Where have I been?

It might come as a surprise to those of you who read this that I actually enjoy writing. It's been more than a year since I updated this blog. I wish it wasn't.

I constantly have ideas that I'd like to write about and I'd love to do more of those weekly summary posts - it was fascinating to bring together some of the stuff I was doing online and in real life. The problem seems to be one of time and motivation. It's the combination that's a killer.

I've got the day job, which I love. Problem solving, programming, technology; I love it! Then when I get home I want need to spend as much time as possible with Isaac. We're less than a month from 4 years old; he's a bundle of energy, but he's so full of life and love that I hate having to get other things done sometimes. I also hate it when I feel tired after a particularly mentally challenging day at work; sometimes I have to force myself to play, which is awful, but I do my best to give him some time whilst being honest about my limits.

Then there are the jobs that need to get done around the house and garden. I'm rarely on top of them all, but that's alright, I'll catch up later when Isaac is older and wants some time/space from his old mum and dad. As long as I can just keep it ticking over.

But that usually just leaves the evenings when Isaac is asleep, I can get some jobs done, but nothing too noisy. Usually by this point I just don't have the attention span to sit down and write. And I've got other projects that need my attention too. D'oh!

And then, just to make life even more interesting, we added Willow to the mix:

Something tells me these two are going to be the best of friends!

A photo posted by David Lumm (@cyberneticiandave) on Aug 1, 2015 at 9:51am PDT

It being summer, we're also spending a lot of time exploring beautiful Cornwall (as much as we can whilst she's not allowed on the ground) which tends to lead to a lot more blog ideas but even less time to write them. Ho hum.

I've been trying to write a little something each day, let's call it micro-journaling (it's like the Twitter of journaling...) but even with that I've struggled. It's trying to decide what is worth taking the time to write down that sometimes slows me down.

I'm resisting the urge to make any "I'm back" announcement, but here's hoping it'll be less than a year before I write again. I'd like to publish at least a post a month. Wish me luck!

Dew genowgh oll

Open letter to Philip Hammond

With a little help from 38 Degrees, I've just written the following letter to Mr Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary. Perhaps you'd like to write your own?

Dear Mr Philip Hammond,
First off, welcome to your new role. I guess there's never a good time to take on a role like this, but you seem to have taken yours up during particular unrest about the situation in Palestine.
Thanks to social media and the constant under-current of religion and politics it doesn't seem there's a person in the country without an opinion on the matter, and they're not shy about sharing it.
I understand that the UKs political relationship is biased towards Israel, not least because we were heavily involved in starting this mess in the first place, but I think we need to make a statement to both parties that this behaviour can no longer continue.
Neither party is in the right here, both must be called to account. The UK must be seen to not be supporting one side or the other, so this means withdrawing financial (and other non-humanitarian) support from Israel.
Whether or not either side has committed war crimes, this has become a very dirty war, with many innocent lives paying the price. Both sides should be investigated. I honestly do not understand why the UK abstained from the UN vote to do so? Was it because only Israel was targeted? Would the UK vote on a resolution to investigate both sides?
Peace talks need to focus on two areas. 1, Hamas, on behalf of Palestine, must accept that Israel have a legal right to some of the land, as per the UN resolutions from 1947; 2, Israel must return land to Palestine that it has taken since that date and remove all blockades around those borders. It must cease and desist from attempting to claim further land, if necessary by having it's armed forces disbanded.
The general populous of both sides have a right to a free and pleasant life. I don't for one minute think that the UK should intervene in the way we did in Iraq or Afghanistan, but we do need to take measures to prevent further innocent bloodshed. I hope I can count on you to represent the growing opinion in this country that this must end now. Enough is enough.
Yours sincerely,
David Lumm

Is God authoritarian?

I'm currently reading Follow by Floyd McClung, a very challenging and thought provoking read. Today's thought centres on one point. Is God an authoritarian?

The book spends some time talking about how we're to give God complete control of our lives. However he seems to approach this from a very authoritarian point of view. That God literally wants to control every aspect of our lives, I'm not sure yet whether he means at the macro or micro scale.

I guess it may be because of my increasing distance from the institutional Church and increasing leaning towards universalism, but I find myself kinda confused that we would take people from their perceived freedom to become slaves (willing or otherwise) of the King. Surely the good news is freedom? Are we not adopted children of the king rather than His servants?

I seek to bring in God's Kingdom, to be and proclaim the good news. But should I really seek to be micro managed?

Jesus seemed to outline a different model of leadership, so why do we treat God the Father as an old world King? Is it because he had to give all of those rules to the Isrealites? Was that for his benefit or for theirs?

