It’s good to be wrong sometimes, it’s important to acknowledge it too, because otherwise you can’t make it right. In fact I would like to take a moment to say that I am often wrong in assertions I make, conclusions I reach and things that I do.

There. Now, have you noticed how it is becoming increasingly difficult, at least here in the U.K. to tell other people that something they believe is wrong? Have you noticed, that it’s becoming unpopular to even admit that ones self is wrong. To put it another way, to acknowledge that we are accountable for our actions (and our beliefs).

But in this society where no one is wrong, where what’s true for you is fine for you, if you can’t even be wrong then what value is left in those things you’re ‘right’ about? I would like to say that I believe in objective, or universal, truth. That means that there are things that are true regardless of what you or I think about them. That there may even be things that are true even though no-one believes it.

Some people say that it is impossible to know what’s right for certain, and consequently you shouldn’t believe anything. Such people are sometimes called agnostics. I find it amusing that such people often label Bible believing Christians, such as myself, as arrogant or bigots, before going on to make some sweeping statement about the certain impossibility of knowing anything for sure – I mean, the audacity!

These people in effect say, “Listen, I’ve been around a while, I’ve tried most things and take it from me – you can never be certain you’re right.”

Well, I beg to differ, but that’s rubbish. I have a God given mind that can reason and know things. I’m more than the genes in my DNA, there is no ‘christian’ gene (any more than there is a ‘gay’ gene). I’m more than my environment, I choose to influence it as well as be influenced by it. I’m more than my upbringing, I have a mind of my own and I use it to form conclusions, so that I can of my own account and shortcomings be wrong sometimes, and also, praise God, be right.

But, if objective truth is true regardless of what I believe, how can I be certain that what I believe is objective truth. How do I get from believing in the existence of objective truth to believing that I know objective truth? My admittedly clumsy reasoning goes something like this.

1. If I can’t think rationally, this exercise, along with my life, is futile anyway. So lets take that as a given. (I realise that’s a big stumbling block for many people!)
2. Everything particular must have reference to something else in order to have any meaning. Ultimately, all of life’s particulars must rest on something absolute, something ultimate. If the particulars don’t rest on something absolute but go round and round resting on other particulars then they’re meaningless.
3. If God isn’t the ‘ultimate’, the sustainer of all things and the source of reference for everything, then what is?
4. If God created me with a rational mind then it follows that I should be able to know Him rationally and personally (Not – just have faith)
5. If God created me with a rational mind that works verbally, and that communicates verbally with my fellow man, it follows that He should choose to communicate verbally.
6. The books within the Bible ARE Gods revelation. The written Word.

And so, unless I acknowledge that life is not just unknowable, but meaningless and futile, I accept that God exists and has revealed Himself to man.

The following is a brief summary of what Steve and I did when we went to Warsaw earlier this week. If you’re more into the photos then check out my Warsaw album on flickr.

Day One

Last time Steve and I hit Eastern Europe, we made a long coach journey up to Stansted in the evening, didn’t sleep at all, got an early flight to Bratislava where we found the cheapest apartment going, and we still had a good time.

This time, in Warsaw, things are slightly different. So if you’ll allow me to sum up, then sit back and relax to the piano playing here in the bar at the Polonia (No, not polonium) Palace Hotel.

We left for Luton right after Church on Sunday evening, found our Hotel in Luton where we left the car. Headed out to Warsaw early next morning on Queasy Jet, got the Bus to the street our hotel was on and checked in. Day one was pretty tiring. We started out with lunch at a traditional Polish restauracja called Dekanta. Here lunch consisted of a large sum of pork with pickled cabbage and dumplings. Steve even went for dessert – Hot cherries with ice cream.

After all that food and one more beer than we meant to order from the waiter (we thought he said ‘bill’) we walked back to the hotel. After sleeping off lunch we walked on down to the old town to explore and got some overrated food at the Jazz Bistro, which had very cool decor – a cobbled floor with uplit stone pillars. On the wander back we stopped for dessert at one of the many café / patisseries. Once back I had a shower and a shave, then we went down to the bar. Which brings me back to where I started.

Day Two

Join me back at the bar, piano playing, people bustling and cosmopolitan Warsaw generally happening – or something. We got our bout of culture in today. After the worlds most amazing breakfast TM, maybe more on that tomorrow, we headed out to the other side of the river. On the way we stopped at the peoples gallery where we enjoyed a photography exhibition of Warsaw around the 30’s and some of the art on offer.

