If you're reading this then you're probably someone I'm trying to convince that I'd be a great flatmate. Glad you could stop by...

Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head - Luke 9:57-59

A big "thank you" to everyone who helped make the prayer service last month a reality. You guys are the best!

I have now moved away from Cheltenham and will therefore no longer be organising the Cheltenham In Prayer Taize Services each January during the Week Of Prayer For Christian Unity. Fortunately, it looks like a team of people from different churches will be taking over the organisation so these services *will* continue! If you'd like to get involved, send me an email.

If you couldn't make it this year, the theme was "The Prodigal Son". The Reading and Reflection are available to download here.

Pax,

David.

It's that time of year again - the Week of Prayer For Christian Unity is upon us which means that it's time for another candle-lit Taize service in St. Mary's!

The service will be at 7:30pm on Saturday, 26th January 2008. Everyone is welcome! For more details please see the website...

I've just knocked together a little screencast of my first Commercial Flex project. Download the AVI Video here and the MP4 version is here.

I've had some problems with my blog over the last few days....huh...anyway, here are my pictures from San Diego:

Gallery 1
Gallery 2

Last weekend was 6th International Salsa Congress in Bournemouth.



I missed the Friday evening as I was helping my Mum with The Thatcham Arts Festival salsa event that night. I caught a (very) early train on Saturday to Bournemouth and got there just in time to miss the start of the first workshop session. D'oh!

The bad stuff
There were a handful of things about the Bournemouth Congress which annoyed me, so rather than end this blog talking about them, I'm going to get them out of the way with now:

1. 99% of the classes were taught from a stage rather than from the centre of a circle.

I'm sure this is of help to the teacher as he/she can see the entire class, but this is to the detriment of the class as this shift in perspective means that all but the first row can't easily see the teacher's footwork - kinda important in a dance lesson...

2. The changing of dance partners during the lessons was incredibly infrequent. Most classes changed partners every five minutes or so, some changed just a couple of times in the entire lesson and a few didn't bother to change them at all.

None of the teachers setup a proper rotation system to ensure minimum amount of disruption, instead randomness and chaos reigned. This makes for a *very* frustrating class. I've been to other weekenders with comparable class sizes and the teachers have managed the classes much better.

Okay...got that out of my system... Now on to the good stuff...

The Good Stuff
The routines we learnt in the classes were superb and I've got a few good moves now added to my regular arsenal. However, what made this weekend different from other weekenders I've been on is that it seemed much more like a group of friends going away for the weekend where there happened to be a lot of dancing - I guess I'm trying to say that it was less intense than other weekenders I've been to.



On Saturday evening we all got dressed up all nice...





...and then went out to dinner at The Red Panda Chinese restaurant:



Oh yeah, there was a bit of tango too!

I've just had a call from Hannah, the lady I've been practising sign language with for the past few months.

Yesterday she had her first sign language exam and she passed! Not only that, but she scored 24/27.

I feel like a proud parent!

Practising with her the past few months has been great and really got me back into Sign Language. At university I passed my Stage 1 exam in my second year and in my final year did a compressed Stage 2 course, but as I had finals I never got round to taking the exam.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do much with my sign language since I've lived in Cheltenham, but I'm planning to take it up again properly when I move to San Diego. The Deaf Centre is only a few minutes walk away from the office and there are loads of places where I can learn ASL (American Sign Language) which, although similar to BSL (British Sign Language), has some significant differences.

Vee!

Recently everyone at work has got into Zero Punctuation, a weekly games review video by an English chap living in Australia.

It is clever, hilarious and very rude.