Trip to Birmingham for HPC workshop in the midst of a busy week

Work has been busy and still next week is fully booked already. People are beginning to ask who else to see. I suspect I am going to start a blog on resources for researchers on USpace and see if I find any followers. Maybe I need to think wider than just me and see if the there is some way of doing this cooperatively either with others in the department or even wider. The fact is that most of the useful stuff I have come across has been by a process of trial and error or by odd links. Take the Thesis Whisperer for starters a good blog on the basics of writing a thesis and often where I learn of good process books. Then there was the fact I chanced on a Vitae blog “Whats up doc?” and the guy was worrying over his literature review. Now I know I am not doing a literature review, For a complex thesis like mine, separating the literature out from the rest of the writing seems to add a level of confusion. However he mentioned that the literature review was the introduction. Well ligth bulb moment, I knew that I needed to write and introduction but the clarity of thinking of it as connected with a literature review gives a clarity to the introduction that I had not had before. It still won’t be a literature review but it will probably set the scene in a variety of ways for what comes next.

On Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for the High Powered Computer session on running Window HPC. What we were looking for was a way to run Windows based products in a High powered computing setup. Unfortunately this does not do it. That is not to say it is useless, if as I suspect will be the case, that licensing can be sorted, then I could well see this allowing engineering and such to teach parrellel computing at a lower cost than at present. We would have a small server on site, which is actually all that is needed for over 90% of the time but when a class is in progress we might have the ability to up this quite quickly by connecting in machines over the net to something that is ten times that size. It needs high powered network infrastructure, and licensing by the hour (some companies will be in for a shock when that happens). The other thing I learnt was that there was a communication problem, when I say non-standard user for research machines, I mean people who are from the Arts or the softer end of the social sciences, when Birmingham says that they mean engineers and biologists. The problem is that for us the engineers and such are the chief users of our present Linux based HPC, I can not see any reason to introduce a Windows version for them. It is not widening our customer base. Another thing was the gender balance. The room had about forty people in it, of which two were female; this is the softer end of HPC and people wonder why I refer to it as “toys for the boys”.

For those who want to know, I saw no trouble at all on Tuesday night in Birmingham. The nearest I got to trouble was probably while changing train at New Street, but the trouble was not even that side of the city centre and I did not leave the station. Once off at Selly Oak I really was heading into deepest darkest areas of Quakerdom, not only staying in Woodbrooke Hall but also past at least one Quaker meeting house and en route to Bournville. Now as far as I know it is over two hundred years since the last time Quakers triggered a riot and they never went in for looting, so I was not really worried. For added measures there was the Christian Education offices is just up the road. I was greeted by the Quaker in residence with “You look as if you have come to stay”, I presume referring to the rucksack on my back. Normally I carry a small rucksack and a travel bag but had badly ricked my neck carrying the travel bag the previous weekend so had to find some way that suited me without carrying anything across my body. The simplest way was to take a weekend rucksack and a small light bag for day luggage.

The one effect of the riots was to make people reluctant to go drinking in places near New Street Station, not a problem for me as I needed to catch a 5:00 p.m. train from New Street and by 4:15p.m. I was tired and ready to head home. However the result of this was to find out that in the summer the University of Birmingham campus is dry until 5:15 pm! Well you can go to Spar, buy some drinks and sit on the concourse and drink them (brown paper bags are optional), but there is nowhere that serves a drink. I think its non-conformist roots were showing! With Sheffield there are so many non-university owned pubs on campus, there is no way this could happen.

Friday was Broomhall Breakfast and we had forty nine for breakfast. Actually most of the time we were coping fairly well as we had a good number of workers. Towards the end things got a bit interesting, a local lass who has come quite often in the past and has a sort of pastoral relationship with Sarah came in obviously nervous. So when Sarah came to take over my duties so I could eat my breakfast I pointed her in this girls direction instead. Then one of the breakfasters who had been in hospital with heart problems, came up and said the he was having a heart attack. I told him to sit down and called Jean Dickson out of the kitchen. I was suspicious that this was either him wanting attention, or that he was having some slight angina but was nervous and with that had jumped to the wrong conclusion. I just felt it needed sussing. So suddenly we were two workers down and Mary was having her breakfast when Stuart ran into difficulties copying the service sheet. The rest of Friday I just slept.

