James's Weblog

I just got a call. The caller display showed "international". The accent was foreign.

Operator: "Hello, this is N calling from the technical department of Windows Computer Systems. Could I speak to the main user please."

Me: "I'm sorry, there is no company called Windows Computer Systems."

Operator: {Silence}

Me: "It doesn't exist. Where did you say you were calling from?"

Operator: {Hangs up}

I feel prompted to post part of Psalm 2 this morning

¹ Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
² The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
³ “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”

Drupal websites don't always need to allow users to register themselves with an account. This site doesn't, for instance. Anonymous commenting is turned on. The contact form is enabled for anonymous users. And those are the only thing that any member of the public would need to do - other than read. So nobody needs to set themselves up with a login.

Here's why you should never trust the autocomplete feature of Google

I've used the services of Pingdom for a long time to keep track of how my websites are loading. They will check any website from ten different servers around the world, as often as once a minute. You can look at graphs of how the load time varies with time, and you can be notified as soon as the site goes down.

For those who don't know, a Hot Top is a home coffee roaster that operates a bit like a miniature version of the commercial roasters. It roasts in a perforated steel drum that rotates while the air temperature around it ramps up to the right temperature. When the beans are roasted, they are ejected into a cooling tray where ambient air is blown through the beans that are stirred with a paddle. The whole thing takes 20-25 minutes.

Getting Things Done

David Allen, in Getting Things Done (paid link), has lots of very useful tips on how to keep on top of all the things that need to be done. I don't think you need to adopt his method in an all-or-nothing way, although if taken as a whole approach there is a consistency that lends itself. Even then, you have to work out how you will put the principles into practice.

I've just taken delivery of the commentary on 1-3 John (paid link) by Colin Kruse, published in the Pillar series by IVP.

Smalley (paid link), commenting on 1 John 2:3, is very helpful on the place of obedience in the Christian life.

Steve Leighton, proprietor of Has Bean Coffee, has been on a trip to Kenya.

Naturally, this is doubly close to my heart, and so it was interesting to read his thoughts on his return.

There's an encouraging twist in there that we can expect some good Kenyan coffees to land in the UK in a few months time as a result of his trip.