So, last weekend was summer Harvest 2010, which if you read my blog from last years harvest. you will know that it is a long weekend away for young christians and non christians, looking to find out about and encounter God. To be honest it was a pretty amasing weekend for many, myself included. I went there with a view of finding some answers to some questions i had, as well as just spending time being close to God and getting myself prepared for the year ahead.

If you read some of my posts from last month you will now that i have felt lead quite strongly down the path of leadership in the church, and am preparing to move churches to pursue that path, but there was one question i wanted to ask God, and that was, what kind of leadership are you leading me into? Beacuse there are so many options, i have found it difficult to dicern where i am headed. Well in all honesty, last weekend, i didn’t get that answer, what i did get was and understanding of what a leader is, how big a responsibility it is, and how i need to prepare to be effective in that role thanks to the leadership seminars that were run over the course of the weekend.

So ok, i didn’t get the answer i was looking for, but thinking about about it, i don’t think i was meant to, not yet, its still early days, i guess i have my whole life ahead of me, to figure that out and decern what kind of leader i am going to be.

However i certainly got a taste of what being a youth leader is like, as i went with a youth group i have known since i became a christian, and i have developed a great respect for their leaders, trying to keep every one in check and behaving properly, and ofcourse me being older than most of the group, i pitched in to try and stop the jumping on each other etc. But during that time i made some new friends, and got to see some old friends i don’t see very often.

I also grew quite close to a couple of people in the group, both whome i have know for some time, but have never gotten that chance. However the downside to that was that they were both going through a particularly difficult time, but God equipped me for that, he provided me with some great advice for them, and i believe He pulled them closer to him through that. So i am happy that i could help bring peace to them even for a short time .

There were many other activities happening over the course of the weekend, such as Tribal Wars which involved pitting campsites against each other in battles of strength and accuracy, like tug of war and welly wanging etc. there was also water games, inflatable gladiatoring, and a gyroscope ( a chair that people sit in to get dizzy ). There were also entertainment events such as Harvests’ got Talent, 70′s disco, comedy night and a couple of open mic nights. Infact on one open mic night even i played my guitar, which was extraordinarily terrifying but an incredible rush, as i have never done anything like that solo before, and i mean ok i wasn’t fantastic as the nerves got the better of me abit, but i am glad i did it, its something i can cross of my bucket lits , but i have felt inspired to practice more and build confidence and then go for it next year .

In conclusion, last weekend was awesome, there were great speakers, brilliant worship lead by a band called Yfriday, and I did lots of business with God, i hadn’t realised how much i need to release to him until then, and it was so freeing when i left on sunday afternoon. Though admittedly it was a bit of a tearful farewell, particularly for one person who had to leave all her friends behind that day as she recently moved away, which i think we all found hard watching her go :’(, but i think she left with a sence that she is never alone, she will always have us as friends, and it just adds that extra aire of excitement when we do see her .

Since coming back from Harvest, I have felt stronger, and more prepared for the time ahead. I have dealt with so much of the rubbish in my life being there, and i am ready to move forward, i am ready to follow the Gods will for my life.

I hope you have enjoyed my latest installment, it was great to follow up harvest with this, and if you are my friend of FB then check out the video of some of the fun we had camping in a field, it didn’t rain much .

So until next time, farewell and God speed

Matt

So lets Get started.

Style – Does it look good

Well what can i say, anyone who has seen one of these on the net will tell you it looks good, anyone who has seen one in the (silver aluminium) flesh will tell you it is incredibly beautiful, its small, its sleek and very discrete, details below:

Height:
1.4 inches (3.6 cm)
Width:
7.7 inches (19.7 cm)
Depth:
7.7 inches (19.7 cm)
Weight:
3.0 pounds (1.37 kg)1

At this size it takes up almost no space what so ever on your desk giving you more space to put other peripherals, like for instance i invested in a 24″ samsung flatscreen monitor and an Edifier 2:1 speaker system.