DSC_0021, a photo by jengie@btinternet.com on Flickr.

Saturday however I woke with a good amount of energy. I went shopping and was functioning pretty well although I forgot what I went to Boots for then walked back out of town. On getting in I happened to glance out of the window on the hall way outside my flat and spot two collard doves nesting on one of the tv aerials (see top of blog) so I went back and took some photos. I think this is the same pair as I saw a couple of weeks ago sitting on top on a lamp post on the close. I also uploaded other photos I have taken over the last few months so feel free to browse on Flickr if you want to. The rest of the day I did normal Saturday things, some supervision admin and so forth.

Today I was at Herringthorpe again and set up my last but one interview for a fortnights times. Otherwise it has been a normal Sunday.

An Adminny sort of week

Last Sunday while recovering from the migraine, I had a sudden yen to make bread. I think the desire was to do the kneading rather than actually for the smell. As I am aware I occasionally get this sort of yet  of desire to make bread I tend to have a couple of ready mixed ingredients in.  I am beginning to think that the reason my loaves never rise as much as I desire is that with hand kneading I tend to keep the dough just too dry. Anyway I enjoyed the loaf that I made and I still have a couple of packets more to use when I want to, although I must admit the fact that they are Tescos Wholemeal  rather than something more interesting does mean I am less likely to get the yen. A few years back when I had either more energy or time I used to make a fresh loaf each Sunday, and then it was worth having the dry ingredients but these days I rarely have that sort of opportunity.

Monday it was into work as usual, on the morning saw Margo with the brighter of her two student who knows what he is doing. It is just so completely different dealing with a student who is basically competent to one who is struggling. I outline roughly what he needed to do, he does it and then produces a good summary for us to review. The other student despite far more intensive support and an easier project is still struggling. I am not sure this happens but I normally know whether a person is struggling or really capable by the end of a first session. Some totally capable people are full of self doubts and just need to see me so I can say “yes you are doing fine”.

Also this last week I found the formula for Fiellers method for calculating the confidence interval of a proportion when the terms are individually normally distributed and the coefficient of variance of the denominator tends to infinity (basically an infinitesimal probability that it could be X). The data is not normally distributed but most of the studies assumed it was. I also hope I have a book with the formulae for the moment expansion method. The conclusion I am coming to is that Fieller’s method is actually better.

Wednesday I took as holiday, going to see Fleur about something that was bothering me. One of the interesting things is the assumption that because I get involved I am losing my critical distance. The fact is that although I am willing to work and chat and spend time there, I do always see this as a placement church. They have no pastoral responsibility for me, I will not vote during church meeting and I will never have myself included as a member. I am not without pastoral care, I made darn sure of that, according to what the need is I will either go to my counsellor, my minister, my elder, Fleur who is a long term confidant or my support group. It is not the placement churches role to help me sort myself out. Actually one of my reasons for having a counsellor is somewhere that I can unpack what I am feeling about the church and what I think the church is feeling about me. Sometimes I have to work harder at unpacking what other people are thinking because my past experience gets projected into the present. Fleur seemed to be in good sorts and sent me back with a German magazine for my father and was getting ready to do simultaneous translation for a group talking about spirituality of refugees and immigration in Europe I think.

Thursday I was in work but my concentration was shot, I eventually came home at 4:30 pm because I could not cope with pretending to stare at the computer screen for much longer and went to bed and slept for a couple of hours. During that time it tippled with rain. So often the inability to concentrate seems to happen in the build up to a rain storm!

Friday was a day I did a lot of admin for PhD including signing up for next year. It said that if I was eligible for 50% off I would get a tick box but no tick box appeared. As I have received it in previous years I decided to query this, especially as the description had not changed. I suspect that it quite possible that they had forgotten that my course is technically hefce covered. There is just almost nobody from the funding councils doing it. At least that is what I am hoping. Hopefully I will find out Monday.

