I’ve just spent the weekend in Derry organising The Wedding. On top of booking the church, visiting a couple of hotels and booking one for our reception and talking to a couple of photographers, we were visited by every single person in that Naomi – or anyone in her family – knew or was related to in the whole of Ireland. Who all asked exactly the same questions. Apparently, personal space is something that doesn’t exist in Ireland.

Oh, and I will “bring Naomi back” to Donegal just as soon as Donegal gets the kind of thriving IT industry necessary for me to get a job there.

Just what the haemorrhaging fuck* have they done to the Newsnight theme tune? That’s just wrong.

* it’s a Douglas Adams quote, alright? So it’s not rude, because it’s a literary reference.

25th May. Make sure you know where your towel is.

Victims of crime could be given a say on whether offenders should be freed from jail, under plans being considered by the home secretary.

I’m sorry, in what way is that not the single worst idea anyone has ever had in the history of ideas, ever?

This made me spray coffee all over my desk. Very, very funny.

1. Q: What is the chief end of each individual Christian?
A: Each individual Christian’s chief end is to get saved. This is the first and great commandment.
2. Q: And what is the second great commandment?
A: The second, which is like unto it, is to get as many others saved as he can.

Following on from last week’s stunning revelation that our senior pastor has read Generous Orthodoxy (and, it appears, enjoyed it and thinks it’s a very good book), this week, we had an actual, real-live Emergent preacher. He encouraged dialogue and interaction during his teaching, debated ideas with the congregation, encouraged individual thought and reasoning rather than just laying the smack down, as it were. We were covering Joshua 6-8, including the difficult topics of God’s destruction of Jericho, and Achan’s sin and punishment – and rather than jumping through tortured hermeneutics to try and explain away why God seems so much more violent and vengeful in the OT, he actually admitted that it was a difficult subject, that he didn’t have an answer, and that in fact a simple proof-text style response is probably not what is needed here anyway. What? A preacher not telling people what to believe and suggesting that they figure it out for themselves? Dangerous stuff, indeed.

So, I proposed to Naomi last weekend. She accepted, so she got a nice gold ring with a diamond in it, plus my undying devotion for the rest of our lives. In return, she bought me a bottle of Talisker.

It may help you to understand me if you learn that I consider this a fair trade. Talisker is good whisky.

Finland won. Monster costumes. More pyros than are strictly warranted. A giant pair of wings sprouting from the lead singer during the last verse. Ultra-theatrical cheese-metal. I am really quite excited right now. If I had my way, all music would sound like this.

Hooray for everyone who Voted Lordi. I wish I’d laid that tenner on them now, too, though.

(also, the lighting rig at Eurovision is basically porn for techs)

I think I leant my copy of Dawn of War to someone. If it’s you, please leave me a comment so I can rest easy at night once again (also, you might like to consider returning it at some point).

So, I made my first camera:

It’s an old paracetomol box. The “lens” is the bottom of a film cannister with a hole poked through with the pin from my Just Shoot “I Love My Lomo” badge.

I cut open the box so I could lay it flat, and coloured the inside black. The, I cut a hole in the front, and mounted the “lens” over the hole. I then reassembled the box ready to load the film.

To load it, I took a “sacrificial” roll of film, pulled it all the way out, and then cut it off a couple of centimetres from the end, so I had a tab sticking out. This was to be the takeup spool. I then took my fresh film cannister, and pulled the film out far enough that it could be threaded through the paracetomol box. Once it was threaded through, I sellotaped the end of it to the tab sticking out of the takeup spool, and then tightened the takeup spool so both cannisters were held firmly against the box. I forgot to take pictures of this, so this diagram will have to do:

Then I simply covered the box with as much light-seal tape as I could (with a strip serving as a “shutter”, too). Taking a picture, then, was a simple matter of opening the shutter for a second or two, then sealing it up again. A couple of twists on the takeup spool and it was ready for the next shot.

I’ll confess at this point that I really, really didn’t expect this to work, let alone get any recognisable pictures out of it. I was therefore utterly delighted, when I developed the film, to not only find that it had been exposed in a recognisable fashion, but there were actual pictures on it.

All told, I think the experiment worked well, considering the thing was made in half an hour out of cardboard and sticky tape. Next time, I’ll try and use a smaller pinhole, and have a proper exposure window so my pictures don’t overlap quite so much.

The rest of the photos can be found in my gallery.