So I thought it was about time I tried to write something on here again and as it has been while it will be a reflection back over the Wet Season (that time that a few who have been lucky enough to travel abroad may be able to justify calling a summer!

Although things here have been quite (at least it has looked that way, more on this later!) the time it’s self has been quite busy. It all started when just a few days after writing the last post I was involved in a car accident, the car behind me as I approached the roundabout decided to try and go across the the middle while I was going round! This resulted in a hand/wrist injury for myself (I was the only one in the car so no-one else was hurt) and after two weeks waiting for a verdict the car being written off! (this seams strange considering I was in a 6 year old Renault Espace and was hit by (I think around a 10 year old) Peugeot 307 which was able to drive away from the scene with a bent wing) Now just over two months later the wrist is almost better, although still gets a bit achy and I don’t have full movement in it!

After this we had our Holiday Club in Faringdon, Called ‘The Wave’ we took a different approach this year with some input at the beginning and end and much more activity in between. It worked really well and reversed the trend of numbers lowering during the week as this year everyday had more children and we reached the high 80’s by the end.

A few weeks after this was Soul Survivor, we went week C, maybe not the wettest week there, but at the end of them all and one one of the worst sites, it had apparently been evacuated during another week, we seamed to have a constant stream of mud flowing through the camp which was pleasant and is always helpful when you have 50+ people in the group. Apart from the mud we all had a great time and the group were fantastic.

At the end of the Summer there was a rather sad day when I had to wave goodbye to the Cyberbus, the work we had been doing with it had been dying down and so we felt it was time for a bit of a change. The bus has now gone off to Colwyn Bay and is with a church there so it was great to see it going off to continue in ministry. The work I am now doing is working more closely with local churches many of which have recently started up youth groups themselves, it means my role has changed a little from more Outreach to more Nurture. Its exciting times ahead, we do also have a grant application in at the moment to get another bus next year so we will see what happens.

The blog itself has been busy in the background with a major hit from spam bots, this does mean that now in order to comment you may need to fill in a capture unless you have had a few comments passed before (this should clear you).

I think that’s pretty much it apart from a couple of weeks Holiday, one house swap with some friends in Norfolk and another week staying with my parents.

Oh the other thing that has been going on is the continued exploration of the call to ordination, this has been going well, still quite a lot to do, but positive stuff so far and still enjoying it, please do continue to pray for God’s guidance as I explore this path.

God bless

Simo

written by Simo

Well I have freshened up the look slightly and made a bit more of a customisation job, I know some people found the heavy black of the old look difficult so I hope this is better, please leave your comments to let me know what you think.

written by Simo

I think so anyway, it now seams to display ok, there was a particular post where things went wrong and it seems that because I tend to type my posts in a word processor then copy and paste, I had done that post on a different computer and software, it had copied some code that it put at the beginning of the post and messed things up. I had also been having problems as mentioned before with the theme keep changing to the default, I hope that was part of the same problem but only the next few days/weeks will tell on that front!

written by Simo

I seem to be having a few more technical difficulties at the moment, these only effect (as far as I know I would be keen to hear from anyone who can test on a mac)  Internet Explorer and Opera, in either of these browsers the right hand column seems to be missing and you only get a couple of posts (I don’t know what impact this post will have on that). If you switch to another page it works and you can then go to the archive, it is only the home page that has the problem, the other way to solve it and and even better idea would be to use Firefox! I will continue trying to fix this problem though.

written by Simo

I seem to be having a few technical problems with wordpress at the moment as the template keep changing to the default, I don’t know what is causing it which means I don’t know how to fix it, anybody got any ideas?

written by Simo

I have added an events page to the site to advertise a few of the things that are going on, some of these are fun things you might want to know about, maybe even come along to! Others are things you might like to pray for! We’ll see how it develops, let me have any comments etc or suggestions as to what else you think could be on the events page or added to the site.

Cheers

written by Simo

For those of you that are using wordpress then have you discovered wp-pda? This is a great new plugin that checks the software that is browsing you site, if it is a pda then it will adjust alter the style to a pda friendly format thus making you blog readable on handheld devices, it works really well and I would highly recommend it.

written by Simo

Very sorry about that, if you’ve tried to look at the blog recently I have just found out that I had broken it, it is however now fixed again, as an apology please enjoy the video below.

written by Simo

A few weeks ago I mentioned that it was two years since my first ever blog post. OnMeBus started while at a conference called Matrix, a professional youth work conference held biannually at High Leigh Conference Centre in Hoddesdon. So it is good to be able to post again from that same conference. Now just over half way through it has been a couple of great days so far. Some good teaching and discussions going on which has been great, but so has the networking, spending time with friends, catching up with old friends not seen for some time, making new friends and sharing thoughts and ideas, fantastic. If you want to get an overview of some of the stuff going on then take a look at Youthblog, there is no point in me trying to repeat stuff here. Just to finish though I will leave with this image, the view from my room that greats me when I open my curtain.

written by Simo

First technical problem encountered, those who subscribe via email don’t get video, not even anything to suggest there is anything so for my first attempted video email readers got this:-

New Look - Welcome
Posted: 20 Feb 2007 04:51 AM CST
Details for the new feeds can be found in the left hand column.

Which all appears a bit strange, I might have to start adding a line to say there is video on the blog!

If anyone has any ideas as to how I can get the video to email as well that would be great.

written by Simo