We went to this one-off concert with composer and conductor Eric Whitacre at Union Chapel in London last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. This official video is just about the whole concert. Enjoy!
[youtube http://youtu.be/0JaiSGAZfW4]If you liked that, buy the album “Water Night” (it’s available in the US too)! I’ve had it on continuous play since it arrived on Monday.
Filed under: Music | Comments Off on ♫ Eric Whitacre at Union Chapel
Eric Whitacre launched Virtual Choir 3, the composite performance of his choral work “Water Night”, to promote his new album of the same name (of which more later). Once again, it’s transcendently beautiful.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3rRaL-Czxw]3746 singers from 73 countries. Amazing, in every dimension.
If you missed the earlier editions, watch them – they are beautiful and remarkable.
Filed under: Music | Tagged: Eric Whitacre | Comments Off on ♫ Virtual Choir 3
I Always Wanted A Portico, originally uploaded by webmink.
This house in Edinburgh has a grand classical portico – on the roof of the house next door! Never let practicality get in the way of your dreams!
(sample of the daily posts from The Global Mink)
Filed under: Travel | Tagged: Edinburgh | Comments Off on ✈ I Always Wanted A Portico
Who said this?
“The Church in its own bubble has become, at best the guardian of the value system of the nation’s grandparents, and at worst a den of religious anoraks defined by defensiveness, esoteric logic and discrimination.”
No, it wasn’t Richard Dawkins or indeed any other spokesman for atheism. It was the Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, in a blog post this week entitled Time for a reboot, not a bailout. I’m hardly an insider to the topics he discusses, which are the manifestations of the deep politics of the Anglican Communion.
But for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, I’m reading words by a bishop who has at very least a glimmer of insight into the problems Christianity has in the 21st century. Those problems have been a frustration to me for more than a decade now.
There’s a core to Christianity that’s impervious to change – the Heart of Christianity, as Marcus Borg put it. But that heart is not to be found in the traditions received from the society that embraced the industrial revolution. Throughout its history, Christianity has embraced society and found the essence of the Jesus Way in it awaiting redemption. “Tradition” changes.
By assuming the prudery of the 18th and 19th centuries defines “tradition”, the church has failed to understand or adapt to modern sexuality, globalist capitalism, the meshed society and more. Instead, it worships an idol. In each case “tradition” means intolerance of change and a failure to see where Jesus would have been found in each change. The result is the disconnect Bishop Alan describes:
” The C of E used to be the guardian of the nation’s morals, but is increasingly perceived as irrelevant, or even a threat to them.”
As well as all the things Bishop Alan pinpoints I keep hearing those “anoraks” voices calling for internet censorship – most recently the “snooper’s charter”, CCDP. I long to hear their voices speaking into the emerging meshed society instead of against it.
“The real fault line now in the Church is between those of all stripes who are at home with social change, and whose Jesus inspires them to find ways of living authentic lives in this culture, and those who fear it, and whose religion is a way to prevent it, or even reverse it.”
Yes, yes. Let’s hope the new Archbishop of Canterbury, whoever he is, understands these things and has the wisdom and courage to engage.
Filed under: Spirituality | Tagged: Christianity | 5 Comments »
The architect who designed this church in Venice (Chiesa di San Vidal) tried to hide the building behind it, but ordinary life goes on behind the façade. There’s an ice cream shop doing brisk business, and the apartments above the shop seem to have no relation to the huge church window on the façade.
So it is everywhere. Religious or secular, business or personal, male or female, gay or straight. No matter how impressive the façade, real life goes on behind it if you look. It has to.
Filed under: Spirituality, Travel | Tagged: Italy | Comments Off on ✈ Behind the façade
I was in Italy on business this week and as I was flying in and out of Venice airport had the chance to spend a half-day in Venice. It was foggy and damp, but still enjoyable to walk around for a while. While I was there I stumbled on the gondola maintenance yard. It had to be there in Venice somewhere, but I’d never seen it before. It was clearly a place that had been there for a very long time – since the 17th century, apparently.
