I’ve been planning on a blog redesign for at least 6 months now: probably more.

Not much has happened.

A kick up the bum

I got all excited, I made a design, and then I did about a day’s work on the CSS. And then nothing. In order to nag myself into getting more done, I have decided to launch the unfinished theme. This is it. As you can see, its a little rough round the edges.

Shamed into action

The hope is that I will actually want to have a working site, and will thus push on with, well, finishing it.

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

Paul J Meyer

Multiple header sizes…

Are an important part of website design

Even though I never…

…use ones this small!

Things I could do

As you may realise, I’m also using this post to throw a variety of elements into the blog, so I can check I have styling for them all. I also need to display some numbered and bulleted lists, but I can’t think of a relevant list to write. So, instead…

My favourite colours:

• Blue
• Purple
• Golden Yellow
• Black

Least favourite books ever:

1. Granddad with Snails
2. The Go Between
3. Not really got any others.

The end of the post

Thanks for reading! Keep nagging me to finish this!

Let worship be the fuel for mission’s flame
We’re going with a passion for Your name
We’re going for we care about Your praise
Send us out

Matt Redman

In the last 8 years, I have visited Harrismith, a small rural town, one of millions of tiny dots on the world map, six times. I’ve spent 24 weeks – nearly 6 months – of my adulthood in this place. Each time I return, I feel like I’ve been away for a few days: friendships pick up where we left off, as if no time has passed at all.

Back in England, I pounce on every accented black person I meet, eager to practice my Sotho, or my Zulu. It’s rare that a week passes where I don’t look up the weather in Harrismith, or hover ethereally over the town in Google Maps.

There’s a little something of Africa in my blood – hopefully not TB, bilharzia or malaria – its a passion. A passion to see the beautiful people of this beautiful country filled with joy, to learn from them the lessons of glory that they have learnt, and passing on to them the glimpses of the Kingdom we see in the west.

On this trip, we have worshipped in many ways: as a family in prayer; saying grace over meals with friends; playing guitar with the worship team; filling in charity paperwork; clapping and dancing in the township; buying Christmas presents for orphans; and sitting on the bonnet of my car, looking at the sky.

Through it all, so far, no bushes have burst into flame, no clouds have cracked open with a deep bass voice proclaiming how I must lead my family. Yet, when we tell people here that this might be our last trip, that we are waiting to hear from God on whether we should come to stay, not one person has given the faintest credence to the possibility that we might not return.

When we left England, there was a great deal of fear inside me, fear that I would not find out the answer to the question: what is His plan for us? That question remains, but the fear is gone. Just as 3 weeks ago, there was only a sliver of a moon in the night sky, tonight the moon is full, and so is the hope for our future.

Lord, send us out.

Katherine, Joen and myself have been on the ground in Harrismith for just over a week now, and things are starting to get busy. We have more than 2 weeks left here, and we are involved with:

• Volunteering at Hope House children’s home.
• Organising a party for those with no family to stay with over Christmas.
• An end of year event at the bible school in Makgolokoeng township.
• Running a men’s and women’s social for Freedom Church
• Volunteering at the local hospital and clinics.
• New charity and church websites with videos.
• New computers for the charity and children.

God is giving us a real opportunity to celebrate and build relationships here, with 3 parties at Hope House over the next 2 weeks, bonding socials at Freedom Church, an end of year celebration at the Makgolokoeng Bible School, and a week long art fair at Rheola’s (our generous host who runs income generating craft projects in the township).

Today we visited Hope House, where the children immediately took my phone and started taking photos: tw0 of which you can see on the right. The level of love the children need is very intense: they run into your arms at the first opportunity, and both of us found our eyes moistening throughout the afternoon. Joen, on the other hand, was fairly shocked, having never been borderline attacked by 27 black kids. They loved him, although we did have to stop them putting him in the sit on car that they raced at breakneck speed aroudn the concrete. Over the next few weeks, we are going to take them out in groups for ice cream, or round to our house for DVDs, for cooking: general family time they miss out on.