I may just be overreacting, I almost certainly am, but I was interested in starting a conversation. Is it about giving up myself completely and allowing him full control, or is it more about becoming one with him and Jesus and the Father are one?

Answers on a postcard please!

All I want for Christmas is an electric car

I love electric cars, I’d love to have one, but I can barely afford to keep the car I have on the road, never mind an electric one too and let’s be honest, range anxiety is still a very real thing (and the sort of electric car I could afford wouldn't have range as a selling point). For sure the situation will improve with time and the network of charging points is increasing, but who wants to have to stop every couple of hours on a long trip?

That there is why I love what +Tesla Motors are doing with their cars, they’re starting from scratch and really thinking the whole problem through. They’re slowly working their way towards mainstream, but of course they have to start somewhere. More power to them, at least they’re taking the risk at being at the cutting edge of this, which is risky.

There’s reasons for the high cost of the cars, of course there is, as +Elon Musk mentioned in his recent blog post, but at the same time this slows down the time it takes for the technology to get mainstream. The more people who have electric cars, the more charging stations; more infrastructure will then push up adoption figures. Plus the more people who own electric cars and the more they can provide useful feedback and usage figures which will help improve the technology.

The sort of media coverage they've been getting recently may not help, even with great responses by Elon (see the above linked blog post); they need users who will actively push the good news into the social media and traditional media.

As a software developer I see it all too often that the best way to understand whether you've developed something right is to test it and take notes of how it is used and how the users feel about it and I think the situation is the same here.

I'm never going to afford a brand new top-of-the-line Model S, frankly it’ll be years before I’ll be able to afford a decent used electric car. So I did what any sane person would do, I wrote to them and asked them to send me a free car in exchange for regular reviews, blog posts and articles. Unfortunately I haven’t had a reply, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up hope.

If they considered a lease type offering, that could work out similar to the costs of running an internal combustion vehicle. You see with tax, insurance, fuel and maintenance that can cost a fair amount each month; and whilst there would be a hike in my electricity bill, I’d imagine that I’d be able to work around that considerably.

We've had a new Sainsbury's supermarket open in Penzance and that, rather helpfully, includes an electric car charging point. We simply change from monthly shops to weekly, change where we normally do our shopping and have a meal there in their excellent cafe to extend charging times. Our food shop bill will go up a little, but against the savings being made on our car running costs it’ll probably be negligible. Whenever we’re planning a trip away we’ll have to do an overnight charge at home (on Economy 7) and plan around en route charging points.

No, I haven’t thought much about this…

I really want an electric car and I can’t wait until they become mainstream! I want to be involved in making them mainstream.

The tales of an electric car towing a caravan and being used successfully away from home for a week or doing fairly ordinary journeys like Cornwall to Bristol, Cornwall to London, Cornwall to North Wales would make people rethink about range anxiety. Having an electric car that is fast enough to compete in races is one thing, but what about an electric car that can be used by a family with minimal or even no inconvenience? Now that’s something that’s going to encourage uptake, and in turn encourage the infrastructure to improve.

What I’d like to see Tesla do now is some sort of subsidised lease programme, with all costs included (except electricity), in exchange for enhanced coverage of the vehicles. Like an extended test drive crossed with Peugeot's “just add fuel” scheme… I can see the branding now, “Tesla, just add leccy”. But seriously, this would be a way to get an advanced electric vehicle in the hands of an average car driver for a year and really accelerate the whole process. I’d like to nominate myself for the scheme; I’ll take a red model S with a towbar please or a charcoal Model X, if they’re coming soon...

And more than two months have gone by...

It's been quite a while since I last did a catchup post, over two months now! So this one won't be quite as detailed as the others, but more of a quick skim through what I/we have been up to. Be warned, it is long.

We've met up with some friends who have come down here to be the Corps Officers (Salvation Army church leaders) in St Ives. Lucy was meeting them pretty much for the first time, for me it was more of a huge catch-up, having not seen either of them for many years. Having now met a few times I'd like to think we're well on our way to becoming good friends. We're just trying not to think about the fact that they'll have to move away in a few years...

As a sure sign that Isaac is growing bigger, we bought a car seat and I blogged about our choice. We had been fortunate that he had managed to fit in his first car seat for almost the first two years of his life and went for a rear-facing model to maximise safety.

Also related, Isaac's gone from barely walking to now running around quite confidently (apart from the other day when he took a tumble on the road outside our house and managed to graze his forehead...)

