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Heading off for a mini-getaway today. Firstly an excursion to the Zoo with Luke and then a couple of nights in the city. Sure it’s only 50km away but we don’t get there much nowadays and it’s a good option when time or money doesn’t permit a proper holiday. Anyway it’s a good excuse for a little Billy Idol… beware though, it’s a very strange video…
Saturday we went and hung out at the beach for a while – the kids played on the sand, played bit of cricket, and then went and sat in a cafe for a while… very nice. Once again, another reminder of what a great place Rockingham has been to live in all these years…
Here’s a video from yesterday of Mia and her cousin Seth, who is just a few weeks older than her. We have never seen her laugh as much as she does here – one of those moments I’m really glad to have captured on video…
Although I love my music, and am involved in church music, I must admit I rarely listen to any Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) – I just find in general it’s a bit lame or boring or not great quality. Even with fairly good bands like Jars of Clay or Kutless or Switchfoot I tend to find myself listening to the album once or twice and then filing it away. They often have one or two good songs but for the most part it’s fairly boring.
So I was pleasantly surprised with my first listen to the band Casting Crowns. I’ve heard their name plenty but never felt compelled to listen to their music until I picked up their CD Lifesongat Koorong recently (partly due to a recommendation in a recent book I read by Roger Olson). Well it’s a great CD. Musically very tight, melodic and interesting. The main male vocalist sounds a bit like Neil Diamond in places but that’s not necessarily a bad thing And the lyrics are honest and original and generally down to earth. Only a couple of lines in one (otherwise very cool) song I didn’t quite see eye to eye with theologically, but at least the fact that I have listened that intently shows how much the music and lyrics have otherwise got me hooked in. I keep intending to take this CD out of my car and play something different, but after at least 5 times through I’m still keen. Well worth getting hold of.
Here’s one of my favourite tracks – Praise you in the storm
Occaisionally when surfing channels I’ll wind up on the Comedy Channel watching shows like the Colbert Report. He has some interesting guests but an annoying tendency to continually interrupt them in order to get his jokes in. Anyway, here’s an interview he does with my favourite Bishop, N T Wright, about his latest (excellent) book Suprised by Hope. Good interview, funny in places, annoying in others, but in general Tom holds his own and gets his point across (sort of). Take a look…
This movie has kinda crept up on us without a lot of buzz or hype – the new CGI Star Wars movie which will be released on August 14th in Australia (one day before America). I first saw the preview in the cinema just a couple of weeks ago but before that hadn’t heard anything about it. Apparently this will be the lead in to a new series on Cartoon Network.
Here’s the preview which I just found at Hello Internet. As Ben points out it’s a bit strange seeing Lucasfilm and Star Wars with a Warner Bros intro instead of 20th century fox
It’s been some time since I’ve posted any videos of Mia so here’s a quick clip of her from yesterday. Also enjoy the music, which Luke created (with a little help from me) using Apple GarageBand.
I walked into the study this morning to find our two boys Owen and Luke sitting at the computer laughing their heads off. The video below, which they had discovered themselves on YouTube, was the reason. See what you think…
As I mentioned yesterday, I had to rebuild my PC this week, which included a clean install of Vista and all my other software. So here’s my list of some essential programs for Windows. Anyone have any other suggestions they would add to this list?
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Thunderbird (email)
Office
Google Picasa (photos)
Exact Audio Copy (CD ripper) with LAME (MP3 encoder)
Tag & Rename (MP3 tagger)
iTunes & Quicktime
This next one is not essential, but I wanted to test out a game on the new PC and ended up downloading Trackmania Nations Forever. This has to be one of the best free games in history – basically it’s a racing game with a range of extreme tracks and online racing – all for free. I enjoyed the previous version of this game but it wouldn’t run on Vista so it’s nice to have an updated version that works. If you like racing games or just want something to help you waste a few minutes then definitely download this game. Here’s a YouTube trailer for it…
This is the blog of Paul Baggaley.
I'm a Christian family doctor from Perth, Western Australia, with an interest in obstetrics and paediatrics. Married to Jennifer, we have three great kids Owen, Luke, and Mia.
The content of the blog can range to just about everything, but the most common subjects will most likely be Christianity, books, medicine & technology, as well as updates and stories from my life. Look forward to having you along for the ride!
Just to let everyone know that more files have been added to the chord charts section of this site. Just click the link above to take you there…. Paul […]
I know it’s been 2010 for a month now, but everyone knows January doesn’t count – Feb is when school and uni and ministries start up again in earnest. Jan is time for holidays, watching the cricket, lazing on the beach, recharging our batteries for the year ahead… More than any year this promises to be [...] […]
Just a quick update to let you know that music for our new song Growing Deep has been uploaded to the Chord Charts page, along with my MP3 backing track and Charlie’s awesome Van Halen meets Rocky synth intro. Just click the Chord Charts link at the top of the page. [...] […]
I’ve had quite few discussions recently with some different worship team members about the acoustic guitar player’s best friend – the Capo. Most of you are familiar with these clever little devices which resemble a very large peg of sorts which is used to shorten the strings and hence raise the pitch of the guitar by [...] […]