Month: August 2009

Ten plagues for all your houses…

One of the other things I may miss out on this Sunday if pain persists and I’ve seen the doctor is my role in our puppet driven kid’s talks at church.

That would be sad. I have been enjoying being Ernie. As in Bert and Ernie. Children like puppets. It’s a fact.

Children also need to learn about the plagues in Egypt. Because that’s important. Sadly this has been difficult to achieve with puppets. Until now. I give you the “Plague Puppets” courtesy of some Hebrew children’s resource site (perfect for your Old Testament needs)…

Cardboard Boxing

I like pugilistic endeavours. I haven’t really gotten into the whole Ultimate Fighter thing. But I would (watching not participating). If I thought my wife would let me… that’s neither here nor there.
Did you know that there’s a “Cardboard Tube Fighting Championship“… no? Well now you do – thanks to here. And it looks awesome. Here’s the official site. Anybody want to organise one in Townsville?

Toby’s Mac

Macs are cool. I don’t have mine yet, but already I know this.

I’m playing with Robyn’s now. And I like it. But this belief has been reinforced by a day watching the West Wing (starting from Series 1) – one of the perks of sickness.

I had never noticed this before. But Sam and Toby both write their speeches on Macs. How cool is that.

For all of those people thinking that this title was a reference to Christian music – you were wrong.

Putting things in perspective

I am, depending on swine flu, preaching this Sunday morning. I’m doing the fourth woe in Matthew 23. I’m going to use this video as an illustration. If I’m allowed out of bed.

Oh yeah, the doctor said it was too early to diagnose me clinically yet. So I have to wait to see if it gets worse.

Here’s the passage.

“23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

Blogology

I’ve been, as a result of some ill conceived posts in the last couple of weeks, and heated debates here and elsewhere, rethinking my approach to blogging. A little. Not a lot.

My problems involve a gap in my understanding of this blog and its function, and my approach to posting my thoughts and opinions.

Izaac is experiencing similar reservations much earlier in his blogging career. I’d like to prolong that career as long as possible, because I enjoy reading his thoughts and opinions.

To start with – I repent of the times when I have not been loving in the comments. It’s easy to forget that there’s no non-verbal communication at play and that other people own their opinions and positions much more vehemently than I may.

I love discourse, discussion and argument. I love the free and frank exchange of ideas and opinions. What I don’t love is snide pedantry, discussion free of warmth, and comments just for the purpose of disagreement. Wise people whose company I enjoy most in the real world have indicated that I’m not as pleasurable here as in the real world – both in comments here, and elsewhere. One such person made a comment that offering sarcasm and objections without solutions is pretty hollow. I agree. I was convicted by that. And I think commenters here should be too.

Another person suggested that I need to be more careful that I don’t come across as an arrogant chauvinist. These comments both came from people I love and respect – so thanks guys.

It’s also becoming increasingly apparent that not all of my readers know me in the real world – and that’s exciting on some levels, but also scary. Because observers looking at some of my arguments in comments here and elsewhere may not be aware of the real world relationships at play. It’s just something else for me to be mindful as I write, and others to be mindful as they read.

But, the onus for fixing this “problem” does not rest solely on me…

You, dear readers (and commenters), have a job to do too.

1. Understand the medium.
This is a blog. It until very recently was a blog that bore my name, and as such could not be mistaken for anything but my thoughts and personal opinion. It needs to be read as such. It’s not gospel. It’s often not set in stone. I think of some of my posts as a bit of a journal tracking my thoughts, or an opportunity to flesh out my thoughts. I’m more than happy for you to engage, debate and discuss… but if you insult or annoy me it’s likely that I’ll respond defensively.

2. Play nice
I was pretty horrified a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned the oversharing saga on Facebook and one of my friends jokingly took another non-mutual friend to task for their lengthy response.
I’d like to think that the many people who come here would pay each other a certain degree of courtesy.

The blogosphere is a wonderful place – and it’s great for sharing ideas, meeting new people, networking, etc. But in every society there must be “rules”… Communicate Jesus has a list of “rules” that Desiring God (John Piper’s blog) uses to moderate discussion. I don’t really like them. They won’t really work here because I’m happy for people to do many of the things it rules out (commenting off topic, self promotion etc).

But I have one rule to propose. I am happy for people to disagree with what I have to say. I love discussing things. I don’t like constant negativity. I recognise that I will often say things that need to be disagreed with.

Also, given that my wife, and one of my sisters, are now blogging here occasionally (and I’m happy to throw open the doors to other people who express an interest in posting from time to time) I’m going to treat being nasty to them pretty seriously as is my want as a husband and brother…

So I’m instituting this rule:

If you are going to engage in commenting here you must write one encouraging comment for every two negative comments.

I’m not going to enforce this strictly. It would be too hard to police. But if I do notice a string of negativity I’m just going to edit your comments (because I have that power) to make them say really nice things about me. Or delete them.

Your thoughts? How can we make the online world – and this neck of the woods – a nicer place? What would make you comment more often?

Clocking Off

Clocks
Like the Mario thing I have heaps of clocks and watches just waiting to be posted, so here they all are at once…

The Mississippi Clock – available from Amazon – counts the passing of time in the traditional.