Specs – What are the options

Well the basic system has a 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 processor (theoretical 4.8Ghz), 2GB Ram, 320GB HDD and 256Mb graphics with HDMI support. This is the model you will be able to get instore, however if you would like to customise your system and get software packages installed, you can do this over the internet on the Apple website. That is the option i went for, as i wanted 4GB Ram and final cut express pre-installed for HD Video editing.

There are some extra peripherals you can aquire also such as the blue tooth keyboard and Magic mouse ( which of course i recommend for its touch technology), as well as the mac remote (always handy). All this will cost you £630 + depending on how many peripherals and software you want, and if you are feeling particularly rich you can spend another £670 on a mac theatre screen .

Performance – How good is it?

Performance wise, well i can only speak for my own system, but it is incredibly quick, it takes literally 30 seconds to a minute to come on which is faster than both my windows computers, the graphics quality is incredible, even when it is not at full HDMI resolution (my cable comes tomorrow), its almost like the retina graphics technology used on the new IPHONE 4 if you have seen one you will no what i am talking about.

As for the network connectivity, it has Gb ethernet and built in wireless N standard connections ( which i am using). i have not yet tested the full potential of either of these technologies as i am still running wireless G standard and 100Mb ethernet in my home, something that i will be looking to upgrade though. But even at G standard the connection speed is impressive although my mac does seem to have a problem with windows live’s website lol.

And finally, the cherry on the top of the whole package, this thing ain’t half quite, its built in fan is whisper quiet, its the sort of thing you could have on in your room all night and not be disturbed.

Conclusion

Being a first time MAC owner, I am quite taken aback by the brilliance of this system, being a long time windows user, i tended to buy away from mac, because they have loads of little differences that just made them that little bit more tedious to figure out how to use, but i think i am picking it up quite well, though i am not impressed that they have managed to remove the pound sign from the keyboard, but other than that, i love it! though i will always enjoy the shear geekiness of building my own pc, which isn’t easily done with a mac, so i think i will remain a proper pc man with an air of mac about him lol

So all in all i love my mac, it is definitely technology to invest in, it has so many things that make life easier, no drivers required, software installed with a simple drag of an icon, it is just amazing in every way. Well this is just my opinion, the decision to get one I leave to you.

i will post updates to this post once i have tested it some more, but these are just my first reactions.

See ya Later.

My situation is like this, i go to to churches, one called trinity and one called heaton baptist, i have spent my time bouncing between the two for the past five years since i made my commitment to faith, which has been fine, i have made loads of friends at both churches, though i have more of background at trinity with it being my family church. However i am now in the situation that i need to decide where i am going to be firmly rooted within a community rather than spreading my self over two.

The basic gist of what was said is that a leader cannot be affective as such unless he/she is fully grounded and committed to one community, which i can totally understand, because it is about support and accountability, for me to be an affective leader i need the support of a community and be in relationships with those i can grow to trust and be accountable to, because this will help me to give the same support to those whom i may lead.

So basically i need to decide and discern what God wants for my life, do i root myself in the community of Trinity, where i sometimes feel i am a bit stuck in my comfort zone and not really moving forward as quickly as maybe i am meant to, or do i root myself into a relatively new community, form new relationships with a community where i feel i have grown more over the past five years. All plans for leadership and student work a side, i need to figure out where my next step in my journey is.

A piece of my heart is a both churches, which makes this decision all the harder to make, so if anyone has any words of wisdom, any advice you would like to give then please do share it. but at the end of the day, guess i need to follow Gods path, and be driven with what is on my heart to do.

Anyway just though I would catch you up on the events as they have unfolded.
Keep Praying, and God Bless.

I guess first things first, I have a new job YAY! it really exciting, i am an ICT Technician for a reputable private school in newcastle, unfortunatly due to school policy i cannot divulge on here where i work,  but the past month has been awesome, i am working with an awesome team, there is only 3 of us, but the other guys are brilliant, really relaxed and layed back, and i am assisting in supporting well over 500 users which i think is quite a feet or any IT office. I am absolutly loving it here, both the staff and students are great to work for, and they have all been really positive about the work we have done, which is always a bonus . I really feel i am fitting in nicely and learning a lot, particularly about profesisonal customer support and managing my time efficiantly here. My manager is great, a really nice guy, he is good at getting the job done without adding any pressure to the job which suits me fine so i am happy, i reckon i am gonna be here for quite some time. Although there is the downside that because my former employer botched up my p45 i am now paying base rate tax on my wages untill my p46 goes through, but hey can’t complain the pay is still better than it was before so again i am happy .

