andy rambles

2006-08-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

2006-08-03T06:12:00.000-07:00

who is the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows Him?

2006-06-12T03:45:00.000-07:00

Hi there, thefools site is temporarily down as nickers needs to do some updating but it should be back soon. Here is the opening post from the site. More to come soon ... I promise

For the word of the cross is foolishness
1 Corinthians 18

We have gotten pretty clever over the years. Weve created a lot of nice
buildings and cities, and we have made plenty of fancy gadgets, we know a lot
about science and medicine. We can find out about what happened in the past,
discover what is going on in space, we even have a good go at predicting the
future. If there is information about something you can now find it at the
click of a button and have a conversation about it with someone anywhere in the
world.

Knowledge is available to most of the developed world but wisdom that is
something different. Most would argue wisdom is something that comes with
experience or age. Cervantes said Time ripens all things, no man is born
wise. Mankind has been around for a good while now and as a society we have
acquired a lot of wisdom, perhaps this is measurable by our advances in
philosophical and ethical thought, or our development of law.

The human race is strong too, we are probably getting stronger, taller and
faster than ever before. Perhaps we could look to our sportsmen for examples of
this. In the last hundred years we ran 100m 0.89secs faster, the marathon
31secs faster, jumped the high jump 47cm higher and pole vaulted 212cm higher.

To borrow from Spinal Tap, if you got human ability and turned it all the way up
to 11 and God was playing at 1, the gulf between the two would still be
immeasurable.

It says in 1 Corinthians 25

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God
is stronger than men.

This kinda dampens the bonfire of how great we are so to speak but thats not
the whole picture, read on through it in verse 27

but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God
has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong

So if you recognise that you arent really that great, that you arent that
clever, that you arent that strong then God wants to use you for His glory.

At Foolish Films we are making this our manifesto, being fools for Gods glory.
We believe in our foolish dependance on God, that makes no sense to the wisdom
of man, we can actually be His glory. We have realised that we are not smart,
we dont have lots of money, or masses of equipment, or endless amounts of
fantastic ideas, but we know that God does. We long to see Gods wisdom
communicated to those around us in fresh ways, we long to see people experience
God through creativity and art. The dream is to start and expand, we dont want
this to be just about film. We long for others to join us; writers, poets,
musicians, designers, painters, sculptors, a network of fools.

We hope to be a group that goes against conventional wisdom, that doesnt get
trapped by being realistic, that isnt so scared of something failing it
never bothers to start. So if you hear the call answer it.

1 Corinthians 1 (The Message)

That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own
horn before God..If youre going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.

God bless.

Andy

1 Corinthians 1 18-31

life, jobs and everything - 2

2006-03-30T00:42:00.000-08:00

well after saying a few weeks ago that i would use this space to collect my thoughts on life, i haven't really done so. the reasons for that, i think, are that i tend to over think everything in my head so by the time i get round to writing things down its all very complicated or a just can't be bothered. my other delibration has been this blog itself, but more on that later.
so during this time i have really felt God's hand in what has been happening. people have come along side me at the right time sharing about their lives, or bringing encouragment or words from God. at one point i could have gone for a cushy job earning more money doing a very similar thing but i didn't. i am now working in a new dept with in the same hosp. doing a 3 month project. i think that this is going to give me more time to think the next step through, and i feel God wants me to take a step soon, not just drift through things. or life even.
also after work has died down on tom's music stuff at the moment i haven't been doing that many creative type things and i believe it's time to try and step that up again. God is moving me away from my idea of safety and foundation, He is also raising my idea of what He can do, things outside of my expectation.
so essential i am pressing on, trying to find the new things God has for me.

i am going to be moving blogs as well, as i finally started to set things up properly at the foolish site, so i think this will pretty much be my last post here, it also might take me a while to put a proper post together over there, but please bare with us. check it out here thefools

some ponderings - 57

2006-01-31T04:30:00.000-08:00

'For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.'

people are asking me 'what you going to do in march?' or 'what do you want to do with your life?'. i dont really like my job and i get the feeling i am going to hate the next one, how do you answer a question when the only answer you feel happy with doesn't really answer the question. when people say 'what do you want to do with your life?' they mean what job would you really enjoy doing, Romans talks about 'living sacrifices' and thats all i'm interested in. when i clear out all the noise of life and focus on Him thats where i end up. yet the mundanity of life prevents me from living this to the fullest. where is the place i need to be

i forgot about the new macs - 71

2006-01-19T06:04:00.000-08:00

d'oh! i forgot to mention my excitment at the announcment made by steve jobs last week that the first intel based macs will now be available, the powerbook is dead, long live the mac book pro. it is very exciting for those of us in the mac world and a bit of a relief because we are now actually seeing these macs working and not looking much different from the old ones just better performance. it's also quite good for me now as i can get a feel for new releases and know when to upgrade (hopefully sometime next year).
so what else is happening in my little realm. well i've decided to start a countdown to the end of my contract which is what the 71 refers to in the title of this post. deciding what to do next is a real hard thing. i am trying to approach in the best way possible, exploring options, talking to people, thinking things through and prayer, though i think i need to spend a lot more time in prayer about the situation, so that will be my intention over the next few weeks and i am thinking about using my blog as a way of remaining focused on that.

