A long time ago in a galaxy far away a stream of text was released with earth as in its path. Or so it seems.
This video made me laugh.
Month: February 2010
A Swift rebuke
I have to confess that other than that she was the girl Kanye interrupted there’s not a whole lot I know about Taylor Swift. Apparently I’m not missing much though… here’s an infographic about the themes and motiffs of her songs. It’s probably slanderously simplistic. But I like it. So there.
From here (an article that is doubtlessly slanderous in its views – perhaps justifiably so).
If Swift’s work connects with teenage girls, it does so on the most simplistic, reductive territory of all: pining for boys, walking in the rain, kissing in the rain, crying drops of tears on her guitar, driving in trucks with cool boys, wanting boys she can’t have, more rain, more letter-writing, more stalking, more broken hearts, breathing problems as a side-effect of broken hearts, fairytale princess this, white horse that, more pining at the window, more psuedo-stalking, more incomplete hearts yearning for your touch, and one song that misinterprets Shakespeare and The Scarlet Letter so criminally I’m certain she’s never read either.
Swift simply hasn’t had the life experience and doesn’t inherently possess the emotional maturity to create great art. Which is fine — most young pop stars don’t, which is why they don’t win Grammys.
Nice.
Lava Lamp Love
I love my lava lamp. I picked it up for $15 from a market about eight years ago – much to my father’s chagrin. “It’ll never last,” said he. It has thus far proved him wrong. And he was, at one point, admittedly envious.
I’m told that Andrew and Simone’s boys like some of the stuff I post here – and I know they’ve been working on their own lava lamps… so here’s a Lava Lamp recipe I found at “What’s that stuff“… a cool site exploring the ingredients of stuff. Sadly it seems most of the ingredients are a “trade secret” or not available in the home laboratory… but this is a start.
Water and wax, which the original patents name as main ingredients, remain components of the commercial recipe, says Tom Spain, vice president of sales, marketing, and product development for Haggerty Enterprises, the official U.S. manufacturer of Lava brand lamps. Additional agents, he explains, help the wax gently plume upward instead of breaking apart into bubbles as it is heated and keep wax from sticking to the sides of the container.
Walker’s U.S. patent mentions additives such as dye, mineral oil, carbon tetrachloride, and polyethylene glycol (PEG), but the exact formula of commercial lamps is a trade secret. Spain tells C&EN that only five or six staff chemists know the formula and are in charge of occasional reformulations. Densities must be recorded for each batch of wax that Haggerty makes, which is mixed in 5-foot-tall vats in factories in China.
Last but not least, the water layer is added to the cooled wax very slowly so as to avoid creating emulsions, which are cloudy-looking oil-water mixtures. In fact, the recipe for the water layer is carefully adjusted to perfectly complement the density of each unique batch of wax.
Pacman media shelf keeps your loungeroom ghost free
For those looking to brighten up a loungeroom or home theatre with some Pacmany goodness I suggest going no further than this set of shelves. For those not looking to do that – I suggest checking out this shelf and reconsidering.
Uninstallation Art
This is a cool sculpture. Created by artist Caleb Larsen, it is set up to perpetually sell itself on eBay.
Every ten minutes the black box pings a server on the internet via the ethernet connection to check if it is for sale on the eBay. If its auction has ended or it has sold, it automatically creates a new auction of itself.
If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. The new owner must then plug it into ethernet, and the cycle repeats itself.
Strange books for adults
A few days ago I shared a bunch of odd books for kids – here’s the equivalent post for adults. Most of these come from this list of ten strange books… which in turn comes from the Abe Books “Weird Books Room“. Every aspiring writer wants their tome to end up listed here… don’t they?
Here’s one for impressing your guests:
And one for the Emo first home buyer… how hard can it be to just paint everything black?
Looking for some Bible study material? How about Bible study with the Clampetts?
How about some arts and crafts for the construction site where all you have is Duct Tape?
Want a romantic career? Consider proctology and get yourself a copy of “The Romance of Proctology” which has been out of print since the publishing company realised what proctology actually was and pulled their fingers out.
And finally, here’s one I might actually buy – If I ever want to properly take over the world…
Colour me Ironman
The black Iron Man Decal for the Mac a few weeks ago was pretty cool – but it’s not as cool as this coloured one. Also from Etsy.
Visiting grammar
One of the perks of moving back to Brisbane is that we’re living around the corner from my gran for the first time ever – she moved to Brisbane this year from regional New South Wales. It’s nice having the family together.
I have no doubt that my gran would be horrified by the story I’m about to share with you. It comes after Robyn and I (along with some other first years at QTC) took a crash course in English grammar as part of our first Greek lesson today.
There may be hope for us yet – apparently first year university students in Canada are demonstrating a complete lack of proficiency in the English language. This is happening all over the world, but some of the quotes from lecturers at the university are brilliant.