Now onto my student lifegroup work, i found out a couple of weeks ago that i am the only member of this years team that wants to stay on and continue with it next year which is fine, i will be working with some one new and working with a (mostly) completely new bunch of uni students which is always interesting. However over the past year i don’t feel i have played a big roll in leading my lifegroup, i have been kind of shadowing the person i was leading with and only leading 3 or 4 sessions this year, but next year i will be the most senoir lifegroup leader which means more responibiliy with regard to the pastoral care of those students.

This however poses a problem/dilemma because i am currently a part of the congregation at two churches in newcastle, one is my home church and the other i have been going to for 4 years since becoming a christian, and i have responsibilities at both which means i have to be at my home church often because i do PA work there on sundays which means that i am not always at the other church, and unfortunatley i have somewhat of a choice to make, because the church where i do the student work want me to commit more of my time to that church (every sunday morning at least) which means i would have to stop going to my home church in the mornings and would also mean that i could no longer to PA there, they are not stopping me from being part of my home church, but i would be spending considerably less time there than i have been this year, though i feel i have commited a lot of time to the student work, but my current situation is, according the the elders of the church, inappropriate for this ministry.

Sorry i know this must be a little long winded and i have probably confused you more than anything, but basically i need to choose whether to commit myself more to the student work and be an almost full time lifgroup leader, or to my home church and give up student leadership. It is going to take a lot of thinking, and a lot prayer, but i feel confident that God has a way forward for me in this situation, because ultimately i feel that if i am walking the path God has set for me then i am walking the right path for me and the end result will be the right one. so please pray for me that all this is worked out, because it is a little stressfull at times and there is some stuff that still needs clearing up on both sides.

Update 03/07/10

With my leadership decision, i feel like i have finally come to a decision about what i should do with regard to commiting my time to one place, and i have come to the conclusion that often God leads us down roads that we may not necessarily fully agree with, he always has a plan to prosper us and to bring us closer to him, and i believe continuing with the student ministry is where i am being called to go, and have therefore decided to commit the majority of my time to performing my pastoral duties as a student leader, however there are still some things to be sorted, which will hopfully be soon. so again your prayers are greatly recieved.

Fianlly i have taken on another website project for a charity organisation called the Tyneside Decorative and Fine Arts Society, this is relatively similar to my last web project for my church, however this is the next step up in that i am attempting to encorporate it into a content management system called wordpress, which is a new concept for me, somthing i have not done this before, sure i use wordpress for this blog, but i have never incorporated my own theme before so it has been exciting but challenging because it has come with a whole new set of issues that i have to take my time over and work through, however there is not much time left because i need to have it finished by the end of the month. It is nearly there, but there is one small problem with the posting system for the news, but between my self and my web guru Sean O’sullivan i reckon we can figure it out . Well i live in hope .

In the end though it will all be worth it because i am getting paid at the end of it, hopefully that is .

Anyway thats it for this post, hope it was not too hard to read, till next time. Bye .

I spent the first month of my unemployment trying to keep myself busy, so i committed myself to revamping my church’s website, which to be honest i had been meaning to do for quite some time but as always things got in the way, such as work, which inevitably slowed my progress, however during that time i really worked hard and made it my biggest priority to make it as good as i could, which meant learning a lot of new skills in a very short space of time, such as coding, which to be honest has never been my strongest ability and i really never thought i would make as good a job of it as i have done, and the site has gotten a lot of praise from most of the staff at my church, which is always a bonus, somehow i expected to get more resistance than i did, or get comments like “well it doesn’t look the same” or “its too different, too radical” but i have had none of that, which was actually a big surprise, though people have called me up on spelling errors but never mind . Why not check it out @ http://www.trinitygosforth.org.uk.

