…if they attempt to get the daily Lent texts from the Church of England
Yes, I know it isn’t Lent yet. But readers of the Sun don’t know that. And to be fair to them neither the Sun piece or the Live Life Love Lent website say (as far as I can see) that the texts don’t work yet. (Update: The Church of England website article posted on Sunday says it will work ‘from today’, ie last Sunday). It is a real shame that they didn’t wait until it works before announcing it.
Simon has posted this on Thinking Anglicans: Church attempts to use new media.
Update: See the comment from Ben Wilson of the Church of England below. Unfortunately I still can’t make it work – has anyone else managed?
Posted by Dave at 9:45 am on January 23, 2007 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Religion.
12 Comments
It is the time of year when people who are last minute about things do their tax returns. I noticed from the procrastination comments thread that there are others who are in the same boat as I, so perhaps this post will act as a motivational resource to help us all.
I am grateful to the Government for the advertisements telling me about the dire consequences of not getting my form filled in on time, but there are one or two things that I am not sure that they understand:
- In order to do my tax return I need to have my paperwork all sorted out.
- In order to sort out my paperwork I need to empty the green box containing paperwork.
- In order to empty the green box containing paperwork I need to have some room to lay out the paperwork in piles.
- In order to lay out the paperwork in piles I need to remove the large box of coat hangers that is occupying the central area of my office.
- In order to remove the large box of coat hangers that is occupying the central area of my office I need to sort the coat hangers into those ones which I plan to use in the forseeable future and those which can go to the garage to be stored until some time in the future when coat hangers become a scarce commmodity.
- In order to sort the coat hangers into those ones which I plan to use in the forseeable future and those which can go to the garage to be stored until some time in the future when coat hangers become a scarce commmodity I need to untangle the coat hangers (which have become intermingled and caught up with each other).
- I feel that it is wrong to spend much time untangling the coat hangers (which have become intermingled and caught up with each other) because I should really be getting on with doing my tax return.
As you can see these things are often not as simple as they first appear and I do not feel the Government always understands this.
OK, some motivational talking:
Come on everyone! Let’s do our tax returns! Yes yes yes!
[If you want to reuse the tax return cartoon on your blog (though it is a bit cartoonist-centric) you are welcome to do so using the following code]
<img src="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cb/tax-return.gif" alt="cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com" />
<p>Cartoon by <a href="http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/">Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/">We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>
Posted by Dave at 11:30 am on January 22, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Starting a Business.
21 Comments
Rejesus, the good website about Jesus, is to move from bulletin boards to a blog for its discussiony bits.
This is the link to the new rejesus (with no capitals) blog. The discussion board, which has now been made a bit difficult to find from the main bits of the site, will close on February 1st. The thread explaining the thinking behind the change is over here. I was speaking to someone today who has had some involvement in this, and they more or less said the same thing as Bruce in the above thread:
Although this community is vibrant and very worth while it has never quite fitted what the intention of rejesus is. We have attempted over the years to make changes to the house rules, or to try and make the intention of the site more explicit directly in threads but it has always been an unsuccessful struggle. This community finds its natural home pitching a message to folk some steps further down the journey than the site is here for.
I find the differences between blogs and bulletin boards interesting. On some sites a bulletin board seems to work really well, but on others it can and up being largely ignored or, as here, going in an unhelpful direction. Ship of Fools has a very vibrant bulletin board community, whereas on the Wibsite our boards have been quieter than our blogs, the latter having having proved unexpectedly popular. If there is a way to predict which of the two means of interaction will work better I for one haven’t found it. Oddly enough quite a few well known blogs are now introducing bulletin boards / forums (call them what you will) for the first time.
All the best to the rejesus team as they try this approach. It is a great site and I hope the blog works for them too.
Posted by Dave at 10:32 pm on January 21, 2007 and filed under Blogging, Religion, Spirituality.
5 Comments
This just in today from the Church of England. I’m a bit tired so haven’t taken it entirely in yet, but it looks like it is a special website that uses the modern text messaging mobile telephones to deliver Lenten goodness to anyone who has a pound to spare for a 10 day influx. Oh, the website is here by the way: livelent.net
The idea is great, and by all accounts the content is great, but they need to work on the website side of things as David points out. “The entire supporting website is built in Flash. If you don’t have Flash on your computer, or are if you disabled and using a text to speech reader or other similar device, you’ll get nothing.” Indeed. I found some of the downloads simply undownloadable, as my web browser is set up to not allow pop-ups. And so on and so on.
Update: The Telegraph and the Sun carried this story today.
Update 2: David Green has added to his post and reports that the text messaging service isn’t working yet. This is a real shame – it isn’t every day the Church of England gets a positive piece into the Sun complete with the number that interested enquirers should text. For it not to work is really very disappointing.
Posted by Dave at 10:02 pm on January 21, 2007 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Religion.
4 Comments
I had a very good day today doing my illustrated talk at All Saints Wokingham. It seemed to go well and I was made to feel very welcome and given a splendid lunch afterwards too. Hello to anyone from Wokingham who has popped in – do say hello in the comments.
