Back in Glasgow

Only a month or so after moving north, I was back in Glasgow this weekend - the first of five weekends away in a row.

It was for the wedding of two friends, so the trip was a combination of ceilidh dancing on the Friday night and then gentle recovery the rest of the weekend.

It was all great fun, and nice to be back in St Silas this morning. Being the holy willy that I am, I managed to get a train back north this afternoon that got in just in time to catch the evening service at Hilton.

And what a blinder it was, with a thumpingly powerful, moving, thought-provoking, darkly humourous and well-presented sermon. I must blog a bit about what it’s like being back in Hilton after my “sabbatical”, but that’s for another day.

In the meantime, here’s some of the weekend’s photos.

Quiet evening in

For the first time in ages, I have a quiet evening in. Currently it’s just me, Ulrich Schnauss and a wee dram.

Which is nice.

I’ve had three objectives this evening - catch up on a billion and one emails, tidy the kitchen and upload some photos.

Here are today’s uploads. The one on the right is perhaps my favourite.

As you can see if you take a browse, I got rather bored writing the descriptions of the photos and veered off into nonsense on one or two of them.

Oh, and talking of photos, this one of the fire round the corner the other night appears (with permission, of course) in this week’s edition of Inverness’s most sensationalist tabloid, the Highland News, in a report about the fire. Page 5, for all you avid HN readers.

I have to confess it’s the first time I ever bought the HN, and it’s only been to see my name in print.

Vain, I know.

Back, briefly

I’m back in Inverness after a couple of days’ zipping about the place. I had two days in North Queensferry (home of a couple of big bridges - see photo) and then a meeting in Aberdeen, although I’m now back north for the rest of the week so can take things a little easier.

Until Friday, that is - I am off to Weegieland for a wedding. I am going down for the weekend and am looking forward to what will be my first trip back since moving back to Inverness.

I hope there’s a few Weegies around to catch up with, although no doubt if I was on Facebook it would be dead easy to organise these sorts of things.

And I am thinking about the comments folk made in my previous post about Facebook - any more thoughts are welcome.

Simon Varwell is not on Facebook

Finally, the debate you’ve all been waiting for.  Facebook.

For some time now, but with considerable intensity in the last couple of months, people - both friends and new acquaintances - have been asking me if I am on Facebook.

No, I always reply.  And I explain why: I don’t see the point in social networking sites that are networking for the sake of it.  I think they’re great if they’re networking for a purpose - and Flickr is a brilliant example of this.  It’s a place to store, share and explore photos, and while there is a strong networking element to it (groups, comments, “friends” and contacts, tags, and so on) it’s networking about photos - people aren’t getting to know each other just or the sake of it, they’re doing so because of the common interest in photos.

Facebook, however, seems to have no apparent purpose.  It’s just… networking.  And surely the whole idea of networking is because there’s a reason for it.

“But you can use it to keep in touch with people”, I’m told.  “No,” I reply.  “I have email for that.  And not to mention MSN messenger, reading their blogs (if they have one), the telephone, and (gasp!) actually talking to them in person.  Which nobody seems to do these days any more.  Why would I need Facebook to keep in touch with people I am already in touch with?”

“But what about people you’re not in touch with, who you want to be?  Or people who want to track you down?  Or meeting new and interesting people?”

Well, there’s a number of responses to that.  Firstly, if folk are wanting to get in touch with me, a quick google search will lead you to my website and to this very blog, as many people I’ve lost touch with over the years have done.

Secondly, and without sounding big-headed, I have a good number of wonderful friends, many of whom I often struggle to keep in touch with as much as I would like.  Could I really cope with having more friends to have to keep tracks with?

I already lead a busy life, am blessed with an active social life, I travel lots for work and pleasure, and have lots of great friends all over the country (and world), and frankly don’t need a networking site to help me make new ones.  That might sound callous, clinical and potentially very arrogant, but it’s meant to be none of them - it’s just my honest personal perspective.

And thirdly, do I really want to be “found” by certain people?  A lot of Facebook to me sounds like a perfect stalker’s charter.  Do I want people to know everything I do in life and who all my other friends are?  With this blog, for instance, I have full control over what you know about me - it’s my blog after all, and I can write what I think is most appropriate.  With Facebook, I worry about losing some of that control.

Oh, and fourthly, why Facebook?  Last year, all the cool kids were on Bebo.  The year before that, it was MySpace.  Who’s to say Facebook isn’t just a “flash in the pan” fad that’ll be forgotten about next year and be replaced by something else?  If I joined Facebook, I’d have to join them all to be consistent and obtain the real benefits, and frankly there’s more to life than keeping your dozen different networking sites up to date.

That raises another question - what do people who are on all these sites do?  If you spend your whole time maintaining your networking sites, you’re not actually doing anything substantive all day, or leading a life that is actually worth networking about.  It’s like building roadsigns but no roads or destinations.  Why would I want to be friends with someone whose status is permanently set at “x is updating his Bebo/MySpace/Twitter”.

Yet people persist in asking if I am on Facebook.  It’s like a standard question, alongside what’s your phone number?” or “what do you do?”.  “Everyone” is apparently on it.

So while I remain a Facebook sceptic, I do accept that it seems to have more appeal to folk than many of the other sites out there.

Should I join?  Will it actually bring added value to my life?

Let me know your thoughts either way and I will have a good think about it all.

I’m off to North Queensferry and Aberdeen for work tomorrow morning and won’t check my email again until Wednesday night.

Until then, play safe.

Gremlins?

Rich emailed me today to say that my blog was “all over the shop”, asking if I had changed anything about it.