That fact of the matter is that i really enjoyed that month because i had some thing to do, and i was learning somthing new, but i cannot take all of the credit, my mate Sean O’Sullivan gave me loads of help on the coding side of things, because before that i had no idea lol. Infact i was so taken in with all of this that i applied for a web development job, which i actually made to the interview stage, but of course i am a complete novice which probably shone through as i did not get the job, nope i guess i am  a hardcore Techy all the way and web development will simply have to remain a hobby.

The past month has been increasingly difficult, not being able to get a job, the website is just about finished and is infact live, so there isn’t much to do, i have to go and sign on every second monday, which is the biggest drag and waste of time in the world, and i think because of these things and everything that has happend over the last 6 or 7 months has really taken its toll on me in almost every way, my confidence took a big hit, which has affected my social behavior as well as my ability to compitantly lead my student lifegroup, which has also been cause by my lack of spending time with God on a daily basis, i have been neglecting my bible, not praying as much, so yeah it has been really hard for me.

Though this week has been a great glimmer of hope, as i have managed to secure two interviews for next week which i am equally excited and terrified about, but hopefully at least one of them will go well, so if you believe in the power of prayer, please send a couple my way next week. Thanks in advance.

Well that is my rant over for now, i will post again next week if i have been successfull in my interviews. Bye for now .

So yes, recent events, well as i have just said i have more time on my hands, due to the unfortunate fact that i lost my job last Friday (19th Feb) which though i am a little glad about, i was actually pretty gutted and got quite emotional and angry on the day, because you get a certain sense of failure when that happens, but that’s life i guess, doesn’t always go the way we plan, and to be honest i found my christian life was suffering because i was devoting all my time to worrying about work and trying to “impress” the unimpressible. I believe everything happens for a reason, i just couldn’t find it at the time, which didn’t really help me deal with it, But i spent some time with one of my Christian friends on friday afternoon, which did help a lot and actually prerpared me for the weekend i was about to have, of which i will tell you about in a bit.

However I reckon God was always looking out for me, i was able to persevere through the 5 month period, and i have actually learned so much about being a good technician, my skills and knowledge have come a long way, it might have been the most stressful time of my life but i can take away that experience and use it in the future so i am in no way regretting my time there.

This weekend i have been away on a christian retreat with a great bunch of students, and i truly believe it came at the right time, it helped my tune myself back in to Gods “frequency” if you like, because i really felt lost on Friday, but God really found me again this weekend, and i am feeling stronger for it, i am feeling more connected, more able to commit myself to his purpose for me. For instance last night i really felt inspired when preparing worship and prayer for tonight’s lifegroup, which is really encouraging for me because i feel my leadership of the life group has suffered the past couple of times i have attempted to lead the group. However i attribute that to trying to do it under my own strength, letting my mind lead my heart instead of the other way round, and also it was not particularly spirit lead either which is probably why i messed up so often. So i guess i am just coming to grips with what it means to let the spirit minister through me into the lives of others, whether i am leading worship or a study. I guess i had forgotten how big a role the spirit plays in our lives. so i am just praying that i will mature in my faith and not step backwards into my old ways of dealing with things on my own.

On a final note, i may not be long out of work, because after sending off an internship application for a web developer position yesterday, i got a call today for an interview, so my future may be looking a little brighter in worldly terms (if you know what i mean).  So we will see what comes of that, i will be praying hard about whether or not this is a role i am meant for, because God may have other plans for me, i guess i will have to put my trust in Him and trust that he has a plan for me. If you are a Christan or believe in the power of prayer, i would really appreciate the support.

So i guess thats it for now, i hope you don’t find this post too preachy, i am just using it as an outlet for my thoughts and feelings . And you never know i might be back next month to post again. Bye for now.

P.s. pleas leave any comments or suggestions below, i will be happy to read and reply to them as long as they sensible and not spam. Thanks.

