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Made in Finland, living in Northern Ireland |
Welcome |
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Hi, I'm Luke - welcome to my
blog. I'm into guitar music, rock, gigs, skating, bmx, surfing, beaches,
mobile phones, gadgets, most sports. I'm also an atheist, humanist,
sceptic, liberal and believe in secularism. Have you stumbled onto a
philosophy page by accident? I hope not, although I enjoy philosophy and
I'm quite happy to stand up for my beliefs. |
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Atheist Crows' Blog |
| Friday 4th December 2009 Party Party We celebrate a couple of birthdays this Friday in style. We had musician friends of the families from Dublin who played the night away and made one of the best parties I remember in years. There was good food, lots of drinks, some conversation and a whole load of dancing. I took a few turns playing guitar (along with Dave and Oz) but mostly just danced my socks off. Great fun and I hope we have more house parties like this one! |
| Friday 27th November 2009 Twitter Stalker Actually just a prat posting suggestions that he was me. It's really sad - does this guy have no life? My cousin was more annoyed than me, but then she has a temper and I really don't. It must be annoying for celebrities who have individuals who pretend to be them. |
| Saturday 21th November 2009 New Moon The gang all went to see New Moon tonight. There has been such a cult thing going on with New Moon.. my cousin and two of her friends came with us and I swear the girl-squeals went hyper-sonic. Still it was an ok movie.. loved the special effects with the werewolves which were much more impressive than I expected. The wolves were "massive" and the sense of solidity and mass were nicely done graphically. They contrasted well as the physical compared with the vampires as frozen statues who hardly touch the earth. The fight scenes and special effects aside the movie was a bore.. even the script writers can't seem to get over Stephanie Myers limp school girl themes. Edward comes off as an uncaring prat and Bella is a useless self made victim. Dakota Fanning had a very small part as Jane.. would have been very nice to see a lot more of her! Dave played pool on his phone for most of the movie... and I think he had the right idea.  |
| Friday 20th November 2009 Children in Need I had an excellent Children in Need day! I did a sponsored swim and raised £150 for Pudsey, then me Dave and Oz sponsored a bunch of small kids who were doing their first sponsored swim. Good to see people getting involved for a nice charity - check out the Children in Need website at www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey and see what went on. On Twitter I updated my avatar with a Pudsey bandana using the Children in Need site. Again I think they had a really nice idea - promote the charity and by charging £1 for the service they collect the little donations too. Children in Need raised over twenty millions pounds this year for kids who need some help - How brilliant is that?  |
| Saturday 7th November 2009 Captain Jack I caught up with my cousin Jack today.. he is just starting at Southampton University and has had a summer travelling around the world and sailing in the Caribbean. Jack and Tamzin have been best friends since they were about three and have gone to university together, sharing a flat and the boat our uncle gave them. It sounds like they have had the best summer. They started off visiting a family in Norway who gave them a lift on their boat to Fiji last summer, and then on to see friends in St. Petersberg and eventually ending up in Tobago working as deck hands for our uncle. I can't imagine Jack and Tamzin ever being apart. The one time they were separated was when my Uncle came to St. Pauls MN. to work on a project with my dad. Jack was beside himself and Tamzin, left at home, in London was heartbroken. After a week Tamzin's mum flew her over to stay with us. Best Friends Forever certainly seems to be true for them.. they are like a single person in two parts or twins perhaps. |
| Thursday 5th November 2009 Bonfire Night Remember remember the 5th of November, The gunpowder treason and plot, I know of no reason Why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot. When Bonfire Night rolls around I always feel it's the start of Winter. The night is usually cold and dark, and often rainy. I love fireworks.. bonfire toffee, the bonfire itself, eating out in the cold enjoying the show. My dog hates the noise from the unidentified random explosions and staying indoors all evening. I'm not certain, but I suspect the youth of Londonderry have the least sense of any group when it comes to readily available explosives. Putting lit fireworks into peoples bags or pockets, throwing them at passers by. I despair of the whole sorry lot of them.  |