Filed under: Photography, Travel | Tagged: Italy | 2 Comments »
I expect to be in the USA in early-to-mid May (and possibly again in July). If you would like me to speak at a private or public event, or to provide consulting services, I would be pleased to hear from you. Combining multiple engagements saves money, saves energy and is good for us all! Please use my contact form to get in touch and I or my agent will get back to you.
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Today is Document Freedom Day. It’s not the easiest subject to explain. It’s easy to explain why being free to video a police encounter in the USA is important, or why it’s wrong for your eBook to be remotely controlled by a vendor, but many people fail to understand the subtlety of why a document format is important.
Having your work in a format that will still be readable in 20 years makes sense, and being able to be sure when you share a document with others that they will be able to read it and work on it is also good. But people glaze over when you try to explain that an ISO standard is not enough. Having a document format standard that is beyond the control of any individual vendor and is fully implemented in multiple products is crucial, but seems esoteric.
So when it comes to practical actions, most people still just save their work in the format their office software chooses for them by default. They send it out to everyone without a thought for the fact they are adding their own energy to a market monopoly that restricts choice and innovation and sells our future to one of the worlds richest convicted monopolists. It’s convenient now, but who knows if the files will even be readable in the future? The largest corporations can change (Nokia started making rubber products) or even go out of business (I’ll leave you to think of an example!)
The fact it is so hard to explain to ordinary people why their choice of document format matters, why a little effort now can make all the difference in the world, is what led me to the conclusion it was worth promoting hybrid PDFs. As I wrote yesterday on ComputerWorldUK, it is possible to create a PDF that can also be fully edited.
Like ODF, PDF is a standard. Sending a PDF makes the maximum number of people able to read your work, so it’s worth the small extra effort to create it. Developing an instinct to always send PDFs ensures maximum readability, and it’s safe to assume PDFs will continue to be readable for the indefinitely long future. Using online storage instead of attaching the file can be good, but plenty of mobile and out-of-office people will be inconvenienced or excluded by that, so I’ve found people reluctant to rely on it at the moment.
Sending PDFs is the right answer. The only issue is editability. Most people just want to send one attachment, so they opt for the one from their word-processor or presentation program. By a simple software upgrade to LibreOffice, that problem is solved too. LibreOffice makes PDFs very easily, and now also comes configured to create PDFs that can be edited. I’ve created full instructions which you are welcome to pass on to others – and edit if you need to!
While I am naturally a huge supporter of Open Document Format as the best protection for our digital liberty, pragmatically I think educating and encouraging people to send PDFs instead of .DOC/.DOCX files is the best next step. When they learn the benefits of editable PDFs, they are also using ODF, of course – that’s the format that’s embedded in the PDF. But it’s a smaller, easier, less controversial step to send a PDF to all their friends and collaborators.
So celebrate Document Freedom Day with me today. Send a friend my tip about editable PDFs, or just the how-to sheet. The journey to freedom starts with the first step.
Filed under: LibreOffice, Links, ODF, Standards, Zeitgeist | 6 Comments »
[This post is only useful to people who can buy MP3s from Amazon US – sorry]
I have previously recommended samplers from Mishara Music. They specialise in singer-songwriters and their previous two samplers in Summer 2011 and Autumn 2011 were superb – and are still free, if you missed them then. So I was pleased to see a new one for Spring 2012 has been released. It’s also free, is double the length of the earlier samplers and is packed with wonderful artists. If you’re allowed to have it by the archaic copyright controls Amazon is forced to implement, go grab it now.
Filed under: Music | Comments Off on ♫ Artistic Excellence
We saw Hannah Peel supporting and playing with The Unthanks when they played down here in Southampton. She is as talented as she is charming, with a fascinating new approach to folk-inspired music that is well-represented on her album The Broken Wave, from which one of the standout tracks is Song For The Sea:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Q2wCEgvbQ]One of her signature instruments is the pin-harp, a music box programmed with a paper tape like a piano roll that she cranks by hand on stage to accompany her singing.
[youtube http://youtu.be/m6xFK-vQhJM]It seems her new project is a small-group concept work called Orkney: Symphony Of The Magnetic North. The teaser web site is hauntingly attractive and I’m looking forward to finding out more when they release the album on May 7th.
Filed under: Music | Comments Off on ♫ Magnetic North
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