About

Welcome to my web site.

StilmanDavis.co.uk

I am taking the unprecedented step of going very personal on this site, hence the name.

There are a few activities that I want to share with anyone who cares to look at these pages.

One of the joys in my life has been preaching in the diocese of Gloucester in the last twenty years. My most recent sermon is located here

My work has been varied from London Showrooms to Publishing.

publishing work

Publishing project management

The revolution computers brought to printing is well known. No longer is a book or anything set by hand – sometimes there is no longer even any ink involved in publications.

I am able to use the speed of the computer to output your document, so that your publication is available on time and within budget. When everything has been prepared, a book can be sent to the printer within days. This is lightning speed when compared with setting books by hand in hot type only forty years ago.

Once in digital form, an author’s prose and poetry can be manipulated quickly and efficiently. Proofing electronically also is possible so that there is no longer the delay of printing galleys and the time-consuming delivery of reams of printed paper. The author and publisher review files as they will be presented to the printer. At every step, there is a ‘signing off’ of the copy and proof electronically.

I have been able to involve the publisher from the outset by agreeing the style of the finished pages, setting timings for drafts, and incorporating all changes in the manuscript.

I will take advantage of DTP technology and techniques for the sake of your publication in a timely manner, whether a short 8-page leaflet or an 8,000-page reference book.

Consultancy

  • Workflow
    • How you put your publications together
      • How do you create content? The spectrum ranges from creating it page by page by yourself to outsourcing content creation – from time and effort intense to costly contracting. Money spent on content creation is what is saved when content is produced by the company itself, which knows its products and procedures. However, when the company produces its own content, time and effort is diverted from the mission of the enterprise.
      • What do you use to create your content? There are many computer programs to do this, but each has its own foibles and benefits, and each has an intended output. Some are better than others for specific publishing ends.
  • Media
    • Print – the usual destination for most publications. A publication ranges from one page to a multi-volume treatise, a personal letter, a leaflet, a brochure, a book, an encyclopedia.
    • Web – the alternative to print, and an increasingly popular output for any sort of publication. This also includes the growing ezine and ebook output.
    • We can help decide how the document should be produced and where it should be made available to the world.
  • Content Management

      The saying, “Content is king!”, should be a company’s mantra. That content is the product for a manufacturer, and that manufacturer should present itself and its product in its publications. The publication of material should not deflect the company from its vision and mission.

    • Database publishing may be the means by which content might be presented. By using data already stored in databases of all sorts, it is possible to produce documentation quickly and efficiently, sometimes “on demand”. This can be output to print or electronic media.
    • Automatic publishing is possible when documents are stored in a “regularised” manner. This means that no massaging of a new document needs to be done – all the work has been done on creation of the content. This could be through a database in some way, or the collation of existing documents or partial files.

If you would like help with your publishing projects, whether to the printed page, e-book, or your own web site, please contact me.

gardening

For all of my life I have been interested in gardening. It has ranged from mowing the grass for pocket money as a boy, watching the odd programme on the television – really enjoying Geoff Hamilton on the BBC and his successors – spending the whole day in someone’s garden to bring it up to shape and maintaining it. I have even been a full time gardener at a small manor house here in the Gloucester countryside.

Most of the time my gardening has been confined to small contracts to maintain gardens for people too pushed for time or for elderly or disabled people.

If you would like help in your garden, please contact me.

preaching

Prayer for today

Look up a bible passage here.

Lately I have posted in WordPress. Here is the opening from the latest sermon.

When we think of all the saints, do we have in mind the book of Revelations? Don’t we rather think about the letters of Paul which speak of the saints in Jerusalem, or the beatitudes which extol the blessed for their virtue. We don’t have visions and portents in our minds’ eye when we think of holy people and those influencers of our lives who have died.

Read more

Other sermons are available

Since arriving in Slimbridge, I have been saving my sermons and producing them on my website. A number of different ways of presenting them have happened. Here is a listing of the earlier sermons.

Sermons before using WordPress

Some sermons

Here are the openings for some sermons as they are being kept on these pages.

Trinity 21

When someone speaks about a slave, what do you think of? … Our reading today uses the Greek word for slave–servant (δουλοσ), a word applied to Jesus and ourselves as followers of Christ. When we use the word slave, we often picture people dressed in rags, working at menial jobs, doing the work that no one wants to do, like working in the fields from dawn to dusk, perhaps digging ditches for sewerage, maybe it is the work of the chain gangs, that hard labour of breaking up rocks for roadways portrayed in movies like Cool Hand Luke. Unpaid and despised and usually mistreated in the bargain. Think of something you really wouldn’t want to do and that is the work we imagine a slave has to do – neither for any reward nor for any consideration for what was done by whom for the sake of someone who casually enjoys everything in life.

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Trinity 19

Last week Graham asked the question, “Why do people stay away from church?” Why don’t church congregations wrap everyone in love so that they want to join in worshipping God? These questions about churches led me to another, more general, question. Why do people not love one another? I don’t think the problem of people staying away has anything to do with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, because I see people still coming to this building in spite of the fact that they don’t consider its significance to them, or its mission in their community.

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Harvest Sunday

There are some ironic words from one of today’s readings –

for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before.

There has been a lot of rain throughout the world lately. No one wants any more, do they? In North Carolina they had three months worth of rain in three days with the passing by of that storm which was once called Hurricane Helene.

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Trinity 16

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is [such] a fire.”

Isn’t the epistle absolutely accurate in this description of the fierce effects of speech? This is particularly true during elections. Other campaigns also try to stir us up to their way of thinking and move us into a crowd of like-thinking people. When we join that crowd, do we stop thinking about what is right and good? In our hearts, don’t we all burn hotly when we hear lies or we are the butt of calumny? Don’t  our lives turn to ash when we take to heart the wickedness of the people around us?

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