Much happier stuffs!!

It was my girlfriend's birthday on Friday 18th July [yaaaaaay!!] & we had some great times, including seeing a little film which I've been banging on about for months - Wall-E. Here's what I thought about this film.

OK firstly this is an animated movie from the always-reliable Pixar & according to Empire it's a 5 star movie [check out full review here] which is normally a good recommendation but I digress!

The first thing that struck me was before the film even began - Pixar have a great habit of making a short [only a few minutes] animation before the feature presentation & this one was called Presto. This was definitely the funniest animated short I've seen as well as cleverly put together & perfectly animated. I won't spoil the plot but it had me & our party in stitches even before Wall-E had been seen!!

OK the main event - overall it had great comedy, moving moments, brilliant characters, as well as a distinct [& rather dark] message about technology. What I liked heartily was that the key characters only had a very limited vocabulary - Wall-E could not talk to begin with, then learned new words including his own name! This meant that with limited dialogue all the story-telling needed to be done with actions & gestures but this was done superbly & it was a memorable story - definitely one for the DVD collection when it arrives!!

One final thing to say was about one character called M-O [his entire vocabulary = MO] he was a robot with a cleaning obsession [well it was his job/life!] he was really funny & reminded me of many people who like to clean like they were obsessed [no names mentioned at all!!] Here is a pic because of the cuteness!!

Diss Update!

AKA Frustration 1 over.......Frustration 2 just beginning!!

Had a meeting with Si Davis [Oxford CYM Centre] & went through my dissertation resubmission 'issue' on Monday & I basically have to do a total redraft for the diss, in the next 2 weeks w00t fricking woot!! The key issue is that I went from an empirical to library-based & back again & as such my overall style seems really sketchy.

The bad news is that I have little drive or desire to do all this work for effectively getting 2 marks to bring my where I was originally marked at [twice grrrr!]. Also it looks like a massive battle, as I need to add in a methodology & some deeper & more specific definitions, as well as shift the entire diss to be more empirical. Seems a lot of work & I need to get it done before MWCC [2nd August].

The good news is that I've come up to see Maddie for a while, so I can make a constructive start [I'm currently sat on her lounge floor lolz!] & she's had a flick through & has given me a good start & now I can sit in my preferred working place [Starbucks lol] to try to get this darn thing done. Also I've managed to get some funding to keep me caffeinated for a couple of weeks [thanks mon grand-pere]

Expect a couple more blogs as things develop oh & if anyone wants to proof this bad boy - let me know ;o)

Disser...what-the-heck-is-going-on...tation

OK got some fatal blow news late on Tuesday - my dissertation needs to be resubmitted as it got a 38RC. Basically this epic failure [hence the pic!] caused me to panic/stress/smash things with hammers/grrrr/etc. Big shouts to Lego for giving me some comedy & a hug lolz! Then tried to get it sorted on the Wednesday, but there was nobody in the CYM Oxford office to try to sort out aaaanything. Frustration therefore continued for the whole day & evening - fail!

So went to see YouthBlog to try to get some advice & then went in to CYM Oxford on Thursday to retrieve my diss. To be honest it's not something which looks very major & I think that a very minor change will improve it. Basically my question for the dissertation was:

"How do young people view the Christian faith, as a faith or as a culture or subculture"

However, the chief criticism is that this looks like I should be looking at 3 separate
ideas, whereas in the introduction, my question changed to:

"How do young people view the Christian faith, as a faith or as a culture/subculture"

Obviously this looks massive/minor depending on how you look at it, but I think a small change or even losing the whole subculture idea might just tip the balance. We shall see on Monday when I meet with the head of Ox CYM.

Finally a big shout out to RevMiri & YouthBlog for their assistance & giving me sage advice on how to sort it.

CYM Completion

As we speak [ok blog!] I've finished all the work for my degree from CYM!!! This is great because it means no more writing journals or essays or [dare I say it] dissertations!

However, they were a great bunch of peeps the class of '08, so I though I'd give a celebratory shout out to them all for great & memorable times over the past 3 years.

So does this mean I'm done with education of the mind....you know what I don't think so - doing this degree has really given me a thirst for knowledge. But I don't think I need another degree or [dare I breathe it] masters, rather I think I should look closer to home...my bookshelf for one. I have collected a mass of books for both youth ministry & theology & I think I should start by really getting stuck into them, not for quotes, but for practical & realistic ideas!!

Watch this space for some actual random musings - come on it's about time!!

We continue

where have you been?!

OK bloggers it's been faaaaaaaar to long since my last blog - so I think it's about time for some updates - check back soon for what an earth has been going on!