Audience of One

South Site CU talk

Today I gave my first talk at the South Site CU. Mim, the sixth form organiser of the CU, was slightly disorganised about it and asked me almost exactly a week beforehand whether I’d do the talk. (Actually, she mentioned that next week’s talk was on worship, and I assumed she was telling me because I’d said I wanted to do that talk and so said I’d do it. She was slightly surprised but pleased – one less talk for her to do.)

So, worship. What first comes into your mind when you hear that word? If you’re not of the “Christian scene”, it might bring to mind tribespeople bowing to a totem pole/stone head/shaman (or that might just be me playing too much Populous in the past), or the Temple scene from the Indiana Jones film. Some might immediately think of singing in church. Some of the more enlightened among you might recognise that the name of this website comes from the biblical concept of worship.

What worship is will probably be elaborated on in a future entry. As for the talk, all the guys were intent and some surprised me with the perception of their answers. It made me realise how fast time actually passes when you’re talking – I thought I had at most ten minutes (and that was at the outside). I took about fifteen minutes, and that was with trying to wrap it up quickly because I knew I’d gone on for about as long as their attention spans could last.

I touched on what some see as a controversial issue by suggesting that calling singing in church worship was unhelpful. I was almost surprised when Mim congratulated me on an excellent talk afterwards. Either she was convinced (at least partially), was just ignoring that particular section, or she’s just a diplomatic leader who will never ask me to give a talk ever again due to abusing my authority to inject propaganda into young minds. I’ll probably have a chat to her about it at some point.

One of the things I noticed about the way I give talks is that I use the word “yeah” a lot and repeat myself.

So yeah, we worship God because of what he’s done for us on the cross; because Jesus died for us we respond by, yeah, worshiping God, and giving our lives for him; it’s our response to all the amazing things God’s done.

Okay, so it’s not quite repeating myself but I’ve said the same thing in three different ways. And there’s a lot more yeahs than there should be. But never mind.

All in all, it was quite enjoyable, both in preparing and giving the talk. It was also encouraging to be so well received. Hopefully I didn’t bore everyone and they were just being polite.

Currently listening to Saving – Thirteen Senses

Matthew @ 17:42, February 28, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (6)

“The most comfortable sock in the world”?

The Men’s Total Comfort Sock is the latest in the range of high performance footwear from popular high street retailer Marks & Spencer. The packaging talks of a a “cushioned sole” and a “comfort toe seam to reduce abrasion”, as well as mentioned “soft gripping Lycra fabric that moulds to the contours of the leg”. This is, apparently, a sock for comfort lovers – and not only that, durable. Are these claims reliable, however? Is this a sock that you should be spending your cash on? Does it live up to the high standards it sets for itself? I put the socks through a series of tests to answer these questions.

Comfort

Firstly, was the sock “the most comfortable sock in the world”, as claimed by a sticker on the packaging? As trying on every single sock in the world to answer this question would be a stretch of my limited resources, I decided to content myself with an average. Spending the best part of Saturday trying on different socks, I ranked each type on three factors:

• Cushioning
• Stretch
• The ‘tingle factor’

As the sock connoisseurs among you no doubt know, cushioning is the defining factor in your sock experience, yet by itself cannot provide the whole experience. I felt my foot to be excellently cushioned by the majority of socks I tried on, including the Total Comfort Sock. On then, to stretch.

The ability of a sock to stretch is measured by the following formula:

where x is equal to foot size (European measurement), k is the decimal value of the sock colour using standard RGB notation, w is the weight in kilograms the sock can hold inside before breaking, and y is the value of stretch ability in Newtons. This test knocked out the majority of socks tested (who broke after a mere five kilograms), but the TCS achieved a record value of 23.4N – truly remarkable.

The final factor is, of course, the ‘tingle factor’, and here the TCS really showed its colours (though only coming in shades of grey). When first sliding the socks on, I couldn’t feel my feet. Then tiny sensations started trickling up my legs, like melting ice trickling down your neck – only pleasant. It was a magical experience, and couldn’t be mimicked by any of the others (even the fantastic Homer Simpson Christmas socks from three years ago – maybe the gaping hole from the stretch test gave them a disadvantage).