I am finding the work in the local hospital very rewarding: my smattering of Sesotho is already coming in useful, and I love the air of friendly faith in the hospital. Last night around 2am I was dancing around the kettle with the senior sister, singing “Ke a bina hobane Modimo o motle” – “I am singing because God is good“.

We currently do not feel any closer to knowing if this is our long term home: for now, we are focusing on thanks and praise, and trusting that He will reveal his will to us.

Love you all,
Chris, Katherine and Joen.

So, tonight we fly to South Africa for a month serving with our friends in Harrismith. We have a colossal amount of baggage, more than enough to live indefinitely in international waters.

I write this from Heathrow airport, with a grumpy Joen perched on my lap. He and Katherine are participating in a frequently repeated battle over our desire to provide him with nourishment. His opinion is that if he wanted something unpleasant in his mouth, he would put it there himself: a point underlined by his frequent oral intake of fistfuls of dog hair.

The latest tactic, in his attempt to be the first chubby, anorexic, one year old, is squealing whilst throwing his spoon on the floor. Then, when Katherine stoops to pick up the spoon, he grasps my neck with surprisingly sharp fingernails. When Kat brings the spoon back into play he then starts again from the top. We suspect his eventual aim is to exasperate us to the point of agreeing never to feed him again: tonight those terms sound increasingly appealing.

Our request from you all, is prayer for peace as we embark on a 12 hour flight to South Africa.

More from us soon!
x Chris, Katherine & Joen

I’ve long wanted to monetise my blog. My eventual dream is of quitting my job, writing a blog post each day, then spend the rest of my time in the pool. The pool in my personal theme park.

The first step towards this happened last month, when Luke from gearzap.com contacted me, asking if I would like to review a bag. Excitedly, I emailed back, politely enquiring if they fancied paying me by purchasing a rollercoaster, or log flume. They declined, but I still got a bag – the Cool Bananas 24Seven…

Appearance 8/10

I’ll be honest, I was a bit hesitant choosing a bag like this. Compact, leather styling, shoulder strap: its a man bag. If you disagree with that statement, it’s probably because you own a similar looking bag and are in denial. That said, it does look pretty good, slung over one shoulder, as I casually stroll along the road, a Starbucks coffee in one hand, an iPhone in the other… kill me.

Joking aside, it’s a fairly sexy looking bag, from the material covering the majority of it to the faux leather. Internally as well, the 24Seven all seems very nicely put together, with nice chunky zips and little pockets for pens and the like. Taking stuff out, and putting things in, you know you are using an attractive piece of kit.

Comfort 6/10

After a month of taking the bag around with me, I still don’t love it. A large part of that comes from my general preference for rucksacks over shoulder bags: when walking along rucksacks are anchored to your back with no freedom to put you off your stride - shoulder bags tend to bounce off one’s back occasionally, slightly jarring you. Sadly, the Cool Bananas bag does this more than most, likely due to the portrait placement of the laptop, making the straps closer together and thus even less anchored. Of the many bags I own, this would be my least favourite for any protracted period of walking.

The strap is also much too thin. Think cotton tshirt thin. This means the strap gets twisted really easily (see photo on right): as a cool metrosexual guy, I like to grab my bag and chuck it over my shoulder before heading to the indie bookstore: I don’t wanna be left behind by my friends as I try to rearrange the shoulder pad to face the right direction.

Practicality 6/10

My normal modus operandi is a rucksack, with room for my laptop, charger, mouse, jumper, bottle of water, deoderant, magazine, sketch pad, headphones, spare ethernet cable, kitchen sink… Downsizing to a smaller beast meant I had to choose just the bare essentials. It is refreshingly focussed knowing “I only have stuff with me that I need”.

Whilst not having unnecessary items with you does make bags lighter, it does come with one important issue: you no longer have necessary items with you. I found myself limited to the point that I could just about fit my laptop, charger, mouse, sketchbook and wallet inside. And then it was overfull, making the lovely Cool Bananas logo a bit mishapen (see photo on right). And there is no more room. Want to pack a sandwich for lunch? Either eat it at breakfast, or carry it seperately. And I really don’t want to carry it seperately: that’s why I have a bag!