long time, no blogging

2006-01-16T03:29:00.000-08:00

i have had a lack of inspiration to blog, even though i have gone through the whole holiday period. christmas & new year were there usual sort of 'funness'. lots of risk/rummikub/myword and pictionary. i didn't win risk once this year which was dissappointing but had a rather thrilling game of pictionary, how exciting!
i did really enjoy catching up with everyone that called back home and just spending the time relaxing and eating - and there was a good amount of eating.
i was back to work for a week after new year and then had another week off. tom was off to canada so i need the time off to make sure we had everything recorded that tom could do, so i could be left to complete things in the studio alone. i worked a bit of the christmas week which i hadn't intended to so it was also good to get the time off and relax a bit also. managed to finish series 4 of 24 which was very good and i am looking forward to series 5 which started last night in the U.S.

over christmas i managed to see narnia, king kong and the producers which were all very different and averaged out at a pretty good standard of cinema watching, i really enjoyed king kong and thought the producers was a bit too based around one gag. if it is possible to calculate a graph from those two comments narnina would lie somewhere between the two slighlty closer to king kong.

so it's back to work which finishes 31st march, after that i'll be a jobless, very interesting and exciting.

dinks and things

2005-12-12T06:27:00.000-08:00

for those of you that don't know me that well one of my most prized possessions is my Apple Powerbook, quite simply it's great! i have had it now for about 20 months, so as you would expect it's not quite as pristine as when first purchase. i remember
the first little dink it got was caused by some house keys - nrrgh!

well on saturday night i was chatting to my brother on iChat and i moved the screen of the laptop only for my iSight to fall off and hit the machine - crap! - i thought and probably said. i checked the iSight, it's made of good stuff and was actually fine. so i continued to tune my guitar (another one of my prized possessions) and chat to my brother.

a little later i looked back and noticed there was mark on the trackpad of my powerbook. at first i thought it was some gunk so i tried to rub it off, then to my horror i realised it was actually a little scratch in the trackpad, there must be some sort of protective layer on there. the trackpad works fine but now i have a 5mm scratch in the middle of my trackpad. it's the most annoying thing! firstly because it's annoying and i like to keep my things nice but secondly because i am still annoyed about it a good 2 days later, i am more annoyed at my inability to move on. it reminded me of a wallpaper at the howies website that goes a little something like this

Own Less
If you don't own the lastest, it won't go out of date.
If you don't own much, you won't have much to lose.
If you own next to nothing, you won't worry about ending up with nothing.
If you own less than you want, you will still have more than you need.
If you spend less money on things, you can spend more time on you.
If you own less, you will value it more.
If you only own what you can carry, you will carry less baggage around with you.
Travel light.

I'm sure I read somewhere else 'Don't let the things you own own you'. I don't know whether its a guy thing or a gadget geek thing but there is such a draw towards having the latest thing and there are a lot of rational reasons for doing so - I mean technology allows us to do some ace stuff, particularly in the creative spheres. I love using my Mac to record music or make little films or even just write, but it's just a tool it doesn't do any of the imagining or creating.

materialism is such a difficult thing to fight because it exists in so many ways, i can stop myself from buying crap i don't need, but the stuff i enjoy using and that allows me to try and unleash some creativity - i can still get stuck with that, obsessing about it whether i need to get the latest gizmo, whether i should really spend that much money, will i actually use it.

for a long time i have desired a fender telecaster - i mean i've never needed one but they look cool and sound great and of all electric guitars they probably suit my playing style and my favoured sound. earlier this year the exact looking one popped up on eBay and I managed to get it for a fairly good price, but one of my favourite things about it is that it isn't new. it's been played in and it's had a few knocks and the case stinks, but it's ace it's got character and it sounds great.

i don't know what i'm getting at, maybe i'm just sharing my experience and in the words of the beastie boys 'that's it that's all'.

podcasts

2005-12-08T06:15:00.000-08:00

apparently its the word of the year (see here)so i thought i might share my knowledge on which podcasts i have found to be worth listening to. now a common mistake is that people think you need an iPod to listen to podcasts, you don't even need iTunes though you would be stupid to use anything else. you can just download the mp3 and listen on your computer or, if you must, burn it to cd.