About four months ago i felt very blessed because i had managed to get myself a job on my second interview, little did i know that it was going to prove to be one of the most difficult transitions i would ever have to make, from being a graduate enjoying endless free time, to an average working joe earning a wage every month. nothing quite prepares you for the sheer shock of the pressure and the responsibility. Since then its been a fairly up and down ride, having really good days where everything goes well, i learn a lot and i keep my boss happy, then there are the days where everything just seems set to out of control, i get stressed, i make mistakes, my boss gets irate, and has on more than one occastion threatened my job. In the recent month of January i have really been struggling to settle in, i feel like i am constanly beening belittled for making minor mistakes or not knowing some what my boss calls “simple” things. He has now set me the task of doing 100% of domestic computers and simple business support jobs, an objective i think he knows i cannot complete successfully, and i just feel like i am being set up for a fall, especially when i have a review for that objective next tuesday, but the jokes on him because there is only to of us it technicians working for him and if i leave there will be only one left and the other technician goes on holiday next friday so if he fires me next week he will be right up a creek lol, but thats upto him, as for me i am at the point where loosing my job is more appealing than keeping right now. But i dunno, i am not really sure how to handle the situation, any suggestions please comment below .

Anyway enough of me complaining about my job, there has been some really exciting developments to, for instance at the beginning of the month my mum got baptised as a believer which was really awesome, its encouraging to see her faith taking strength again, because i know it has been quite difficult for her for a number of years, its good to see her back on track .

Another really cool thing has been happening with me, in that i am now leading a christian student lifegroup, for one of my two churches. Its been really fun so far, the stuff some of them come out with is incredible, i see this as a way for me to grow in confidence with my faith as well as help them grow nearer to God, i love my lifegroup particularly because we are all friends even outside of the group so thats always a positive when trying to lead them, it helps them get more comfotable i feel. But the only downside to all this is that i have actually been struggling quite deeply with my faith, because of pressures at work, i have stuff happening all the time, IT’S COLD! I am still dealing with a lot of old personal issues i am just feeling realy exhausted in every way, and a little lost in terms of where i am suppose to be going with my life, i am constantly asking myself  ‘ am i on the right road, is this truely where i am meant to be?’ so if you are a christian or believe in the power of pray then i would really apreciate it right now, i feel i need God now more than ever but i am struggling to find my footing.

anyway enought for now, I think i have depressed you all enough and contrary to my opening statement i appear to have waffled lol.

See you another time, probably in another 6 months .

Bye

I am also getting into The Beatles because though their rhythms are a bit difficult to mimic we can still pull out some great sounds with their songs, my favourit at the moment is ‘I saw her standing there’, it just seems that something in that song speaks to me , well that and it reminds me of this girl i like haha.

Anyway the lessons are going great, i am getting lots of praise and encouragement from my teachers and we even want to extend out little sessoin group with a drummer if we can get her on board at a time when she isn’t working . I’m thinking i should maybe re learn to read music too, as i used to be able to when i played piano a while back, infact i am thinking when i get good enough on the guitar, i might take up piano again, i will have to digg out my old music books to get some of the basic notes and chords, as it may help me learn to read guitar music, becuase though both may be different they have their similarities, so every little helps you know.

Well thats all for this update, i will hopefully bring you another one sometime soon. Bye

The Media Player of the future?

Still The Big Daddy of music players?

Spotify was launched for public use in October of 2008, however did not provide free accounts too the public straight away, instead it was by invitation only until February 2009. Till then the public would only have access to a paid subscription which cost a tenner a month.

The purpose behind this media system is to stream peer to peer music for free over their system. Which means that you can listen to any song in there database via an internet stream. However the draw back to this is that you need to be connected to the internet for it to work in this way, which admittedly isn’t a problem in the home or in a public access hotspot, but if you are in a location without internet access you will be unable to get music from spotify, unless you have ofcourse bought the tracks you want to listen to from the many music vendors that spotify is associated with, because obviously they cannot allow you to download the tracks on to you computer for free because that would be illegal breach of copywrite law, which of course gave napster a bad reputation in the early days of online audio streaming.

