At the moment it is on the free hosting that comes with my brother’s broadband connection (a throwback to being in Antrim!). I had hoped I could move it to Biglobe’s space but it doesn’t support php or DBs unfortunately.
I can buy a package from F2S for £25/year and flat3d.net for £12/year (or flat3d.co.uk for £7.50/year, but that doesn’t seem to be right when I am in Japan!)

The space is pretty minimal (200mb w/10mb database) but it is the same as I am working with now…
Can anyone suggest a decent host (not too pricey and supporting php/providing db)?

answers on a postcard… or just comment below…

Sapporo Snow Festival 2009

You can see some pretty awesome snow sculptures at the festival!  I got to go twice, once during the daytime on Saturday, then again on Tuesday evening with Alex, but a mix up in meeting and communications meant I didn’t meet Alex in the end, but still got to see a few of the sculptures all lit up…  The ice ones look much better by night!

Last Wednesday, a Public Holiday here in Japan, a Singaporean student at the language centre (Wan Jee) arranged for us to go to a Singaporean buffet-banquet at a hotel in Otaru.  It was delicious and we all ate far too much!  I had to leave slightly earlier than the others to prepare to give a speech on Friday morning.  The others went to the Otaru candle light festival in the evening.  My speech went well on Friday, it was all about electrocuting myself when I was little.  We have to do speeches each time we finish a section of the course in front of all of the students and teachers at the centre!

Then just the other day my internet began working!  The NTT (Japanese equivalent of BT) came and put in the line a couple of weeks ago, but it took Biglobe (my provider) a little longer to get it up and running.  The line is an optic fibre link to the exchange which promises a maximum ability of 100Mbps, but in reality it is giving 12-15Mbps downstream and almost as much upstream at the moment…  Which isn’t the 100Mbps, but still isn’t bad for a consistent connection speed.

The final bit of news is I am on Twitter!  If you are on twitter you can follow me at flat3d, I’d love to follow you too…  I’m building up my links (it’s all about the links…)
For those who aren’t or don’t know what it is, it is a bit like facebook’s status updates, but made viable.  In reality it seems to be a bit more like one huge chatroom, with a whole lot of conversations going on at once, the nice thing is it sort of tunes in your friends and tunes out everyone else, so you can follow conversations.  It’s also possible to use it to simply let people know what you are upto, which might sound pretty dull or dim, but I like the idea that I can communicate daily life to folk and friends at home.

The big surprise for me is that it is actually pretty big in Japan.  It seems to be filling (bridging?) a gap between the all out geekiness of IRC (internet chat) and the more mainstream social users of Mixi (sort of Japan’s answer to myspace or facebook…)  At the moment I am much to illiterate to make much use of it in Japanese, but as I learn more hopefully it will be a valuable resource in learning about the tech world/culture in Japan and even help me with studying the language!

I will sometime link it into the site here, a twitter updates jobby or something, but I am not sure the best way to do it yet, or even if it is actually worthwhile…  Some more thought required I guess…

But to go back to the top, 懐かしい (natsukashii) or “nostalgic.” I experienced this very feeling this evening as I was having a jeffries in iTunes and came across Today FM’s Ray D’Arcy show podcast. Now those of a similar ilk to me will remember Ray presenting Den TV on Network 2 (RTE) every afternoon after school, like RTE’s CBBC, featuring young stars such as Zig and Zag and Dustin the Turkey…
Well of course I signed up to see what the guy was up to these days and to my suprise (and delight) I was joining in just after a whole show devoted to Den TV!
If you remember Den TV and all the stuff on it, you might want to head over to Today FM’s pages and check out the episode…

Anyways! Yes it is nearly Christmas!!!
I have been thinking about Christmas quite a bit this year.  I had a Christmas party in October at Steve and Emma’s place, organised by my friends in good ol’ Norn Iron.  Then in Singapore they were lighting up their Christmas decorations – it is hard to believe a month ago I was in 30 degree heat, sweating profusely while soapy, fake snow was blown upwards to sting children’s eyes and make them wonder why people think avalanches are dangerous…  And now it is this week.  This is the Sunday before Christmas.  Traditionally at this hour (6:30pm) I should be practising carols with the band at church and getting ready for the (super heated) service in the church buildings…  School or uni would be over, exams would seem far enough away to be insignificant, many Christmas dinners would have been consumed with the best yet to come, Indiana Jones and James Bond would feature heavily on the week’s TV schedule, the GCD day of Halo 3 would be fast approaching (a 2 year tradition for me, but a good one none the less)…

This year only one of those is true.
School has finished and we are having a party tomorrow…  But for most, Christmas in Japan is pretty much a normal working day, sure there is a commerical hype, but it feels like the same kind of hype that mother’s day or father’s day might get - people trying to make money from products that under normal circumstances would see them sell nothing and lose their lively hood because of their foolishness in buying bulk lots of winter scene greetings cards, small plastic trees and red socks…  But on Thursday in Northern Ireland kids will be up early to see what they got from Santa, mothers will be up putting a turkey in the oven while everyone else will sleep in.  Here everyone will be up early, kids going to school, business men to the office, shop keepers will open their shops as normal…  Banks, post offices, buses, trains, pretty much everything will run as normal!