After these tests, there was no doubt that the TCSs were as they claimed to be with regards to comfort.

Durability

The modern sock has to put up with many things, from being chewed by toddlers to being stuffed with presents by Father Christmas (stockings are so twentieth century…), so I put the top three ranked socks through the three vital tests.

Lactose/Citrus Resistance

As any normal five year old will tell you, bottles are there to have things stuffed in. My first job, then, was to test how well the socks resisted the effects of orange squash and milk (though not, fortunately, at the same time – five year olds aren’t that disgusting). I left a sock in each of the respective containers for a set amount of time (the average time between a distracted parent seeing the sock in the bottle and retrieving it), soaked it in water for five minutes, then smelt the sock to detect any remaining liquid.

It appears that, the comfier the sock, the most absorbant the fabric is. The TCS scored lowest on this test – in fact, the smell of the liquids stayed around for so long with the TCS that the orange-soaked sock smelt like milk. An abject failure, then, for durability in this area.

Marathon Run

As I write this, two friends of mine have just come in through the door, carrying a former friend between them. They have just run a marathon with no shoes to test their socks. The former friend in the middle collapsed after twenty miles when his TCSs finally wore through. The two other types of sock were fine, and their wearers carried my bloody-footed volunteer for the remaining six. Again, a complete failure for the TCS brand, and a loss of a friend for me. The things I do for an objective and complete review.

The Labour Party Speech

The final test is to see whether the socks on trial can last through a speech by a member of the Labour party (the higher up, the better). Luckily, the Oxford Town Hall had a Labour delegation this morning, and I turned up, kitted out in three pairs of socks.

Upon waking up in the uncomfortabe seat to find the speeches over and everyone gone home, I checked my footwear, only to discover that, left open to the air, all three pairs of socks had deteriorated under the hot air from the orators. No better nor worse than each other, then.

Summary

The Total Comfort Sock aspires to be the sock for the discerning modern man. Under careful scrutiny, I have found that, while extremely comfortable, the durability of this sock leaves something to be desired. I give the TCS a 7 out of 10.

Currently listening to He Woke Me Up Again – Sufjan Stevens

Matthew @ 14:53, February 27, 2005 to Reviews | Permalink | Comments (4)

One week on...

It was a week ago that I released Audience of One to the public. Since then, I’ve climbed the Google rankings to fourth if you search for Matthew Weston, and around the same if you search for Audience of One. I’ve managed to post an entry every single day except for one (which I doubt I can keep up, but is encouraging nevertheless). I’ve received an email about the design (apparently the writer doesn’t like Courier New, but I’ve lost the file I used to create the header image so could do nothing about this even if I wanted to).

One week on, does anyone have any comments to make? Any particular kinds of entries you’d like to see written? What do you think of the non-blog sections? Have you even looked at them?

I’m hoping that in the future this site will have an increased readership – partially from searches throwing up past entries, but also because people find the content interesting enough to tell their friends. Of course, not everyone reads blogs, but if you know someone who does, please let them know about this site if you think it’d interest them.

</pleading>.

So it’s been a week already. I’m looking forward to writing next week’s entries :)

Matthew @ 12:21, February 26, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (3)

You know you're getting geekier when...

Last night, I dreamt that the comments listing on this site had suddenly decided to alternate between yellow and purple, with slowly changing one pixel borders when you held your mouse over a particular comment. I woke up shivering, then realised what I was doing – and shivered again at what was happening to me.

I was rather relieved coming back here this morning to find the site absolutely fine…

Matthew @ 11:15, February 25, 2005 to Geek | Permalink | Comments (0)

Acoustic Aid

Last night was the student-run Acoustic Aid concert – a misnomer if ever there was one due to the number of amps at the front of the “stage”. To be fair, I’m just being pedantic. The music wasn’t loud and was played on almost entirely electroacoustic instruments. Ironically, the one truly acoustic band (mine) were the loudest act due to two saxophones and a drum kit.

