Monthly Archives: September 2010

Sep 30 2010

The rise and fall and rise of David Icke

Sports journalist David Icke, come self-proclaimed messiah, now more recently conspiracy enthusiast seems to have made a come back in recent times.

Where as Youtube has been the staple diet of the conspiracy nut’s content, its like Icke and co, combine all the most popular elements usual plots like 9/11 was an inside job and Zionists control everything, UFOs, secret AIDS and cancer cures are withheld from the general public, and thousands of other offensive stuff.   Its not like DI has really much new original material.   Maybe its a kind of conspiracy ‘greatest hits’ album.

Either way stuff of the Royal Family being alien lizards make even the Scientologists look tame.

His wiki article makes interesting reading.   Here’s his web site www.davidicke.com Please take with a huge pinch of massive truck load of salt .

His Facebook fan site has 58,000+ followers.

Are people unaware of his famous line of being the son of the God on the Wogan show in the 90s (Youtube) and other antics that show he is completely crackers?   Or do people read his stuff and buy his books for comedy value?

Sep 30 2010

“Dude you have no books to burn” – Ordinary folk tackling extremism

After the horrible book barbeque incident that was the pastor from Florida, who wanted to have a Koran burning party.   See previous post. There was something funny in the news about a church with a copycat type stunt.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/12/skateboarder-extremist-burning-quran/

On this occasion a young lad on a skateboard went past him and snatched the petrol soaked Islamic book from his hand and said ‘Dude! you have no Koran!”   News of this chap hit the blog/twitter community as a hero, that averted a PR disaster in the church and a possible revenge attack that would inevitably happen in Islamic countries towards smaller Christian communities.

I also give this young man (who is an atheist by the way)  a big thumbs up for his actions to avoid a conflict.

One thing I was wondering, when people here in the UK, say things about England, America, Israel, God (the Christian/Jewish one of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and Jesus, would anyone be brave enough to challenge these people in the high street in a equally fun jovial sort of way?

Sep 29 2010

Jerusalem Parade

Jaffa Street is looking like a race track, there are loads of police and security, mainly trying to make sure people don’t walk across the road.

This parade is a big event that happens each year and is lots of fun.   Its not political although there are soldiers there, and the police, various Christian organisations.

Vintage buses and trucks, some are very old, probably date around 1948.

Left. Gasp!  The new electric lightrail train is here!  Apparently its not supposed to be running yet, just a brief glimpse of it was operating today only.   The electric overhead wires were powered on a couple of weeks ago, but some of the infrastructure is not finished, there are some computer screens on the bus stops are not installed yet. Right. Police dog handlers.  The canines seem to be an unusual indeterminate breed, they are shorter and stockier than typical German Shepherds normally use for police and military uses.

El-Al, Israel’s national airline, had their pilots and stewards out doing their own dance.

The International Chrisitan Embassy Jerusalem. (ICEJ)

Some Christians from the Philipines…

and Norway, Hong Kong, China…

Below from the Daily Planet…

Disabled Israelis also here.   There were loads more people attending, but I had to get back to work. 🙂

Sep 28 2010

Sukkot tents

At work we had a birthday lunch outside with a Sukkah tent.   These temporary structures are popular all over Israel as a place for Jews to eat and sleep in them for this festival.   Sometimes they are tents and some are shed like buildings, they are decorated with palm trees, plastic or real fruit and Christmas-style decorations, kind of all the fun of camping but just outside your house.

Just off the side of Jaffa Street, there is a huge Sukkah put on by Jerusalem Municipality.   There is local artwork being shown inside, and behind was a stage with a big free concert is on, there was some Ethiopian girls singing in their native Amharic language.   Of course there wasn’t any English commentary to this show, so I don’t know if this was a charity event.

Sep 28 2010

Need software tools for network diagrams

IT stuff – skip below if this is not your thing.

This last week we got another volunteer in the IT department, its great to get some help, and also pool together ideas on we I can make IT support easier and plan for changes and improvements.

One of the projects for the future is re-do some documentation for our network.

The typical software application to do flow charts and diagrams is Microsoft’s Visio in places I have worked before.

Visio is quite expensive though and has a propriety file format, so all members of a team (and clients) need to have Visio to read the file.

I am thinking of what else I could use to do the job.   As well as cost, and there could be some free tools to do the job, there is the need for extreme simplicity, to making designing and altering diagrams easy and be able to hand over this role to future staff who will eventually replacement me.