| Saturday 31st October 2009 Halloween The Crowe/Clarke clans descended on us this week from London, the Isle of Man and as far afield as Finland for Halloween. It was rather cramped having fifteen extra family members staying with us but rather like a giant sleepover. Halloween was a lot of fun.. we had a BBQ and ghost stories. I spent half the night talking politics, religion and science. I really love how intellectual my family are.  I wasn't going to bother dressing up for Halloween this year but my cousins thought a makeover as Lauri from the Rasmus would be fun and I ended up with crow feathers woven into my hair. |
| Wednesday 21th October 2009 A most wise and friendly bear I've been chatting with a most amazing bear on Twitter. His name is Henry and he is unfailingly positive, encouraging and happy - an excellent person to know. I am charmed by his tweets and he makes me grin every day. Henry has some very wise thoughts on quiet places and I think everyone would enjoy a visit his website www.henryandfriends.co.uk My favourite quiet place is the beach... I am sure Henry would approve.  |
| Friday 16th October 2009 Office Enterprise 2007 I installed the full range of Microsoft Office 2007 products on my laptop tonight and got to know InfoPath, Groove and OneNote - which were all new to me. I guess most people just have the Office suite forced on them at work and really don't like or appreciate the tools for how amazing they are.. but in a geeky way I think they are a fairly awesome update from the 2003 set I was using. |
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October 2009 #BoobieWed - Breast Cancer Awareness on Twitter What an amazing group of people inhabit my small corner of the Twitterverse! Over the last few Wednesdays I've been told about a campaign for raising awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Awareness. The fun side of the campaign is our avatars on Wednesdays are a lot more interesting with peoples chests on display.. and behind that the very worth campaign to raise awareness and money. About 1 out of every 7 women will get breast cancer over a 90-year life span... that's a lot of people. Men can also have breast cancer - it affects everyone. There are excellent treatments if cancer is discovered soon enough, so all girls should be aware of their breasts and check them regularly for changes. Get informed and get involved.  |
| Friday 9th October 2009 Poking fun at Gods I was chatting with Lawrence on Twitter about nonsense with five "gods" jesus, muhammad, Ganesh, Buddha and Cthulhu. I messed around with a few images, looking for something cartoonish and silly for "gods" that people take much to seriously. I'm rather pleased with the results of a quick 15 minutes in Paint Shop Pro and thought I would share them - Village Gods - A Village People Tribute Band.  |
| Friday 11th September 2009 The Greatest Show on Earth My copy of the long awaited Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins arrived and the last few days have seen me even more deep in reading than usual. I was very pleased to see the fox breeding experiments by the Russian geneticist Dimitri Belyaev. I remember seeing a Horizon program on Dimitri's experiments breeding for tameness in the fox. After 30-35 generations some amazingly dog like results - black and white fir, floppy ears, doglike tails. The foxes looked and acted a lot like Border Collies. It should be noted of course that domestic dogs were breed from wolves not foxes so the results are extremely interesting. Imagine the changes in 3000 or 30,000 generations. I'm enjoying the book so far but there hasn't been any new information or revelation as to why Evolution is true and in reality I hadn't expected any. I also loved the transcript of the interview with Wendy Wright, fundy nut job president of "Concerned Women of America." I had seen the interview on YouTube and the fundy simply doesn't take on board Richard Dawkins answers. Show us the intermediary fossils she wails.. so Richard describes the various Australopithecus species, Homo habilis, archaic Homo sapiens and modern Homo sapiens. She continues to insist that there are no intermediates. Bless Richard Dawkins for the patient champion of science that he is! The Greatest Show on Earth will be a best seller no doubt and will help educate some people who didn't know quite as much about biology and evolution as myself. |
| Friday 4th September 2009 Classes start We have a rolling start to classes. My little sister started her school year near the beginning of the week with older students starting a little later. I think it's quite a good idea to give the younger ones a chance to get used to the classes (and layout of the school if they aren't familiar with it) before older students swarm back. For me new classes started with a gentle easing in.. timetables needed to be ironed out, exam revision timetables and study plans made. |