Saturday I was out of sorts again, although I managed to buy some clothes for next week as I decided I wanted to be comfortable and fairly smart at the conferences and the clothes I had were either comfortable or smart. If I am happy with these for next week I will try buying a couple more silky stripped shirts and try wearing that during warmer weather into the office in an attempt to smarten up slightly. Work is always a problem as I have to be able to adapt pretty quickly to different situations. I need to satisfy both comfort and smartness, plus I carry a lot in my pockets. I am fortunately not a regular attender at meetings. Winter is mainly sorted with a turtle neck and trousers although I know I should wear something smarter than sweatshirts but they are warm and comfy (actually I have toning fleeces that I wear a lot). Summer however with wanting long sleeve tops, I find that most of the t-shirts have really deep neck lines which I am not really comfortable with in work. Hence my trying out of blouses. I just hope these don’t need ironing and tumble drying them will do.

So to today, and a normal day really. Got to Herringthorpe, congregation was missing mostly the families there being only about two there. There were two older lads but I had no idea where their parents were. The Sunday school was therefor sized at 6. Three of whom were cousins. Normally there are over twenty children that go out although even they are worrying over the Sunday School as they had not got any younger children coming through. I suspect it will need something stronger than a recruitment drive. Actually one of the interesting things about Herringthorpe is that the congregation is prepared to talk of things as a marketing campaign.

Broken Computers, Birmingham visit and a Community Party

News this week. Firstly my work computer has been sick all week. This clearly does not mean that my home ones are sick. Indeed I have been using an old computer at work, which I feel happy playing around on as it was mine and I know what it is like. I could borrow another computer but then I feel restricted in what I can do, I cannot set it up to suit myself. The latest stage is that it is due to go back into the workshop, this time I have specified what is wrong with it. I just hope they can fix that otherwise it will have to be a new machine as the machine is not safe on the network in its current form and I cannot make it safe. It also will not do the work I want it to. They are on the third attempt to try and fix it.

Otherwise work wise I have been reading through papers on fibre and its ability to prevent colon cancer (well that is the point of interest from our perspective, however some were more interested in Type II diabetes). This are tough studies to be a participant in, if ever there was an argument for paying people to participate these are the studies. Some of the diets are pretty lousy, one was eating so much fruit and veg that even I was thinking no way! Hardly surprising that it only got a study size of ten people. Some however I could see working. For instance one sent people chocolate muffins to eat with their normal diet! I kid you not. The muffins were made with different amount of fibre in and some had very high amounts indeed. However the real problem was that fecal matter had to be collected during the study. I am reminded of Dr Johnson’s comment on a woman preaching: “Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

Then on Wednesday I went to Birmingham for a supervision. The journey out went smoothly with me getting to Sheffield Station early enough to get a coffee before I caught the train. The journey on the whole went well. I am deciding Helen Cameron’s book “Resourcing Mission” is not the book I hoped it was. It is not fish, nor fowl nor good red herring as the saying goes. The themes it takes are largely sociological but the analysis of them is a mix of person contextual theology and sociology light. There is not a cohesive theme running from one to the next.  She use a typeology typical of organisational studies but rather than spend time showing how the behaviour is manifest in different institutions by examples she just delineates it, using examples only as introductory pieces. I don’t want to know that churches that are gathered organise money in way XYZ, I probably could say that with more clarity than she, I would be interested in how she argues from such churches behaviour to such conclusions. Finally it claims to be contextual theology, but “Lets do Theology” does this better. If she intends the chapters to be briefing tools then she has barely scratched the surface on what is needed and there is no “go further” section at the back.  Very different to my response to Hybrid Church in the City although I suspect that it would be better titled “Church in the Hybrid City” by Christopher Baker. There is a serious attempt to engage with sociology, followed by  a serious attempt to reflect theologically on these implications. The irony being that normally I find stuff coming from the direction Helen Cameron useful while I steer clear of stuff that comes from where Christopher Baker comes from.

I was in time for my supervision and my supervisor is now happy that what I have written on cafe church is a paper. I am surprised given how popular cafe church is that there is little written about it in the serious books. I now need to do a reading review of what I have read in the last year. I suspect this is two years really and more than just a list of books. I then spent some time on the computer searching for things on older people. One of the interesting papers that came out was that there appeared to be a correlation between people’s involvement in extra curricular activities as a teenager and their involvement in voluntary associations later. This would suggest to me that the government’s policy on teaching citizenship is wrong headed and what we need to be doing is rather than spending class room time on teaching them to be good citizens, rather be encouraging their involvement in extra curricular activity. I suspect particularly activities that they themselves have a role in organising. Its not our teachers who will build the civil society of the future, nor the parents, but the youth leaders. You want to change society for the better become a youth leader and I don’t just mean those with those titles, I mean guiders, scouter, youth team coaches, people who organise youth orchestra and allow youth volunteering in the community. They all add up to being a massive citizenship teaching organisation and all the better at it for giving the children fun while they are doing it..

