Wikipedia article on Wood is edited/vandalised to conform to the comic’s satirical content, adding a section on “Wood in Popular Culture”.
Changes are reverted, and administrators decide to limit changes to the article.
Discussion begins on article’s Talk page concerning the events, at which point the following is written:
User 1: Shouldn’t it be “Wood in poplar culture”?
User 2: It should, but we’ll just have to be content with the fact that there’s now a protection log for the article.
This not only says something about the popular culture of the internet, but also something about me, given that I read the comic and assumed that this exact sequence of events would happen, so headed over to Wikipedia hoping to make a blog entry out of what I found on the Talk page…
(In other news, I have a job, but still no laptop. Also, I’m cooking prawns for supper. It turns out raw prawns aren’t pink. It occurs to me this should have been my assumption.)
Following from last time, I can report that “grace” has increased its importance (in Google’s eyes at least) on this website. Unfortunately, while my top three important words remain at “God”, “Matthew” and “Christian”, it seems “joy” has been kicked off the fourth spot (no longer in the top 100 either!) by the word “work”. Luckily of course this shows the trend into more entries about work, careers, calling etc. and not any profound point (just in case I’m misunderstood!).
Radiohead were amazing in concert last night, playing Everything In Its Right Place, Idioteque, Planet Telex, Pyramid Song, How To Disappear Completely and Cymbal Rush (!) amongst other amazing tracks (The Gloaming had never sounded so good!), and we managed to make it home shortly after two despite having to walk from Oxford city centre.
Currently reading: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, and The Shadow and Night by Chris Walley (in preparation for The Infinite Day).
Currently listening: Cymbal Rush by Thom Yorke (played on piano at the gig last night!) has finished; now Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring; earlier, our own covers of Disney songs, jazz standards, Muse and Coldplay.
Currently watching:
The Count of Monte Cristo is so far an amazing book; I’ve been reading it for three days now (it’s quite long) and it’s still gripping (despite knowing overall what happens, having seen the film) and generally fascinating. I may write more once I’ve finished it. It’s taken me a long time to start on these kind of books*, and now I’ve started I plan to continue.
* As to what I mean by “these kind of books”, I’m not really sure. Great novels of the past? Works that require use of a dictionary, or a passing knowledge of Latin? Books likely to contain a scholarly forward and possibly historical notes in an appendix? (Books likely to be known only as a modern film to the majority of the populace, who probably won’t even have heard of the author? Books that, once you’ve read, you end up feeling superior to those who haven’t? Hopefully not the latter, but already the temptation is there…)
Not only have I been busy trying to cram everything into the end of term, I’ve also not had a computer due to an accident some weeks ago at one in the morning involving my bicycle, velcro, and the side of a pavement. All my careful plans for interesting entries went out of the window.
In lieu of further entries now I’m at home for the week and still haven’t unpacked, here’s a scribble I found on a scrap of paper while packing up my room two days ago.
Do we have too low a view of God’s sovereignty that says “people need to hear the Gospel, therefore I must give up everything and go, otherwise I’m thwarting his purposes”?
I can’t remember writing it, and have thought through these things a lot more since, but it’s an interesting thought nonetheless.
“During the flight I saw for the first time with my own eyes the earth’s spherical shape” – Major Yuri Gagarin: 13th April 1961
See her then swing through space, another moon
Wrapped in a shining singleness, an Earth
That no division knows nor count of time,
Nor name for war and peace, dying and birth:
See her with mountains, but no barriers,
Countries, but countries by no owner claimed,
Continents linked in passionless embrace
Neither by greeds nor loyalties inflamed.
If such the bright impersonal wanderer –
No guarded frontiers, no jealous dates –
Such too the unknown Earth on which we walk,
Hid by our map of human loves and hates.
George Rostrevor Hamilton
Terra incognita, a setting of the above poem, was my final project for studio composition this year. The brief merely stated that some form of live electronics be used; I used a vocoder to process the (spoken) voice with a synthesiser. It’s not perfect: the copy of the poem I used to record the text had an extra “d” after “an” in the second line (so yes, I do say “and Earth” by mistake), and the drum parts start off pretty bland and really should have had more work done on them. Apart from those minor points, I was reasonably pleased with this – particularly as the majority of it was done within 24 hours! It’s quite stereotypical of a particular genre – nothing groundbreaking, but at least it’s listenable to (I think).