Or how about the whiteboard clock – a clock that allows you to jot down appointments so that you don’t forget.

This one takes the whiteboard clock concept to a new level. It automatically wipes out the past…

Some people get up so early that they need to callibrate their eyes. This test pattern wall clock should help…

Sometimes when you wake up you want to be alert quickly, and alarmed, this pneumatic alarm clock will do the trick…

This digital “black and white” clock is digital technology taken to a whole new level. And it’s pretty awesome.

Digital clock: only figures, no case, only the necessary – only accurate time. Each figure has self-contained power supply and independent control, it can be fixed to any surface autonomously. A light sensor will switch the clock to an invert mode: the figures are white in the dark time of day and black at daytime.

Watches

Here’s a spherical pocket watch of awesome.

The problem with the myriad social networks available to divert and distract is finding the right time to use each… that’s no longer a problem with this social networking watch.

Look mum, no hands. This is a ground breaking moment in clock technology… Blue for hours, red for minutes.

Unblocking the queue

Thanks to the awesome power of Google Reader I have a stack of things (more than 200) that I have the best intentions to post.

Sometimes these build up, and as you’ll no doubt note from the post of Mario stuff, and the post of clocks, they are often variations of a theme.

This post is all about Tetris. Enjoy.

The perfect Tetris fit out requires perfect Tetris cushions…

Like these…

These Tetris shelves are part of a bigger collection from a pretty clever design firm. They’re the almost perfect modular storage system…

Tetris is so good that it’s captured the heart, minds and skin of fans.

There’s also this salt and pepper shaker created by this clever Flickr user.

Credit for finding these gems must go to Walyou.

Super Mario Art

There’s a whole lot of awesome Super Mario Bros stuff out there just waiting to be posted.

To save myself some of the trouble I’m going to compile it all into one post.

Found here.

This vibrating Mushroom Cushion ($US11.99) will give new life to your room.

This Etsy user has a whole stack of bed spreads and other 8 bit inspired manchester.

A game is only as good as its collection of villains. Here’s someone’s take on how the bad guys were cast…

Obviously Super Mario Bros was a good game. And much more entertaining than that video. Good enough to inspire this sort of street art…

Or these sorts of incredibly painful tattoos…

And this sort of painstaking dedication to converting things into Japanese artwork…

This, for those not familiar with the whole Mario thing, is someone’s attempt to get everything turned into a handy graphical representation of a family tree – you can get a bigger version here.

And finally, this is a shirt laying down the life lessons learned from a life playing Mario games…

Sticking around

Sticky tape. It’s so versatile. If I’m not using it to hold broken things together – I’m using it for some sort of nefarious inter-office purposes.

You could be using the power of stickytape for so much more. Like inter-office football tournaments. You can buy a roll of this here, and check out the guy who designed it (and the second roll of "frame" tape too)…

Go where others fear to tread

You’re torn right. A bike. Walking. It’s so hard for the environmentally conscious fitness freak to decide how to get to work. Oh, and there’s fitting in the gym too… Here’s a solution. A treadbike. From Wired. There’s a company making these – and they’ve taken it to a whole new level of production quality…

Flipping the bird

I’m sick. So this might not be as funny if I were well…

Meal break Musings

Back by popular demand…so i was meant to write blogs here, but then i haven’t since the very first one. This is mostly because 1. I dont have time to write blogs. 2. I dont think people have time to read my blogs. Then with the marketing knowledge that i posses i thought about a solution to this problem – short blogs which i do have time to write in my lunch break, and that you have time to read during your lunch break. Not that i am assuming you would chose to use your precious 30 min meal break to come and read this. It should only take a couple of minutes, or less. It is really just going to be one sentence about something i’ve been muling over.

EG.

Why is it that – it is only socially acceptable for Asians to wear facemasks in public?

Hmmm…food for thought.

I’ll keep you posted (irregularly obviously!)

Spring cleaning

Spring has sprung – well, it feels like it has for those of us living in the tropics and enjoying 27 degree days.

I’ve done some further rethinking about how I structure this here page – and I’ve moved the daily posts of links out of the “Curiosities” column and into the far right.

You’ll also notice some new little images in the footer which were fun to put together. I may move to styling all my images like little polaroids, but we’ll see.

If you’ve got more suggestions for tweaks I should make – hit me up in the comments. I’ve got a fair bit of time on my hands this week.

This little piggy…

It seems I’ve picked up a case of H1N1. We’ll never know for sure… but Robyn went to the doctor yesterday and was diagnosed, and now I’m sick too. I’m going to the doctor this afternoon.

So expect more posts today, tomorrow and Friday.

Robyn wants to make it clear that we’re not dying. So it’s too early to start dividing up our possesions amongst yourselves.

One for the books

I’m a sucker for a good bit of other person promotion. And it’s probably time I mentioned Goannatree anyway.

It’s a good place to read intelligent scholarship from a Christian who is into literature, the arts and all sorts of culture.

This week Goannatree is running a book giveaway to encourage lurkers out of the woodworks – and probably to score a swag of new readers. So get along, check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

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