Anybody for a Revolution?

Dear friends,

A very brief email today as I want to get back to the programming of the changes to our website. On the forum yesterday I provided a link to where you can preview the new look and feel the Catholica website. I'd value feedback particularly from people using non-mainstream browsers or computer operating systems to let me know if anything is not working on your set-up. Clicking the image above will take you directly to a preview of the new front page of Catholica. <Read the post>

When I started this exercise a few weeks ago I honestly thought I'd have everything completed within a few days. It has literally taken weeks of research though — basically endeavouring to work out the best configuration of the zillions available given our particular objectives here at Catholica. Now that most of those "big picture" decisions have been made the process now is of considerable "grind" setting things up so that when a user calls up any particular page on Catholica the servers will serve all the elements that make up the page in the correct fashion. I find it deeply enjoyable work even when a lot of it I can organise to happen with little scripts that go through and alter every page on the website with one click of the mouse.

Last night Milly had to almost drag me away from the computer as she wanted to catch up with muso friend, Matt Zarb, who was playing at the Eastern Hills Tavern and is presently back in Oz from Kentucky. Man, what a guitarist this guy is. We've been thinking for a while about having a little benefit gig for Catholica and if we can organise it I'd certainly like to see Matt (and the rest of his very talented family) part of the line-up. The Zarb brothers grew up in Amanda's parish — they were educated by the Christian Brothers at St Dominics — and two of them, Matt and Pauli, have carved out careers for themselves in the States. Sitting with Matt late last night after his gig he began talking about the spiritual side of what he does. When he's on stage he's a million miles from "Church" but he describes what he does as an intensely spiritual endeavour. He described how he feels "called" to use this talent he's been given. As I listened to him my thoughts again went back to George Orwell when he was describing that force deep down within himself which he felt little control over which drove him to write.

I didn't take my camera with me last night so the photos above are taken from Matt's website at www.mattzarb.com. You can see more photos there and also a selection of some of his music. Meanwhile back to the programming for me...

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world,

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher