Tag: Best of

2010 on St. Eutychus

I missed my end of year wrap up yesterday because I was reading a book. Sorry. But here are some facts, figures and highlights from the year that was.

Stats

In 2009, 31,705 Absolute Unique Visitors made 48,733 Visits, making 82,916 Pageviews
In 2010, 31,869 Absolute Unique Visitors made 52,965 Visits, making 83,668 Pageviews.

At the time of writing I have 78 Facebook fans (become a fan – I’m now sharing links to stuff I don’t blog, or that is in my queue, to Facebook fans ahead of time), and 22 Google Connections.

So small increases across the board – but more importantly. No decreases. Hooray.

In 2009 I posted 1,106 posts here on St. Eutychus. In 2010 I managed 1,434. A 29% increase. And some people said being a college student would slow down my blogging. As it was – I used college as an opportunity to create more content.

My favourite college related series and posts from the year.

1. Some language resources (some for Mac, some for typing on a Mac)
2. Reflections on the “Disciplines of a Godly theological student”
3. My guide to First Year Greek
4. The things I love about College
5. The things I’d change about College
6. My Wisdom Literature Essay (part two, three, four, five, six) – my favourite essay of the year.
7. Pre-exam prep: New Testament 101, New Testament 102, Old Testament 101, Old Testament 102, Church History 101, Hebrew 102
8. Greece and Turkey Report(s).
9. Liveblogging Ben Witherington.
10. Liveblogging Gary Millar (one, two, three, four, five)

My favourite useful posts from this year

1. How to write a Media Release to promote your church event
2. How to talk to Atheists about Christianity
3. Awareness Raising is Overrated, (and the prequel – The Facebook Booby Trap, and the sequel about Movember, and a follow up about Social Media)
4. How to not raise bitter ministry children
5. Social Media Strategies for Churches (and a follow up on Venn Theology)
6. How not to be very good at Facebook
7. My election posts – Julia Gillard’s atheism, my Christian values election scorecard, why I won’t vote for Family First, wrap up.
8. Coffee and ministry.
9. Five cheap ways to exegete your suburb.
10. My Five Steps to Better Coffee series

Many of these are the type of thing I hope to post at Venn Theology this year (2011).

My favourite coffee posts this year

1. Seven Deadly Coffee Sins
2. From Cherry to the Cup – a look at processing and roasting coffee: part one, two, three, four, five
3. Brisbane cafe reviews: Dandelion and Driftwood, Cup, BlackStar
4. The sin of Instant Coffee.
5. Coffee and Ministry
6. A coffee gift guide.
7. Science says “don’t freeze your coffee”
8. How to make Greek Coffee.
9. A beautiful guide to coffee drinks
10. My “Five Steps to Better Coffee” Series

My favourite frivolity
But it wasn’t all serious. Here are some of my favourite posts/series from this year.

1. Ten steps to planting a mega church (with a follow-up “how to name your megachurch“)
2. 23 Bacon products that will take your breath away.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook.
4. The Devil Wants you Fat (series – that I probably should finish now I have a scanner).
5. Backwards Masking Unmasked (The Jacob Aranza Series)
6. Mad Skillz Week
7. Liveblogging Chuck Norris’ Invasion USA (part 2, part 3, part 4, Robyn’s report).
8. The Make Me A Mexican Challenge
9. About “Hot Wives”
10. About Church Slogans (a bad example).
11. A Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (part one b, part two, part three)
12. The definitive and authoritative guide to the six basic plot lines
13. A look at “Objective Ministries” crazy Christian conspiracy to take over the moon
14. Reverse engineering the perfect chip
15. The Art of Improvised weaponry
16. K-Strass the Yo-Yo guy

Most popular posts in 2010
Here are the most popular posts (mostly because google loves them) by visits this year. A couple of these were written last year and continue to attract a steady stream of traffic.

1. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast (2009), the 2010 follow up was equally popular
2. Five things that would make atheists seem nicer: this accounted for about a quarter of 2009’s traffic. By itself. Not so much in 2010, but still enough to rank second.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook: This one had a bit of a spike in traffic around publication, but continues to get about 10 hits a day.
4. Ten steps to planting a megachurch: This was one of my favourites, so I’m glad it did well.
5. Chuck Norris Jeans: The little engine that could. Google loves this post.
6. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress: Certainly my geekiest post of the year.
7. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
8. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
9. Let’s not fly Jetstar: a 2009 post about a Jetstar nightmare.
10. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.

Most popular posts from 2010
A slightly different list – because it does away with a couple of “long tail” posts from last year.

1. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook
2. Ten steps to planting a megachurch
3. Chuck Norris Jeans
4. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress
5. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
6. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
7. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.
8. Some Greek and Hebrew Resources
9. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast How to Make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast: The 2010 follow up was equally popular
10. Typographic Moustaches

Thanks for reading.