| Friday 28th August 2009 Coming home My ten days in Croatia seem to have flown by so fast! We went out and explored the coast around Dubrovnik and got to drive in an open topped car on such a nice hot day! Actually pretty much every day we had was sunny and hot! Loved my holiday and met some really nice people! Travelling home was long but ok. I'm one of those hardened travellers who just talk with anyone who looks half awake, my friends however looked much the worse for wear after last nights farewell dinner at a very nice bar grill. At the airport my "Hug me, I'm an atheist" tee shirt drew the attention of a flock of nuns. They headed over to chat and my friend Ant tried to run away. Being catholic he's had more experience of nuns than me. The nuns were very nice though, they were curious about the atheist tee on a "younger person" but very nice about it. We chatted for a while about holidays and I swear Ant didn't breathe until the nuns walked away. Left Croatia in the heat and sunshine, arrived in Northern Ireland in the cool rain. |
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| Thursday 19th August 2009 A Day at the Beach One of the best things about the beautiful country of Croatia is the clean, lonely beaches just a short drive from Dubrovnik. Ant's dad knows lots of really nice beaches and we spent a few days like today on the holiday - just relaxing on the beach, swimming and playing footie on the sand. Although the beaches we went to were quiet we did meet up with some of the girls we'd met in the disco on Tuesday which was good fun! Also loved messing about in a hired boat and Ant's dad is very keen on sea fishing so we did some of that too! |
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| Wednesday 18th August 2009 Exploring Old Town After something of a late start (thanks to Ant & Oz having sterling hangovers) we set out to explore the Old Town by daylight. There is an excellent City Wall running around Old Town with some really great views. There were groans from the lads but Ant's dad and I were keen on a hike around the wall so they dragged along. the walk around the wall is about 2km, there are millions of stairs and the views are excellent! After the walk we had dinner in a brilliant restaurant by the famous Arsenal. |
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| Tuesday 18th August 2009 Off on Holiday to Croatia My friend Ant's dad said Ant could invite a couple of friends on holiday, which was very cool of him. Ant invited me and Oz and we flew off to Dubrovnik today. Ant's dad lives there in a nice villa overlooking Dubrovnik Old Town. After a few delays and a pretty nice flight we arrived in Croatia and had our first night out on the tiles. |
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| The Old Town is full of Tourist Traps - shops, bars, restaurants, cafés and has a really nice welcoming feel. The streets are typically medieval, narrow, winding and with endless stairs to climb. The best part of Old Town for lads on a night on the tiles is no one seems to be interested in how old a tourist is. We wandered around bars and discos packed with tourists and no one bothered us. Ant and Oz were in seventh heaven lol. We met some really nice Croatian girls in the Disco and made friends, helped by a particularly nice German girl who helped with translations! Around 1am we were wandering the night looking for a taxi to find the villa - a really good start to the holiday! |
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| Monday 10th August 2009 Flying Spaghetti Monster for my BlackBerry The Flying Spaghetti Monster with his noodly good godness is now available as a gel phone skin from those nice (and amazingly artistic people) at GelaSkins.com. They have a really nice range of skins for iPods, iPhones and BlackBerrys. I ordered a few of them including the really cool FSM skin below! |
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| Friday 7th August 2009 Invasion of the Creation "Museum" Today a whole bunch of Atheists and Freethinkers descended on the so called Creation Museum in Kentucky lead by the awesome atheist guru PZ Myers. I was able to catch a lot of the event vicariously on Twitter and it was really shocking and rather scary to see what the gullible will actually buy into. The Creation "museum" basically tells the religious American public that the bible is literally true and they have displays showing dinosaurs and people side by side because of course God created the all in the same week. The atheists and humanists who visited with P.Z. Myer posted some really nice photo's on Twitter and these were reposted so many times I'm afraid I really don't know who took the originals, but the following will give you a feel for what fundamental christians believe. |
