Last night on the way home from work coming through the roadworks on the M27, I pulled across into the fast lane, and suddenly the car started making funny noises coming from the front drivers side wheel. It gradually got louder, so I slowed down and pulled into a gap in the cones into the area coned off for the roadworks. I got out the car and realised that I had a flat tyre. So I phoned Laura to explain and see if she knew who I needed to phone to make use of the 'free recovery zone' for the roadworks. I then tried the AA, and was sat in a queue for quite a while until I realised - "I've got a spare tyre - I can change it myself" - duh! So I got on with changing the tyre and just as I'd finished changing the tyre and phoned Laura to let her know that I'd sorted it and was about to head home, a truck with it's orange lights flashing pulled up in the roadworks section on the other side of the road - I explained to him what had happened and he told me the best way to rejoin the traffic. The car seemed to be driving strangely after changing the wheel, so I took it slowly and then took it into Kwikfit today and got it sorted.

Following on from my list of firefox extensions, here's my list of Thunderbird extensions:

Minimize to Tray

Changes the minimise in Thunderbird to send it to the system tray and still check your e-mail in the background.

Contact Sidebar

Adds a list of your contacts below the folder pane

Message Faces

Show Face headers in e-mails and news groups

Quote Collapse

Makes quotes in e-mail and news messages collapsable to save space

Quote Colours

Makes quotes in e-mail and news messages appear in different colours (I used to do this with userContent.css, but this is easier)

Buttons!

Adds extra buttons to Thunderbird including change SMTP server which I use a lot

View Headers

Adds an extra button to Thunderbird to toggle the viewing of headers

About Config

Restores about:config to Thunderbird so you can access the advanced configuration

Mail Redirect

Lets you bounce e-mail with the original headers

Also you can see which search plugins I use.

I can't remember where I found it, so I thought I'd put this here so I don't loose it!

In user.js or about:config, find mail.addr_book.mapit_url.format and set it to:

http://www.multimap.com/map/places.cgi?addr2=

@A1&addr3=@CI&pc=@ZI&db=GB&client=public&

cname=Great+Britain&advanced=true&mapsize=big

Or for streetmap use:

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?
postcode2map?@ZI

Well yesterday we went out for a meal to celebrate Anne's birthday which is on Tuesday, and we decided to have a New Year's challenge. We had a few different ideas for challenges, (including my suggestion of collecting an object to represent each month throughout the coming year) but the challenge we're doing is a good idea, and that is:

To start of with £10 at the start of the year, and to try and increase it's value by this time next year, when the person who has made the most money gets 10% of everyones total, and the rest goes to their chosen charity - if that makes sense. The rules are as follows:

• No more than ten pounds can be put in at the start

• Means of increasing value has to be legal

Well I've had a few ideas, but still not sure what I'm going to do - so the value of my £10 is still £10

I've now implemented Gravatars for the comments on this site.

It was a bit tricky as this is coded using ASP (VBScript) - but I've managed to get it working using the code from http://www.frez.co.uk/freecode.htm#md5 - although interestingly the VBScript version wouldn't work, so I have used the javascript version - a bit of a strange way to do it, but it seems to work. I didn't realise before that you could mix languages in ASP, but it turns out you can by including one in the page using the <script runat="server"... tag, and then it can be called from within the other code on the page even if it's in a different programming language!

On Bonfire night before we went up to Portsdown hill to watch the fireworks, we filled up the car at the BP petrol station opposite All Saints church. The car was initially fine, then on Saturday it started making a loud squealing noise, which we thought was a problem with one of the belts. By Monday I'd planned to take the car to the garage, however the car wouldn't start at all, so I assumed that the battery had been worn down, so borrowed a battery charger and left it charging. However even with doing this, the car wouldn't start, so later in the week Ben towed me round to the garage. When the garage had a look, they discovered that the problem had been caused by the petrol tank containing water, so they would have to remove the tank and the fuel lines, drain them and clean and dry them thoroughly. The only place I can think of where this could have come from was when I filled it up, which apparently does occasionally happen (as I found out from the garage, from BP and from trading standards). So I contacted BP about it and after conducting an 'investigation' they said that it was highly unlikely that it came from there tanks. It's a mystery where it came from then!

Yesterday I had my first meeting with the Archdeacon since becoming one of the church reps for St Luke's. It was a very promising meeting and the archdeacon said that he wants to have a lively evangelical church community at St Luke's that will reach out to the people of Somerstown and to students - which would be a good thing. They are planning to follow a similar process to that of appointing an Incumbent - but for a "Priest in Charge", which means we will have quite a say in the process and the opportunity to interview the prospective vicars. The only real difference will be that a Priest in Charge doesn't have a permanent position.

The other thing that's floating around in the process at the moment is that the diocese are planning to replace the vicarage with a new house in a different area of town, as they feel that the current house isn't suitable for a vicar with a family, because of the neighbourhood and the position of the house as being away from other houses. The next thing that will with this is a PCC meeting with the Archdeacon and someone from the diocesan housing board to discuss the possibilities.

Apart from that meeting, we will also have a meeting in December with representatives from another local church (that is coming up to being without a minister), and representatives from the diocesan 'Kairos' process (which is looking at ways the diocese can move forward). At this we will need to present our vision for the future ministry of St Luke's and various possibilities will be discussed.

We had this over a week ago, and it's took me a long time to get round to posting it, so I'm too late for the round up anyway! We've not had Shiraz before, and weren't that keen on it.
The wine was a bottle of Wolf Blass Eaglehawk 2003, and had a slightly blackberry like smoky aroma. It was a too sharp for our tastes really, as we generally prefer something a bit smoother.
From the Wolf Blass website: The 2003 Eaglehawk Shiraz is a fruit driven style with a bouquet of lifted spice, plum and red berry fruit characters and subtle oak overtones. The palate is of medium body, showing soft complex fruit flavours with rich berry characters. Soft tannins help finish the wine with a dry lingering finish.

I've been thinking of putting a list of the firefox extensions I use on my blog for a while, and then Dean listed the extensions he finds useful and asked what anyone else was using - so I decided I should post it! So here is my list of firefox extensions:

All in one gestures

Extension that helps you to navigate the web just using the mouse - includes mouse gestures and extra wheel navigation

Web Developer Extension

Very useful extension with lots of CSS tools and tricks which is especially useful for designing and testing webpages

Sage

Sidebar RSS Reader for Firefox

Livelines

Changes the live bookmarks icon to add RSS feeds to Sage

IE View

Useful for testing pages to check that they work both in IE and Firefox, also for the pages that are designed not to work in Firefox.

Link Toolbar

Site navigation toolbar - useful for navigating blogs and forums - provides buttons for next and previous pages (and other related pages - but I use next and previous most)

OpenBook

Extension to open the bookmarks dialog with the full tree automatically

Colorzilla

Useful extension to check what colour things are! - Can pick up colours from pictures and webpages and copy them to the clipboard in different formats

Autofill

Automatically fills in forms - like the same feature from the google bar

Bookmarks Synchronizer

Backs up a copy of my bookmarks to my website

Scrapbook

For taking notes and recording websites

HTML Validator

For checking website source code

Outliner

Adds a sidebar of document structure

GeoURL

Adds a status bar icon to show if the current page has geographic information

Gives and option on clicking a PDF link whether to download or view in the browser.

All In One Sidebar

Adds a toolbar of sidebar options

Also you can see which search plugins I use.

We had a really good bible study last night on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.

Which really encouraged us to see things in a right perspective, in relation to the great hope we have for the future in Christ.