A blog (short for Web Log) is a way of posting writings, thoughts or just plain inane ramblings to the web in a easy manner. It's easier to keep updated and as my site has proven troublesome to keep updated, I've employed a blog here to help keep things current.

Some of these "posts" may not be explicitly Christian - that is they may not be Bible studies :o) but all of them are written from my perspective as a Christian. It is , after all, part of what makes me... well, me.

Note that the blog pages are subject to a different licence to the rest of the site - see the bottom of the page for details.

from website to blog to magazine!

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

I've mentioned both my affection for free software and Free Software Magazine before. Well now I can link the two as I have had two articles published in the latest issue (15) of FSM.

The first is a beginners guide to understanding free software which does exactly what it says on the tin (I hope).
The second is a review of GRAMPS which is a free software licenced genealogical application.

If you are interested in free software or just want to know what the fuss is about I recommend the first one. The second will be of interest if - like myself and many - you are interested in family trees and the like.

Cheers C.
Copyright Ryan P. Cartwright.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

New Media Award

Saturday, September 23, 2006

As you may know, I am an IT Manager for Contact a Family, a UK national chairty for families with disabled children.

We produce two websites, the one linked above and MakingContact.org , which I have mentioned here before.
This month we won the "Best use of new media" award at the UK Charity awards and well I'm kinda proud of the fact - even if I did have to wear a dinner suit and bow tie to collect the award :o)

You can hop over to the Contact a Family site to read their oen news announcement about it.

Cheers
C
Copyright Ryan P. Cartwright.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

Faith lessons from a different child

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Some time (scarily it was nine years) ago I wrote a piece on here entitled "Touching a heart". Two years later I followed that up with a piece called "Further lessons from a child".
Both those pieces centered on lessons I had learned by observing my niece and I often find myself reflecting on the things I have (and haven't) learned as a result of those experiences.
Nowadays I have children of my own and just a few weeks back my son (who is two and a half) taught me something about faith.

We've all been there, you wake up in the middle of the night and your throat is a dry as sandpaper. The trouble for my son this time was that we hadn't left a drink next to his bed for him. So he did what toddlers do in the middle of the night and cried out for one of us to go in. My wife went and discovered the ongoing thirst issue. Actually the words my son used were "How about a nice cool drink mum?". Mum said she would bring one and left to go downstairs.

So what did my son do during the wait? He sat on his bed quietly waiting for his Mum to return. You see he had no doubt that she would come back or that she would have the water in her hand when she did. He trusted her, implicitly and, to him, the fact that she had said she would do something was enough. No more tears, no going to the top of the stairs, no watching the door, no worrying just patience and - when she returned - thanks. In short my son has faith in his mother - and rightfully so.

So let me ask you the question this triggered me to ask myself. How often do you wait patiently for God? How much do you trust that He will do what He has said? How much faith do you have in Him?

Always handy having kids around when you need a few lessons don' you think?

Cheers C.
Copyright Ryan P. Cartwright.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Both eyes on heaven, both feet on earth

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

It's been a while since I posted something here - and longer since that was specifically applicable to Christians.
Recently I was asked to give a talk (don't like to think of them as sermons as that always conjurs images of people falling asleep) at my church. Having prayed about it I felt God wanted me to speak on His promises. One of the promises I looked at was the return of Jesus and how it should inspire us to live fuller lives here.
There's a popular but misguided saying which says that one can be so heavenly minded they are of no earthly good and a lot of people have written a lot of good stuff to refute this. I stand among the group that feels this statement is not only false but dangerous as it prvents us thinking about the one thing that should be giving us hope.
The hope for a better future in the next world is not escapism but realism. If we , as Christians, are unable to focus on the glory that is to come then what hope can we honeslty offer to the world we live in. Without the purpose of heaven in our hearts we just become ineffective as ambassadors of Christ. Indeed I would go so far as to say that the problematic (and sometimes shameful) periods of Church history all contain - at their root - people whose focus was solely on the here and now and not the great hope of tomorrow.

CS Lewis said:
"If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next."

And I agree. We must face life - with whatever it throws at us - with both eyes on heaven and bot feet on earth. If we don't then I fear life will overrun us and eventually we will shrivel up in our own selfishness.

Joni Eareckson Tada wrote an excellent piece, The Earthly Good of Being Heavenly Minded [www.moodymagazine.com], for MoodyMagazine which I found when doing research for my talk. It's an honest and frank piece and yet it speaks volumes about her approach to life and just how she "copes" with here disability.

Cheers
C
Copyright Ryan P. Cartwright.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

Free Software Magazine

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

I've recently found Free Software Magazine, a freely downloadable (or web readable) magazine about - um - Free Software. By which they mean Freedom and not zero cost.

As you know I'm an FOSS afficianado and I have to say this publication is very well produced, the writing is good, the production quality is high and of course, being zero cost, it is great value for money :o)

If you are interested in Free/Open Source software or in computers in general and want to know about the sorts of things available on Free Software licences then I recommend you subcribe.

Cheers
C
Copyright Ryan P. Cartwright.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License