Just close Chrome, open up Terminal, copy the command below, and press enter!

defaults write com.google.Chrome.plist AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool FALSE

Thankfully Springpad lets you create backups (in settings->services) and download them as on big html file, which with a little magic can be converted into a series of plain text files, and with a little more magic can even be put into folders corresponding to the notebook they were stored in with Springpad!

But How!?

I’m glad you asked! I’ve written a litte ruby script which you can download from gist and run from the command line.

It only exports text notes and books, and there are sometimes some funky characters that invade notes that are rich text, but minor issues…

Solution: Don’t try and link before the activity is fully running. See the Activity API reference for details about the activity lifecycle.

Update: Turns out this has nothing to do with when you start the authentication. After an email exchange with a developer at Dropbox (they contacted me!) we deduced that this was due to a low memory situation, and it just happened by chance that waiting until the activity had fully started fixed the issue. Apparently a fix will be coming for this in a future update…

Here’s the error from the logcat:

E/AndroidRuntime(23572): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to resume activity {your.namespace/com.dropbox.sync.android.DbxAuthActivity}: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Dropbox isn't initialized.
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.ActivityThread.performResumeActivity(ActivityThread.java:2567)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.ActivityThread.handleResumeActivity(ActivityThread.java:2595)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2109)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.ActivityThread.access$600(ActivityThread.java:132)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1157)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4575)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:789)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:556)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572): Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Dropbox isn't initialized.
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at com.dropbox.sync.android.DbxAccountManager.getInstance(DbxAccountManager.java:144)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at com.dropbox.sync.android.DbxAuthActivity.finishAuth(DbxAuthActivity.java:72)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at com.dropbox.sync.android.DbxAuthActivity.onResume(DbxAuthActivity.java:51)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnResume(Instrumentation.java:1154)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.Activity.performResume(Activity.java:4539)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        at android.app.ActivityThread.performResumeActivity(ActivityThread.java:2557)
E/AndroidRuntime(23572):        ... 12 more

I spoke on the topic of “Reaching Out” and spoke from 1 Peter 3:15.

You can listen online or download it!

Birthday Order

This is a good ice breaker / starting game. You get everyone to line themselves up in order of when their birthdays are, so January at one end and December at the other, but you do it in silence, no one is allowed to talk.

Paper Fish

Teams line up on either side of the room with a small newspaper (or several pages of a newspaper). Firstly they have to cut out a fish from one sheet of newspaper (points for the best fish) and then once everyone has a fish ready, the teams line up on one side of the room and they have to get the fish to the other side of the room by fanning it with the rest of the newspaper. You’re not allowed to touch the fish or you have to start again. The quicker the team, the more points they get!

Ground Stick

Find a long stick, like a piece of bamboo or a broom handle, the team gets around the stick and they each put one finger out, then the leader places the stick across their fingers and shouts “go” and the team has to get the stick to the floor with everyone always touching the stick. It sounds easy but it really really isn’t… Points for the quickest team!

Magic Carpet

Find a big piece of cloth, like a table cloth, and put it on the floor. All the team members then stand on the cloth and have to turn it over without touching the floor. Points for the quickest team. Really simple, but entertaining game!

River Crossing

Find a long piece of string and an item of your choice (we used books, but bricks or buckets would also work). Imagine a river running down the middle of the room. Different team members can start on either side of the river and using the string, they have to get the item (e.g. book) across the river without it touching the river, and without them going in the river. All the string has to start on one side of the river. And they can’t just throw the item either.

Marshmallow Tower

Give each team a tray, a bag of marshmallows, some cocktail sticks and five minutes. They have to build the tallest tower on the tray, and then after the five minutes are up two team members have to carry the tray with the tower on it across the room. Tallest tower still standing gets the most points, you can also award points for creativity and whatever else you like!

Handy Circle

The team stands in a circle/huddle and each person has to hold hands with two other people, but not the person next to them. They then have to untangle themselves completely without letting go. Girls always do better than boys at this one.

I spoke on the topic of “Following Jesus” and spoke from Luke 9:23.

You can listen online or download it if you like!

But! Today, I stumbled upon a way to (mostly) disable it (apart from in the gallery/album app). Install the following app from the Google Play Store:

Google Play Store: Illumination Control

And then in the app’s settings, go to “Set Theme Color” and then slide all the sliders all the way to the left, you might have to wiggle them a bit first if they are already in that position.

It’s that easy! Now you can use your phone in the dark without being blinded!

As a Christian that loves Jesus (as a Christian you should love Jesus…) I understand that this love compels me to want to do “good works”. It compels me to want to serve at church, it compels me to want to show love to others, it compels me to want follow the teachings that are included in the bible, it compels me to want to imitate Christ.

