Friendfeed

…anyone use it? I just made myself one which you can find here, should you so wish. It aggregates all your social networking activity online (for instance, facebook, twitter, last.fm, flickr, tumblr, blogs, etc etc) and makes one feed which people can view and comment on and generally enjoy. If you’ve not got one you should totally make one up and we should all be buddies on it or however it works. Sign up here.

2:27 ftw

Fran, Rach and I were driving to Morrisons to get stuff for baking (we made awesome brownies we we munched at the Minster Carol Service) and we were listening to the 3rd Radio 1 Live Lounge album. Some of it was a bit hit and miss but there easily the stand out track was this cover of a favourite from first year. Listen to the end.

How to get a Facebook status RSS feed

Since my last post a couple of people have asked me how to get an RSS feed of your facebook status since the button was removed from the website. I’ve tried numerous methods found on various pages to no avail. Credit to Hugh for pointing out this very simple method; hopefully you’ll find this useful.

Interconnectivity

Bring on the trumpets to herald my arrival in (or perhaps submission to?) the huge and dizzying universe of web2.0. Not only am I on millions on Social Networking Sites with all kinds of different emphases, but most of them connect with each other. Joy of joys.

Adventures

So, once more to topical commentary, dear friends.

Question: Should Atheists celebrate Christmas?

Answer: If they want to.

Comment: If you’re a Christian or you vaguely know one then the chances are at some point you have been involved in some sort of discussion about whether it is suitable or proper or pointless or whatever for people of alternative faiths or none to celebrate Christmas. Until recently the logician in me couldn’t really understand why you’d want to if it went against everything you believe in. A revelation: it doesn’t, for pretty much anyone. People enjoy a celebration, we love food and good company, exchanging cards and gifts, time with family, holidays, walks, decoration, festivity – without a single mention of Jesus, there’s a whole lot of fun to be had at Christmas – and you know what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Maybe the fact of the matter is that for many people Christmas doesn’t focus on Jesus – but why should those of us for whom it does begrudge them a great time? I’m all for people having fun and I certainly don’t hold it against my friends who aren’t Christians when they enjoy themselves the rest of the year, so why should I start now? Why, as we’re celebrating the birth of God made man would we decide that it’s up to us who gets to have fun and why?

I will be going to the carol service – but I’m definitely going to be at the work party too. And I’ll tear it up! This advent I have learnt that it’s time I stopped attempting to limit God to the safe and sanitized but realise that he was born in a crappy stables in some backwater and he did all that to turn the whole story around for me.

I want my friends to know that the God I love isn’t against fun and celebration, Christmas isn’t a members-only event and Christians can not limit Christ, whatever they might sometimes think.

Isn’t it time we presented the gospel as something which explains the mess with we live in and offers some answers rather than another set of restrictions and a big ladder up to a rather high horse?

To my non believing friends, I hope you all know me well enough to know that I have no plans to subvert you (read this) but I would love you to know a bit about the God that I know; who is probably quite different from how he has been portrayed. This article in Esquire is one of the best explanations I have read in a long time and although it’s a tiny bit lengthy I’d be delighted if you skimmed through it. This blog inspired some interesting discussions about the season and is equally worth a quick read.

Oh and I hope someone enjoyed the title.

Party

Last Night we had a house party. It was awesome! It was a birthday party for my housemate and a friend who have recently turned 21. There was epic preparation – every thing got cleaned! Somewhat ironic given the state of the place in the morning, but still, at one point it was the cleanest the house has been all year. We mixed the most awesome drinks. There was fruit and juice and fruit juice and juicy fruit and all the alcomahol you can imagine -  we seem to have amassed a pretty varied and interesting collection. Recently I’ve taken some advice from the D-O-Double-Gizzle himself and have been enjoying all kinds of Gin & Juice type concoctions. They’re the most of the yummy. That said, it should be noted that Frank mixes the best drinks of anyone I’ve ever met and some of his were awesome. We also spent hours creating a spotify playlist for the party so we all added some of our favourites and then left it on random (well, we were supposed to anyway!). We bought one of those day passes for 99p to avoid adverts – clever business, you know. Worth it too – we had 11 hours of music in the end! So there was a clean house, plentiful supply of choons and buckets of cocktails: the stage was set for a pretty good time…

And it really was! If you are friends with the right people on facebook there are tons of photos of the awesome dancing and people and fun. Even better the whole thing was relatively without serious incident which is jolly good.

All that remains to be said is that the C.A.T.E.M.P.I.R.E has G.O.T. a par-ty H.A.P.P.E.N.I.N.G…. Oh, and thank goodness we didn’t open the sky lights.

Modern Warfare 2 Fallout