What is in Kelvin's Head?

Statement on the fire at Notre Dame

15/04/2019

The fire at Notre Dame Cathedral is a tragedy not only for Paris and the people of France but for the world.

Those who know the building will be unable to see the pictures of the fire without feeling heartbroken.

So many different things that make up the building are priceless – the medieval roof, the woodwork, the organ, the stained glass, the relics. But this tragedy is more than the loss of them all. It is the loss of the heart of Paris, the loss of a place of pilgrimage and the loss of a place of romance.

Every day this week, Christians will be reflecting on the heartbreak of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, to whom Notre Dame was dedicated. Every day as we do so, we will be praying for the Paris its people as they face their own heartbreak.

Notre Dame means Our Lady. Notre Dame doesn’t just belong to Paris, it belongs to us all.

This was a building that is utterly associated with Paris. But it was an utterly priceless treasure for the world.

It was truly ours, and this tragedy is our tragedy.

Our Lady of Paris, pray for us and for all affected locally.

Our Lady of Paris, we pray for you.

18 responses to “General Assembly on sex and singleness”

Kennedy

27/05/2009

DCampbell writes:
Wow, Kennedy – I hadn’t realised there was so much or so many people to it, but surely it is not beyond us to have some kind of webcast of the more important sections of the proceedings

Webcasting from Palmerston Place presents a number of challenges:

resourcing the camera crew, vision mixer and director (kit and people) and integration with the projection system to carry any slides and visuals
looking at the lighting to allow good pictures but without interfering with the projection system (which suffers from light spill from the windows already)
Network and machine infrastructure in the building to capture and code the video.
Dedicated bandwidth (with Quality of Service) to transfer the video and audio stream out to a distribution server. (We currently piggyback on Palmerston Place’s own internet connection).

An alternative would be an audio stream with a general shot webcam updating every 30 – 60 secs but again would probably need a dedicated connection to the net to ensure that there was no breakup.

This is not a litany of reasons for not doing things – it’s just a realistic assessment of the resource requirements.

Kennedy

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Kennedy

27/05/2009

Or another thought-

We start having Synod on the Th/Fr/Sa after the Assembly on the Mound and share the costs of the setup.

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Kennedy

27/05/2009

No, I suppose a general ‘piskie tag would work just as well, but I’m with Kimberly and would prefer #piskie

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kelvin

27/05/2009

My only problem with piskie is that in some parts of the UK a “piskie” is one of the little people, and not necessarily a nice one.

See for example:
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/cornwall/folklore/the-piskies-of-cornwall.html

“Some people saw them as the souls of pagans who could not transcend to heaven, and they were also seen as the remnants of pagan gods, banished with the coming of Christianity. In tradition they are doomed to shrink in size until they disappear. “

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Elizabeth

27/05/2009

Maybe it’s just me, but I have always found the potential confusion between pisky and piskie immensely pleasing (by ‘always’ I mean, since I discovered the term – not too many years ago!). It’s one of the (many) reasons I’m pleased to be on the pisky/ie side of the pond.

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David Campbell

28/05/2009

Thanks Kelvin – all this stuff is quite amazing really – especially Kennedy’s informative and knowledgeable material about what is actually needed. I agree about the Primus’s charge being essential, but if live streaming (if that is what it is called) is too intensive an operation in all kinds of ways for an admittedly small audience, why not do a twice daily edited digest of each day’s business like the one the Revd Dougkas Aitken does for the CofS?

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Kelvin

28/05/2009

Rob Warren already does do digests in audio format – video may well be the next step, though it is quite a big step to take.

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Kennedy

28/05/2009

The video update that Douglas Aitken does is a copy of his audio update with appropriate video material behind it ie you don’t get any actuality from the chamber.

We would still need editing and coding time before the video could be uploaded to an external server.

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