Walking down the darkened music department corridor (newly equipped with Santa’s-grotto-esque lights), the first thing that greeted you was a mass of students running around, trying to organise everything for the arrival of the first audience members. Accosted by the organiser with a terse “are you playing?”, I replied in the affirmative and was ushered into the venue.

Dazzling lights rotated around the larger music room, occasionally shining in your eyes so that spots appeared. Projected onto the wall were pictures of Bolivian street children in a Powerpoint slideshow. The charity we were raising money for had its name poster-painted to a sheet on the wall: “Acoustic Aid for Arco Iris”. Food being sold at the back included soya cakes and fair trade chocolate brownies (with some Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and Smarties slightly out of place underneath the “Fairtrade” sign). “It’s starting in five minutes and there’s no-one here!” One of the team running it started to panic, forgetting that to North Oxford citizens, 6.30pm means “turn up at 6.45, or 7 if you really can’t be bothered”.

To fill time while waiting for more people to arrive, I offered my musical services and played through a couple of songs on the piano as people were arriving. The “stage” was one end of the room sectioned off by a row of amplifiers (none too big to step over), and was carpeted with jack and mic cables. One particularly bright white light seemed to be directed at the piano stool, so I closed my eyes as I played – apparently it makes you look cool, but I just wanted to see afterwards.

The evening started at seven, as the most North Oxford influenced audience members turned up. The music of the evening was mainly guitar based, but one girl did a Nina Simone cover on the piano near the beginning, as well as her own composition. Talking to her later, I heard she was “angry” I hadn’t had my own solo slot and was just playing in the breaks.

The organisation was shambolic, but in some ways that made the evening more enjoyable. At recitals I’ve been to in the same room, the pressure is really on to play perfectly. The environment last night – with moody, moving lights and slightly disorganised rows of chairs – led itself to a much more relaxed evening. When two performers broke off halfway into their set to tune a new guitar and find a cable that worked (about a three minute delay) it was natural for the audience just to talk among themselves for a bit, and the response after the song was not muted one bit.

I was playing second to last with my band – this time with the addition of Ling, a singer, for two songs. We started with the most depressing song ever (you think Radiohead are depressing? Try “Gloomy Sunday”) – or at least up there with other depressing greats – and followed it by an upbeat blues (don’t you love oxymorons?). To finish off, we jammed around a riff apparently composed “while stoned in the south of France” – the sort of thing that distinguishes those who really like jazz from those who think Jamie Cullum/Amy Winehouse are fit.

The evening rounded off with a set from Ben and Joe, two year twelves I know. Ben was the compere of the evening and has an idiosyncratic compositional and organisational style (he achieved fame in last year’s talent contest for his song “Leonard the Laminator”, and just before starting one song, he called out into the audience to try and persuade someone to drum for him). Their set epitomised the slightly disorganised sprawl of the evening, as well as the standard of music – the quality seemed only dimmed by the slightly poor PA setup.

The evening appeared successful in terms of turn-out and music, but as with all such events, the success is down to how effective it was at its real purpose – in this case fundraising. Good music’s obviously good, but if you fail at your real purpose you might as well not do it.

Currently listening to Bedshaped – Keane.

Matthew @ 08:54, February 24, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just slightly sleepy...

So Chemistry was cancelled first thing, and I used the opportunity to do the Chemistry work I hadn’t done yesterday. Next free period, I started work on a talk for the south site CU. Music involved a lot of thinking, for which I almost nodded off. I spent lunch at the north site CU (north site being my site, south site being the younger ones), followed by essays in Music Tech and then coursework. I almost fell asleep in the recording studio.

I was ill for most of half term – a useful illness in that, though rather unpleasant to start with, its main symptoms by the end of the week were fatigue. My parents wanted me to rest so that I could throw it off. This meant no schoolwork, and plenty of time to work on the less-energetic Audience of One. It’s because of the illness that this site is currently up.