Early in September we bought a caravan, to allow us to take some holidays away from home. We wanted a particular model of folding caravan (a Rapido Export-matic) so I travelled all the way to Kent to pick one up at a very good price. Unfortunately on the way home one of the tyres burst and did some damage to the floor, but it's all repairable. The caravan also turned out to be the slightly older Export model, but it's not much difference. We're looking forward to getting her out and exploring some more of this country near and far. We've already decided that our first week away needs to be the New Forest, but we'll probably take her for a weekend somewhere closer to home.

Now we just need to get that garage sorted so we can fit her in!

Mid September Isaac had his second birthday! Woo hoo! I took the day off and we headed to Lappa Valley Steam Railway. We had an awesome day, despite some dodgy weather. Here are some photos:

Towards the end of September Lucy's family all came down to see us, which was lovely. We saw Mousehole and St Ives and on their way back up the county we popped into St Agnes for lunch on the Sunday. Isaac had loads of fun throwing stones into the sea with Nanny in the rain!

When they'd all cleared off we set to work turning the spare room of old into Isaac's bedroom (so now there's even more in the garage... oops). There's no rush to get him to sleep in his own bed, but he's loving having his own space to play in etc.

This last week I've been off work, which has been lovely. We originally planned the week off to use the caravan, but circumstances meant we had to adapt. We used the week to get some stuff done around the house, and make a bit of room in the garage (thanks to a car boot sale on Sunday). We didn't waste it all in the house though, we went to soft play, visited Lands End, went swimming at a great pool with slides and we also went on walks around the village.

Last but not least, here's some highlights from various parts of the internet:

• 29th June - Instagram: Possibly Isaac's first "selfie"
• 12th August - Instagram: Isaac showing off his improving walking
• 14th August - I reviewed the "Groovy Cable"
• 16th August - I shared a skeuomorphic online payment system on LinkedIn
• 18th August - Instagram: Isaac learning how to sew with his Mama
• 20th August - I shared an interesting blog post from a friend about prayer
• 22nd August - Lucy took a picture of me and Isaac waiting for the train, it's my current profile picture
• 13th September - I started blogging a home PBX project (still in progress)
• 23rd September - I shared a post on Google+ about a spoon that cancels out parkinsons tremors

Jesus Is Lord!

Having started a series on the fundamentals of our faith, some time back, it seems like I missed a step really. So in this post I'm going to backtrack and start from the very beginning. Since I started the series on this blog, I'll keep it here, but future posts of this nature will probably be posted on the Mission Cornwall blog.

We absolutely believe in Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ or Messiah, and that He was the son of God.

We believe in a trinitarian god-head, or as the old song puts it "God in three persons, blessed trinity". We believe that there is a Father/Creator, the Holy Spirit who is the breath of God and Jesus, the son of God and son of man.

We believe in the Bible, although we don't believe the story ended there - I guess that one is a post all in itself.

We believe wholeheartedly that Jesus came to save, to heal and to inaugurate the new covenant and the coming of God's kingdom. The arrival of God's kingdom is, for us, simultaneously past, present and future. That is, it started with Jesus and, to quote Jesus, it is "at hand" - that is to say both here-and-now and also imminent.

We believe that Jesus started a movement that would be announce the coming kingdom and catalyse it's creation. They became Christians and they, in turn, became paganised by the Roman establishment.

So today we find ourselves Jesus followers, but not always 100% sure of what that means, hence the need to explore our fundamentals in the first place!

I think that's enough for a fundamental, I'll get working on some more posts soon, otherwise these won't be "Fundamentals 2013" any more...

Win an iPhone 5C

I'm pretty fortunate to be able to review a fair few bits of technology, thanks to my awesome writing skillz and some great contacts. OK, so mostly is the good contacts, but anyway, I digress.

This is a quick post, I'll be posting a humongous catch-up post soon, hopefully, but in the meantime I have some news to share with you. Following the announcement of the new iPhones, one of those aforementioned awesome contacts, the wonderful people at mobilefun.co.uk, have announced a competition to win an iPhone 5C.

I'm quite impressed with the concept of the 5C, to be honest, I like the fact that Apple are slowly widening their portfolio and introducing a cheaper (if not exactly cheap) iPhone with all the same attention to detail they are known for. I can't see them ever bringing out a truly budget phone, but this is a step in the right direction.

Back to the competition, it's incredibly easy to enter and it's one of those competitions where you get more entries the more you share etc. Of course the more you share, the more other people get a chance to win... make a wise choice! ;-)

If you win you will, of course, be needing some accessories for your iPhone 5C, and of course Mobile Fun just happen to cover everything you could possibly need.

If you win, please thank me in the form of £50 notes... Or chocolate will do...

In terms of getting back to general blogging, watch this space, the last month and a half have been jam-packed, so there's plenty to tell you!

As they say down these parts, cheers and gone!