James Ogley

The Second "Debate"

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:23:00 +0000

I caught some of the second presidential "debate" via The Daily Show and what struck me was not McCain's derisory referral to Obama as "That One" nor his addled wanderings around the dais as Obama was speaking.

No, what amazed me was how almost life-like he looked.

Michelle Obama did a great job too. If you missed her, take a look.

Mum's gone to...

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:11:00 +0000

We're well used to hearing about states that allegedly sponsor terrorism - indeed, we can name the usual suspects easily: Iran, North Korea, the USA, Israel (sorry, two of those just enact terrorism themselves directly).

Now it seems we can add a new name to the list. Icelandic bankers are apparently terrorists. Why else would our government have employed anti-terror legislation to freeze Icelandic assets in the the UK? Surely those lovely Nordic types (statistically the most beautiful nation on earth apparently) with the coolest named banks in the world (Landsbankinn anyone?) can't be that big a threat to global peace and security?

A cynic might suggest that this demonstrates that the laws in question are framed in such a way as to allow the government to do pretty well whatever it likes. Yesterday, in the Lords, Lord Onslow said roughly that.

Worship: Variety or Consistency?

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:13:00 +0000

In our worship, is variety the spice of life or does consistency build community? Where do we strike the balance between the two?

As a minister in the Church of England, I have a wide variety of authorised liturgy available to me to use while remaining within a consistent shape and pattern of worship. As a leader in the Church of God, I have a duty to help his people engage with him in corporate and collective worship by making it both familiar enough to connect with and sufficiently fresh as to not grow stale (see the connection between freshness and a lack of staleness).

It's never an easy balance to strike, especially as there is the added layer of working in a multimedia world with an increasingly media-literate population (and indeed, those of the emerging generations for whom a rich diet of media is expected) - the temptation to use cool new worship resources for the sake of it or to satisfy one's own taste is strong. Undoubtedly, employing a variety of media in worship can help keep worship fresh while maintaining consistency - I saw a fantastic way of presenting the Eucharistic prayer at college last week, an audio-visual presentation to accompany the president in place of simply projecting the words or the words with a static image (inevitably, normally, of bread and wine) onto the wall or screen.

There is a real air of permission-giving the Church of England, the sheer number of alt.worship groups is evidence of this. This may well be in part down to the fact that a lot of alt.worship is profoundly liturgical. Where our history is not only recognised but honoured, it is easier to give permission for the expression of worship to be changed, updated or adapted.

I hope that in Bursledon, we are moving towards striking this balance well. Our Conversations service (which will soon see a tweaking of style) and our 1662 Communion (as well as the various other services we run) show that there are a number of points within the cloud where we reside. I use the word cloud rather than continuum or the more ecclesiastical candle because I don't think that worship shows a linear move from liturgical to experimental or catholic to evangelical but rather it's a cloud with three (or more) dimensions in which people move.

So, variety or consistency? It's a balance, we can have - and indeed need - both. We need to keep worship fresh while also remaining grounded. We move towards the future while honouring and being nourished by the past.

26 days to go

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:12:00 +0000

Until the people of the USA go to the polls and it's looking like it might be a landslide for Obama. People ask me (they really do) how I think it's going to go and for a long time (even back when the polls were showing a roughly tied electoral college) I've been predicting an Obama win in the region of 100 electoral college votes. The polls are now showing more than that - getting towards the region of a 200 point gap. With each debate being adjudged to have been won by the democrat candidate (both the presidential candidate and the VP candidate), the gap just seems to show a widening trend (see the trend here) and with enough states already polling outside the margin of error for Obama to give him the 270 votes he needs, it's his election to lose now.

Bush states polling for Obama currently include (electoral college votes and %age of 2004 vote that went to Bush in brackets in each case) FL (27, 52%); IA (7, 50%); MO (11, 53%); OH (20, 51%); VA (13, 54%).

Playing catch-up

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:01:00 +0000

The weekend before last, I was at the IME Residential which was led by Jonny Baker. A really interesting time thinking about creativity in a post-modern context. One of those times whose value was not in the new information imparted - for me there wasn't much - but in knowing that Jonny had been approved by the diocese to come and talk about this stuff (alt worship, creativity, grasping the culture of the day without being controlled by it...) which was totally speaking my language. Fantastic. Jonny, incidentally, is a member of Grace, an alternative worship community based at St Mary's, Ealing.