“Little happy faces … or a sad face … little abbreviations,” show up even in letters of academic appeal, says Khan Hemani.
“Instead of ‘because’, it’s ‘cuz’. That’s one I see fairly frequently,” she says, and these are new in the past five years.
I must confess – in the past I was a complete comma fiend. My father always used to bang on about run on sentences. I solved that problem by replacing commas with dashes and throwing in the occasional ellipses between disparate clauses. This little quote from a second professor is pretty funny.
“Punctuation errors are huge, and apostrophe errors. Students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for. None. Absolutely none.”
“I get their essays and I go ‘You obviously don’t know what a sentence fragment is. You think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words’,” said Budra.
What your church sign may or may not say about your church
The Naked Pastor isn’t on the same page as me theologically – but sometimes he’s on the same page cynically. This little deconstruction of the typical church sign made me laugh… I had been thinking about the way every church I’ve ever been to has a little “welcome” blurb on the service sheet that says pretty much the same thing – and I don’t think anybody thinks that paragraph is even remotely welcoming. Welcoming comes from personal interaction not from words on a page.
But it’s one thing to point out a problem and another to solve it – how do we welcome visitors and newcomers without saying “welcome, it’s great to have you with us” or something cliched like that…
Baconspresso
You know I love coffee. You know I love bacon… but what about Bacon coffee? Urgh.
But that’s exactly what the guy behind “Putting weird stuff in coffee” did. Bacon coffee – breakfast in a cup.
The findings:
“This project was a little daunting at first. The world of meat-based coffee additives is, as far as we could tell, completely unexplored. It could have turned out disgusting. But to be honest, it wasn’t. The bacon added a subtle smokey flavour that did not clash at all with the dark roasted coffee. The bacon grease left a beautiful sparkly film on top and gave the coffee a creamier texture than usual.”
YouTube Tuesday: Party Trick edition
So keen am I to bring you this regular column that I’m posting these having not actually watched them. We’re still working with a tethered iPhone here…
What’s your party trick?
Cool gear
This is a nice little ring that will no doubt keep one occupied for hours during boring lectures, public transport trips and sermons. If you want one it’ll cost you just $165.
How (not) to be scammed
An anti Nigerian scam website has recently conducted a series of interviews with a previously convicted – and now reformed – scammer who supplied this advice on how not to be caught up in conversation with Nigerian scammers – if you’re interested in a spot of scambaiting you should do the reverse.
The biggest thing I can say is to delete the emails and never to reply. Once you reply your email address will be put on a list and sold to other gangs, even if you never reply again. It just tells them that the address is real and that somebody reads email going to that address. If they can’t get you with 419 (advance fee fraud) they will try phishing or viruses to get your banking details and take your money that way.
I used lots of different stories to get people to send money. I used the dying widow story a lot, saying that I was an old lady dying of cancer and had fallen out with my children. I wanted to give my money to charity and didn’t trust them to carry out my wishes, so was looking for someone outside of the country to make sure it went to the right place. So whatever the story is, make sure you delete the email, because you can be sure it is a scam.
Another thing is not to put email addresses anywhere on the internet. If it is on a guestbook or message board, or on a website anywhere then the foot soldiers will find it and put it on their list.
Ten Word Wikipedia an exercise in brevity and succinct awesomeness
You know what. You can take your 140 characters and stick them somewhere else on the internet. Because 10 word Wiki is where it’s at as far as concise online writing is concerned.
The “encyclopedia for the ADD generation” has a ten word limit.
Michael Jackson
“Legendary pop singer/songwriter, trouble with press. Died June 2009. “
Australia
“Send your criminals down south to develop a horrible accent.”
Or:
Vast southern country inhabited by ex-convicts, aboriginees, kangaroos and sharks.
The rules are cool:
- Describe your subject in ten words. No more, no less.
- We like to stick to single sentence descriptions. Please try.
- For more fun, make your revision comments ten words also.
- Regarding images copyright is bad, drawing your own is awesome
- The facts can be sexy, but don’t use personal opinions.
- There’s no such word as libel. We’re fairly laid back
- Bonus “points” for using humour or indeed using some Gludu
A new dawn
College starts today. Robyn and I decided to set a precedent and be on time. Early even. So we left home at 7am. I didn’t even know there was a 7am. Let alone a 6am.
Needless to say we got to college fairly early. Earlier than anybody else – staff included.
There are 84 students at QTC this year apparently – and more than half of those are first years. And we’re keener than all of them (judging by arrival time alone).
Simone, in a little piece of offline wisdom, told us that the first few days of college are going to be all about establishing a pecking order (at least in our minds). I think it’ll be a bit like first year uni except without the low cut clothing and unrealistic expectations of finding true love in the lecture theatre.
I think pecking order should be established chronologically. So we’re first.