Digital weapons and defences

Intriguing news this morning that a senior Kremlin figure who had been a patron of Putin's leadership  has broken with him over the war in Ukraine and left the country. A small sign of hope. All we need now is several more to do likewise publicly, and that could trigger a change that will result in an end to the war. Putin cannot survive unless he has united support, methinks. Meanwhile this terribly cruel conflict continues. The Russians are said to have lost about fifteen thousand soldiers. There are no comparable figures for Ukrainiansoldiers or civilians killed.

I went to the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning, with ten others, then fetched this week's veggie bag before lunch. When I got home there was a small package in the post for me from my sister June. It's a small protective wallet to house bank cards with a safety lining that prevents anyone with the right device from reading the data on one's cards and using the information to steal from your bank account. Up until now my card wallet has had an aluminium foil lining, which also works, but wears had needs to be replaced regularly to serve its purpose.

I made a draft of next Sunday's sermon, then worked on next week's Morning Prayer upload and recorded the audio in the afternoon, with a break while the tuner worked on Clare's piano. Rachel has sent us a lovely video of Jasmine playing jazz piano at a school concert. We knew she plays saxophone, but I wasn't aware that she's been learning the piano as well. Amazing!

When Clare went shopping for some vegan products at Beanfreaks, she found out the shop had suffered an expensive loss of fresh stock due to a fridge breakdown or power outage, not sure which, so she asked me to go over to the Tesco supermarket on Western Avenue and see what suitable products I could find there. It wasn't easy to locate what I needed, but I was successful in finding all she wanted.

After supper, I watched more episodes of the Finnish crimmie 'All the sins', which did turn out just be be a prequel to series one. It turned out to be quite a complex essay on the turn of the new millennium, as a moment of change challenging traditional religious and social values, and the impact of the emergence of female leadership on community life in a remote rural area. It made me realise how much has changed in the past twenty one years and how much we've become accustomed to since the rise of the internet and the smartphone. Who could have thought back then that they'd become weapons of war in the struggle to control the information required to rule the world?

What is a timely death?

While I was posting this morning's video upload to WhatsApp just before 'Thought for the Day', it started to rain heavily. It didn't continue like that all day, showers came and went, giving way to sunshine late afternoon, freshening the air, prompting the birds to sing. We haven't heard much from them recently.

Archbishop George Carey is in the news today together with Rabbi Jonathan Romaine spearheading a debate as part of a campaign to permit assisted dying in certain controlled circumstances. It seems there is a growing tide of opinion in favour of this in Britain, although the majority of religious leaders are opposed to it. It will be interesting to see how Parliament responds to draft bill proposals. 

There are countries where voluntary euthanasia is allowed - Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland, some Australian states, New Zealand and Canada. We have an increasing problem due to medical success in keeping people alive when they might have died earlier naturally. This can so easily prolong someone's helplessness and suffering, so matter how good palliative care can be if available. We have plenty of ideas about what a good life consists of, but don't readily consider what a good death may look like.

I attended the Eucharist at St John's taking the shopping trolley with me, avoiding puddles. Archbishop Rowan celebrated with a dozen of us. On the way back I called at Beanfreaks and collected the groceries Clare ordered yesterday and then forgot to collect. She was in school this morning, fitting the kindergarten class with eurythmy shoes. She brought the entire stock of tiny shoes back home with her for a machine wash. They made a cute sight drying outdoors between showers.

While I was out walking in the park after lunch, the piano tuner came for the first time since the pandemic. The piano wasn't badly out of tune, but it has benefited from some TLC, so Clare is pleased, playing and singing happily in preparation for choir practice at St Catherine's. We had supper early, then went to choir practice together and sang for an hour and a half. I was surprised how tired my voice was by the end, not to mention the rest of me. Early to bed now.

iPad down and up

A day of respite from intermittent rain hail and cold wind, sunny and warm enough to go out with no top coat, proper spring weather. There were eight of us at the St Catherine's Eucharist. It was Emma's last service at St Catherine's before she goes on three month's secondment to Fairwater Parish. She will be missed, and it generates a certain level of uncertainty about how projects she initiated or catalysed will be able to continue.

I collected our organic veggy bag on the way home, and cooked what I call my Inspector Montalbano tribute lunch. Pasta with pesto mixed with spinach and carrots, and boil in the bag mussels in a white wine sauce, plus a bottle of a organic Sicilian white wine to accompany it. In all thirty of the movies based on Camillieri's novels I have never seen Salvo drink anything other than local white wine. It's not something seen here often but Lidl's had one when we visited yesterday. 

After lunch I collected our weekly grocery order from Beanfreaks, and then took my Sony Alpha 68 with me for a walk around the periphery of Llandaff Fields, equipped with a 11-18mm wide angle lens to take a succession of landscape photos of the trees whose leaf canopy is now almost fully developed. On three of the marked pitches, preparations were under way for evening cricket matches - at a guess, teams of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi players, each group speaking a mixture of English and their national language. If there's a Caribbean team or league hereabouts, I'm not aware of it. It's just great that so much cricket is played. Most afternoons there are players practicing at the mobile nets array in a corner of the park. We're just a mile away from the SWALEC stadium, home of Glamorgan County Cricket, where there are even more practice nets, so it's understandable.

Yesterday, Clare's iPad froze on her. The touch screen stopped working, although it seemed that behind the inaccessible login screen, everything else was still working, but inaccessible. She took it to Turotech on her way into town, only to discover the shop is closed on a Wednesday. When she returned, she left the device on the kitchen worktop. I was pondering on why Apple would fail to provide the equivalent of a kill-switch and means to reboot iPad OS, as happens with all other electronic devices. 

The older iPad has a top edge button that works like a power switch to bring it out of hibernation, but no amount of prolonged pressing would shut the thing down properly. It also has a physical button below the touch screen that can take you back to the home screen whenever it's pressed. I tried pressing the two together. The screen went completely black, then after a few seconds, the Apple logo appeared and reboot started. We were both delighted to find the touch screen worked again and found out something neither of us knew before. But, why it froze when it froze is a complete mystery.

This evening, just for fun, and for practice, I made a three minute video slideshow using the photos I took this afternoon, and accompanied it with the first movement of Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons'. I was quite pleased the result, and uploaded it to YouTube for the family to see.