According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, an average of 100,000 Christians have been killed in what the centre calls a ‘situation of witness’ each year for the past decade.

That works out to 11 Christians killed somewhere in the world every hour, seven days a week and 365 days a year, for reasons related to their faith.

This is a live counter which updates approximately every five and a half minutes.

I needed an MP3 player, didn’t want to buy an expensive iPod and someone recommended I look at the SanDisk Sansa Fuze. I’m glad I did.

I bought it in January 2010 for £53 (at time of writing, they’re only £35 from Amazon) and have been nothing but pleased with it ever since.

It. Just. Works. The list of great things about it are:

• It plays just about any audio file you wish to copy onto it (MP3, WMA, secure WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC).
• It sounds great and the battery lasts for ages.
• It plays just about any MPEG4 format movie file.
• Has expandable memory with a microSDHC memory card slot.
• FM radio (not used that much to be honest).
• Voice recorder (not used that much either).
• Has EQ settings, including allowing custom settings.
• Photo/image viewer (small screen, so of limited use – use your phone instead).
• Metal back and sides (apparently made of LiquidMetal) with a piano-gloss plastic front.
• Has a good solid weighty feel to it without being heavy.
• It appears as two drives when connected to the PC (internal/external memory) so no iTunes needed.
• It supports Audible books (used these – they’re great).

Rather than bore you with a full review, read the excellent AnythingButIpod.com review which will give you all you need to know.

Want an MP3 player that will last but don’t want to pay a premium price, then this will be money well spent. A simple (not included) jack-to-jack cable lets me plug into separate speakers if I want to.

Enough said. Here’s a photo of the unit with its blue ring of wonder:

I came across this blog post from Mali Korsten on the perfect recipe for poaching an egg:

Poached eggs have been my nemesis for the extent of my cooking career (I use the term “career” loosely, in the way that one might describe wearing clothes, or any other necessary daily activity). Without one of those special cheat-pans, my eggs just dissolve into a stringy mass of albumin floating in a sea of frothy salt-water, the yolk sitting isolated at the bottom of the pan, long-since detached from its white partner. Yesterday, all that changed.

http://themalikwhey.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/how-to-poach-an-egg/

I tried the recipe this morning and can tell you, it works! Evidence below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apart from being able to make great eggs, Mali is also a musician. Her album is here and is well worth a listen: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/malikorsten

Finally, a quote from C S Lewis which mentions a poached egg:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. – Mere Christianity, pages 40-41.