I also ended up giving another student a quick tutorial on using computers for research. The thing is for a number of books I tend to read them at least partially on line. I ended up reading a paper in a book on Torrance Theology just by searching for it. Alright so the paper was called “Calvin and Cafe Church”. Unfortunately it was not really about cafe church.but all new forms of church (I think that wording is title neutral, what with “emerging” and “liquid” becoming so quickly sort of brand names). It is amazing how someone can not realise how much stuff there is on the computers these days to help a researcher.

Anyway after that we went upstairs to meet up with my supervisor. He decided that as he could get five of his PhD students together for a day he would take us out for a meal in the evening. We were joined by another PhD Student and a research fellow who works with my supervisor. He took us to Deep  , a Carribean Restaurant on the Bristol Road just around the corner from New Street Station. They had a buffet and I just ate what I felt like. I may have got some things wrong. I did not eat akee and salt fish because it looked like cold pasta salad which is not a favourite of mine. However I ate goat stew without any problem. The other thing was I think he was expecting some of us to order wine or beer, but none of us did. The reason we didn’t is I suspect largely due to circumstance. Quite a few of us had long journeys home like myself and others were in the final stages of writing their theses for submission. In other words we had reasons for staying sober. I suspect that the others were all driving. Anyway got safely home afterwards but was very tired so headed almost straight to bed.

Saturday there was a party held by I think the Broomhall Centre (formally known as the Broomspring Centre) for local people in Gell Street Park. As with all Broomhall events it was late in getting going. I was there around 1:30 and there was hardly anyone, Sarah at 2:00 pm found much the same (it started at 12:00 noon) but by closing time (4pm when I went back) the place was absolutely heaving with people and people were not dispersing. From the feel of it I suspect it is the indirect successor of the Broomhall Carnival.  The big things that brought people out were activities for children. There are some photos I took on Facebook which will be accessible to those who are recorded as my friends on Facebook.

Today I went to Herringthorpe for the morning service. It was the moderator Kevin Watson who was leading the main part of the service while Pauline took the communion. Prayers for Pauline and her husband Alex on Friday please as Alex is having major operations for bowel cancer at the Hallamshire. The service was on the love of God and the need to share that love with those around us. It was well prepared and he clearly used images as well as words so please don’t think with my next comment I am criticising him. He centred his image for the love of God on embrace which is not an image I find easy to handle. Normally I suspect it would be water off a ducks back but not this morning, maybe tiredness due to time of the month, maybe Stuart saying he was coming around the previous evening for a chat and not showing (he came around today instead). Maybe just the business of the last while catching up with me but I was at least at one point seriously considering if I would be better off out of the service. I didn’t and I suspect that I was sorted enough for no-one to notice at the end of worship at least no-one commented on the fact.

A busy fortnight ends in Migraine

As it is two weeks I am afraid it is going to be highlights. On the Tuesday two weeks ago I gave the second of three courses. So there is just one more course to give this session with maybe on NVivo course if there is demand as NVivo has been extremely popular. The puzzling thing is that like the previous course where you could just attend by being present at the first session only, there are now three sessions. So people need not sign up for all three. Indeed they could release spaces between courses. All three courses are fully subscribed but people are showing the same attendance pattern as before. That is selfish as I know some people want to attend the later ones who do not need to attend the early ones.

On Friday night the Younger Womens Group attended a St George's night meal at the Carlton Park Hotel which was pleasant enough. The menu was interesting, nobody thought it was typically English but some of that was the way they named the dishes. For instance they had Pork Hock Terrine which may well have been fairly British, basically Ham in Jelly, which of course does not sound quite as nice. The desserts really were not English, well the nearest you got was I think Manchester Pie and Apple crumble but the others were things like chocolate cake. There was not one steamed suet pudding amongst them, nor any milk puddings such as rice, sago or tapioca. I fully acknowledge that I would not have eaten the later but I equally would not have eaten Manchester Pie.