After that, I had a night at home before heading up to Nottingham to spend a week at college doing the Introduction to Theological Method, kicking off my MA. It was a fab week - my mind was really stretched which anyone who knows me knows I value enormously. I also managed to catch up with a few people and to go play in the �10 Hold'em tournament at the Circus Casino in Nottingham. I was doing well - above average stack with over half the field eliminated when with me in the BB, the button raised. I could tell he was trying to steal the blinds and after the SB folded, I checked my cards, seeing AhQd. I had him covered and so I pushed, which of course would put him all-in. Incredibly, after correctly naming my hand ("a strong Ace" he said), he made the call and flipped over 9c8s! The flop didn't help him but a 9 came on the turn. I didn't improve on the river and I was left crippled. We were playing 6-handed at that point and so the blinds got back round towards me very quickly and I was card-dead. Had a great night though.

Speaking of poker, the London leg of the fifth European Poker Tour happened last week. I was keeping up with the action via the PokerStars blog and this entry made me laugh.

Greeks Include Many People

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:10:00 +0000

As promised, version 2.6 of the GIMP is now in GNOME:Community

Green Imps Make Phones

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:14:00 +0000

It only seems like yesterday that GIMP 2.4 was released - indeed, it's less than a year - but already, GIMP 2.6 has been released.

Stephen has very kindly packaged it for openSUSE 11.0. I'll update the package in GNOME:Community real soon.

It's a wired world baby!

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:08:00 +0000

Or in this case a wireless one.

Four years or so ago, I used wifi for the first time on the laptop I owned at the time (the beast, as it was known). I was sat at Northampton Services on the M1 at the time.

Well, I'm there again today and the wifi access is now free - gratis - it ain't cosing me a penny.

Kudos to BT and RoadChef for doing this because it means that I can have a coffee to perk myself up while listing to streamed radio and check Facebook without breaking the bank. The other reason I stopped was that it appeared that just about every motorway and 'A' road in the southern half of England has an accident and delays on them at the moment so I figured I'd give them a chance to clear or at least ease.

A lot to blog about from the last week or so - there isn't the time to do so here but I will soon.

Offline a few days

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:52:00 +0000

The annual proto-vicar jamboree (also known as the Initial Ministerial Education Residential) begins today so I'll be mostly offline for the next few days. This means that any updates to Planet SUSE will have to wait until I'm back in the connected world. I'll try to read email via my N95 but replying is unlikely so please be patient.

America

James Ogley james at jamesthevicar dot com — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:58:00 +0000

I think a lot of people who read this blog (and I know that's like saying - in the words of Bernard Wooley - "a lot of Radio Three listeners") probably come away with the idea that I'm anti-American. I'm not, what I am is anti-hypocrisy and anti-imperialist. I love the US Constitution (with the notable exception of the Second Amendment) and only wish that the nation that it represents lived by it.

The election on November 4th this year has huge implications, not only for Americans, or indeed for their standing in the world but for the world as a whole and that's why there's a tilt in my posting towards comment on the campaign and situation across the pond. I recently exchanged some messages with a friend of mine who's a Californian but now lives over here. She's trying to figure out who to give her overseas vote to (worth noting that all 55 Electoral College votes from CA are almost certain to go to Obama). She was struggling and I tried to be as impartial as possible in offering her places to go to get to grips with the two candidates positions on the issues (again, I know there are other candidates but until a third-party candidate picks up an EC vote, no-one's really going to care).

That was all a very long preamble so that it's very clear that it is with no glee whatsoever that I provide a link to today's report from Robert Fisk in the Independent: Six years in Guantanamo. "Sami al-Haj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman was beaten, abused and humiliated in the name of the war on terror ... 'We know you are innocent' ... 'All they wanted was for me to be a spy for them.'"

I also provide a link to this post from one of the BBC's reporters in the US, Justin Webb: Nailing a sneezing maverick. A very quick look at how McCain's poll lead has atrophied in the space of a week. September 18th - one week ago - had McCain on 274 EC votes to Obama's 243 (21 ties). That is now Obama 286, McCain 252. Obama's looking more and more presidential with each passing day while McCain seems panicked and unfocused. I know which of those options I would want as Commander-in-Chief.