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How to get to sleep

Sorry for posting so many videos - couldn't resist this one...

Genius

Guitar Hero Traffic

Month Review - April

The months are disappearing this year! Classic blog apology - sorry for the lack of activity on this blog - I've been quite busy!

It's been a good few months. Songsmith's really starting to take shape - most of the functionality is there, so I'm tidying things up and getting some feedback before I start to finalise things. The closer it gets, the more excited I am that it'll be a great product!

This month, I've also paid myself for the first time! It's the first pay I've received since I left my job in December. I've done a bit of work on the side, building a website and playing at an event which has meant I've had the funds coming into the company to allow a salary. It's a step of faith that things will continue to progress.

I incorporated (became a limited company) back at the start of April, so I'm now officially a company Director. I thought about putting it on my email signature, but I think it sounds a bit pretentious still! Perhaps when I start selling units I might do that...

Wedding plans are coming along well. The invitations went out over the last couple of weeks, and these have been hard work to do! My wonderful fiance has worked her socks off to create them, and we've both spent many long nights cutting, sticking and writing them.

Lessons

One of my big lessons from the last few months is to set good deadlines. I've given myself a few tough but realistic deadlines, and have pretty much met them all, but the best thing about this was that it made me focus my work. It's so easy to be distracted by fiddling with stuff, but when you know you need something done by the end of the week, it helps to clear the mind! I've obviously worked with deadlines before, but when you don't have anyone over you, telling you what to do, I've found it quite a steep learning curve to figure out how best to make me work!

Welcome to May!

Invisible drum kit

Turning a cliché into a long wait

Have you ever heard something so many times that it doesn’t make sense any more? Clichés sometimes seem to rob things of their meaning, making powerful things impotent.

Last week I was wittering on to someone about how important it was to “Wait on God”. “It’s all over the bible,” I think I said, “so it must be important”. The person graciously listened to me and then asked me how to “wait on God”, and I suddenly realised that all I could come up with was generalisations and vague waffle. I was a walking, talking, hypocritical cliché!

So I’ve spent the last few days digging around, trying to start learning what God means when asks us to “wait” on Him. I’m sure that this is the start of the journey rather than the end, so if this feels incomplete to you, then my apologies are given!

The Hebrew word we’re interested in is qavah which means "'to wait hopefully' or 'to look eagerly' for something" (Strongs). I guess it might be a bit like the way Apple fans waited for the iPhone; camping in the street to ensure they got a phone.

Qavah is the word we find in the well used passage from Isaiah:

“...but those who qavah for the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31)

Some of the Psalmists anchor their songs on the idea of waiting for God – Psalm 27, which is about looking to God for help when everything seems to be going wrong, ends with the verses:

“I am still confident of this:

I will see the goodness of the Lord

In the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;

Be strong and take heart

And wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:13-14)

There have been times in the past when I’ve been waiting on God, expecting and hoping for Him to move in situations. I guess my waiting during those times very much depended on the situation – sometimes things are so tough that hoping on God seems too hard. Sometimes, in the middle of tough situations, it hasn’t even occurred to me to ask, hope or expect God to do anything.

Looking back, I can see resolved situations that I’ve prayed about, which have encouraged me to hope and expect more from Him. I guess it’s easy to say that God can do anything, but much harder to believe it! Jesus called the Holy Spirit “Teacher”, and I can certainly see me learning more about what God’s like through the last few years – I can also see that I’m a slow learner!!

I like the way that Eugene Peterson (The Message) translates the ending of Psalm 27:

“I’m sure now I’ll see God’s goodness

In the exuberant earth.

Stay with God!

Take heart. Don’t quit.

I’ll say it again:Stay with God.” (Psalm 27:13-14 The Message)

It manages to capture, for me, the mixture of persevering in hope and also remembering the past, which we sometimes need in order to “wait hopefully” and “look eagerly” for God to bring His goodness to bad situations.

I guess that if we’re really serious about wanting to see His freedom, justice, and healing in situations then sometimes God calls us to be sacrificially passionate with our waiting like those Apple fans camping on the streets of New York.

None of the stuff here is ground breaking - sorry if you were after a difinitive answer! Your thoughts and comments are very welcome!!

Guitar Hero Roadies

Month Review - January

January's been a challenging month! I started working full time on my software at the start of the year, so here's look back at the month:

Achievements

I've got quite a bit done, but a lot of it has been "under the hood" stuff which isn't that visible. I've been tidying up some fundamental things that I'd left earlier in the project - things are a lot better now, but it's quite frustrating to not be able to see any dramatic change!! I'm happy with what I've got done, but I'm not quite as far on as I hoped I'd be.

Lessons

I've learned that it's important to have a life! I cleared all of my spare time at the start of this project, cancelling commitments and activities, in order to focus on what I'm doing. This has given me more space, which was great, but I've been struggling to switch off from the work, which is bad! I've been amazed at how much this kind of thing has affected me. The solution so far is to make time for some evening stuff to try and balance me out a bit. (...well, as balanced as it's possible for me to be...!)

Looking forward to...

Getting married!! The wedding plans are coming along slowly, and Laura and I are very much looking forward to having a break on honeymoon! I'm also looking forward to getting the software sounding better - there's some tweaks I need to make, but once it's sounding good, it'll feel like I'm getting somewhere!!

Roll on February...

Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2008

Expression Blend seems to have been coded to work with Visual Studio 2005, so after installing Visual Studio 2008 some stuff went a bit crankey for me.

After a quick search, I found a "Configurator" tool, which looks like it was a hack put out there whilst VS2008 was still called "Orcas" during beta testing...

I was just about to download it when I found there's a Service Pack 1 for Expression Blend that should fix all of the problems - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a07196d1-971b-4710-99c8-d3d9603ccfcb&displaylang=en. Good stuff - hopefully it'll fix some of the other weird things that Expression does - I like it as a tool but, as with any new product, there are a few things that don't seem to be 100% right!