Saturday it was over to Manchester to visit my parents who had invited Ruth around for the day, I think on the pretence of gardening but really because they decided it was time Ruth and I got together again. We did manage to get some gardening done, but as my parents had not planned any it was limited to tidying up jobs. This reminded me of what I intended to get mum for a birthday present, so a folding stool is now ordered so that it can be stored down in the utility space for Mum when she wants to climb up during gardening. It is light and pretty strong. Hopefully this will help prevent her having mishaps like last years.

Sunday morning I had planned to do bits of thesis work I had not got around to, like writing up the meal on Friday night. Due to the meal I had not come over until Saturday morning and Mum was feeling that time was short. So she decided on Sunday morning that even though I was going to be busy that she would stay at home just to be near me rather than going to church. Unfortunately she did not confirm this with Dad who was not happy at the prospect of going to church on his own, so Mum had to do a quick change around and get ready for church.

Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. It actually went fairly well but Birmingham New Street was on emergency power source after flooding which meant that though there were lights, none of the retail units whether food or newsagents were open nor were the escalators working (and I presume lifts). Intriguingly unlike when escalators are swtiched off or broken when you can still walk up them. For those interested the station right next door to Birmingham New Street, Curzon Street is still standing and the platforms are still there as I see them every time I go to Birmingham. My suspicion that this rather than Birmingham New Street is actually what is going to be the new High Speed Rail link seems to be confirmed on Wikipedia. The weather was good and I managed to get the Rymans shop which gave me opportunity to stock up packs for Jenny and Cait. The supervision with my supervisor went well, although I need to review the amount of stuff I am transcribing as I simply won't get it done in the time.

Wednesday I went out with the NAG (I think Neighbourhood Assessment Group) from Herringthorpe to Intake Doncaster. It was interesting. The thing was that the situation developed because a church was generous even though it was nearly out. Generosity is something Herringthorpe needs to learn at the moment the cost cutting I think is actually having the knock on effect of reducing peoples giving. The thing is that they see things run on lets get by with the cheapest we can. Somehow always looking for a bargain is not a good sentiment to get people to give nor to  particularly encourage people to join the congregation. However the person at Intake underlined the fact that just being generous and involved in the community is not enough, in his words, it persuades people you have not got two heads but it does not bring them into church. I am getting more and more convinced that we need to look on joining a congregation as a journey to be undertaken and not as a matter of an instant decision. The good news is you don't have to approach everyone you know with "Have you considered the claims of Jesus Christ" or you are not playing your part. The bad news is that it needs more people, you cannot rely on the big evangelist to do it all, it is upto people to form relationships and to welcome a lot more people than will every join your congregation.

Thursday finally submitted my essay to Renewing Reformed Theology which is a sociological one. I know I am proficient in doing theology at least contextually but it seems to me at present more important to grasp how people do do theology, than to spell out what that theology ought to be. So late Thursday I submitted it.  I suspect that they are expecting theological papers and to have one that clearly isn't but addresses the issue might be something of a surprise. However I can say with all honesty that my paper is answering the question.

Friday I had supper at the Dicksons. It is good to get to spend time talking with them.

Saturday I think I over did things. I put on a a pot of dhal in the morning, hung , not sure what now. Went into town where I shopped for a lot of bits and pieces. I started by walking down to Argos, but it was a Continental Market day. I must say I think the stalls are getting less continental and more arts and crafts plus normal market stalls. However with them Fargate was packed. I am tempted to say recession, what recession after seeing that. It was a constant crowd all the way down. I then bought a pair of walking shoes to replace the brown ones I started wearing when a volunteer on Iona. It is at least my second attempt to buy a pair of shoes to replace them. I bought a previous pair which proceeded to disintegrate at a faster rate than the brown shoes so I went back to them. So I now have a pair of walking shoes, fairly light which I hope I can be happy in wearing every day. Then to Boots and Marks. On a whim bought a pair of trousers and a top for smart as I wanted something cooler to wear to church. Then in the evening started writing up an account of the visit to Intake but got distracted into buying a computer. Well one somewhere between a netbook and a superlight notebook. I probably could have got a netbook for half the price but then I would not have been so confident in its quality. I also managed to order it at a good price from Debenhams rather than just any internet shop. This was prompted by an incident which meant I had no phone or internet connection at home for a few hours. I would not have known about it except that I went home for lunch and tried to login. I just became aware about how I felt disconnected when that happened. Silly really but so much of what I do is spent on line.

