I was clicking around the internet, and the next thing you know have booked to go to the Spring Harvest Christian seaside conference in Skegness, April 11-16 (Week ‘two’ to those in the know).

Anyone else going? Lets meet up! I don’t know if I’ll be blogging or cartooning or anything. I might just draw huge diagrams in the shingle on the beach that will be washed away by the incoming tide, thereby demonstrating their ultimate futility.

[Cartoon originally posted on the Church Times Blog sometime around here, when I did my in-depth analysis of being at the event.]

“I NOTICED that the doormat was at a slightly crooked angle. I reached down and moved the mat back into its correct place.” Thus began a recent entry on The dullest blog in the world. Although this publication is something of a satire on the internet’s inane blogs, scientists are finding—to their surprise—that useful information can actually be mined from the tedium of the blogosphere.

The dullest blog in the world is here, or you can follow it via Facebook or Twitter.

[Cartoon from We Blog Cartoons.]

I am aware that I ask for technical help (usually on Twitter) several times a day, but I am taking a liberty and doing so once more.

This time it is not for me and my blessed Mac, but for a family member’s PC computer which I am attempting to make work this weekend. If I can do so I will get superb numbers of brownie points and will generally be regarded as some kind of hero.

Here is a summary:

Problem: Can’t surf the internet / do e-mail.

Details:

• Computer is a quite old Evesham one running Windows XP
• Modem appears to connect to the internet, but no data is actually received.
• On the modem (Voyager 105) Power and DSL lights are on, Data light isn’t.
• ISP is Supanet if that is of any relevance. They say the connection should be working. They also cost 50p a minute to chat to.
• It worked until a few weeks ago, then stopped. Unfortunately I wasn’t here at the time, so I don’t know whether anything odd was done to it.
• AVG free is running, as is Windows Firewall. Disabling either or both makes no difference.

So, what I’m wondering is (a) any thoughts what the problem might be? (b) how would I go about making a diagnosis and, all being well, fixing it?

Normally I’d do copious Googling, but I’m connecting via a dongle on a netbook and too much internetting is a bit awkward.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

There has been a greater-than-average reaction to my What the bishops were doing whilst civil partnerships in church were being voted on cartoon (extract above) on the Church Times blog. By ‘greater than average’ I just mean that there has been one, as an average reaction is for there to be no reaction. See Thinking Anglicans for one place there has been comments.

I have minor regrets about this cartoon as it has given the ‘I hate bishops – they can do nothing right’ brigade who loiter on Anglican blogs something to jump up and down about.

On the other hand blogger Matt Wardman says: “Sorry, Dave – not as well judged as usual in my view”. To blogger Matt Wardman I say that normally I do not knowingly judge things that well, I just draw the first thing that comes into my head. Also I am asking a question about the activities of the bishops and was not prejudging the answer to that question. I am perfectly prepared to accept that they had more important things to be doing if that turns out to be the case. Bishop David Walker, whom I have great respect for (not least because he is my namesake and has done much to make the wearing of sandals acceptable in polite society), says that “most bishops are relaxed about the Ali amendment” and I can understand why that might be the case.

PS. I bet some idiot will try to register pectoralcrosses4u.com.

This video is described as follows:

Pringle of Scotland has commissioned artist David Shrigley to create a humorous short animated film about life behind-the-scenes at Pringle to celebrate the brands return to Milan Fashion Week

[Warning: probably not suitable for children]

I am a great David Shrigley fan, although I must warn those of a sensitive disposition that some readers may find some of his work not to their liking.

Thanks to Kristen Bailey for alerting me to this.

I don’t normally post these kinds of things, but this made my morning.

