GadgetVicar

What Goes Around Comes Around

Long term readers might remember that this blog had a run in with the person in the following news story. Sounds like one or two of his 'victims' have decided to thoroughly check him out and have uncovered a little bit more than he would have bargained for........Mr Mackie is in my prayers.

Full story here and more detail here.

'Honeypot' photographer admits benefit fraud

A photographer, who sued anyone using his images for breach of copyright, has admitted to fraudulently claiming £24,000 in benefits at the same time.

According to The Herald, photographer Alan Mackie raised 30 civil actions against companies which used his images, while also receiving £24,368.31 in benefits that he was not entitled too.

During the hearing at Ayr Sheriff Court yesterday, depute fiscal Erin Campbell, who was prosecuting Mackie, claimed that several witnesses spoke to the Department of Work and Pensions, which launched an investigation following an anonymous tip-off into Mackie’s work.

One witness claimed that Mackie attempted to sue his company for £3,000 for using his images, describing the photographers tactics as a ‘honeypot’ in which people would use the images from the website, not realising that they were doing anything wrong.

Mackie eventually received a lesser amount in compensation.

Sentence following Mackie’s admission of receiving benefits fraudulently, was deferred for reports by Sheriff Desmond Leslie.

The Wilderness Downtown

The Arcade Fire have a little web browser experiment based on their song "We Used To Wait". It's best viewed using Google Chrome. Here's what it did with a town I lived in as a child.

Do We Really Need The Apple iPad?

Discover other future products, the Mactini and iToilet by Peter Serafinowic.

Help Wanted - Which Mobile Phone Network?

My contract with T-Mobile is coming to an end, and I'm not sure what to do. I'm thinking about unlocking my phone and moving to 3, thereby halving my monthly costs. How are they as a network? Or Orange, or O2, or Vodaphone? Who has the best 3G coverage in Glasgow? Comments appreciated.

Sanctuary First - Godcast

Sanctuary First is doing some really exciting web-based stuff. The mastermind behind it all is Albert Bogle - entrepreneur, visionary and ex-St Silasite. His family were stalwarts of the congregation. The Piskies lost a great gift when he defected to the Kirk!

We've considered partnering with them, but we are still pursuing what we believe God wants us to do in terms of innovation. Nonetheless, I've worked a wee bit with them (as have many church leaders in Scotland, cos Albert stuck us all in front of the camera and told us to tell stories!). There's a contribution from yours truly on this clip:

I'm a Computer Slave

I am thinking that I should never actually leave the computer, for it mysteriously generates work to be done when I return to it. For example tonight I've had to reply to more than twenty-two emails, and I was only out for five hours. This should make me feel wanted and important, but instead I'm feeling a wee bit enslaved. If I ignore them, they'll still be there in the morning, along with those I've yet to reply to and any more that come in the meantime! It's tyranny, isn't it?

Comments - Whoops

While deleting comment spam this morning (many hundreds of same), I inadvertently deleted the last forty legitimate comments. Apologies to commenters - be assured that you are not being censored, merely that I have been incompetent!

Maybe the same thing happens on other blogs, which would explain why my comments don't appear?

Assembly on the Interweb

Watch the Church of Scotland General Assembly live (surely  that's an oxymoron?), courtesy of the techie crew from St Andrew's, Boness. Might be especially interesting to watch on Saturday evening? Keeping the Kirk in prayer.........

Renewed Love of Music

Spurred on by the comment by Carol Moore (lead singer of Talking Drums) the other day, I did something I haven't done for twenty years and hooked up a turntable to the hifi. I've listened to "Devo Live", Tubeway Army's "Replicas", "Pieces of Eight" by Styx and two lps by an obscure new wave dulcimer band called Attacco Decente. And it all sounds very good indeed.

One has to be intentional about vinyl - with a cd or mp3, one can skip songs easily. It's convenient, I suppose, but not conducive to listening to albums as the artist intended. Music is more disposable now. In the olden days, we used to listen to whole albums, even when we had to get up out of our chair to flip the record over. We'd have the artwork on the sleeve to examine in detail, often reading the easily legible lyrics on the inner sleeve over and over again. It's a much more engaging and relaxing process. I think I'm hooked!

Charity shops, here I come on my search for ancient vinyl recordings.

Sermon Text

Last Sunday, the congregation took over the sermon slot with their texting of questions on worship. We hadn't planned for it at all. Immediately before the service, when I realised that Jenny had texted me the questions I was meant to ask her, we had the inspiration to ask the people of God to text in their questions too. To my surprise, it worked very well, with over thirty texts received, most of which asked helpful questions. We covered an awful lot of ground, but I hope that we both cast vision for worship and learned together too.

Listen to it all here.