January 1, 2011

Wikileaked: Absolutely the best Wikileaks release

I plan to write something about the whole wikileaks fiasco, though it’ll probably be long and boring.

In the meantime. Be sure to check out what experts are suggesting is the most interesting cable to be leaked by wikileaks. It’s not about K-Rudd. It is a statement guaranteeing the US’s most “special relationship”…

Here’s the header. Read the whole thing. It’s worth it.

Saturday, 12 December 1998, 16:13

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 LONDON 000368
NOFORN
SIPDIS
DOE FOR GPERSON, CHAYLOCK
EO 12958 DECL: 12/12/2018
TAGS EPET, ENRG, PGOV, RS">RS, NI
SUBJECT: ENGLAND: RELIABILITY AND LONGEVITY OF UK-US RELATIONSHIP CONFIRMED
REF: A. LONDON 365 B. LONDON 366
Classified By: Consul General Robbie Honerkamp for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D )

December 11, 2010

My five favourite posts about branding and PR from 2009

January 9, 2010

My five favourite posts about living in web 2.0 land in 2009

Web 2.0 stuff occupies my thoughts both professionally and personally. Here are six posts (or series) from this year that I thought were vaguely useful for understanding the world of social media…

  1. My top five tips for blogging (all the posts in full)
  2. My “essay” on where you should put stuff online
  3. A list of “new rules” for the web
  4. Some posts about behaviour around the web – how to lose friends and alienate bloggers, how not to lose friends and alienate bloggers, an exploration of the nature of blogging
  5. A look at the “five types of bloggers“.
  6. A look at oversharing in your status updates – for Christians and for everybody

January 9, 2010

My five favourite “how to” posts from 2009

I like finding tips around the web – and I like making up my own tips and posting them as lists. Here are five that I particularly liked from 2009.

  1. My “Recipe for Sizzler’s Cheese Toast“
  2. My “five non essential skills”
  3. My “Tips for writing complaint letters“
  4. My “Tips for finding a good cafe“
  5. My “How to make scrambled eggs with a coffee machine“

January 9, 2010

My six favourite arguments from 2009

The little post that stirred up a hornets net of atheists and caused a shift in service providers was almost worth the effort of blogging for a year all by itself. Here are my six favourite debates from 2009…

  1. Five things that would make atheists seem nicer
  2. The one where I admit to not enjoying U2 and then suggest some alternatives
  3. The one where I suggest it’s ok to treat subjective issues objectively.
  4. The one about an “open source” approach to producing ministry resources (music especially) that sprung out of this amazing discussion at Simone’s blog.
  5. The one where a pastor I don’t know took my doctrine of creation to task – and I didn’t like that very much – and my apology for being rude about it.
  6. The one where I dared to suggest parents shouldn’t overshare on Facebook.

Thank you to those of you who commented here throughout the year – I do enjoy a good verbal stoush.

January 9, 2010

My top five posts about ninjas

You probably didn’t see these first time around. But ninjas are sneaky – so that’s understandable.

The black parade

Shirt of the Day: Ninja Code

For people who know CSS and like ninjas… Buy it here.

Ninjitsuit

My first thought when reading about this new, controversial “Burquini” the Islamic bikini invented by an Australian and banned in France (two things that make something more likely to be awesome) was that it looks pretty much like a ninja suit.

Am I right? Yeah. Which got me thinking further – firstly, I didn’t know what a ninja suit was actually called – which was a bit of a gap in my ninja arsenal. For the record it’s a shinobi shozoko. But it’s always dangerous to put a ninja in a box.

Ninjafy your car

After you’ve got things in the kitchen to a dangerously ninjafied status it’s time to turn your car into a lean, mean, killing machine (figuratively not literally).

Pirates v Ninjas: Black and white issue

First there was ninja v ninja checkers – and now a chance to settle the age old question – pirates v ninjas.

January 6, 2010

My top five posts about bacon

Declaring a love for bacon is tantamount to declaring a love for oxygen.

But here are some posts about Bacon that I just want to relive.

Bacon jam helps you eat, like, a pig

Pig + Blender = Bacon Jam. That’s the equation celebrated by this shirt.

How to top Bacon Jam

Breadwinners

The perfect BLT.

The winner was an American chef living in Sydney… here’s the concluding post from the competition.

Here’s his winning sandwich – but the best bit is the photographic flow chart he made (and the fact that he harvested his own salt from the ocean)…

BBB sandwich

This is what you should get if you order a BLT with no L, no T and extra B.

It hasn’t made it to “This is why you’re fat” yet – but it will.

I found it here.

And finally – a very useful flow chart…

There’s nothing wrong with this picture

Plenty of bacon to be found here in this “what to eat” decision making flow chart from geekologie.