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| Thursday 6th August 2009 Twitter Attacked I logged onto Twitter this afternoon and was surprised that TweetDeck wouldn't open my "Mentions" or "All Friends" pages. I tried logging onto Twitter via the web and got the scary "Page cannot be displayed message." I thought it must be my internet connection, which admittedly isn't the most stable, but it actually turned out that Twitter had been attacked by a "Denial of Service" bot attack. The attack was basically flooding the Twitter servers with requests and overwhelming it. I really missed Twitter! I have gotten so used to my daily fix of intelligent secular commentary and rational thinkers that I felt lost without them. Fortunately Twitter fought back and the service was partly restored after a few hours and today everything seems fine. |
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| Sunday 2nd August 2009 Belfast BBQ I spent the weekend with my family at close family friends in Belfast. It was something of a meeting of "clans" with an enormous BBQ planned for Sunday afternoon. We travelled up on Friday and on Saturday the weather, in typical Irish style, was less than kind. On Saturday afternoon we went around Belfast, shopping and hopping from coffee shop to coffee shop in the showers. Our hosts and their children hadn't seen the new Harry Potter movie so that was our entertainment for the evening. I rather enjoyed watching HP6 again but my sister curled up on me and fell asleep half way through the movie. The BBQ on Sunday was a lot of fun, we had a marquee in the garden and about forty guests to circulate amongst. Talk was in turn literary, political, music and some fond memories of my fathers misspent youth. It was really nice to meet people who knew the family from before I was born and the party broke up somewhere around midnight with many injunctions to come and visit. |
| Wednesday 29th July 2009 Winning Lotto Streak Continues I've had a bit of luck with my lotto numbers - in the past month I've won five times 3rd, 10th, 24th, 27th and 31st. |
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| Saturday 25th July 2009 Ice Age 3, Coffee and Bowling I had a really good day. Often happens. I went to see Ice Age 3 with a bunch of mates and enjoyed the movie a lot. My mate Dave has the most outrageous loud laugh and nearly got us thrown out, but made us all laugh as much as the movie did. After we had coffee and hung out for a while, and when more friends finally showed up we went bowling. I'm a huge fan of any sport that gets you and and moving and bowling is a great social sport in a country that rains a whole lot! Today we played handicap bowling, where you have an added random handicap for each frame like hopping on one leg or bowling between your legs. The scores weren't high nut there was a lot of laughter. |
| Friday 24th July 2009 MSN Bin I know a lot of the people who add me to their MSN are girls who do so based on a picture of me, not from any interest in talking to me. I kinda find it a little disappointing because I add people to MSN when I want to chat with them and get to know them. On Twitter they cut out the fake accounts in a house keeping exercise this week and I lost 140 fake followers from my list and I thought that's maybe a good idea - my MSN account needs a spring clean too. So I made a new category called "The Bin" and moved in about 50 contacts who I don't remember chatting in a while. My plan is to delete and block them from my list if I haven't heard from them by next Friday, then repeat the process until I've got a list of people who login and say more than Hi when I say hello to them. |
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| Tuesday 21st July 2009 Atheists Out Campaign I'm not saying Atheists should "get out" here, but talking about the Out Campaign to encourage people who are Atheists and who are able to say so to come out and be open with your atheism. Sounds strange to a person in Europe which is largely secular, but in other countries it's very difficult to admit to being an atheist. In the USA, not less than in Iran, the vast majority of vocal lobbyists are religious and pushing religious agendas. To maintain a secular society, with both freedom of religion AND freedom from religion, it's important that the rationalist is also heard. So ok this is something I buy into and its relatively easy for me to admit to a total lack of religious faith, coming from a supportive and largely secular extended family. So I've added my name to the Out Campaign - see http://outcampaign.org/ - and a large atheist symbol to my Twitter display picture and to my logo on this little webby. Small steps, but I'm already as vocal an atheist as I know how to be and more than happy to stand up and be counted. |