ricky gervais has just started doing a very funny podcast on the guardian thats over here.
the guardian also has a useful idiots guide here.

the bbc also do some good podcasts available through iTMS and direct from their website. fighting talk is a humourus show thats all about the week in sport (mainly football) and normally makes me laugh quite hard.
mark kermode's weekly film review is one of the most popular podcasts around, i've not always been kermode's biggest fan in print but hearing him talk you realise he makes a lot of sense. he has a horror slant but it's not often a problem.

finally iain lee of the 11 o'clock show and RI:SE fame is working for LBC and there is a daily podcast of his best bits, it is not always funny but he has some good regular callers particuarly barry.

trons

2005-12-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

england is a pretty old place and while that is all good because it means we are more intelligent than most countries - actually i've just read that again and i've realised we are the most intelligent nation. well back on point, things can get a little fusty around here. a friend of mine told me that a friend of his was always unhappy with the sound of his home town's name so he decided he would spice it up using tron instead of ton. here is some examples

southamptron
littlehamptron
northamptron
brightron
burtron
newtron
nuneatron
lemingtron
lymingtron
wolverhamptron

i've decided to dub the sport or game 'tronning'
now how can you spice up 'ing', 'worth', 'port', 'mouth' or 'ester'

wochenende

2005-12-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

had a bit of a crazy weekend, just seemed very busy. I went into birmingham to have a look around, even going later in the day there was still a lot of people about doing their christmas shopping.
i purchased a copy of the lastest boards of canada record - the campfire headphase, so i'll be listening to that over the course of the week.
On friday i downloaded an ultimately geeky, yet brilliant piece of software called 'delicious library'. It's is basically away to create a database for your books, cds, dvds and games. Being devised for Apple the developers have got it to link with Address Book and iCal so you can easily use it like an actual library, booking things out to friends and set dates for when you want it back by (though that may seem a bit strick). It is a great way to keep track of what you have and who you have lent it to.

films, movies, películas of 2005

2005-11-24T01:07:00.000-08:00

This year it feels as if I haven't been to the cinema that much. I think this is because there hasn't seemingly been a lot to see and also the local cinema only seems to show the more mainstream 'bums-on-seats' type of films.
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was a great film, full of interesting characters, beautifully shot, some great little animations and I just love Bill Murray. The ending is just sublime, a lot people will think 'what the heck?' but others it will just really resonate with.

Batman Begins is probably the most successful film, financially and critically this year and I think rightly so. Christopher Nolan is a talented director and treats the material as seriously as he would any work of fiction. Christian Bale is understated as Batman but doesn't disappear like Michael Keaton's and the supporting cast are excellent Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman deserve much praise.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy was suprisingly fun and not having read the books nothing bothered me about the cast or changes to the plot. I saw this with a mate who wasn't having the greatest of days and it manage to make him laugh, that must be a good test. The humour is so very British and that's great because it's normally compromised by American funding. I started watching the TV series which has dated ever so badly, so whether Douglas Adam's would have approved of the changes or not we'll never know but I think his sense of humour carries through and this film will help it reach people unfamiliar with the books.

The Constant Gardener, I saw this just last night and if you haven't seen City of God then you should, this is by the same team. The thing that helps film rise above all the other mediums is that it is a combination of them all. The Constant Gardener is a fantastic example of this, the way that the cinematography and editing combine is great, the acting is superb and the film feels at points like a real life documentary. It is the type of film that could become dangerously preachy and I would say it gets it pretty much bang on throughout the film. It's not an easy film but if you have a heart for justice, see it!

Two films I saw on video for the first time this year were Napoleon Dynamite 'gosh!' and Garden State with Zach Braff check this out for an interesting look at the film. Some of my lesser cinema moments this year would be Ocean's Twelve (what the?)Are We There Yet? (I was asking that throughout the film, hoping it would end when we got there) and The Magic Roundabout, I would like to blame my friend Tim for this one but he had to take his kids and I think he paid for me to go out of sympathy.

Some of the films I missed or my cinema didn't show and I would like to check out are Broken Flowers, Serenity, Crash, A History of Violence and Howl's Moving Castle.