January 6, 2010

My five favourite posts about Lego

January 6, 2010

Nine of my best series and tags

It seems a shame that there are some 2,100 posts just floating around in my archives, waiting to be discovered. If you are one of those who came in late here are some of my favourite bits…

Features

1. Our Daily Fred – the best from Fred and Friends.
2. The Beginners Guide to Taking Over the World 
3. A self help guide to writing self help books
4. Our New Zealand holiday
5. YouTube Tuesday
6. Nigerian Scams/Scambaiting
7. Shirt of the Day
8. Anti-green
9. Guide to better living

Tags
1. Photography
2. PR tips
3. Toilet humour
4. Segways
5. Ninjas
6. Cool Art
7. Tetris
8. Pacman
9. Super Mario Bros

September 9, 2009

New Zealand: Reflections

As our trip comes to a close – we fly out today – Robyn and I have been doing some early post trip analysis. Here are our thoughts on our trip.

Best Coffee
I’ve written a lot about coffee so it seems only fitting this is the first cab off the rank.
N: Bureau de Cafe, Queenstown
R: Bureau de Cafe, Queenstown
Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of it – but honourable mentions go to the Sugar cafe in Kaikoura, Gusto in Picton and Coffee Culture in Christchurch.

Gusto, Picton

Worst Coffee

There have been some stinkers on this trip. It’s hard to pick. But here goes.

N: The Why Not Cafe, Kaikoura, I’ll tell you why not – the coffee seemed to be exothermic. It got hotter as time wore on, the coffee itself was untastable because our taste buds were scalded off.

R: Piazza coffee at the Hermitage Hotel/Edmund Hillary Centre at Mount Cook.

Best Budget Accommodation
N: Top 10 Holiday Park, Franz Josef. Talk about million dollar views. It worked out at $42.50 pp so that’s value. Plus there were bunk beds in the room so we could have been even more efficient.
R: Holiday home at Hanmer Springs. Worked out at $30pp and was clean, well equipped and very comfortable.

Best Accommodation

We’ve stayed in some nice places as well as some budget places. Here are our top picks.

N: Living Space, Christchurch. It was quirky, colourful and handy to the CBD for strolls and coffees.

R: Breakfree Alpine Village, Queenstown. The views of the lake from the balcony were stunning and it was a spacious one bedroom apartment handy to town.

Worst Accommodation

N & R: Te Anau Holiday Park – the lakeside A-Frame cabins look cute and cozy, but inside were anything but. It was cold. We were supplied inadequate blankets and the bed was like a marshmallow.

Dishonorable mentions: Picton Holiday Park – full of smokers, poor facilities and dangerous cliffs.

Best Breakfast

N: Sugar Cafe, Kaikoura – Big breakfast – venison sausages, hashbrowns, bacon, eggs and a terrific relish.

R: Sugar Cafe, Kaikoura – maybe it was the seal swim induced appetite, but the Sugar Cafe scored again for their eggs benedict – Robyn says it’s the best she’s ever had.

Best Lunch

N & R:  Fergburger.

Honourable mentions go to the Skyrail buffet, and the Honey Pot Cafe for their sensational toasted sandwiches.

Best Dinner

N & R: Bailies Pub, Christchurch. Robyn had Lamb Shanks, Nathan had a sirloin cooked to tender perfection.

Honourable mention – the hot rock dinner at Hanmer Springs.

Best Activity

N: Seal swim, Kaikoura. Seals are cool.

R: The Skyline experience – paragliding, luge and lunch. What a winning combination.

Honourable mentions go to horse riding, puzzling world and the jet boating part of our white water rafting adventure.

Best Drive

N: Hanmer Springs to Kaikoura – the rest of the car was asleep but these picturesque mountain roads were fun to drive.

R: Te Anau to Milford Sound – lots of scenic stops on the way, a tunnel through a mountain and the constant presence of a glacier in the rear view mirror on the trip back made this a drive to remember. As did the early morning start.

Honourable mentions – Queenstown to Lake Tekapo for the Lord of the Rings style rolling mountains and craggy rocks, Lake Tekapo to Mount Cook for the cows and roadkill, and the Wanaka to Queenstown stretch.

Best City/Town

N: Christchurch – lots of cafes, churches, old buildings and a comfortable city feel.

R: Hanmer Springs – a cute little village in the mountains.

Honourable mentions – all the rest.

Most Memorable Person

N & R: The grumpy horse riding lady.

Most Memorable Day

N: Picton – simply because Robyn almost fell off a cliff. I won’t be forgetting that in a hurry.

R: Queenstown – paragliding, luge, lunch, and gondola ride – plus the best coffee all trip. A winning combination.

Honourable mention: Fox Glacier. I’ll never forget the pain in my legs during that walk – or the sense of satisfaction drinking a cold beer on our return. It was all worth it though – walking on a glacier is kind of cool.

Most Picturesque Location

N: Mount Cook

R: Lake Tekapo, Church of the Good Shepherd.

Honourable mentions: Milford Sound and Kaikoura.

We’ll add pictures and links when we get back to Australia – right now it’s off to breakfast.

January 17, 2009