Then to the market, or lack of market at the stadium. It was dire so we didn’t stop. Then for a wander through the Praga district in the direction of a park that had bears, but before we got there we stopped at an Americanized mall for lunch and tasty ice cream. Finally we made it to the ‘bear park’. No bears. So we didn’t stop there too long but walked over the river and back into the old town where we found a micro-brewery that kept us occupied for a couple of hours.

On the way back to the hotel we toyed with the idea of eating at the Strauss restaurant at the hotel. Once back that became a certainty so we had out best nosh of the trip. The service was first class and the food was fantastic. We actually went all out and got a three course meal. I had beef with honey and mustard dressing and salad for starters, veal ravioli for main, and a cheese selection for dessert. A yummy Rioja, can’t remember which vineyard, helped it all go down.

Steve just about passed in our room from exhaustion after that and I went down to the bar for some agua and to write this entry before bed.

Day Three

Sadly no more listening to the piano at the bar, I’m at the departure gate waiting to go home. Our last day was more sombre than the other two, but first let me get breakfast out the way! If you can’t read the diagram, on offer at the buffet was the following – cheeses, meats, condiments of every kind, juice, champagne, vodka, caviar, an omlette bar, cakes, pastries, fresh fruit salads, hot meats, fish, bread, toast, cereals, yoghurts and a waffle bar. Basically everything.

After getting our fair share of all of that we checked out and didn’t get far in the direction of the old town before we stopped for coffee. Then a bit of a photographic walk before heading to a prison/museum where lots of people that rebelled against the Nazi occupation where held and executed. Then off to the Warsaw Uprising Museum. This was excellent and blended technology, media and artifacts brilliantly. The audio guides really helped stick the story together to both understand what you were looking at and what happened during the uprising.

Finally a fairly long walk in search of food, back to the hotel and to the airport. A pretty unpleasant flight back during which someone smoked in the toilet. Then navigating road works on the way back down the M1, M25 and finally M3 to Southampton where I got home a just after one a.m.

Megan sent me the sweetest after Christmas (actually an Epiphany present) that I receieved the other day. Here it is:

I’ve had enough. If you read my previous post on self improvement then you may have noticed I waste a lot of time, and consequently a lot of my life, stitting at a desk in front of a computer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, unless there is no good reason for me to be.

I also said I wasn’t making any resolutions this year. I fibbed. My one resolution is to find as many excuses and ways possible to not use my computer. One way includes writing, as in pen and paper, most of my blog posts. It’s a nice record for me to keep and I can stick things in it to remind me what i’ve actually been doing as the year progresses.

I’m going to try and read a book instead of surfing the web, get out of my room to write posts, cook something or go for a run instead of playing a game for an hour.

I must admit, there is one thing that keeps me tethered to the computer, especially in the evenings. Megan. We talk almost every day, but from time to time one of us gets held up for whatever reason and the other is waiting. To stop this reason from keeping me in my room with the computer, I wrote my first AppleScript which is executed everytime Megan comes online.

tell application "Adium" 
    if my status type = away then
        tell application "Skype" 
            activate
            set TheSMS to (word 2 of (send command ("CREATE SMS OUTGOING " & "+44##########") script name "Notifier") as text)
            send command (("SET SMS " & TheSMS & " BODY " & "It looks like Megan has popped online") as string) script name "Notifier" 
            send command (("ALTER SMS " & TheSMS & " SEND") as string) script name "Notifier" 
        end tell
    end if
end tell

If my status message is an away message, then it’ll send me a text (SMS message) to let me know that Megan’s popped online. Now I know it could probably be made better by someone that knows what they’re doing, e.g. pulling the name from Adium and getting my phone number from the address book. But it works for my purposes.

If you want to try it out then you’ll need the latest version of Skype Beta for Mac with SkypeOut and Adium

Edit the AppleScript above with your phone number and the name of whoever it is you’re checking. Then in Adium, right click on the name of the person you want to attach the event to, click ‘Get Info’, select the ‘Events’ tab, select ‘Contact signs on’, click the ‘+’ button, choose ‘Run an Applescript’ as the Action, and then find the file of the AppleScript you just saved. phew!

When I was in the states last time, I got a Cingular sim card on their most basic pay & go plan and loaded it with $30. One, inbound one hour call later and that was down to less than $10. Once I got below $4, whenever I tried to dial a number instead of letting me dial a number, it gave me some automated message saying my balance was low. Apparently I could press a number to continue anyway, except it didn’t work. In short, my experience with Cingular, outside of a contract plan, was dire. In fact I vowed not to use them when I move to the States.

