Dust extractor cyclone

Having watched a number of videos about home-made cyclones I decided it was time to invest in one now I have a table saw. The amount of sawdust it produces and the frequency with which my shop vacuum filter clogs meant I needed to do something.

So I ordered some parts from Amazon and waited for delivery. Disappointingly the cyclone part of the kit isn't coming for a couple of weeks, so I'm still emptying and unclogging the vacuum.

Eventually I was looking around the garage and noticed two old buckets. One had tile adhesive in it and one I think was paint. I use them for rubbish but it's time to repurpose them. I also had a bit of waste pipe.Now to get all Heath-Robinson and see if these two old buckets would do the job. Neither had a lid so I cut a ring from 9mm mdf and used a few dabs of CA glue to stick it to the smaller bucket and then some silicone sealant to make sure it was airtight.

I used the middle of the ring to make the top hose connection, primarily because the first hole I cut was too big! The side connection was another bit of pipe secured with a small bit of wood screwed through the pipe and the wall of the bucket. Again lots of silicone to seal.

Because I didn't have a lid for the bottom bucket I just used some broad black insulating tape to the strap the two together. The tape round the top was to hold the mdf in place. An old hose from another vacuum cleaner and the thing was built.

To test it I emptied the contents of the cleaner on the floor. The filter was already clogging up although I'd cleaned it a few hours previously.

Amazingly it worked! I didn't think the buckets were big enough to create a separator but they did. When I opened the vacuum cleaner there wasn't a hint of sawdust in it at all. Because of the tape I can't open the cyclone, or rather can't be bothered to open it, but all the use must be in there.

It's all very exciting and possibly the most exciting thing I've ever made.

Goodbye Googlewave

So I found out today that Google is to wave goodbye to its innovative online collaboration tool. Googlewave is to be no more. Apparently the lack of user uptake is the issue.

I thought Googlewave had tremendous potential for planning and developing ideas, but as I found out, not everyone is keen to explore new technology. Having a continuous conversation that is easy to review rather than an inbox full of emails was really exciting. I mourn its demise.

So, I will have to look elsewhere and I've already begun to have a look at what might fill the gap.

Wridea looks promising, but I've only seem the overview. Again the issue is less about finding something to use and more about getting others to try it too.

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Praying about what you see

I do find it rather interesting how going for a walk can help me pray for my community. You see people and places and things going on that, if you are looking, can be helpful.

Today's walk took me through some open fields, past the cemetery, schools and local shops. I went past some remote houses too. Each of these helped me pray. As I passed the cemetery I prayed for those who are grieving and for those who would have their day interrupted by loss. The remote homes made me stop and wonder if anyone ever visited them to share God's amazing story or where their lives as isolated as their homes.

Could I have done this sitting at home? Probably. But I'm not sure I would have thought about the same things without the visual prompts.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Creative Process

Thank you Tim for the link to this picture of the creative process!

Find it here.

Google Wave

I've just been sent a link to this video from Michael. The concept looks really interesting and I can see great potential for doing the kind of round robin decision making via email that can get so messy with conventional email systems.

I also like the idea of being able to work together creatively in a single document.

Worth keeping an eye on the development.

All in one place

If you're interested in mind mapping then you might be interested in a new resource that pulls together many of the blogs that are out there about Tony Buzan's creative concept for mapping ideas.

Alltop is an "online magazine rack of popular topics" and there is a page just for mind mapping junkies.

I like mind maps, but I tend not to follow the strict rules as laid down by Buzan. I use them to outline sermons and ideas, to map organisations and ministries and to dump stuff out of my head. I've used a few software packages, but the problem with these is often that it takes more effort to create the map you need than it does if you just grab a sketch book and a pen. In fact I have one notebook dedicated to mapping. 

Years ago you used to be able to buy a notebook that alternated plain pages and lined pages. If I could find an A4 spiral bound version of that notebook today, I'd buy them in bulk! Mind map on one side, outline on the other. Personally the best of both worlds! 

I feel the thread of another series of posts coming on... 

CEBC Times (2)

And the second big news story of the day...

Lost. Found. Lost again!

Earlier this week the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem went missing again. Police fear that this might be a celebrity kidnapping, but as yet no word has been received about the donkey’s location.

Arthur Fishmeal, the donkey’s owner said today, “He’s a really good worker that donkey. Our business is suffering. It’s costing us a small fortune having to hire transport. Pots and pans don’t deliver themselves you know! Even though he had one leg shorter than the others, he was one key donkey.”

The donkey shot to fame when he became the impromptu vehicle of choice of Jesus of Nazareth. The event caused quite a stir as crowds gathered and cheered him along the road into the capital. Jerusalem residents were less impressed.

“A prophet can’t come from Galilee,” they said, “It’s unheard of.”

The Pharisees were also indignant and demanded that Jesus quiet the crowd. He responded, telling them that if the crowd stopped, the stones would cry out!

If you see this donkey contact Sergeant Auspex Perspex on Jerusalem VVV-IXIXIX-IXIXIX.

A small reward may be offered for the safe recovery of this valuable animal.