David Hodgson, the Rector, has posted that he enjoyed it, Miffy, who was there, has posted a positive comment in the comments, and Richard (who lives just down the road but was not there) has Blogging Cartoonist Meets Blogging Priest.
Photo: David Hodgson
Posted by Dave at 8:21 pm on January 21, 2007 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Cartooning.
1 Comment
5 links for a Saturday:
1. ‘UNUSUAL SUSPECTS’… PROOST looking to find young creatives! « jon birch [creative journal]
If you’re under 25 and looking for an outlet for your creative work (paid) this could be for you.
2. A Secret Sculpture
This sounds brilliant, and it is happening just up the road from me in Rochford. I like eccentric art projects.
‘A Secret Sculpture’ is a public art-work in which a sculpture is designed, disassembled, put into Rochford Reservoir, retrieved by divers and then reassembled before being installed on the small island in the middle of the Reservoir.
The sculpture will be designed in secret by one group of Rochford Residents and be assembled by another, not privy to the original design.
The blog tells the full story.
3. wannabepriest / I’m a published author!! Ridley publish their Lent book
David is giving away some free Lent books.
4. The Fat Badger – Food & Drink – Times Online
Giles Coren convinces me never to buy bottled water again. Not that I do very often.
Mineral water is a preposterous vanity. It is flown and shipped around the world, from France and Norway at best, from Japan and Fiji at worst. It is bottled in glass that is mostly thrown away and is stupidly heavy to freight, or in plastic which never, ever, decomposes and just goes to landfill or ends up in one of the “plastic patches” the size of Texas currently gyring in our oceans.
5. Association of Church Editors – Church Magazine Workshops
This might be interesting for readers who look after their church magazines.
Have a good weekend everyone. Possibly see some of you in London later or (We didn’t go in the end) in Wokingham tomorrow.
Posted by Dave at 9:13 am on January 20, 2007 and filed under Art, Links: bloggers.
4 Comments
This laundry cartoon is available at We Blog Cartoons and can be freely reused on your blog.
Posted by Dave at 1:44 pm on January 19, 2007 and filed under Religion.
7 Comments
This is possibly the most boring photograph I have posted on this weblog for many weeks, but in light of the circumstances I feel it is appropriate.
A fierce and most perilous gale is blowing across these parts and I have been in the garden wrestling with our fence which is in the process of falling over. The picture shows it leaning at an angle it is not supposed to lean at and some string I have used to hold the different bits together. It is partly our fault for having old and rotting wooden fenceposts rather than the up to date concrete kind, though some neighbours with concrete fenceposts have lost theirs (for the second time in a week). Another neighbour’s house has tiles coming off it – again for the second time in a week.
It looks like it is chaos on the roads too – Go easy if you are in the UK and travelling. In fact go easy where ever you are and what ever you are doing. Go easy everyone.
Right, back to work, though it is not easy to work when I keep hearing the sound of fences breathing their last.
By the way, thanks for all the positive procrastination comments. One reader sent me this link about why we procrastinate, which I thought was quite interesting.
Posted by Dave at 2:52 pm on January 18, 2007 and filed under Essex Life.
11 Comments
You can get some code to republish this one from We Blog Cartoons.
This is not the first procrastination cartoon I have done, hence the ’2′ in the title.
Posted by Dave at 2:18 pm on January 17, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, New Weblogcartoons cartoons.
21 Comments
[Click on the image to see one that is a bit bigger]
Posted by Dave at 12:23 pm on January 16, 2007 and filed under Cartoons.
2 Comments
“Making a Splash – a young person’s guide to baptism” is a new book for young people published by the Baptist Union for which I have done the cartoons. Hopefully I can publish a sample cartoon shortly.
The book is published in February and costs £4 or £3.50 if you order lots. To order it your best bet is to go to baptiststore.co.uk and put ‘Making a Splash’ into the search box as it is a site that uses frames and so I can’t do a direct link.
It is written from a Baptist point of view – ie full immersion and lots of water. None of this splashing around in fonts. As an aside, that was the way I was baptised. Though I was confirmed by the Anglicans a few years later just to make sure.
I’d like to point out that I am not thinking of becoming a Baptist.
Other books that have my drawings in:
Posted by Dave at 1:24 pm on January 15, 2007 and filed under Cartooning, Ecumenical matters.
7 Comments
The Diocese of Oxford has put together an album depicting scenes from Bishop John’s day tour of the Diocese in preparation for becoming their new bishop. A couple of photographs I enjoyed:
Meeting the staff over coffee. I like the way the Bishop is at one end of the room and the staff are line up at the other end. Come on someone – start the mingling!
The there’s this one – what bishops do when no-one is looking. If the Bishop of Dorchester had been in my youth group I’d have had a gentle word about not abusing the antique furniture.
I don’t know why there were not any photos from Sarah’s church.
In all seriousness I do wish Bishop John all the best as he takes up his new post.
Posted by Dave at 12:20 pm on January 15, 2007 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Photographs, Religion.
5 Comments
Dave Walker's blog. Dave is a freelance cartoonist who draws a weekly 'Guide to the Church' for the Church Times. (
