Even by their fairly hyperbolic standards, this is an entertainingly over-the-top headline from the Evening Standard. I wasn’t worried by it, perhaps because we live on a boat (though shortly after buying our boat, a relative asked me worriedly “but what if the Thames floods?”)
I found this in a discussion on the Times online about whether we need religion:
Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Perhaps the unexamined faith is not worth having?
In the midst of a lot of hackneyed and poorly argued comments for and against religion, this seemed a really valuable thought. Something that Quakers aim for is an ‘examined faith’, both at an individual and corporate level (See Advice No.5 in Quaker Faith & Practice). It ties in with a well-worn Quaker phrase, ‘What canst thou say?’I try to do this from time to time in my blog, but perhaps not often enough. Aidan McCartney has this as his main purpose in his blog though- I look forward to reading more!
[update] Now looking at using WordPress to bring it all together…Hopefully, I’ve now achieved two goals- the good looks of a custom-built site (johnfitzgeralddesign.com) along with an easily updatable blog.
On the Eurostar now, final leg back to London. Quite tired after another night in the sleepless seats of Deustche Bahn from Munich to Paris. Bizarrely, I slept better on the day train from Vienna to Munich- had to be shaken awake by an exasperated guard who had been shouting ‘fahrkaten bitte’ for a fruitless few minutes!
It was a very good weekend in Vienna, we really motored through the planning for the European Quaker conference which will be happening there next weekend. Local Quakers in Vienna were very hospitable and friendly, and we enjoyed some wonderful Viennese food- strudel and new wine being particular highlights. The only downside was we were so busy planning that I hardly got to see Vienna- a real shame as it looks very pretty. Next year though…
My few fumbled words of German made me want to learn some more for next time- felt a bit of a foolish pointing tourist at times. I find it reasonably easy to follow what is being said, but am hopeless at stringing words together myself.
Now just a quick day at work before I can catch up on missed sleep.
Travelling by train from London to Vienna and back. All quite exciting, save for a few gripes: had to stomp round Gare de l’Est in search of a cash machine at 10pm last night (thought I’d get a good value exchange by waiting ’til I got to euro land…) The night train from Paris to Munich was pretty grim- no couchette on the cheap ticket! Slept in 5-minute snatches. Not feeling too shattered though.
On the train from Munich to Vienna, discover that Deustche Bahn have given me a ticket from Hanover to Brussels (odd since I go nowhere near those places!), and omitted to give me any tickets for the bit from Munich to Vienna and back. The German ticket inspector gives the closest he can come to a ‘bof!’, but the Austrian one demands that I buy a new ticket. A bit of a pickle as he can’t take cards and I’m 40 cents short- a good samaritan fellow passenger very kindly chips in. Swings and roundabouts- the ticket inspector’s zeal balanced by my fellow passenger’s kindness.
On balance, though, I’m really glad I’m traveling this way- a great chance to watch the world go by, and to get on with things- have had some very productive fettling with the HSC visual identity.
When I’m starting a design process (as I am at the moment), there’s a lot to be said for getting out a pencil and paper- a bit of time sketching means my ideas tend to be stronger- they evolve naturally, rather than the old ‘let’s try it with a drop shadow’ school of design. In a way, I almost want to put off the digital side of things as long as I reasonably can.
After a fair bit of mucking around with code (HTML the hard way), I’ve used RapidWeaver to get my work online. It’s certainly a quick way of getting my portfolio together! It follows from Seth Godin’s advice, that small businesses shouldn’t spend too much time tweaking their code.
[14/07/07 Update: I’ve now brought my blog into the new site, it’s available at: www.blog.johnfitzgeralddesign.com]
things that might have been otherwise 