So, I’ve been quite busy recently with coursework and my exam, but that’s now all out of the way. To celebrate, I went to visit my brother for the weekend, and got to go to the church my family attended until I was almost four. Walking down the corridors outside the main hall, I realised the last time I’d probably been there I’d have been very small, probably running and causing chaos. I then met the son of a couple who’d used to look after me when I was causing said chaos. It was a great weekend, and really interesting from the point of view of seeing how a different Christian Union ran their meetings as well.
Now I’m back with supposedly nothing to do (other than find a job, organise music for the CU, read the books I’ve been trying to do for weeks etc.) I’ve got a few entries planned that will hopefully be forthcoming…
Oh, and you can have a listen to my final coursework project for the year, but I’ll post that separately.
“I don’t know much about what people call the religious view of life,” said Ransom, wrinkling his brow. “You see, I’m a Christian.”
I’m just starting the second volume of C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. The second book was described by Sara yesterday as full of conversations about philosophy, so “just your kind of book then”. The first book (Out of the Silent Planet) was excellent, and the second (Perelandra) is shaping up to be just as good. Mind-twisting in places – so my kind of book, then. Definitely worth reading!
UCCF have just put a video they showed at New Word Alive up on Youtube, so for those who weren’t there or aren’t students, here it is!
I’ve read a few of them and it seems an excellent selection. Delighting in the Trinity and Let the nations be glad! are on my to-read list.
Sam Allberry posted a list entitled “You know you’re an Ebbe’s student when…” back in 2006, which I’ve just discovered. Favourites of mine (which are more widely true, I’d say!) include:
You can’t remember the last time you asked a Christian “How are you?”. “Are you well?” is the only appropriate enquiry.
Now Google has search analysis tools as well, and so I can inform the world that in Googlebot’s humble opinion, the four most important words on this website are:
God
Matthew
Christian
Joy
Grace clocks in at #17 – should probably work on that.
Just because it’s been a few years since participating in a meme, and because this one’s actually interesting, here’s what I think it’d be great to see at New Word Alive 2009, focusing on seminar tracks and morning sessions. (For those who didn’t go, there were morning options and afternoon seminars as well as evening meetings; the morning options were slightly longer with less interaction.)
Following from my latest entry, I think the issue of God’s common grace to humanity, including stuff about secular careers, the comparative importance of cultural development given the Great Commission of Matthew 28, and other related issues would be a great topic to look at – not just because I’m trying to figure it out but because other people must be too. Julian Hardyman’s probably the man for this. On a not-entirely-unrelated issue, “Our Missionary God” would be a great topic – get Chris Wright to do it, and make it one of the morning options.
While I’m slightly biased, a series on “Music in the church” run by Bob Kauflin and Richard Simpkin would be great, if unlikely. I reckon something like “Francis Schaeffer for the Stupid” might help me finally finish reading The God Who Is There. Seriously though, Schaeffer’s engagement with culture and philosophy was to a far greater and higher extent than anyone seems to bother with today, and so maybe a track on “how to be a Christian in our culture” or something similar would be good.
Following on from Hugh, using the rationale that if lots of people write on the same topic they might print one, I’ve written a letter to the editor of EN about an article in the last issue.
Dear Sir,
I much appreciate Josh Moody’s “Letter from America”, but in your latest issue (April 2008) he seems to have written about the Mark Driscoll of many years ago. Moody critiques the Mars Hill pastor for “colourful language”, something that may have been true years ago but I have never come across in recent times. The epithet “Mark the Cussing Pastor” was coined in a book (Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller) published five years ago. Since then, Driscoll has matured, has received mentoring from men such as John Piper in this area, and has repented of many failures in a recent sermon on humility.
As Moody says, Driscoll’s ministry is to Seattle, one of the most secular areas of America. As such, he encourages his church to “go as far into the culture without sinning as they possibly can”. Perhaps there have been occasions when they have gone too far, but it seems that Driscoll is aware of the dangers. He is clear in his teaching that Christians need to be distinctive, but that we cannot withdraw completely. My understanding is that he and Mars Hill Church have come a long way in getting the balance right over the last few years. They’re not perfect, but they are ever improving!
