I'm a Christian, a physicist, a worshipper, a gamer, a husband and a father.
So, Zach has been with us a few days now. He is the most amazing person, the way he grows so quickly, even in three days. His neck is getting stronger, his legs are stretching, wriggling and pushing, and his head is becoming less deformed each day!
Zachariah means The LORD remembers, and we believe this is a prophecy over him, that through all his life he will know that God is with him and God is for him. Continue reading “Zachariah Michael”
So Zachariah Michael was born today! It is certainly the most amazing and terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced, becoming a Parent. At some point I’ll have to go to Parents’ Evenings…!
He is an amazing gift from God, and when I was thinking about what to write in this most momentous blog post, I was reminded of the best gift ever and the verses in Isaiah 9 that describe it:
Continue reading “To us a child is born; to us a son is given”
Today Farrah and I took our friend’s baby for a walk in his pram along the canal and across the fields. It was so lovely and he slept the whole time.
If only parenting was so easy the whole time!
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Ugh. What fun I have had. For those of you that want to know how to do this without reading the hoops I jumped through, here’s a summary:
Sounds simple, right? No.
This all started because I’m helping a friend set up their new computer, including transferring all the Outlook data. The old computer is old and running Windows XP and Office 2000 Professional very slowly! The new computer is running Windows 7 Home Premium and Office 2010 Home and Student, which does not include Outlook. To get Outlook involves paying another £80 or so.
So first off, I went into Outlook on the old computer and looked for the export settings, found these OK and started with the calendar and contacts, export to CSV, looks simple. A lovely little Microsoft box pops up saying that this feature “Import and Export Module” is not installed, and could you possible put in the disc for Office 2000 Professional that you had 10 years ago? Unsurprisingly, this disc was not forthcoming. This is why I always tell people to select full installations – disk space is so cheap these days. This is also why I tell people to keep all the discs somewhere safe…
So, short of finding a copy of Office 2000 Professional in a friend’s dusty attic or on the dustier side of the Internet (of course, Microsoft don’t support it any more), the only export option available is to PST. Now, as far as I know, PST is a proprietary format, only used by Outlook. Not great for importing. But at least it’s a backup.
I then went onto the new computer and opened Windows Live Mail. I looked for the import function – after working out how to show the menu bar and find the File menu, the only options are to import from Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail. Boo…. So I downloaded a trial version of Outlook 2010 and imported the PST file – all fine, everything is in there, I just needed to get it out!
Again I started with the calendars, as they should be easier than emails. I found a Save As function and exported the whole calendar to an iCalendar file. Simples. Then I went to Windows Live Mail and tried to import the file. No such luck. After scraping the Internet for a while, the only way seems to be to set up a Windows Live account, import the calendar file online, and sync the computer with the online version. I tried to do this, but the online import kept crashing after a certain amount of events. I got around this in the end by exporting the calendar from Outlook as ten different iCalendar files, all for a certain time period, and importing them one at a time… Not nice.
Then the contacts. There doesn’t seem to be a Save As or Export option for contacts in Outlook. I did find a Share by Email option, so did that and saved the attachments as vCard files. So far so good. However, the only way I could find to import them into Windows Live Mail was to double-click each contact individually! Aaargh!!
Anyway, everything’s in there now except the emails. And this is the tricky bit. With a nice ISP that lets you use IMAP, there wouldn’t even be a problem, all the emails would be on the server ready to download. Stupidly, BT don’t think this is a good idea. So in Outlook, my friend has ten years of emails downloaded over POP – *sigh*.
I won’t list all the things I tried, because it would take too long. Transferring them via my own GMail account would have worked, but I estimate it would have taken over 40 hours. I found the answer on a number of forums (thanks Mark) but it’s not possible on Windows 7. So I took the PST file home to my MacBook, which has Windows XP and Office 2007 Enterprise. So my poor Mac is sadly running Microsoft software and imports the PST file to Outlook fine. The trick now is that Outlook Express on XP and Windows Mail on Vista can communicate with Outlook. So I opened Outlook Express and managed to import all the Outlook data, which it saves as DBX files in a mailbox store. By going to Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store location you can find the store or move it somewhere more memorable. I then opened Windows Live Mail on my MacBook too, and found the import from Outlook Express option on the hidden File menu. Hooray, the emails are there in Windows Live Mail! At this point it seems like a miracle!
All that is left is to move the store (Tools > Options > Advanced > Maintenance > Store location) to my friends computer and get the folders in. Hopefully that should be the easy part…
My advice, as ever: Get a Mac.
So it’s just over a month to go. How scary is that? I’m going to be responsible for a little human being! You’d think there’d be laws against it…
Farrah and I are really excited about meeting him, but with a healthy dose of terrified! It’s like nothing we’ve ever done before, and it’s starting to feel closer to reality than a dream. Continue reading “Fatherhood”
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
I’ve had such a good day today. I was worried earlier in the week that I’d feel really sad on Sunday because I wasn’t at home at church. I found an Anglican church here but the service was at 8am and I, ahem, didn’t make it. I also have to confess that, last week, Sunday seemed like any other day – this is because at Physics conferences, all the student stuff happens on the Sunday before the conference actually starts, so I had my poster up and had to learn how to copy files from one computer to another.
Today, I went to Arashiyama, which is an area of Kyoto outside the city centre, and I hired a bike and trundled around. I went through bamboo groves and into temples, along the streets and past the fields, along the river path and (partly) up a mountain. It was really nice, beautiful, picturesque and calm. And God was there with me.