I would like to ask my fellow IT peers, in systems admin, and those who do web design and programming, what their views are there on this.

When consulting, do you sketch out things on paper, then on chart modeling software of some kind?   Does complex projects need two or more people to work on a model before coding commences?   Or does a sketch of what’s needed get shown to the client, to check hes happy with the solution that is to be built?

I have largely ditched Microsoft’s Word and Excel in favour of Google Documents, as I like being able to get documentation on any computer, inside my network or indeed anywhere in the world with a web connection.   Plus documentation to rebuilt a server is no good, if it was saved on the one that went down due to a failed disk!!   This is an example of a cloud makes perfect sense here.

A lot of web designers are likely to be using Macs, so an app that’s on Mac and Windows, or a web based app that’s transparently usable on any darn OS/browser is good.

Now, if remember correctly Google now do a vector graphics as part of the Google Documents suite.  Having something cloud based is a huge plus, especially if there becomes a problem with a server that contains documentation.

This isn’t about knocking Microsoft or Adobe, but there is a wealth of free and open source apps, so please feel free to tell us what is the best tool for the job, and responses from fellow IT pros on your preference for ways to do this would be great. 🙂

Sep 27 2010

International Christian Embassy Jerusalem Feast of Tabernacles concert

Last week I want to the first event at the Feast of Tabernacles at the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) at a hotel here Jerusalem.   I personally know quite a few of the volunteers from this organisation and this is their busiest time as they put on a 5 day event for Christians supporting Israel and the Jewish people.

On the thursday we got our tickets and queued up, my friend John who came to visit me and two friends who are fellow volunteers at Bridges for Peace.

There is some really good speaking followed by a translator which was in surprise, Portuguese!  There were a lot of attendees from Brazil.   Actually there were people there from all over the world, with different groups of believers who got up on stage with flags representing their countries, not unlike the Olympics or Eurovision, there were even people from Egypt and Jordan there.   In the lobby outside I got chatting to some people from Finland who were waving their white and blue flags.

For anyone often thinking that Christian supporters of Israel = Nutters, well I support Israel, but number One – I love Jesus, and this land played a part in the events of the bible, there is still an important role in what the Lord has still for this country today and in the future.    Its important that Christians reject the common but completely bogus “replacement theology” doctrine which mistakenly gives the impression that the Israel mentioned in the bible is a metaphor for today’s church.   Check out Romans 11 : 1 which clears up this confusion.

The worship consists of a band with about 20 musicians and there are many dancers and acrobats.  I particularly liked the version of Paul Baloche’s Glorious (heres a Youtube clip of a version of this song)  which has become recently one of my favourite worship tracks.

During this event, there was a man from the Israeli government who came to show his thanks for the support (I forget his name)  as the Embassy has always had good relationships with government here, and they are now celebrating their 30th year here supporting this nation.   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an appearance, but via a recording on a TV screen at the beginning.

After the event, there was a variety of stands outside you can visit and get food, falafels, hotdogs etc and drinks whilst wandering around.   One of the stands I saw was the blacksmith who recycles rockets that hits Jewish towns close to the Gaza strip into a variety of table decorations and candlesticks, I blogged on recently.

This was a nice evening, the only downside was tickets for the whole week, and even for this one event was a lot, although I got a heavy discount being a Christian volunteer here.

Sep 26 2010

Caves in park in Yemin Moshe behind King David hotel

Behind King David Hotel is some more archeology.

Just realised this tomb has a circular stone rolled next to it.  Look hard and you can see this tomb has an iron door too, which is locked.

This one is nearby, different to the one shown in the above three pics.  Doesn’t have an obvious entrance.

Not sure who these tombs belonged to, or how old they are.   Suggestions please?

Sep 23 2010

Wasteland in the Armenian quarter inside Jerusalem’s old city walls

Before Yom Kippur I went walking on some walls with John on the old city again.  You get to peek into the yards of Christian, Jewish and Arab people’s houses.  For obvious reasons its not possible to go completely 360 degrees around because of the Al Asqa mosque is at the back and this part of the wall is not open there.

Still I got to see a few more things I had not previously seen.

Peaking over this side, this is the back of police station, there is a few horses with stable and exercise yard.