Something i have also noticed is that because you are streaming music over the internet, depending on the quality connection at either end, you may experience interference causing the tracks to pause at random points, which does kind of ruin the experience bit unfortunately.

Spotify’s music database is not as “fully loaded” as Itunes as it has been round far longer and has managed to build up a music base of around 10,0000 songs from all over the world. Spotify’s limited database may mean that it will not be a front runner in the media player battle for some time, but it is definitely catching up, as they update their song list regularly. However there is one thing that Spotify does so much better and that is the ease of finding the tracks you want and playing them, something which takes several minutes on itunes, because though it does not take long to find you favorite tracks, you have to buy them before you can listen to the full track, because it only allows you to listen to a snippet of the the track before purchase, which in all fairness is a bit of a pain for those without an itunes account which can only be set up with a valid credit/debit card, which means that those without that, or simply do not feel comfortable with buying off the internet, cannot utilise Itunes full service, and therefore may draw those in these circumstances to head towards Spotify.

One really irritating thing about Spotify free accounts though are the adverts, every couple of songs there is an interuption by a flash vid created by the creater of Spotify, telling you about advertisments by variouse advertisers, which unfortunatly cannot be turned off unless you are a paying customer, which in my opinion should not be so, but that is i guess how the advertisers get themselves known, and get their money. This is something Itunes definatley trumps because you get no adverts what so ever with their software, unless you go to the itunes store of course but you would expect to find them there, because it is a shop, but not while you are listening to tracks and/or playlists.

One feature that Itunes has that Spotify does not is the ability to play and import music from your CD collection, so that it can be accessed whenever you use your computer, or indeed if you want them on a portable media device such as you Ipod, however the disadvantage to itunes is that you can only use an Ipod as a portable media device because the file format will not work on any other MP3 player, which i found particularly frustrating when i only had a creative MP3 player, before i got my nano last year. But portable media is not something that Spotify currently supports unless you buy the music and use either Itunes or windows media player to put the muic on an Mp3 player. which means that you need more than one media player to perform this function which kind of defeats the point of competing with other software companies a little bit, don’t you think? .

My final comment is that currently spotify does not support all media types such as movies, podcasts and photos which Itunes and windows media player do, infact the only extra feature it supports is internet radio, but it is my understanding that the others do to, which makes spotify just a mediocre media player compared to these other giants of the media player world.

In conclusion my opinion of spotify is that yes it is an awesome system and i will continue to use it, but it is still a long way from being a strong competitor with the likes of Itunes and Windows Media player. However this is ust my opinion, only you can decide what you want, and that choice i leave to you. See you later.

After the next couple of weeks when i have finished my course for this year i am going to have to start thinking about what to do in the near future, like over the next year as well as the summer. I have discovered there are many options available for me to do. I can continue in my education, and or get a job, or take a year out. And i think i have unofficially decided to continue with my enduaction next year by doing a masters degree in computer forensics part time, and get i job part time in technical support (hopefully), and as well as that, i have decided to complete Cisco CCNA (Cisco Certifide Network Asscociate) certification and cisco wireless fundimentals certification over the 3 months of summer i have. i have already completed CCNA 1 & 2, i just need to get 3 & 4 out of the way and do the prometric exam. Why am i doing this you may ask? simple, i am passionate about networking and technical support and these certifications look good on a CV in this feild.

My goal for quite some time now has also been to try and find a job that will pay well enough for me to be able to afford to buy and run a car, because after passing my test in december and getting my pass plus in february i haven’t really had any time behind the wheel of a car, and i hate not being able to do it because i love it so much, it gives you so much freedom and it means that you are not constantly relying on others for a lift which unfortuantley i do…often, and i feel like i am taking advantage of those who are giving me lifts because it happens so often. So that is the ultimate goal before my pass plus runs out and i am no longer able to benifit from it.

I think that is me all brought up to speed with current events in general, watch this space for more “riviting” post, and also keep an eye out on my other catagories for some posts coming soon , by for now.