It seems to be hanging on, though, and draining me out completely. I heard today that, based on my lack of work over half term and rather dazed appearance, my Chemistry teacher had told me (via a classmate) to “put my act together”.

It’s sometimes hard to know when I need to relax or when I need to ignore the tiredness and work. Today I chose to sleep. Tomorrow I will no doubt regret it.

Matthew @ 20:04, February 22, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who is the church for?

My cousin Mark wrote recently of the purpose of church meetings. From his knowledge of the Bible he cannot see that church meetings should have evangelism as their main purpose.

In response to his entry, I’ll talk first about evangelism. The word comes from the Greek word “evangel”, which means “good news”. Evangelism is therefore defined as “bringing the good news”. Christians believe that non-Christians fall under God’s righteous judgement; they also believe that there’s a way out. That is the good news which Christians are commanded to “bring”, or “tell” to others (Matthew 28:18-20.)

One of the current trends of a lot of churches is to give “seeker-sensitive” services – in other words, to create services that are comfortable to non-Christians, or services that are specifically aimed at non-Christians. The services may have shorter talks to stop people switching off; they might hand doughnuts around afterwards; they might have really modern-sounding music, or snazzy technical effects and visual aids.

While there’s nothing wrong in any of these things per se, what happens is that it is these things that end up attracting people. The Bible teaches though that it’s the gospel (the good news) that wins people for Christ; it’s the good news about Jesus that leads to people becoming Christians. In a way, this should be obvious. A lot of Christians seem to be embarrassed by the gospel though; it’s almost as if they’re tricking people into turning to Christ by neglecting the hard parts of the Christian message. Telling people they’re doomed – tactfully – is hard (yelling “you’re all going to hell!” generally isn’t effective, even though Christians would hold it to be true…). It’s not something we can gloss over though, and if we believe in the gospel then we should believe in its power to change people’s lives.

Back to church services. Setting aside a particular side of service (or creating a particular kind of church) to be particularly “seeker-sensitive” suggests that we have something to be ashamed of in our normal services. It’s almost as if we’re hiding something. Could it be the message of judgement? No, even that seems to have left many normal church services. People don’t like it – even Christians.

We have nothing to be ashamed of in our church services – or rather, we should have nothing to be ashamed of. If a friend is interested in Christianity yet you don’t want to invite them to a church service because it might “weird them out”, maybe there’s something wrong with your church service.

Every church service should be seeker-sensitive. That doesn’t mean that every talk or sermon should be aimed at the non-Christian – far from it. If an A level student goes into a university lecture to see what it’s like, he doesn’t want the content or approach changed just because he’s there. He wants to see what it’s really like; what the students really do.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for evangelistic events. Evangelistic events have their place; the apostle Paul speaks evangelistically on many occasions, for example. Where are evangelistic events without the gospel though? Often we only hear it watered down in seeker-sensitive services – somehow “made more attractive” for those who don’t want to hear about their eternal destination.

So who is the church for? Mark quotes William Temple, the Archbishop of Cantebury at the time of the Second World War, who says “church is the only organisation that exists for sake of its non-members”. While possibly not the only organisation that does this (and theologically not even an organisation), it is otherwise true. One of the purposes of the church (Christians as a collective body) is to tell others about Jesus. That is just one of the purposes though, and certainly doesn’t refer to the church meeting. As Mark rightly says, church meetings in the New Testament are for the purpose of building up and encouraging each other (Hebrews 10:24-25 for example). The major growth of the church seems to be caused not by non-Christians coming along to meetings that were specifically designed for them. The growth seems to come from Christians, fired up for God, telling others the gospel. Why were they fired up? They were encouraged by each other and by the word of God. This is the centre of meeting together as Christians. While the church is for the non-believers in that it encourages believers in evangelism, it is mainly for Christians. Churches (as collections of Christians, rather than the church as a whole) can certainly evangelise – but not at the expense of neglecting to teach and encourage those who already believe.