As cool a device as the iPhone looks, that isn’t going to change my mind. I could get one, for what seems to be around the full price of the device, plus a two year contract with Cingular. Hello? Two years. I wouldn’t sign up to any service for two years! I might pay another $200 on the device for one year, but $600-$800 plus a two year lock is just a joke.

To be fair, I get the impression that most cell phone providers in the States are just as bad, I’m guessing this comes down to a lack of regulation. Here in the UK, unless the call originates outside the country (and this may be about to change soon too), you will not be charged for receiving a call. Even on the lowliest pay & go plan, you will not be charged for receiving a phone call. Can you Americans imagine that? Even on the lowliest pay & go plan, you probably won’t pay more than 35p (about 70¢) per minute to call a mobile phone on another network at peak time. Quite expensive, true, but it is cheaper for same network or landlines. You can get a fairly decent contract with any service provider for just one year, and then you’ll probably be entitled to an upgrade too.

The only things that might sway me are either if it goes on another carrier, can be bought without a contract, or maybe just possibly if it supports Skype. Then, instead of being ripped off I could call across countries whenever I was at home or the office from my iPhone via Skype. Now that would be nice! However, as a consumer, exercising my right, Cingular et als schemes of providing horrific pay & go schemes in an attempt to lock people in to a two year contract isn’t for me.

Eschewing resolutions, this year I’m going for a regime! One that features targets, checklists, and best of all rewards! As I think about how much time I waist each day, a lot of it comes down to not doing small things. Small 15 minute tasks that could leave to a great deal of self improvement.

Some short things that I’d liked to concentrate on include handwriting, pure maths, design and typography, programming, blogging and reading. Okay, so that’s quite a long list of short things, but if I really wanted to then I could fit most of these into my day.

My solution to make the most of my time is two-fold. Firstly, implement a regime that makes it easier and more rewarding to fit in those small things. Secondly, to find a way to limit the time wasting. Lets look at the second one first.

Some things I’d like to spend less time on include reading blogs, surfing the web, playing games generally just killing time. Now there is nothing wrong with these things but surfing the web can quickly turn from looking something up to wasting an hour.

Each time I need to look something up, or want to read blogs, I’m either going to write it down and allocate it some time later, or I’m going to give myself 5 minutes on a count down timer. I love the app Minuteur, I now use it for all of my time keeping on projects and it’s great at that. I think it’s time to start using the countdown too.

Coming back to implementing a regime. I want one that’s fun to do, that makes tasks manageable and flexible and one that rewards me for sticking to it. First up I have to decide how much time to dedicate, how much time I want to say ‘this is self improvement time’. I settled on 2 hours per day (Yes, I waste a lot of time currently). Then it’s a matter of dividing it up into chunks and assigning tasks on my list amounts of time. Some things I may only do once or twice a week, some things I might do every day.

My time chunks that make up 2 hours are:
1 x 15 minutes
1 x 45 minutes
1 x 60 minutes

My tasks, with their minimum weekly repetitions are:
Handwriting practice. 15 minutes 4 x per week
Pure maths. 45 minutes. 2 x per week
Reading and practicing design or typography. 45 minutes. 2 x per week
Programming. 60 minutes, 2 x per week
Reading. 60 minutes, 2 x per week

That leaves me with one spare slot for each category, meaning I can take a day off or repeat anything as I wish. There’s also plenty of flexibility to change it by adding or removing things as the fancy takes me.

But what about rewards. My points are going to be hours. Each hour = 1 point. The way I’m going to do it, is that every 10 hours, is going to equal a guilt-free amazon voucher for £15. So if I make the most of improving myself over the course of a month, then I can spend £60 on books or whatever.

It’s been a while coming but finally the new, brand new, version of mtcodex.net is here. The more radical change from previous revisions represents the change in purpose of this blog, namely to be more of a blog.

There is now, or will be, a months worth of posts on the front page to encourage me to write more. I also intend to write a lot more on personal things – issues and topics that interest me other than just web development.

To emphasize this break I have decided not to bring along the old content. It’s still there, in case people turn it up through links on other sites or search engines, but mtcodex variation 6, right here, is where my fresh start in blogging begins.

2007 is going to be an exciting year for me. I hope that you’ll add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and share in my experience of it!