Here’s a great book from Awful Library Books… if anyone can track down a copy I will pay real money for it…
Month: October 2009
A posterous idea
Posterous seems like a pretty nifty service.
Ok, I’ve tried it, it seems to work.
Posterous lets you essentially blog by email – it hosts all media files and syncs with just about every online service I can imagine… like WordPress.
I’m thinking it will be a very useful tool. So useful I’ve set up one account for blogging purposes, and one for personal use, which will probably end up being a scrap book for blogging.
I’m also thinking I might reduce the amount of personal stuff I put up here – so that when tribes of angry atheists come marching through and insulting me they have less stones to throw. Posterous might fill that gap.
Having said that – feel free to check out my posterous page here…
Bookkeeping
It’s been a while since I plugged booko. It’s very handy. You can price match on books from online retailers. And it’s an Australian site…
I bought a batch of books last week – including Ratio – the conceptual cook book Simone was looking for many months ago…
Giving notice
I was a little bit surprised that so many people spoke out in defense of announcements at church. I want to be clear that I’m talking about things that are generally covered in the “news” section of a church bulletin, and hopefully these days the church’s website and Facebook page*.
Announcements are dead wood. They should be cut. Like a pine forest. They should just be printed on literal dead wood.
I don’t buy into the whole “seeker sensitive” style service where everything is run for visitors and the people who are part of the church family are ignored. But if you’re spending 10 minutes reading out the handout that everybody is holding already** that’s 10 minutes of wasted time. You could, though I wouldn’t, fit three more songs or one long prayer in that time. There are myriad things that can be done in ten minutes that are more beneficial to church life than boring advertisements for things that are no doubt already boringly described in your boring newsletter.
You know what happens when church is boring – people fall out of windows and die. And Paul isn’t going to pop in and resurrect the poor souls that expire during your overly long promo of the church working bee.
* Here are some great tips from Mikey for how churches (and in fact any organisation) should use Facebook. He’s much better equipped than me to comment on this matter… I’ve only got 27 fans on my Facebook fan page after a week of relentless self promotion… you could become one now. It would make me feel special…
Here are some more Facebook friendly resources I found through Church Marketing Sucks… an e-book called “Facebook for Pastors” and a set of general principles on using Facebook for your business.
**And while I’m on that note – what’s with churches (not just ours, though it’s guilty here) being so miserly about the number of handouts they print. One per couple? Per day? Are you serious? My attendance isn’t worth 5 cents to you? You’re expecting me to “give generously” when the offering comes around and yet I have to share the handout…
I also miss handouts with sermon outlines written in them.
On simplicity
A nice reminder that perhaps you don’t need to pad your product or service with every feature imaginable.
This is how I think church services should be approached too. Get rid of the clutter and noise (like announcements) and just do the essentials.
From stuffthathappens.
A trick of the light…
Look at this picture up close, and then look at it from a few metres away. I’m not sure this is an application Einstein considered when studying light.
From bits and pieces.
This one you can just look at up close…
From Neatorama.
Sign language: Friend request
Some church signs – like the famous St Barneys sign (that prompted a tit for tat with a pub) – start discussions amongst people, which I am sure they’re meant to do.
Some are stupid and do the church (locally and universally) a disservice.
I remember around election time in Brisbane a few years ago a church had “give to God what is right not what is left”.
Sadly I can’t tell if I like these or not – what say you readers?
From here.
Title fit – I felt it
Palindromes are cool.
Your homework is to use these to write a palindromic haiku in the comments…
Poles apart
Today I didn’t blog much. You’ve noticed right?
Today was one of those days. One of those days that reminds me why it is I love my job.
This week I’m coordinating a photo shoot, so today I took a bunch of friends from church (and my wife, who doesn’t work on Mondays) to Magnetic Island.
We went for a bush walk, to a resort pool, to lunch at the island’s flashest restaurant, and to a backpackers hostel/wildlife park where our eight models were mobbed by rainbow lorikeets. It was pretty scary. For them.
Hilarious for onlookers. I’ll post a photo when we get them…
Tomorrow I’m off to a cattle station for an “outback” experience.
Pretty fly art
The internet is abuzz with this cool collection of dead fly art. And why wouldn’t it be. It’s so dazzlingly simple.
Pay it forward Japanese style
Kottke.org linked to this guy’s Japanese holiday story about a cool cafe concept.
They guy bought an orange juice – and was given an apple cider and bag of lollies… he was confused, and asked the cafe staff what had happened. The cafe had this rule”
At this cafe, you get what the person before you ordered. The next person gets what you ordered.
Which is pretty bizarre.
Before they left the guys who found this place got into the spirit of things.
“Mike went up to the cafe, slapped down a couple thousand yen (~$25), and ordered a little bit of everything: some ice cream, some snacks, some candy, some drinks, a Japanese horn-of-mysterious-plenty intentionally set up as a shocking surprise for the next lucky customer. (After his order, Mike received single iced coffee.)
As we walked away from the cafe, with just the right amount of delay, we heard an extremely excited “arigato goazimasu!! thank you so much!!” yelled in our direction, from an ecstatic mom and her equally excited young son. They truly appreciated the surprise.”
Here’s a translation of the rules from the cafe…
- Let’s treat the next person. What to treat them with? It’s your choice.
- Even if it’s a group of friends or a family, please form a single-file line. Also, you can’t buy twice in a row.
- Please enjoy what you get, even if you hate it. (If you really, really hate it, let’s quietly give it to another while saying, “It’s my treat…”)
- Let’s say “Thank You! (Gochihosama)” if you find the person with your Ogori cafe card.
- We can’t issue a receipt.
Sing for your supper
Al Dente is the all singing, all dancing, king of the pasta pot. Chuck him in the water with your pasta and he’ll sing when it’s ready.
You can get your own little Al here – he’ll cost you three tenners.
A project for the weekend
If you’re not doing anything this weekend you could try to make this rubber band machine gun. Or this machine rubber band gun… either way it’ll be great fun going back to work with this on Monday…
Out on a limb
Am I the only person who likes to pick complex words with xs and other uncommon letters when playing hangman?
I thought this picture was funny. But I’m not sure why…
I thought this one from Flickr was pretty good too…
Traffic jam
It seems I’m not alone in being inundated with traffic. Over at City on a Hill Jeff asked if Christians should be defending marriage – ie the traditional definition of marriage. I thought it was an interesting question, so I threw in my two cents and left. Unfortunately I left before the fun started.
Jeff was featured on the WordPress.com homepage and he got quite few comments. They make for interesting reading… one American guy suggested doing away with the separation of church and state.
You should read Jeff’s blog – his posts are bite sized, like meals at a fine restaurant.