So it got me to thinking what the big deal was about Christmas?
Christians here celebrate Christmas for the same reasons that Christians at home do - Jesus coming into the world for our sake.  Christmas is like Easter.  It’s about Christ.  Sure there is a slight secular commercial blitz around it, but it really doesn’t seem to attempt to link itself to a meaning of Christmas.  But in the west, it is also about family, goodwill, sharing, giving, receiving, eating, drinking…… etc.  The true meaning kind ofhas competition.  Sure they are all good things…  Many of them even stem from the true meaning, but for too many people they expand and replace it…  Why is that?  And what about me, why is Christmas always such a more prominent event in my mental calendar than Easter?

Well…
Christmas in the UK is much more than simple commercialism for non-Christians.  It is a big festival in winter!  At Christmas time the depressing shortening of days has come to an end and they are going to get lighter from now on!  It is a holiday after such a long spell with no bank holidays or public holidays…  The last time everyone had a weekday off was in August!  And it is a time to let go for a bit and enjoy rich food, warming flavours, heartening traditions, family time, fun with friends, giving and receiving presents even when its not your birthday… etc etc etc…  When I really thought about why I like Christmas so much I realised that it isn’t just as a Christian that I enjoy it.  But I love all of the other aspects as well.  Well most of them!

So what about Japan?
Well in Japan they have another winter festival.  New Year is a huge thing here, people get several days off work (a big deal here!) go home to their families, spend time together.  There is a religious aspect to it, people going to shrines and temples etc.  But I will happily ignore that side and focus on the chance to have fun with friends, eat good food, give and receive etc…

I guess the bottom line is that Christmas is about Jesus, but the rest of the stuff (within reason) isn’t necessarily wrong or bad unless we allow it to push Jesus out of the picture, or we don’t have Him there to start with.  I think for me, being in Japan will mean that it will be easier to keep Jesus at the centre of Christmas…  The paraphernalia can wait til New Years…

It’s turned out kind of like an interview hasn’t it?  hmmm….

This is Singapore, less than 2 degrees north of the equator.  Yet when you go into Starbucks you find Toffee Nut Lattes, “Christmas Blend” coffee like at home, Santa Claus wears heavy red winter clothing in the humid, 30+ degree weather, there is an attempt at an evergreen Christmas tree (all the trees are evergreen around here, there is no autumn!) and all kinds of other things that are Christmas-y.

But why are they Christmas-y?  In the UK (or US, or wherever in the Northern Hemisphere) they are Christmas-y because it is the middle of winter and that is the season in which Christmas falls.  The only green trees around are evergreens, Santa needs to keep warm because he’s going to be braving a mid-winters night to get all the kids their gifts (or coal!)…  We put nutmeg and cinnamon into stuff because it is warming, sweet heavy toffee-nut lattes are wonderfully warming on a winter’s afternoon…  Snow falls (sometimes!) and is cold and crisp and doesn’t even make your eyes sting!

But here in Singapore it isn’t mid-winter.  It’s as warm as ever and sticky to boot!  Why make trees that look like evergreens, why not use local trees?  Why not have Christmas Ice Cream, or something that is suitable to the season in which it falls instead of winter warmers?  Why not put Santa in a t-shirt and shorts (aside from the fright kids will get from a fat old man not wearing enough…)?  Why not forget the snow and just make your own Christmas traditions and festivities based on the festival and the context it is being celebrated in?

This is the aim of contextualisation, when we as missionaries take the gospel to another culture.  When we attempt to bring it to a new place or develop it in an existing stronghold we must be careful not to simply transplant our traditions and practices into the new culture.  To do so would mean that Christianity would remain a western import, something that is foreign and strange, unsuited to the culture and society into which it is being brought.  Sure the society may adopt these traditions and practise them, but their initial contextual meaning will be lost in a society without the initial context.  Much like our Christmas-y things being based around the context of winter, here in Singapore that context is lost and so the reason behind having snow, or having an evergreen tree, or soothing and warming coffee is lost.  It is simply being done because that is how it is done.  How can they even hope to be guided through these meaningless, contextless paraphernalia to the meaning behind the traditions?