Matthew @ 17:27, February 21, 2005 to Discussions | Permalink | Comments (6)

Get off to a good start

I thought, seeing as I’ve just re-released my weblog, I should probably write an entry pretty promptly. I mean, the welcome entry doesn’t really count, and the first ABC is a regular feature.

So I sat down, and tried to decide what to write.

I’ve recently subscribed to the BBC’s news feeds for Science, Nature and Technology. I started to read through some of the interesting ones, and thought about writing about them here.

It’s the first entry, though! I can’t just pick a random story, however relevant, and discuss that here for the first entry…

How about finding an interesting blog article somewhere, then? My cousin Sparticus has written an interesting discussion about seeker sensitive churches and evangelistic events. I have enough to say in response to warrant an entry here. After all, that’s one of the great things about weblogs: discussions can take place across different websites, and bring information and arguments to a wider audience.

It is my first entry, though. However interesting this might be to write about in the future, I have to do something special for my first entry…

I could review a little-known book and give it a wider audience; I could even write a short story, or post one I’ve written in the past that no-one’s ever seen; I could post a fantastic photo I took the other day. I could do many things.

None, I felt, were appropriate for my first entry.

So instead I wrote this.

I could finish off this entry with a moral about how so often we ignore all the “pretty good” options, waiting for the “excellent” option, and end up being left with the “just about okay” or “poor” option because we’ve missed our chance – but it’s the first entry, so I won’t.

Matthew @ 10:07, February 20, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (2)

A is for Author

For as long as I can remember I’ve been writing stories. I remember when I was five or six being taught about speech marks for the first time and not understanding the point. I grew up wanting to write a novel, a desire now countered with realism (I’m not especially good at writing fiction) but still present. My love of creative writing led me to take English at AS level, as a third of the subject was original writing. However, writing about why I’d written something a particular way didn’t come naturally to me and I missed the top A grade because of it.

I’ve also been writing for the internet for almost as long as I’ve been using it. Writing online can be very different from writing anywhere else; then again, it can be very similar. There is no real equivalent of the weblog away from the internet, but weblogs can include the same kind of writing as newspaper columnists, for example. I tend not to classify weblogs on the fiction–non-fiction scale – they can be both, even within one entry. As a weblog author, I try to get a mix.

If I ever write a book it’s much more likely to be non-fiction than fiction; I find writing fiction more enjoyable though. The freedom to create characters how you want, to build up a picture of them in so many different ways; using words to convey subtext or explicit meaning or both; there are so many things to enjoy in writing fiction that I wish I had more ideas for stories. Maybe it’s busyness that keeps them from me, I don’t know. Writing stories is a fantastic feeling. I’d love to have the time just to think and write, but somehow I doubt that even with the time I’d write anything good. It’ll stay a dream, though.

Matthew @ 20:29, February 19, 2005 to ABC | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome to Audience of One!

After over a year in development (though not active development), the new incarnation of my weblog is finally open to the public. I’m still calling it a beta, as I’m sure there’ll still be problems around, so please get in touch if you find any. Hopefully the site should be useable though.

The menu on the right holds links to various different sections; I’d especially like to point your attention to about the design for information on why your browser might not be able to cope fully with this site, as well as the history page so that you know what’s happened to the old stuff.

At the top of the menu you can find a category list, albeit one looking remarkably sparse at the moment. As I add more entries and add more categories, this will grow over time. For now, I’d like to mention the ABC category – one in which I’ll add autobiographical entries based on adjectives beginning with all the letters of the alphabet. (I’m still struggling with K and V, but there’s a good few weeks before I have to write them.)

It’s more than two years ago that I started “Matt’s Diary”, and I’ve learnt and discovered rather a lot over those years. Firstly, I’ve discovered that I much prefer Matthew to Matt. Secondly, I’ve learnt loads about standards-compliant web design. Thirdly, I’ve grown up – but that’s getting far too personal for an introductory entry. I’ve learnt about why I blog and why I read blogs. It’s all to do with opinions.

So please: give me yours. It’s what blogging is all about.

Happy reading :)

Matthew @ 20:28, February 19, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (4)