CEBC Times

We did our Easter Celebration as a newscast with a variety of characters taking part. We had a great piece of animation and music to set the scene and underline the newscast theme. We also did our notice sheet in the style of a newspaper, and for fun we used Roman numerals for dates and times!!

There were two cover stories for our newspaper. Here's the first.

Body Disappears!

Early reports this morning suggest that the body of the Galilean rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, has disappeared from his tomb.

The sometimes controversial preacher was executed last Friday by the Roman authorities. But early this morning rumours began to surface about the disappearance of his body.

Government officials were not available for comment but religious leaders said, “We told Pilate that this might happen. This Jesus made some outrageous claims, one of which was that he’d rise from the dead. That’s why we asked for a guard on the tomb.”

When asked, one of the guards simply said, “He was there last time we looked!”

Speculation is high about what actually happened. In the confusion of the early hours, one of the guards spoke about an earthquake, others spoke about strange men dressed in white wandering around the area immediately surrounding the tomb.

Followers of the enigmatic prophet claim to know nothing of his whereabouts, but one early visitor to the site of the tomb claims that he might be alive and that they had spoken with him in the garden area outside the tomb where he is supposed to have been buried.

Christmas CD

Okay, so I may be jumping the gun here, but I received an email today from someone called Eddie with an offer that looks very interesting and I wanted to pass it on. If, like, me you tend not to open unsolicited emails, then you may have had the email but rejected it. I don't blame you, I normally do the same, but this time I took a chance and read it.

The idea appealed to me straight away. 

I'm always looking for something to give away, especially around our village and especially at Christmas. This year I'd thought about doing little notebooks for shopping lists, but this CD at 53p a copy, might be a really good alternative. Looking at some of the comments on the website (I'll do a link in a minute), a lot of people have been impressed. That's why I'm posting this now before I've had the chance to even listen to the CD.

So. please forgive me if it turns out to be a dud, but I just get excited when I see an opportunity like this. I quite like Celtic music, so I'll probably like the CD anyway!

Here's the link to Beacon Music

CompassionArt

I read recently about Compassionart in an interview with Martin Smith, but wasn't really paying attention to release dates but a friend sent me the link to the site this morning and I wanted to post it here.

Probably a good idea, but mock with caution

Christians welcome Atheist London bus campaign

So reads the banner headline for an article on Christiantoday's website. 

Whilst it's good to see Christians taking a positive and dare one say humorous view of the proposed campaign, I fear that we are in danger of going over the top. The more we ridicule atheism, and who doesn't find humour in the proposed wording that  there "probably" isn't a God as if even the atheist can't be sure, the more likely we are to alienate them from meaningful discussion.

Personally it looks to me like a great opportunity, in the right circumstances, to actually ask people what they think. I just hope we don't add fuel to the fire by getting drawn into some great debate and, heaven forbid, a series of special prayer meetings to pray against the campaign. Some of us remember the calls for prayer about the EU and the beast!

Simon Barrow suggests that the campaign slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" is the unbelievers equivalent of "God may very well exist. Now have a nice day" in case anyone is short of an idea for an answer or an alternative publicity campaign.

Knols

Just got an email from Google about their new project "Knol". It looks quite interesting as a way of writing articles and papers that are longer than a typical blog entry should probably be (I say probably because no one I know has ever defined what length a blog post ought to be, if that were possible). Anyway "knols" are "units of knowledge" and you can visit the Google Knol site here. 

As yet I can't see a way of connecting any knols to my blog in a sidebar widget or the like, but I guess that will come. As it stands you have to know that an article is there or just go to the site and search. Some sort of RSS feed along the lines of Goggle alerts would be nice. 

I've added a knol about how we are trying to develop pastoral care at Cotton End. If you search "pastoral care" from the home page you should find it should you wish to read it.

I've tried using Google Groups for collaborative projects but that relies on specific people picking up the thread and using it. This may be a way of inviting wider interaction. 

We will see....

Conversational Conference Podcasts

I've been listening to one or two of the podcasts from the Conversational Evangelism Conference I mentioned a few posts ago. 

I fall into that group within church life who would identify themselves as not having the gift of evangelism, but who are desperately concerned about being more effective in evangelism all the same. I've always understood that as a follower of Jesus I am part of his missionary task force, equally valued alongside the heroes of outreach, but not gifted in the same way as they are. 

So, the three podcasts I downloaded include Todd Hunter's opening session and Rick Richardson's session on reimagining evangelism, and another Todd Hunter session on Three is Enough, an idea he is pioneering (and for which there is now a website/blog).

So far I've listened to two of the three, but sadly was too tired to sustain my focus through both, but fortunately I can re-listen to the one that got away from me. Todd Hunter's first session was really interesting. He spoke about the image problem we have as Christians. Now I know that some folk see our image problem rather positively. We must be doing it right if people don't like us or understand us might be their argument. 

But that's not the point. The point is that, as Todd Hunter put it: They (the non-Christians) are not put off by our doctrine, they are put off by us. In other words, evangelical spirituality isn't the problem, it's the way evangelicals express and practice their spirituality that is the problem. People may be confused about what we believe but they are probably more confused by how we live in the light of what we say we believe. 