This is interesting.   This is a panaromic shot, so these two walls actually join at a right angle where I am standing.   This is the Armenian quarter of the old city.  Ahead is the Armenian church and a car park, but lots of scruffy looking ground just going to waste.   I thought this is odd as surely land within the old city must be very expensive and sort after, must be worth a million dollars maybe.  I guess even a small square of land big enough to put an ice cream kiosk would be expensive to rent.  Its blacked by fire as it appears someone has burnt all the weeds that are growing here.    A hotel or some nice flats could maybe be built here.   Some people who were with me on the tour think that its inevitable if you dug up this ground there would be plenty of archeology here.  For some reason the Armenians would rather let the ground go to waste than sell it, or have it landscaped or develop something on it.

Sep 23 2010

Yom Kippur in and around Jerusalem

This week I had my Christian friend John come to visit, John is an older gent also from Portsmouth UK, but originally from Malta.  He has Jewish roots, and his family came from Armenia.

He is here to see the Feast of Tabernacles which is coming up soon which is hosted by the ICEJ, International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem.

So I got to show him a lot of sites around here, a few days ago it was Yom Kippur, a holiday, in which Jews fast for a day.

We went around the UN headquarters at the end of my street and around the forest overlooking the city, then made our way into town.

There are no cars around the centre of town.   None at all.   I might see a police car once an hour or so.  This is normally a busy street.

This was unusual.   There were a lot of Arab families in the park picking some of the wild olives.   This man and his son was smarter than the others, as a large tarrapaulin was laid out to catch the dropped ones.  Funny as in the year I have been here, I have never seen anyone pick fruit from trees in public places here.


The world famous King David hotel.   Top right. This nice wooden counter just had one Arab chap manning the desk, as everyone is observing Yom Kippur.  As well as the beautiful decor here, there is a Sukkot (tent/shed type structure.  Bottom right. Some of the staff from the kitchen are taking a break chatting on the tables as no-one will be eating until about 6.30pm.

John got chatting to a elderly Canadian couple there, who have lived in Jerusalem for 30 years now.  This chap was talking about a nearby building called ‘Yimcer’   then I realised he meant the YMCA, which is opposite the King David 🙂    He told me off as I was drinking some water from a bottle, I didn’t realise the fast included water from then!   oops.   For me as a foreigner I think its unwise to fast from water, as the extreme heat can make you feel very unwell if you do.   But I did use this day to do some praying and abstain from food from darkness Wednesday till Thursday.  I had a whole chicken in a slow cooker for when we came back home to my flat.   I am a recent convert to slow cookers, just the thing when you want to come home and have dinner more or less ready. 🙂

Leviticus 23 : 27 says more about this event.

The outside of the YMCA.   Although the ‘Y’ is a Christian organisation and originally a Youth Hostel.  Its now a proper hotel and owned by Muslim, but still known as the Jerusalem YMCA.  Sadly I didn’t see anyone do any comedy dancing either.  Not that it would be a appropriate with most people fasting that day. 🙂

Walking along the walls with Dutch Christian couple who mentioned on earlier post ‘never be silent’.

The really interesting thing about John’s Armenian Jewish and Maltese background is the Maltese language is a mixture of mostly Arabic and some Hebrew and Italian, so this meant he could converse with the Arab taxi driver who took us home later. 🙂

The Jews have a generous amount of feasts and holidays in their calenders, next one is Sukkot, a kind of religious campsite outside your house, more soon….

Sep 20 2010

Odd tat for sale in markets in Jerusalem

This ex-Army and outdoor store has various odd things for sale in the this glass cabinet, but one thing caught my eye.

Apologies for the pic being shaky.   Apparently this is a stun gun, in James Bond style its disguised as a popular model Nokia phone.   I didn’t ask the man on the counter if a licence is needed for this kind of thing.

The old British favourite Marmite, can be bought specially imported, albeit with a Hebrew label slapped on.   Its kosher and vegetarian after all.   Its a bit pricey at 30 Shekels (About a fiver for a small jar) though.

A lot of computer and stationary shops sell stickers for your keyboard, some laptops and PC keyboards are available with local keyboard type (plain Hebrew, Hebrew and Arabic or Hebrew and Russian)   if not, you can get stickers to put on.  These Hebrew keyboard stickers are aimed at teenage girls.

The local quack in the Arab market has these magical tea bags that cure everything.  As well these in the pic there are plenty of more boxes for every ailment you can think of.