Today I went to Herringthorpe, we sang "Shine Jesus Shine", I have two queries, will we sing it again before I leave (no hymns repeated when I have been there since about Christmas and I have been recording) and secondly I realised it does stir strong emotions, people either seem to love or hate it. Individuals could give their own personal reason but I am wondering what the more general one is, and why this particular chorus. However I was aware at the end I had a migraine, mainly due to the headache, but also due to the fractured sense of reality. If you have seen early cartoons then they sometimes look fractured, jerky motion to them, well with a migraine my experience of reality seems to have a similar quality.

Week ending with a walk with Billy Anne

Anyway having looked at my diary I find I was in Birmingham for a supervision last Monday. I was in a state of panic going as I had forgot to print out the papers. I tend to do this in work. I had two options, one was to print them out in work before I went and the other was to go down there and print them out. I decided that in this case the extra hassle of getting into work did not outweigh the hassle of using an unfamiliar printing system. So I went into work. Just as well I did as both the rooms, I use for computing when I am there, were shut. This only meant therefore I did not get to check my email, rather than have to panic about finding a room and then sussing how the printing works. The other thing I normally do is a bit of a literature search. Checking if there is any papers I should be reading but I have learnt a trick so I can do that at home without going through a complicated set of menus. I took my umbrella and just as I was setting off for the station home it decided to rain. So my umbrella was truly wet. I am also learning that 5:00 p.m. train is very nice thank you. The people who are at a business meeting in Birmingham all get the 4:30 pm train and the people who work in Birmingham all get the 5:30 p.m. train so I get this one in between and there is usually lots of space on it!

At work we have had the results of the Voluntary Severance Scheme. It has not quite got the number of redundancies the University wants but when the fact that older staff were disproportionately represented in the scheme it might do. CICS has been quite heavily hit and what we are loosing is some people with a wealth of knowledge. I am quite sure that managers are going to find things don't happen and wonder why, then realise that the staff that did them have gone and no one has been delegated to do them. The good thing to come out of this from my perspective is that two of the staff who are leaving have decided to set up a walking group that goes for walks once a month and asked me whether I'd like to join. It was just as I was starting to get restless over walking again and wanting to be out doing it, so the timing is perfect for me.

Then Billy Anne made one her bi-annual visits to Sheffield. She said would I organise a days walking before she came, then she said would I organise it for the Sunday 16th August. Well St Andrew's Chesterfield was already holding a walk on that day, so I saw no reason to organise a second. So at 11:30 ish we headed out to Chesterfield to meet up with others on the walk. I made a mistake of thinking that because the roundabout which we turn off from the A68 was a messy last week, it would not be this week (the work on the new Tescos store is going very rapidly, which was the cause of the problem, and I just was over optimistic). The queues were worse, stretching all but twenty yards to the next roundabout. If it had been twenty yards longer we would have taken an alternative route. So we had a long wait and were later than planned at getting there.

We went the scenic route after us following Alec out of the carpark and me then realising he was probably heading home. So back to my map reading as the SatNav was failing to give me Clumber Park (arrgh). We got there, via Coal Aston which is definitely not on the route and then skirted Worksop. Fortunately I was better at navigating around the grounds and we got to the car park that they were meeting in and joined them for lunch. Then we divided into two groups, one group sat around by the cars and otherwise entertained themselves; the rest went for a walk around the lake. Well almost I don't think we got into Hardwicke village but crossed on a bridge before that. The pace was a gentle amble, the sun shone, there was an ice-cream van half way around and then swans and grebes on the lake. At one stage trying to get pictures of swans I crouched down and my left ankle which was bearing my weight decided it did not like this so plonk me down with undue ceremony. No injury apparent at the time but I woke with a stiff back the next day. John, Tricia and David's son thought it was hilarious which it probably was but only he would tell me. We ran Dorothy and Audrey home so were not dependent on my map reading skill and had a commentary and tour all the way. Including arguments about where the former military training college was and being told to stop on top of a narrow bridge to admire somebody's garden (which was delightful) Pictures of the walk are up on Flickr. .