Of the films that are yet to come I am hoping King Kong will be good, Everything is Illuminated looks interesting and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe could be good but I'm not a big Disney fan.

iSight

2005-11-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

the quest is complete, it's ace!

busy week

2005-11-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

last weekend i celebrated guy fawkes night by attending a bonfire over at a friends farm. in conversation it struck me how different the world might have been if the gunpowder plot was a success. on tuesday i headed down to london with Tom to work on some things at our friend Dave's studio. it was a hectic time, working intensely can be difficult, your ability to decide whether something sounds any good seems to disappear.
on wednesday i met up with my mate pete and we went to see the White Stripes at Alexandra Palace. Quite the venue, you may not be a fan of the White Stripes but how 2 people can produce such a noise is phenomenal. They just work so well together Meg's minimal drumming and Jack's overdriven/blues/punk guitar is a combination only they could carry off. They have a brilliant dynamic on stage. The new material from the latest album brings a lot of depth to their on the spot set list, I've never known a man on a marimba cause such a stir.
I spent much of Thursday walking around central london, then on the piccadilly line, certainly not my favourite of the underground lines. Thursday night was back in the studio and Friday was back wandering round Regent St, Oxford St, Covent Garden and the South Bank.

music of 2005

2005-11-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

i was sifting through my music and it suprised me that i have purchased very little new music this year even though i seem to be enjoying the amount of good new bands that are about, beck's guero is easily the best album i have bought this year, the futureheads has some fantastic tracks - and well get behind me satan, white stripes are quality. roots manuva's awfully deep was also majorly enjoyable. albums i haven't bought but may do would probably be you could have it so much better with franz ferdinand, gorillaz demon days and boards of canada the campfire headphase. special mention to the arctic monkeys they sound very promising.

the white stripes

2005-11-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

next week i am off to see the white stripes in concert at alexandra palace, i am well excited. am heading there with my best mate pete. also found out they are releasing a little e.p. in december so that should be something to look forward to.

walk the line

2005-11-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

joaquin phoenix got so into the role of Johnny Cash he had to check in to rehab, that my friends is method acting - hardcore. I liked joaquin in signs, the director is james mangold he has done, cop land(ok) and girl, interrupted which was very well acted, so I hope this is good.

the trailer is here

a scanner darkly

2005-11-04T02:37:00.000-08:00

here is a still from the lastest philip.k dick adaptation, and you can see a trailer here. the big question is will it be any good? it looks great, it uses the same technique as richard linklater's earlier film waking life, which i have never seen but some friends said the animation made them feel ill. keanu reeves is in it, i think there is only one film i've actually liked with him in it. philip.k dick based films are so hit and miss blade runner(brill), minority report(liked it at the time) and paycheck(awful). i think it's out next year in the UK.

links

2005-11-04T02:13:00.000-08:00

ooh lots of blogging. i really want to point out some of my links cos I find other peoples links a great way of finding out new stuff thats all www-e-fied.
rob bell has an amazing teaching gift and he is just great at challenging and getting you thinking. The nooma series he helped create made me think for the first time that 'christian' video was possible (UK citzens buy direct from the US as Wesley Owen is pricey), his book Velvet Elvis is a brillant read and you can hear him teach almost every Sunday thanks to his church's website Mars Hill.

innocent

2005-11-04T00:54:00.000-08:00

i love surfing the web it's just full of information and cool stuff, though it becomes suprisingly small if you spend too much time on it. also much of the internet seems to be an opportunity to spend money, not always a good thing. this blog may be about me rambling about life and stuff, though there is an equal chance it will about websites and products. here is my favourite example of both

early bidders

2005-11-03T23:59:00.000-08:00

what has been increasingly common over the last weeks is this happening to me. I have been trying to purchase an iSight for about a month now, and I am continually losing out to idiot early bidders who drive the price up for no apparent reason. With a good internet connection it takes less that 30secs to place a bid so why do it 2 minutes before the end of an auction!

In brighter news delirious' new album comes out on Monday and will be on iTunes on Tuesday, so that should be lovely. I've ordered my copy have you?

a new beginning

2005-11-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

well today i found out an interesting thing. a friend of mine has a link to this page on his fairly regularly updated blog, whereas I have never kept a successfully regularly updated blog. Why? Probably cos I think it is incredibly geeky but the thing is I really actually like it. Though I probably enjoy reading other people's blogs more that writing one of my own.
It might be good for me to put down a collection of my thoughts as I am a bit of a crazy thinker. Well for those who don't know me here are some short sentences.

I live in the UK.
I'm currently 23.
I work in the NHS for a local hospital.
I am a frustrated creative.
I love music and play guitar.
I love film, and sometimes when people ask me what I want to be I say my dream would be a cinematographer.
I love all things Apple
Most importantly I am a christian, though I've noticed Americans say 'I love the Lord' which might confuse some.

Christian has some bad conotations so I hope I may help change some of those, though I'm sure some new ones will be created. So I hope at some point in this little blog something interesting may occur, I need to work on my writing and get some links to all the cool stuff that there is in the world. Maybe then I will be confident enough to distribute the link.