade out and Vivaldi's Trumpet Concerto strides in gustily.

I think the 'Viv' will be more enduring, but Violet Hill is growing on me the more I listen to it.

That's two armfuls!!

Aye - I know I've been here before - done the Hancock thing...

But I was back at Blood Suckers tonight -and gave a double helping. Honestly! They've got a new machine thingy that takes the blood out, separates the red cells, then puts the other bits back again. So you end up giving two lots instead of one. Apparently this is better for the ultimate recipient - to get two units from one person, rather than getting them from different people.

So they asked a bunch of guys who arrived at the same time as me if we fancied it - the rest opted for the dull, traditional way. But I wanted to give it a whirl. (My reckless side surfacing again!)

And I got to jump the queue!

And I got a lot of attention from two young women in uniform!

It also means that you have to wait 6 months between donations - but over a year you give a bit more than through the traditional method.

How cool is that?

There are limits as to who can do it - well, they don't want any common old blood! Actually, that is what they want - blood groups O and A; and there are height and weight issues, and blood iron levels. But if you get a chance - go on it's easy.

And as ever, I had the traditional Tunnock's tea cake afterwards - you cannae beat it! (When did they start doing plain choclate tea cakes?)

For Boris

This one's for Boris - almost certainly the youngest person to comment on my blog, and probably the most perceptive (see comment on These young people should be headline news)!

How cool is that!

Ya beauty-y-y-y!!!!!

How good was that?

Awesome or what?

Passionate and gutsy - aye, we expect that!

Clever tactics, clinically executed - that's new, but very welcome.

In case you haven't guessed I'm talking about today's rugby:

Scotland 15 - England 9

Epic!!!

I'm going to lie down somewhere now to calm down a bit.

Cool classics

I’ve just discovered My Classic FM. You can choose from a range of music streams – smooth classics, opera, baroque etc – to suit your mood. Then you can rate individual composers and pieces of music, so that the music played is tailored to your preferences. You can even ban some music altogether.

Of course, you can still listen to Classic FM in its traditional format – for a slightly more random selection.

Is this another example of Web 2.0? Now if only we could get our broadband connection sorted out to give us more reliable performance!

electric macca

From the ridiculous to the sublime?

Last night The Ramones, tonight Paul McCartney!

I'm listening to the Electric Proms concert from last night - and it's brilliant. From the tender beauty of 'Here Today', to the rockiness of 'Back in the USSR'. Not bad for a bloke who's about 108!

Dolly D doesn't get it, but if you have more discernment and wisdom do yourself a favour - make a cup of good coffee, maybe with a bit of home-made tablet (thanks Dolly) and sit back for an hour and a half listening/watching online.

It's good!! And if you want more, the Kaisers and a host of others to come.

Feel the vibe

This marks a half-century - my 50th blog entry. Not overly impressive, but worth noting in a minor sort of way.

Dolly Daydream (my teenage daughter) introduced me to Netvibes recently. What a cool thing! You can organise most (though not all) of the websites, blogs etc that you visit. You can get news updates and any other RSS type feeds from the Net. Maybe I'm the last person on the InterWeb to catch on to this (which wouldn't come as a surprise to Dolly D!). But if you haven't come across it yet - have a look.

Normal blogging service will resume shortly (when I have more than 5 minutes to spare!).