The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

Videos about the making of the video: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Just under a month ago I posted my Dave Walker / CartoonChurch iPhone app here on the blog, and said that I hoped to have a discount code for making apps on AppMakr, the site I used. Well, I now have such a code. It will get you a 50% discount on the $199 appmaking price, bringing it down to $99.50 (approx £65). The code expires at the end of March, so you have a month to do your appcrafting. Many thanks to AppMakr and in particular to Liz Terry who kindly agreed to my pleading. The code is: CARTOONCHURCH

Please be aware that making an app this way is not something you can just do in 10 minutes – I’d urge you to do some in depth reading first, including my making an app with AppMakr post and the Appmakr support site. There are two posts in particular that would have been very useful to me had the information been known at the time, Changes to Apple policy and Top-10 things to know before you publish an App.

I should probably add that I’m not on commission here – just passing this on as there was a lot of interest in the process the last time I posted about it.

[The cartoon in app above has nothing to do with this post but is for illustration purposes only. It is taken from my 'free cartoons for your blog' site, We Blog Cartoons, which as it 'appens is on my app.]

This is a blog post about my cartoon in today’s Church Times. Unfortunately it would be unfair of me to post it here given that the Church Times have paid me to draw it and so it is right that they have exclusive first use of it. The link is here, but it is subscriber only, and I’m aware that the extract above will be too small to see as it is long and thin. Apologies, therefore, to those for whom this post will be meaningless.

This isn’t an apology (which was what I originally entitled it), more of an explanation. I felt in hindsight, having submitted the cartoon, that some clergy might feel that I am getting at them and criticising of the organising of lots of Lenten things. This was not my intention. The cartoon is perhaps saying something about the vast range of Lent resources and activities that are available – are there too many? But in truth the cartoon is probably more about how someone like me, whose job it is to think about Christianity all day every day, keeps their belief alive. The danger is that one becomes overwhelmed by worthy activities and spiritual messages. The suggestion is that, for me, the best Lenten fast is possibly to fast from Lent itself.

I don’t know, what do you think?

The image is an extract from a cartoon I did to advertise Your SHAPE for God’s Service, a course that is being run in my local diocese. It is all about helping people to find the right things to be doing in church, life etc. A kind of ecclesiastical careers advice. Click here to see the whole thing. I haven’t done the course (that is why I blunder around not really knowing what I’m doing), but it looks jolly good.

Phil Ritchie is the person behind this in the Diocese of Chelmsford. You might know him from such micro blogging websites as Twitter. He is your man to talk to if you want to know more – contact info on the SHAPE page.

The Digital Economy Bill is currently making its way through the UK legislative processes (official Parliament site). Photographers are up in arms about it. See for example these sites:

• British Journal of Photography: Digital Economy Bill still a threat to photographers
• Copyright Action: The Digital Economy Bill : what’s yours is ours

In summary, it seems that anyone will be able to use someone else’s work for free if they have tried and failed to find the original creator of the work. The main people to lose out, according to these sites, will be (1) amateur photographers, because their (usually unwatermarked) images will often be effectively usable for free, and (2) professional photographers, because there will be many more avenues to find free work.

On the websites I’ve linked to the ‘orphan works’ in question are photographs, but I imagine the same principles would apply to cartoons. I’m wondering, therefore, how this will affect cartoonists. In my own case many of the cartoons I post online have a website address included, but some of my work appears without a signature / web address, as that is included in the publication itself in some other way – in a heading or text attribution for instance. And what would happen if the work has a signature, but the person wanting to use the cartoon is still unable to trace the artist? I know of cartoonists who have had their work pinched by other people and later discovered it in use elsewhere, but this legislation would seem to add legitimacy to such occurrences.

I am, as you know, fairly laid back about personal reuse of my work on blogs if certain basic conditions are adhered to. I do, unfortunately, fairly regularly come across my work posted online without the website owner having applied the basic courtesy of posting a link to my site as I request on my (probably inadequate) copyright information page. Of course the reuse of cartoons by commercial organisations on websites or in print is another thing altogether.

I’m wondering whether writing a strongly worded letter or creating a small-to-medium-sized fuss might be in order. I’d be pleased to hear from anyone who has looked into this in greater depth and open to ideas as to the appropriate action to be taken. Perhaps cartoonists are already doing something about this, but if so a quick search didn’t reveal any such initiatives.