Supervision and interviewing followed by a migraine

Monday was quiet, very quiet in many ways. I spent some time trying to see what I could do with nxview and raw photographs but in the end downloaded an add on to GIMP called UFRAW as the version of NXView that came with my camera seems to be a cut down version and much more about organising slides than converting raw files. The UFRAW seems to give everything the full NXView does and more. You can see some I did on flickr . Otherwise a quiet day.

Tuesday was a supervision day so it was off to Birmingham in the morning. The train was smooth, on the evening I caught the 5:00 p.m. train out of Birmingham New Street. I have learnt that it is a good one to catch. The office workers aren't out yet and the conference people aim for the 4:30 p.m.. There are major works in the quad a Birmingham as they are fixing a service tunnel and the weather was unpredictable, there were showers so I ended up having lunch in the common room. It is exam time and that means fewer students around but not as few as vacation time, so I managed to get a computer to check emails before seeing my supervisor. The supervision went well and I am on track. I need to get down to transcription. Now all I need is the discipline to sit down and do that little by little.

Wednesday I woke rough but not much the worse for wear so went into work slightly late. At lunch time only Cliff and I ended up at prayer meeting so ended up talking with him. I passed Janet Brown's card onto him as she was having difficulties with getting her computer online. Cliff sorted it on thursday but warned that the computer was very near the end of its life. Cliff is if anything conservative in what he condemns. Otherwise a quiet day, I shopped on the evening, partly as Tuesday I was in Birmingham but Waitrose also seem to have Tuesday like the old fashioned Monday and lots of things are out of stock by Tuesday evening. Wednesday evening I can nearly always get what I want. I also hit on the brainwave as my dishwasher was not draining properly, of putting in some drain unblock, leaving it a while then running a wash through to see if that would clear it. I don't know if it did clear it, because someway through the first wash the dishwasher blew the fuse circuit it was on. I reset the circuit and fitted a new fuse but on plugging it in the fuse blew again. I decided this probably meant that it had given up the ghost. If it was just the electrics that had gone it might have been worth getting an engineer but it wasn't draining properly and it was leaking and I had been nursing it along for a couple of years. The only place locally that stocks such dishwashers (they are the compact sort and really quite rare) that I am aware of is John Lewis. So I went onto their website and found that they only have one in. So that was the decision made for me. However it took me a hour to get the order through. The new one is 75% more expensive than the old one was, but it has major advantages too (like the inside is metal and not plastic so less likely to crack and leak). I doubt it is as simple as my old one which was very basic.

Thursday afternoon was the interview with David and Tricia the minister and wife and my placement congregation. However my brain had been working over night and I realised that un fitting the dishwasher was not something I really felt up to doing. So I emailed Ted and asked if he would do it for me. I also had to go into work to print out the paper work for the interview. There were several noticeable things about the interview with David and Tricia. That they did not mention that it was an elderly congregation, that they were worried about the level of socialising (too low, in a congregation I can barely keep up with the social events). They worried about people class difference being barriers in a congregation that values people for "being able to do X for anyone". X varies from "talk to" "do anything" "can ask anything of" but being open to all is also important. I gave probably about an hour back, about what I had found out. David was incredulous that I could find so much out in such a short time which had taken them about ten years. David wanted me to write a Grove book on how to hear a congregation. I won't do that until I have finished but I guess I might refer him to "Studying Local Churches" and suggest he dips into chapters as they take his interest. I think he was surprise that I affirmed his impression that there real was no community around the church. Yes it is in the middle of suburban housing but it is actually on the join of several housing estates and these face different directions so all of them have their back on the church.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been dominated by a migraine, largely my fault for not giving into it on Friday or Saturday (I got myself up for a doctors appointment on Friday plus Ted came around to unfit the dishwasher and to do a short shop on Saturday which just seemed to be more than my body was ready to take). Hopefully it will clear overnight and I will be ready for work tomorrow.