Of course I haven’t even touched on the more basic issue of commercialisation at Christmas.  We see it in the west and it has obviously had a huge effect in the east, certainly in Singapore.

Anyways… it won’t be long now til I am in Hokkaido where Christmas will see plenty of real snow…!

My experience of small groups at uni was a little more wide ranging than most perhaps.  I was living in Queen’s Elms in first year so I went to Halls Group that year, the next year I helped out leading the group, so I was in it a second year.  At first I went to an English dept small group because I had friends there and they were encouraging me to go along to a small group aside from the halls one…  But I switched over to the Engineering group in the Ashby a little later.  It was through the engineering group that I met Mark who spoke at my commissioning, Budgie who commented on the last post there and a whole bunch of other folk.  But there’s more!  Between second and third year in my degree it was required to take a year of professional experience.  This interupted small group attendance for most, but Ben (Later of SU Presidential fame) lead a small group for those on their year out working.  It was all guys, but we had an awesome year, heightened by the lack of CU attendance and department groups and so on due to work, meeting later than normal and discussing how things were relevant to working life rather than student life was probably one of the most benefitial years I had in small groups…  Then more recently, while I was at Union I attended a small group at my home church, this was very different to the previous groups as people were from all kinds of backgrounds; nurses, drivers, designers, programmer-cum-theologians, missionaries to the Philippines…  And again it was great!

So now I am pining for small groups!  There is a reason for this though…
Irene approached me a while ago asking if I’d be willing to partner up with a small group from Queen’s University, the small groups were going to partner with missionaries and pray for them etc through the year.  So tonight I went and met the group who got (landed with) me!  The group is Steve and Sam’s medical small group (as in medical students) and is part of the CU at Queens.  The meeting tonight was great, there was, of course, a time of bible study, time to spend together and chat (with unpaid for coffee…), time for prayer and all in the kind of relaxed attitude I remember of small groups!  It’s a time when bible study mingles with banter, when fellowship mingles with accountibility, when prayer mingles with honest concern and love for those you are praying with.  It is an excellent small group with great members, pulling together Christians and making it a quality time.  It’s great to have been able to meet them, and it’s great to know they will be partnering with me in prayer as I head off.  Thanks guys!

So yeah, now I’m pining for small group ministry.  I can’t wait to see what God will make me part of out in Japan!

It usually begins with something that seems fairly straightforward or simple, something that shouldn’t be a problem at all!  Things go smoothly at first, but after a short while something appears that was unexpected, soemthing isn’t formatted quite correctly and to get any further you will need to spend hours reformatting it, maybe the data isn’t as complete as you thought and you will need to spend a while typing in or copying and pasting the rest into the file, or there might be a step in the process that you didn’t foresee and seemingly no easy way to overcome it…  But you have come this far!  Surely to go back and do all this by hand would be much more labour than to overcome the obstacle and get it done right?  So you plough on, and as time wears on and the text on your ctrl key is worn back to unreadable from all the copying and pasting it begins to look like the manual option might have been quicker, but surely there isn’t long to go now?!

This is the kind of thing that crops up all the time in IT work, particularly in software work that is heavy in data processing.  In my last job we often took feeds from various places and attempted to automate them to make life easier (well in this case actually just to make the project possible!).  Of course if you have the right tools and so on, you can overcome the obstacles and, to quote someone else, “anything is possible!”

But the issue is made even more frustrating as you realise why it occurs and what it means.  If (suitable) data is already in a digital format, it is sheer lunacy to have to do manual work in order for it to be acceptable in another location.  The whole point of digitising data is to increase its accessibility, portability and usefulness and this too often is forgotten as people make an application that produces data or transfers it.  Perhaps the developers didn’t use standard formats designed for transferring data such as XML, CSV etc for textual data, common image formats or whatever is suitable for the data in question.  This is less of a problem now thanks to the web and forced portability of data.  The real killer comes in lack of consistency, when data is being transferred in a common format, or even a well specified uncommon format, but all of a sudden something changes and data is coming across in a slightly different format.  Of course this results in lost data, mistransmission, etc, but it also makes attempting to process the data automatically a real headache, and it is inevitably down to poor design and implementation of the original system.

So I’ve warbled on and no one is going to be reading now, even if they were the last time I checked!  But the next time you find yourself thinking “technology makes things so much more complicated” ask yourself if it is the technology that makes it difficult or the design of the system.

(This post was inspired by my attempts to get my supporters addresses from the automated email sent to me and into my pc’s address book.  Surely someone might have thought about the format that the addresses are provided in and thought that commas alone might not be the most useful separator…)