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| Saturday 18th July 2009 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince I remember waiting for the Half Blood Prince to come out and reading it in three days. We ordered two copies of the book, one for me and one for my cousin and we sat engrossed reading the books and hardly talking. When I finished my copy first my cousin warned me on pain of death not to say a thing... not a single word about the book until she finished too. So I started reading the Half Blood Prince again. So I really do understand what its like to be a fan of the book. I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince at the movies today and thought it was a really good film. Enjoyed it enormously. What I found annoying was kids bitching about how much had been left out from the book and other kids whining that they didn't get every reference because they hadn't read the book first. The audio book version of Half Blood Prince, narrated by the wonderful Stephen Fry, is 20 hours and 33 minutes long. How could the script writers squeeze 20 hours of novel into a two hour movie without missing out some things? I personally think the movie was a really good compromise between keeping it short and making it faithful to the original. The kids moaning about not fully understanding the movie because they hadn't bothered to read the book? Well hello, the book was released back in 2005. You've had plenty of time to read it if you cared to. Don't whine about a movie made for Harry Potter fans containing a few scenes that you would have understood better if you had read the series. |
| Wednesday 15th July 2009 Twitter Wars Well not wars as such, but annoying American princesses. This kid posted on Twitter that she was blogging about Creationism vs. Evolution so I took a look at her blog. She was blogging about Evolution being racist - nice. Obviously a creationist princess but that's ok I'm happy to correct misconceptions about evolution. I tweeted: "Evolution proves that no person is any different to any other person. None superior. None inferior. We are all children of Africa." American princess started her tweet replies politely enough, "Can't creationism use evolution" and quickly progressed to name calling - how I was a dumbass, know nothing idiot who didn't even know anything. Nice. I was actually laughing out loud at her increasingly aggressive and childish responses, but managed to keep calm and keep posting the truth about evolution not being in any sense racist. In fairness to American princess she deleted all of her tweets to me from her Twitter account the following morning, perhaps realising how small and silly they made her look. People are free to read all of my tweets. I don't think I've officially met the dumbest person alive in her, she's really not that different from other uninformed, science illiterate, creationists. |
| Monday 13th July 2009 Cyprus Dives I managed to get a few good diving sessions in the gentle clear sea around Cyprus. I dived at Moray Cove, Coral Bay, at Cynthiana, Pathos, at Jubilee Shoals and at Devil's Head, Akamas. Scuba diving is such a liberating sport, you get to see some of the most amazing things as you swim freed of the need to surface and breathe. I took my Scuba qualifications with PADI the American style dive training organisation and it was great to be able to dive without taking basic lessons. I got some really nice dive stamps in my Dive Log and look forward to diving again later in the year.  |
| Sunday 12th July 2009 Aphrodite's Trail We drove up to the North West of Cyprus today to a particularly beautiful part of the country and a hiking trail based around Aphrodite's Bath. I think quite a lot of tourists get as far as the natural spring and don't do the hike which is sad. The natural spring is a little disappointing if you were expecting to find a Greek temple or something divine. The walk along the cliffs and through the woods is really awesome.  After the long, long hike we stopped at a family friends house near Pathos and swam while our friends cooked for us. The Cypriot people can be wonderfully hospitable and the meal was shared with a number of neighbours and their families. We were made to feel less like tourists and more like islanders and I really appreciated that. Friday 10th July 2009 Lots of Travel People are fond of telling me that I'm lucky, and I don't disagree. Healthy, happy etc. Tonight's EuroMillions Lottery saw me with a winning ticket for the second week in a row! How cool is that?  Thursday 9th July 2009 Lots of Travel I've been on the road and in the air for most of today, holidays are with us! My family are heading for Cyprus, which is a favourite destination amongst the Greek islands. We have some really good friends on the island and I think it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited. The flight isn't too bad, about 5 hours or so, but it's the endless queuing and hanging around that wears at me when we travel. I guess I just get into that resigned to sit and wait mode that seasoned travellers adopt, and of course read and listening to music while watching the world go by. We're renting a villa with a pool from Cypriot friends and it has the twin blessings of WiFi and a hidden beach within walking distance. It's a really lovely spot and I can imagine myself living out here on the cliffs one day.  