Yours faithfully,
Matthew Weston
For those who don’t know him and don’t want to read Hugh’s entry or the EN article, Mark Driscoll is the pastor of Mars Hill Church, Seattle, a large church in a reasonably anti-Christian city. To engage with the city, Driscoll and his church have been involved in some ventures that more culturally conservative Christians have considered unwise. I’m not really in a position to comment on specifics, but my impression (mainly gleaned from Hugh, but also from what I’ve heard in his talks personally) is that he’s generally on the right side of engaging with the culture without compromising. The problem is that we’re from a very different culture to Seattle (as is Josh Moody, the columnist – he’s a Brit who lives in Connecticut) so it’s hard to assess from the outside.
Driscoll is a challenge to me, because I’m very good at either withdrawing completely, or compromising, when it comes to engaging with culture. I need to get better.
Thought it was probably time for something slightly less serious. I’ve recently been reading my way through the manual for Logic Pro. Yes, this doesn’t sound like the most interesting thing to be doing, or indeed the best way to learn how to use the program. The idea behind it is that this way I get to figure out exactly what Logic can do (as a newcomer to the program, I don’t know the extent of its features), so that when I’m using it and want to figure out how to do it, I know it’s possible and even where to look for help. So far, it’s been very useful. Occasionally, though, you get little comic interludes in the text which help lighten things up.
In the section on time-stretching:
You can make an audio region play at half-speed by stretching it to twice the original
length, or at double-speed by shortening it to half the original length. Great for Darth
Vader or Munchkin impressions.
In the project management chapter:
If you have made some really serious blunders (as unlikely as that may be), or you
decide that in the 15 minutes since you last saved, your creative efforts have resulted in
material too unpleasant to describe politely, you may find the Revert to Saved
function very helpful.
Talking of the problems with having only one MIDI output:
Each MIDI tone generator will play the incoming data with the sound assigned to channel 1, which may be:
Bagpipes on module 1
A drumkit on module 2
A helicopter effect on module 3 and so on
While this would be colorful, it would hardly be musical, unless your tastes lean
towards the avante-garde.
Thought I’d show a little of what I’m actually doing with my degree. This is a piece of music I wrote this week – and when I say this week, I mean that I started writing it on Tuesday and have only had eight or so hours to work on it. The recording isn’t great, it’s quite stylised, the timpani sounds even more out of tune than normal and the ending is pretty rubbish. All that said, I was reasonably happy with it.
The piece is called “Dentetsuteki Kawa”, which was my attempt at translating “Legendary River” into Japanese, using a combination of Google Translate and Wikipedia. Don’t ask how I got the name, because I’ve since forgotten and Google Translate tells me my name doesn’t make sense. So if someone can transliterate (into Romaji) “伝説の川” I would be most grateful. Until then, this name sticks. (The last bit is “no kawa”, I know that much.)
Edit: The piece is now officially called “Densetsu no Kawa”, and I’ll edit the score to reflect that once I get a chance. MP3 file updated.
(This is part one of a series exploring whether it’s better to keep updating a blog while expending no effort, or not update a blog. Come back soon for part two!)
Somehow appropriate for the final lecture of the first year, we watched a video of a robotic bagpipe player. (With apologies for the bad pun of the title.)
Today, I wrote the phrase “sublimity not beauty”1 in an essay. Just as I’d finished typing, Supermassive Black Hole by Muse came on. I’m not quite sure what comment to make. From the sublime to the ridiculous, perhaps?
It often takes a few months for new people to filter through into dreams. I remember it wasn’t until a month or so into my Japan trip that I started dreaming about the people I was with there. Similarly, uni people don’t seem to feature much in my dreams – except once, where I managed to save a guy I know from falling into an infinite vortex, or something. (I don’t normally dream about infinite vortexes, or whatever the correct plural is. This also surprised me.)
At the main CU meeting on Thursday, some of the hall CU leaders were asked to give an advert for the CU trip to Word Alive:
This song features Harry on guitar, then vocalists Will, Paul and Dave from left to right. (Will and Paul are my hall CU leaders, Dave and Harry help run other hall CUs.)
Oh, and directly after this, I had to give the reading.
