Steve Goodier’s posts are always thought-provoking. I got this one today…
A man lay in a hospital bed worried about whether he would live or die. He called his pastor to come pray for him. He told her that if he got well, he’d donate $20,000 to the church.
The pastor prayed and the man eventually DID get well and returned home. But no check came to the church. The pastor paid him a visit.
For months we’ve been looking forward to Family Camp. It’s a week-long camp with other Christadelphians for parents with young children, and it’s all about helping each other raise children who learn respect, care for others and above all, love God. We’ve been twice before and loved it, so booked into this one as soon as we could.
Continue reading When gastro serves you a lemon…. how to use a sudden week at home
What is it with me and phantom touches?? After enduring this with my Surface 2, I’ve now got the same thing with my LG G2. Fortunately I find it’s not a new problem, but it’s definitely frustrating!
Why do we discipline children? While there may be many reasons, ultimately I believe:
We discipline to teach children there are consequences to their actions.
We know instinctively that everything we do has some consequence, even at the simplest levels. If we turn on a tap over an empty glass, the consequence is the glass is filled with water. If we push a tall box, the consequence is that the box falls and possibly causes something to break. As adults we know that we are responsible for dealing with the consequences of our actions, but that’s not something children understand. As very young children we’ve done everything for them, so they see us clean up their mess at the table and put them to bed when they’re tired. They can’t take responsibility for their actions when they’re very young, but as adults they will do this almost 100% of the time. So between infancy and adulthood they need to progressively learn this.
I’ve always been a fan of home-grown produce and supporting local producers whenever possible, and around this time of year for the last couple we’ve bought a few boxes of citrus from Fresh Citrus Direct. They’re a family citrus farm in the SA Riverland who sell their produce direct to the public rather than being forced to dance to the supermarkets’ tune where in most cases the supplier bears the cost of their ‘low’ prices to the customer. Some of our friends at church have property on the Murray and have had to dig up perfectly good orange trees because they can’t compete with the cheap imports from overseas. So I’m keen to support the producers who are left.
Continue reading The economics of squeezing your own orange juice
Seven months on how do I find the Surface 2? I’m still happy with it. The bugs I had with the screen seem to have gone. I’m guessing since others have commented on the problem it must be a software glitch, not an issue with just my unit, so it could have been fixed through a software update. It only came back once when I put a screen protector back on, but since that’s been gone so has the problem.
This afternoon a young boy about 6 and his mum got on my bus. He walked in front of her as they walked up the aisle. His mum came to a vacant seat just past the turntable and said ‘here’ to her son, to which he responded loudly ‘NO HERE!’ and kept walking to the back. His mum shook her head in annoyance, and with a huff meekly followed him to the back.
Hands up who sees a problem here.
Does it really matter, in this case, where they sit? No. But what does matter is that she issued an instruction, he ignored it and then she allowed his word to overrule here. So the issue is one of authority – who’s in charge, rather than simply a choice of seat.
…continues to impress. It seems to chew through the juice slower than normal in use, but in standby it hardly sips anything, generally only dropping about 4% overnight on airplane mode. This is a big improvement on the Galaxy Nexus which would normally lose >10% under the same conditions. A lot of this is no doubt largely due to the GN’s 1750mAh battery compared to the LG’s 3000mAh, but it’s good to see that larger battery translating into longer battery life rather than simply driving a hungrier processor / screen etc. For a heavy user the difference may not be so noticeable but as my phone is on standby most of the time, to be able to get almost two full days out of a single charge is a big improvement!
My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Bought it two years ago just as they were being phased out and it’s been a good daily driver. I liked the simple Nexus experience. Several months ago it had been running slower and slower so I rooted it and installed the last official ROM, 4.3, and started from scratch (was able to restore app settings with Helium). Unfortunately I think the hardware’s not totally up to 4.3 as it’s ended up slower than ever, sometimes taking up to 10 seconds from pressing the search box to the keyboard appearing and being able to type.
So I started looking for alternatives. The Nexus 4 was on my list as I liked the look of this when it came out, but the Nexus 5 quickly joined it as its replacement and also packs LTE. Then I saw the HTC One (M8) which looked magnificent, and then read some reviews on the just-released LG G3. This last one sounded like exactly what I was looking for, but wasn’t released and also expected to be priced right up in the $600+ bracket.
It boiled down to a toss-up between the Nexus 5 and the LG G2. The hardware was very similar. LG Nexus 5 vs LG G2 read before purchase – LG – Android phones explains some of the differences, but in short it’s the better camera and battery life on the G2 and larger screen in same sided body, plus oddly placed buttons and custom skin which I was unsure about, vs wireless charging and quicker software updates on the Nexus 5. Coming from a Nexus background I liked the philosophy of the Nexus 5. Most reviews listed them as about equals taking into account the higher price tag on the G2, but by now the G2 is about the same price as the Nexus 5. Eventually I got a 3 month old 32Gb G2 for $350 on Gumtree which feels good since it’s a current model still selling around $600 new.
I’m pretty happy with it so far.
I went to the shops a few weeks ago looking for breakfast cereal. I naturally gravitated to the products we normally bought, including a box of corn flakes. The box was well coloured advertising its health benefits and a competition for some free promotional products. However having been to a nutrition seminar at work not that long ago I took particular note of the ingredients and compared this with another brand alongside – this was a plain white box with a fairly minimalistic picture on the front, the sort of thing one tends not to look twice at, but when I read the ingredients I found this rather dull looking products contained less sugar, less fat and more fibre than the fancy looking one. Finally they were cheaper and tasted just fine!
When you go shopping, your attention may be arrested by fancy packaging or “2 for 1” offers and the like; but ultimately you’re interested in the product itself and how it works, not how fancy the box is. This is a lot like people. Someone’s physical appearance is just the packaging, but the product inside is their character. You don’t become friends or more with someone simply for how they look, just as you can’t live with a disagreeable and prickly person just because they’ve got a pretty face. In the same way, outward appearance counts for precious little in a committed, long-term relationship.
This was brought to mind when I read some comments Bindi Irwin made recently. People comfortable with themselves don’t feel the need to attract artificial attention by the way they dress (or don’t dress!). In the eyes of some, fancy packaging through immodesty or excessive attention on the outward appearance minimises the beauty of your character, to the point some may interpret this to mean there really isn’t much inner beauty at all! In the case of immodest clothing, this can cause you to become perceived by some more as an object than a person, which helps neither you nor them. Down the track, people who have felt the need to attract artificial attention often end up wishing they’d held their honour a little higher.
The Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, has also drawn the attention of the media because of how modestly she chooses to dress, something noted as a breath of fresh air. Modest attire allows the beauty of our character to show.
The Apostle Peter says the following: “Let yours not be that outward adorning… but the hidden person of the heart” 1Peter 3v3-4. Male or female, I think there’s a lesson there for all of us – focus on developing a beautiful character, something which transcends and outlasts any physical beauty.