So how do we address the problem? Part of the answer lies in something I read in Mark Driscoll's Vintage Jesus. He argues that Christians need to know Jesus as prophet, priest and king. As prophet he tells us the truth about our sin and our need to so something about it. As priest he holds out the grace of God as the answer we need. As king he rules over and in our lives. 

Todd Hunter says that what we need to do is to move from belief-ism to following Jesus in the ordinary routines of life. To do this faithfully we need our lives to be grounded in the prophet, priest, king understanding of Jesus.

Building the Tabernacle

So, in order to try and help everyone at church get a sense of the scale of the Tabernacle, I built a very simple model and also set out the courtyard and Tabernacle very simply in our field. We are very fortunate to have such a large site, and it worked far better than I expected. We all trooped outside part-way through the morning celebration to walk through the full-sized layout.

I also used my video camera connected to the data projector to show the congregation my model.

Here are a few pictures:

The model was made to a scale of 1cm=1m

Outside, we used a simple bamboo cane and line construction to show the dimensions of the various parts of the courtyard and the Tabernacle.

In Sunday School (Stepping Stones), they'd made an ark, and they carried it out and put in its place while I described something of what would have happened and the significance of it all for us.

I had some very positive feedback. I don't think any of us will read the Exodus description of the Tabernacle construction in quite the same way ever again!

Managing the back (and front) doors of the church

The seminar I attended the other day has got me thinking and maybe even a little inspired. 

Although it was not made explicit in the seminar, I take it that when we talk about the back door of the church we are using it as a metaphor for the exit strategy of those people who leave the church disgruntled or disengaged in some way or another. Now this doesn't necessarily have to be the case. In fact, as the seminar developed through the day, it became clear that for some the back door was simply the exit used by anyone leaving the church.

This in turn generates some confusion because there are times when it is right for someone to leave their church, so why would we want to close the back door on them doing so? It seems to me that what we need to do is to manage the traffic that passes through the back door rather than approach it as the simple matter of keeping closed. I want to help people leave well if leaving is what they need to do.

So, I'm going to begin work on developing a strategy for how we manage our back door. Maybe this is, in part, a defence mechanism so that we can say that we've done everything we can to help a person to leave well, but it's surely worth having a plan. Even more so in our highly mobile and low commitment society where people move on with apparent ease. I've had a few thoughts that I need to get in some sort of order, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has a strategy that works well, or ideas about what might work well. 

As someone who has left a few churches over the years (that's because I'm a minister I hasten to add) I've had my share of good and bad experiences. I know too that it's just plain impossible to please everyone, so even the best strategy won't work for all leavers. 

To drop a pebble in the pond of your thinking, I suspect that the best strategy for managing the back door might just begin with our strategy for managing the front door, the entry point to our churches.

Three-Ninety-Fifty

One of my favourite questions comes from Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade. Apparently he used to ask this question of the staff at CC. I don't know if he only asked it once or if he asked it consistently, but it is becoming a question I've asked a lot and a question other people around the church are beginning to ask too.

And the question is:

What three things can we do in the next ninety days that will make a fifty percent difference?

Trying asking yourself that question in whatever setting you're in today and see what you come up with. It could be a productivity issue, a ministry issue or even a personal growth issue. I've used it in a lot of settings and it has helped me focus my attention on the positive thing or things I can do rather than the negatives of what I can't do.

I rather suspect too that there are some minor variations that you could use from time to time. For example, Ally, my daughter, has a lot of coursework and home to complete at the moment and it can seem overwhelming. I guess she could ask herself the same question but make it 90 hours instead of days. It's almost GTD-like in that it focuses your attention of the next action you can take to move a given project along.

What car?

On Saturday we had a day away for the leaders. As we began, we asked ourselves this question:

If the church was a car, what kind of car would it be?

My favourite answer was: "A new VW Beetle–a modern version of an old classic"

I thought that was a really interesting take on church. It was meant positively. We have a classic message that doesn't change with time, but the way we do things has changed.

We then moved on and asked ourselves what kind of car would we like it to be. This turned into a drawing of a bus with all sorts of interesting things going on as we added to our picture.

Sometimes these sorts of exercises can run away with you, but by thinking in a different way to the way we might normally think we have the opportunity to be creative in ways we may not normally be creative. I remember listening to an interview between Bill Hybels and Steve Sample, the President of USC (University of Southern California). During the interview he told the story of how he developed the concept of an electronic controller for a dishwasher or washing machine (I forget which). Apparently he lay down on the floor and thought about how a small insect might control the machine.

So, if you're a bit stuck today because you can't see how to get from where you are to where you want to be, you might want to try something that might at first appear really odd, but in the end might just open your eyes to a possibility you can't quite see from where you are currently sitting.

If drawing cars or imaging how ladybirds might run your church are not for you, you might like to try mind-mapping or spider diagramming. I use this technique for developing sermon ideas and presentations. I start with my central idea or proposition in a box in the middle of the page and then branches of words, ideas and phrases. From there I try to pick out the recurring and bigger themes.

I know some people have very precise rules about how to mind map, but I just get the paper and a pen and go for it. If you haven't tried it, give it a go, you might be surprised by the outcome.