Wednesday 8th July 2009 Tuesday 7th July 2009 Giving up on MySpace I thought my layout on MySpace looked ok, was happy with how I could have my Twitter feed on there and in general liked the site... but all I really wanted from MySpace was a page (like this) where people could just drop by. MySpace automatically added age restrictions, Bebo insists you create an account or login, Facebook, well you just can't customise the pages. So This evening I gave up on MySpace and did a Google search for free domains and came up with this little space. Trying to throw together a basic page using Microsoft products is pretty frustrating. I have Microsoft Expression Web, which frankly sucks, and Microsoft FrontPage 2003 which also sucks. Between the two of them you might make a half decent but frustrating program. I've ended up editing this in Notepad and typing in HTML. |
| Wednesday 1st July 2009 Storms plugged in... You know when it’s so hot you are expecting a storm to come and wash away the sunshine? Feels that way here… we’ve had rain but somehow it just made the day more humid. I rather like storms. I was on twitter earlier (which I’m semi-addicted to) and there have been some big storms in the ....US..... One twit posted about how stupid his sister was for having a shower and having the radio in the bathroom… Right, yes because people are often struck by lightening inside the house. I know people who turn off the TV and pull the plug out too. I think it’s strange. I’ve just been for a run with my dog for a few miles. He never complains about the heat or humidity… just stoically runs beside me panting as I drip sweat. Back home and into a cool shower and it’s the most refreshing thing. Hope your storms are electric and you live life with the TV plugged in :) |
| Sunday 28th June 2009 Family Hikes A really nice day today, went for a long hike with my family and some friends. A couple of my dads friends we haven’t seen in a long time were able to visit and it was really nice chatting with them and hearing some of their stories from when dad was at university. He was a great devils advocate and loved to debate with people, lol and this comment from his friend who is now a bishop. We had lunch at a nice family pub before walking all the way home. Kinda funny having to carry my lil sis on my shoulders for the last mile, she’s such a lazy sook! |
| Saturday 27th June 2009 Customising MySpace I like the way MySpace actually recognises that we’re not all the same and some people would like to change their space a little… or maybe a lot. I really wasn’t to psyched by the default colour scheme and stuff for my blog so I just spent twenty minutes or so making a little banner and playing with the colours a little until it felt more like mine. Maybe if Facebook would wake up to a choice of colours even it might make the site friendlier, but then maybe Twitter is so staggeringly popular because it’s what Facebook started out to be? Still not entirely sure how all this MySpace stuff fits into what I do online but hey at least here’s a space with my name on it. PS - What I don't live so much is the damned Blog editor. Text won't stay aligned, colours won't stay selected. Shesh I might end up typing each entry in the HTML view - how 1990's! |
| Friday 26th June 2009 Alone in the Dark I watched "Alone in the Dark" this evening. I generally like paranormal type movies and the TV guide described this one as an Action Comedy. Excellent, I like both Paranormal and comedy movies. The movie starts with voice over text before the credits... like in StarWars "In a Galaxy far far away...". Ok a little scene setting is fine. This movie however had voice over text for two or three minutes, not an intro as much as an explanation of the movie. Not being funny but didn’t the director have faith in his script or direction? The movie was ok, not great but that was more down to wooden acting than any huge problem with the script. What it did lack was a storyboard flow that would have done away with the need for the long, long intro. Perhaps though the intro was for the movie going public who have too short an attention span to actually watch the movie and remember the little details. Oh and I thought I would start a blog. Small things I twitter, but here I can kinda post longer non-sense and rants etc. See how it goes, I would rather spend my online time chatting with friends and tweeting but hey. |
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