Well, no.  But a few days ago I did have to reinstall the photo on my banner (above) so maybe there’s gremlins in the WordPress system. If anyone else has noticed funny goings-on with the blog (and I’m not talking about the content or commenters!) then do let me know.

Fire!

I was in the flat earlier this evening and thought I could smell burning. So I checked all my electrical appliances and lights. No evidence of impending disaster, but the smell remained.

So I went outside, and found a full-blown hullabaloo going on - a building round the corner was on fire, the fire brigade and police were out, and a big crowd had assembled, cameras in hand. Thankfully it is an abandoned building that I think was about to be rennovated, and there were no ambulances around and therefore presumably no casualties.

Dramatic stuff, though. Photos here and here.

So much for the quiet evening.

A week of travels

I’m having a well-earned afternoon off after a heavy week of ridiculously early mornings and a whistle-stop work tour around the east coast. I’ve been in…

Dundee - the jury’s still out, but it’s maybe not as awful as I used to think it was.
Arbroath - not been for many years. Something of the Royston Vasey about the place.
Aberdeen - good catch up with Justin, Mark and Claire.
Fraserburgh - first time visit. Pleasantly surprised: some gorgeous granite buildings, but then it is not just a heroin capital but a historic county town too.
Elgin - smelt of shortbread.

There’s some photos from this week here on Flickr.

In other news, you’ll have to hold on to your hats for a few days more for the big Facebook debate, and you can also expect some exciting imminent news on the New Zealand mullet-hunting front too.

But in the meantime, I need a quiet evening - it’s only Thursday and there’s still a trip to Perth to come tomorrow.

Computery stuff

Donald has just told me a nice witticism via MSN Messenger - “Computers are like Air Conditioners.  They stop working when you open Windows…”

That brings to mind this blog entry from Graham (plus the two before it) about the PC v Mac debate, which I found very interesting. I am increasingly certain that when I replace my current laptop I will switch to a Mac (though I have no immediate plans).  But before I do, you can expect me to launch another debate here to get some final help from knowledgeable friends.

And talking of debates on computery issues, stand by for another one starting here in the next few days - Facebook…

The JWs

Oh, and I almost forgot to blog about the two Jehovah’s Witnesses I had at the door last Sunday.

Well, I say two – one did all the talking and the other hovered slightly and suspiciously out of view.  Perhaps she was in training.  Or just shy.

Anyway.  Here’s how it went:

JW – would you be interested in a couple of our magazines?
Me - who are you from?
JW - we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Me – no thanks, I’m a proper Christian.
JW – and how would you describe a “proper Christian”?
Me – as someone who follows the word of God and not some alternative version of it.
JW – do you not believe, as the Bible says, that we should go out and tell people about the word of God?
Me – yes, I do.  And I admire your faith’s enthusiasm for getting out there and spreading the word.  But I don’t agree with your doctrine.
JW – so if you follow the word of God does that mean that you abstain from blood, as it instructs us in Acts?
Me – well, I tend not to drink much of it.
JW (with no seeming acknowledgement of the joke) – right.  But would you accept a blood transfusion?
Me – of course.
JW – how can you if it goes against what it says in Acts?  Do you not believe that the Bible is the word of God?
Me – I don’t believe it’s the abstractly literal word of God.
JW – oh.  Right.  (pause)  So you don’t want our magazines then?
Me – no thanks.

Obviously I could have handled that better.  For instance, by not sounding arrogant in calling myself a “proper Christian”, or by giving more clarification of my view that the Bible is not the abstractly literal word of God.  And I am not even sure that “abstractly” is a real word.  But I was thinking on my feet, I was interrupted from some very nice cheese on toast (with smoked sausage, mustard and Worcester sauce if you must know) and had a busy afternoon ahead.

And plus, my basic knowledge of JWism is minimal, other than the fact that they believe that some bloke got given a magic pair of glasses through which he was able to read a new version of the Bible that nobody else had read.  Or something.  And that they don’t take blood transfusions, and spend a lot of time knocking on doors handing out magazines.

Maybe I should have asked them for some prior warning so I could have prepared myself.  Mind you, that didn’t help much last time I had the lunatic fringe of Christianity knocking on the door.

A couple of years back, shortly before Christmas, I had a couple of Mormons at the door.  Inverness is full of them for some reason.  Mormons, I mean, not doors.  Not that Inverness isn’t full of doors too, there’s plenty of them as you’d expect.  My flat has one.  Three if you count internal doors, and five if you count wardrobe doors too.

But anyway.

I couldn’t talk long as I was about to go out, and would soon be going away for Christmas and New Year.  They volunteered to come back in January.  As I am always up for a good barney about religion, I took them up on their offer, agreed a date for them to return, and began my “homework”.  I looked up lots of information about Mormonism on the internet, read a bit of their copy of The Book of Mormon (imagine Tolkien without the elves), I spoke to various ministers, found material that helped Christians respond to the arguments of Mormons, and as a result I felt knowledgeable, prepared, and poised.

And then… they didn’t turn up.  Which was most un-Mormon-like.  You just can’t win, it seems.

So – how do you treat religious door-knockers?

Travelling to England

Last week I was in London and York briefly for work.

I had just enough time to catch up with a few friends one night and take some photos, one or two of which I am quite chuffed with.

It was nice to be in London again - despite the fact there was a protest in a London museum against my visit. It was ridiculously hot however, so am glad it was just a flying visit.

I can’t say much about York, though - all I really saw was the insides of two taxis and a meeting room. The railway station is cool, though.