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Funding

Just sat through my first experience of an STFC Town Meeting. This is a meeting of a group of physicists to discuss matters of the Science and Technology Facilities Council. It was almost exclusively about money: how the limited funding we get from the government should be allocated, and how we should try and get more money.

The government has, within the last few years, drastically dropped the level of investment in particle physics. This means that a number of existing and future projects have had to be scrapped, and other projects have had to be scaled down.

While I was listening to this discussion, I was thinking about how money should best be used. Continue reading “Funding”

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Holy Spirit breaking through!

God is good!
(You say, “All the time!”)

Yesterday and today I’ve been at the Worship Central London event with Fairy and a gang from our church. We learnt lots and had a great time, but by far the most exciting thing for me was what happened in the last worship session tonight.

I’ve been struggling for ages with feeling emotionally detached from God. It’s been a long time since I’ve tangibly felt the Holy Spirit, and although I feel fine in the “head” part of my relationship with him, I’ve been missing the “heart” part. It has felt like, whenever I pray, I’m talking at God rather than meeting with him and hearing from him. The only times I’ve really felt close to God have been when I’m leading worship, which isn’t a healthy state to try and serve in.

Tonight though, something broke through. I was worshipping God and giving him everything, when suddenly it just clicked, and I felt a wave of the Holy Spirit running through my body. It wasn’t dramatic or overpowering, but it felt like the beginning of something big. I’m excited about what God might do next!

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Identity

It’s amazing how your identity gets spread thinly across the whole Internet! I’ve just be collating all the web sites that I belong to and all the chat clients that I’m connected to, and it can be a bit overwhelming to keep everything up to date. Does anyone know of some web service to notify all your different sites when you change your address, for example?

Is it possible to have a coherent web identity? In fact, I would probably like three or four different web identities – a public one, a work one and one for friends and family. I guess this is just the nature of the Internet. It is by definition decentralised, and there is no reason for each of your web services to know about the others, let alone communicate and consolidate together. It does seem, however, that interoperability is one of the current pushes in Internet services.

If you’re interested in how to connect with me online, check out the contact page.

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Entertainment

I hope you appreciate the variety of technology and the juxtaposition of new and old, cheap and expensive in my entertainment cabinet!

For gaming I have a SNES from the 80s and an Xbox 360. For watching and recording TV I have a VCR on top of a PC running experimental new social television software (I got rid of the DVD player to save space as the Xbox plays DVDs). And this brand new software is running on a 10-year-old cast-off HP PC…

Continue reading “Entertainment”

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The Eastons go East

this year we decided to send out a christmas letter to let our friends and family know about the exciting stuff that has happened this year. sadly we couldn’t send this to everyone we know because we didn’t have everyone’s addresses and because of the printing and postage costs! so here it is for your delectation!

Hello beautiful friends!

We hope this letter finds you well and we hope that you are looking forward to the Christmas break.

As most of you know, Serena, Farrah’s sister was healed of cancer in June. She had been diagnosed with terminal cancer almost two years ago and was told that there were no more options to help her. Continue reading “The Eastons go East”

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No more cancer

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

Prince Caspian – Chapter 10

Every day God seems a little bit bigger! We’ve been praying for this day for years now, but when it finally came yesterday, we struggled to believe it at first. But God is really big enough to cure cancer!

Continue reading “No more cancer”

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to shame or encourage?

“you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”

— obi-wan kenobi

a point of view is a powerful thing. i’m thinking in particular about the examples of famous missionaries who gave up everything for God. Continue reading “to shame or encourage?”

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listening to God

just had an awesome small group, thinking about listening to God.

i’m feeling really challenged to shift my paradigm of life, if such a thing is possible! would be great to be listening to God the whole time and hear what to do even in the little things! i’ve realised that my current attitude to activity is very selfish, hence not really bothering to listen to God in case he wants me to do something!

i realise that change is hard, but i do want to make an effort to listen every minute of the day, and hopefully this will biff the passivity out of the way, and the change will be self-sustaining!

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passivity journal strikes again!

so I was meant to be keeping a passivity journal. sadly I’ve been too passive..

so here it is. today I have read my bible and I’m going to help out at church with the computers and go into college for my viva, which is scary. then fairy and I are going rock climbing!

in general a good day. I do need to pray and maybe write in my prayer journal, then I’d have done all the things I’m meant to do in a day!

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homework

gosh physics is complicated!

– imported from matteaston.net