a time for amnesia...

Don't you hate is when you have a great idea for something you want to write about, but then you forget before you next get to blog? It probably doesn't help that I haven't been on the computer in about a week...
So for want of my original topic, I'm going to write about music.
I bought two new CDs last week so I am very excited... You may not be but that's ok. They were Children of Bodom's "Hate Crew Deathroll" and Metallica's "Kill 'Em All" ... I had to rearrange my CD storage to fit them, but it suits me... My Cds live in a shoebox on my desk - I had them lined up along the shoebox like this but now there are two many so they are in two rows going across instead. One of these days I'll get a proper CD stacker, but at the moment my shoebox is probably more compact and less likely to fall over anyway...
Well I'm very happy with the music, which is probably related to the fact that I'd already heard some of the tracks from both CDs, but also because any metal makes a good backdrop to latin translation, in my opinion...
yes, I'm a nerd...

Speaking of which, I don't use linux but I do love this comic:














(I pinched it from www.indietits.com)

a time for contemplation...

I do that a lot...
After commenting on someone's site - maybe enemy of the republic's, but I don't know - I was thinking about a Bible verse... so I thought I'd write about what I'd was thinking about it... a nice bit of "thinking with my fingers" as it were.
Sometimes my fingers think without me actually - it's a bit weird when I type the end of sentence without realising I'd decided to type that...
So, the verse:

1 Samuel 16:7b
The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.

I think this verse is really relevant in looking at the Christian faith... It reflects the difference between God's ways and people's ways, and it's also got a great explanation of why Christians need to keep an eye on the things they do and say.
Most Christians (feel free to disagree, by the way) would agree that committing a sin is not going to cut you off from God forever, once you've accepted Jesus Christ as your saviour. Whether you've lied, cheated, committed adultery, stolen or murdered someone, forgiveness is still on offer if you truly have faith and repent.
So a Christian who is truly following Jesus will not only want everyone to be forgiven and turn to Christ (as opposed to wanting revenge or ostracising them), but they will also be aiming to find opportunities to explain this to people.
I'm not saying this is a licence to go out and do the wrong thing "since I'll be forgiven anyway" but I am saying that it's not the be-all and end-all of your faith... there are more important things than judging other people. Let he who has commited no sin throw the first stone. If you're completely innocent, only then might you have an excuse for judging others.

On the other hand, one of the most common "turn-offs" for non-Christians would definitely have to be a hypocrite. No one wants to be "preached at" by some loser who is always doing the opposite of what he or she is saying anyway. And that's why Christians need to be beyond reproach in everything they do - or at any rate, they need to be doing their utmost be irreproachable, and they need to admit it when they do make mistakes... pretending you're perfect isn't going to acheive anything if everyone around you can see clearly that you're not.

hum-de-dum. I hope you don't think I'm a hypocrite now too. I know I make mistakes, and I also know I'm particularly blind to my own mistakes, so I have to work hard to realise them... But don't we all?

a time... no time...

come on, you don't expect me to actually update do you? I will do so properly sometime soon.

ok I think the reason I haven't updated much is because I have now got a little notebook which I put everything in ... and so instead of blogging things that usually I'd write about I tend to just write in there.

and yes, I do mean everything from Rants to Circle Geometry calculations to Latin research to my experimentation with Celtic Knotwork(which incidentaly is great fun) ...