The 24Seven feels very heavy. I found it harder work for my spine than other shoulder bags, and it seemed heavier than my rucksack, even though it had about 1/3 of the contents. Due to it continually bouncing on your back, you also end up feeling a little bruised and uncomfortable.

Build quality disappointed me: after just a few uses the already negligible shoulder strap began to fray a little, reducing it to almost imperceptible (see photo on right). Unplanned fraying looks bad, which is very important to us trendy Apple store frequenting chaps: if I wanted to look bad, I could just buy old jeans, rather than these £100 distressed Levis that bring out the colour of my eyes.

Conclusion 7/10

I did enjoy trialling the 24Seven, but its unlikely to last me the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week that it promises - the strap would drive me mental, and I would feel irritated everytime I had to walk somewhere with it. There would also be no spare room for a toothbrush. Or a sleeping bag. Or a bed.

However, using it less often, I can see a real place for this bag. For taking a laptop to a coffee shop, or just chucking your wallet and magazine in it, I think it could be great. And frankly, just having it sitting on a chair unused will make all your NME reading friends respect you at least 15% more.

In September 2009, I decided I wanted a personal site, linking to cool stuff I do, with a little bit of bloggyness bolted on. I got all excited, and stayed up all night a few times, playing with Jquery for the first time, implementing everything else in php – image feeds, tweets, blog rss, everything.

I was happy with the result, and others liked it to – it even featured on the front cover of the second Web Designer’s Ideas Book!

As time went on, I became more interested in frequent blogging, and the art of creating sites in WordPress, and so decided to change from having an external blogspot blog to having one located here at allaboutchris.org/blog.

From time to time I made some visual adjustments, but the home page has remained identical for 2 years now. And I think that needs to change, so this post is to bid farewell to it. It may not go today, or tomorrow, but its days are numbered…

Its taken a month, but I have finally completed my exhaustive analysis of everything wrong with cycling. After hills, sweating, roads and punctures, all that remains is my very least favourite thing about cycling: Cars.

The problem

Risk is an interesting phenomenom in our society. On the one hand, environmental health can shut you down if you make a sandwich without washing lettuce; on the other, there’s no legal barrier to sitting on a flimsy metal frame with half inch wheels, doing 30 mph on uneven tarmac as lorries overtake you at 70, with a feeble layer of polystyrene as your sole protection.

When doing 13 mph down my road, I’m not too worried about lorries, but I am very concerned about the lady in the Corsa who hasn’t looked in her wingmirror, and is about to open her door. Or the chap who overtook me on a high street, then turned left, causing me to crash into the side of his car. And I say I’m not too worried about lorries, but I don’t love it when they force you off the road into a ditch and you lose a front tooth.

The root of the problem is that cars are large, fast vehicles with limited visibility, often driven by impatient people. As a cyclist, its easy to despise the more obnoxious drivers, and paint them all with the same brush. Certainly, the operator of the car that hooted me last month whilst I was traversing a free flowing, highly dangerous roundabout fully deserves a slap.

However, we do need a little perspective; after all, many of us cyclists are drivers at other times, and all of us know how easy it is to forget to look in the mirrors before turning left, how easy it is to miss the cyclist hidden behind a truck, or in line with the sun.

Last week I pulled out at a cross roads after very carefully trying to assess if there was a bike coming down the hill. Despite my best efforts, there was a cyclist, who I very nearly brained. Whilst his not wearing a helmet implies there was little brain to risk, the point remains: cyclists are vulnerable, and, ultimately, feeling vulnerable is not the same as having fun.

The SOLUTION

I actually tried to come up with a realistic solution to the problem here.

The biggest issue is that not only are bikes very vulnerable, they are also vastly in the minority. Multiple studies show that the more people there are walking and cycling, the safer it becomes. In Amsterdam, you are twice as likely to be murdered as killed cycling. Overall, in Denmark and Holland, countries with much higher rates of cycling, you are three times less likely to die when riding.

So, the best way to make the roads less dangerous, less terrifying and thus less offputting to cyclists is to get more of us out there. Which probably means I should write a 5 things I love about cycling series…

Thanks for reading. This is the last article in my Five things I hate about cycling series. Read the rest here…