God loved us completely and fully before we were saved, before we’d had our spirits renewed, before we’d ever done anything for Him. And by putting our faith in Him we were forgiven and assured of an eternal live in a renewed creation (commonly known as heaven). We don’t have to do ‘good things’ to win God’s approval. A lot of people once they’ve heard this then ask “So why do Christians have to follow any rules? Surely you can just go and do whatever you want?”. As I said in the last paragraph, if you love Jesus, this love compels you to not want to go and do whatever, sleep around and take loads of drugs etc (to use a slightly extreme example).

There’s nothing quite like an illustration to make that clearer, and this is what God was saying to me the other night, and why I mentioned at the beginning that I was walking my girlfriend home. The walk is about an hour round trip, it’s cold and dark outside, my bed is often warm and inviting and I’m quite often tired. (keep reading otherwise this sounds really bad) But none of that even comes to mind, I just do it, I just walk her home. The fact that she is my girlfriend, that I have a relationship with her, that I care about her, all these things compel me to just want to walk her home. It makes all the negatives seem completely insignificant. I don’t have the desire to walk her home because I think she won’t like me if I don’t, it’s a not a desire that’s born out of guilt, it’s a desire that is born out of a relationship.

So if you’re a Christian and you’re reading this and you’re struggling with sin in a particular area of your life or you’re feeling like you should be serving more to win God’s approval, then what you need to get right first is your relationship with God. Speak to Him. Read His word. He wants to talk to you! He loves you!

And if you’re not a Christian and you’re reading this (and you probably think I’m a nutter, I would have a few years ago before I met Jesus) then I hope this illustration has helped you understand why Christians want to do ‘good things’ and yet know that they don’t win God’s love by doing ‘good things’.

I’ve just been playing baseball / rounders with one of our youth groups in St Ann’s Well Gardens. We had a great time! We were on our way back and at the north end of our church building, less than 100 meters away from the south end where we were heading in when we encountered some really terrible police work.

There were about 20 of us, a mixture of young people and adults, stretched out along the footpath walking along when a police officer charges towards one of our children at the back who was carrying the baseball bat screaming at him to put it down, he does. I then try and talk to the police officer, I’m wearing a Holland Road Baptist Church t-shirt at this point. He’s just generally very rude in the way he’s speaking to us. I try to explain that we’re with the church (that we’re standing outside of) and that we’ve just been playing baseball in St Ann’s and that we’re now heading inside. You can see the front of the group of people heading inside now. He demands to see the ball we were playing with and doesn’t seem to believe the story. However one of the guys at the front has the ball and by this point he’s gone inside the church.

We go and try and get the ball, into the church. He doesn’t listen to anything we are saying and puts the young boy that was carrying the bat into the police car and drives him the length of the church building to see the ball. He was very irrational and very disrespectful.

The other police officer was very friendly, very apologetic, and dealt with the situation very well. As have most other police officers I’ve ever met. He walked the length of the church building with us, explained the situation. He was very rational and very respectful. An example of how you should police.

It’s such a shame that you get a minority that behave like the irrational police officer and give the rest of the police a bad name. When you do behave like that and don’t treat the people you’re meant to protect with any respect it’s no wonder there is little respect for the police themselves.

Now I do understand that seeing a teenager with a baseball bat as a situation on it’s own might look a bit dodgy, but you CANNOT tarnish all young people with the same brush. The vast majority of young people don’t go around with baseball bats smashing the place up. If the police officer had cast his gaze to the front of the group and seen them heading into the church building then he might have made a better assessment of the situation. Or if he’d realised that we weren’t running away but were happy to stop and talk and explain the situation then we might not be a gang of people about to go and attack someone.

There was no need to put our young person in the police car and there was no need to talk to us like we were something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe. I liked the other officer though, he was a good guy!

Here’s what you need:

• Something to play music from
• Enough chairs for everyone
• Some way of blindfolding the young people

It’s similar to musical chairs, except everyone is blindfolded. Instead of placing the chairs out neatly, you randomly place them around the room. When the music is playing everyone walks around like a zombie, slowly with their arms out in-front of them (this makes it a bit safer). It’s also fun for the leaders to move the chairs around!

When the music stops everyone has to find a chair, make sure there is one less chair then there are people playing. The person left at the end is out and gets to sit / stand at the side and watch everyone else look silly!

I’ve done this with our younger youth group HD at Holland Road in Brighton, Park Baptist in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, and a kids club on the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. They really enjoyed it every time, the only challenge was when some of the HD kids got a bit over excited once they were out and tried to trip up the people that were still blindfolded… When the young people saw how amusing it was to watch people walk around blind folded they behaved themselves!

Abraham: Steps of Faith

We decided to call it “transform” based on Romans 12:2. Part of this involved creating a new logo for it for which I was very kindly told “You have one hour, go!”. I made this lovely creation: