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Vertigo

Posted in faith, the web on December 11, 2009 at 1:49 pm

I was listening to U2’s Vertigo then other day and thinking what a fine piece of writing it is. It’s a song about temptation and refers to the temptations of Christ, one of which involved standing on the highest point of the temple and jumping (to prove to himself and others just who he was). Vertigo, temptation - clever stuff because part of the problem with temptation is we are attracted into the void, we are may lose our balance and fall or we may actually jump. There is something about standing on the edge that changes our balance - I can walk along a curb stone no problem, but put it 200 feet in the air…

Anyway, in IT terms I have been wasting too much time browsing a particular site so I have banned it! I’m obviously hopeless with temptation and just want to jump into that void so I have moved away from the edge (not The Edge, a little U2 joke there). If I really want to I can go back to my firewall and re-enable it but taking a step back may just keep me away so I can get on with all the other stuff I have to do. I remember friends at university revising for finals - one of them unwired the plug to his tv and another took his guitar strings off. One even cut his guitar strings because he kept re-stringing it! I just relied on will power but maybe I have less these days.

If you have a router it probably has firewall software on it and it was very easy to block a URL

For me it was http://IP of router select Firewall, URL Blocking, check domains filter and click details then enter the WWW of the site that I waste time on. Whilst I was there I added a couple of sites I didn’t want my kids to get at - typing in the address of every porn site might take a while though!

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/vertigo?view=uk

google your own U2 lyrics