You know what you need to help you truly understand the motives of those youths lurking by the service station, or crowding around wearing hoodies at the shopping centre… Trading Cards. The Crabby Old Man has you covered.
Month: February 2010
How to be “awesomely” sneaky like the CIA
This is one of those “ah ha” moments. The CIA has released some operating secrets from the pre-technology era. Those guys were high tech. You can buy a book filled with awesome tips. Like these. Via the Boston Globe.
That’s not the best one.
And this, friends, is my excuse. It’s particularly prescient because a good friend told me (before I left Townsville) that he doesn’t think of me as a deep thinker.
A lightbulb moment
Cardboard tube fighting is so passe. All the tough guys are now taking their sporting conflict to the streets with fluorescent tubes. At least in Japan.
Once, at work, after replacing a dead bulb I thought it would be fun to swing the old tube around and ended up whacking it on the big bin outside. They shatter like crazy. I can’t imagine this being good for one’s health.
Some of the pictures at this link are a little disturbing. This is the least disturbing of the bunch.
How to win at eBay
Here’s a useful guide to always winning at eBay – even when you lose.
Step One:
Find the product you want.
Step Two:
Save the product to your watch list.
Step Three:
Wait.
Step Four:
Just before the item ends, enter the maximum amount you are willing to pay for the item.
Step Five:
Click submit.
From here.
There’s a kid’s book for that
Got an awkward concept to explain to your child? No doubt there’s already a book to help you explain with easy to understand illustrations.
Here’s a post from elsewhere that has collected some for you. Just in case.
Know your Batmans
It can be confusing having so many Batman franchises to keep abreast with. Here’s a helpful chart via BookofJoe.
How to be awesome like Steven Seagal
You’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that Steven Seagal was more awesome than you were willing to give him credit. Haven’t you. Well it’s true. Not only has he starred in such awesome titles as Half Past Dead and Under Siege, not only does he do all his own stunts (probably not true), and not only does he have the worst combination of receding hairline and ponytail since, well, ever… he has a new TV show coming out. A reality TV show.
But wait. You say. This is not the blogging fodder I’m expecting at St. Eutychus. An ode to a washed up B-grade action movie star (who also happens to be a blues musician)…
Well, it gets even more awesome. The show, called Lawman, unearths a deep and dark secret. Seagal has spent some 20 years deputising for his local police department, kicking bad guys around for real.
Seagal, 58, who has a second home in bayou country, is a fully commissioned deputy and spends several months a year in Louisiana. While on the force, he usually works five-day shifts.
Jefferson Parish Col. John Fortunato, who partners with Seagal on the 13-episode series, says Lawman captures deputies in a high-crime arena – interrogating suspects, breaking up fights, chasing bad guys and making arrests.
Just shoot me
This is a cool camera that takes the notion of a photoshoot pretty literally.
YouTube Tuesday: Steve Jobs should cut the adjectives
Why don’t we all pretend, for a moment, that it’s Tuesday – and not Thursday. Because you are a gracious readership.
Steve Jobs’ product launch speeches are truly superlative… or full of superlatives.
You’ve seen almost the same video before (here somewhere). Here’s the launch of the iPad. Reduced to adjectives.
How to promote yourself like Leonardo Da Vinci
I don’t think there’s a figure in history with talents as diverse as Leonardo Da Vinci’s. He was cool. A true renaissance man. If you require proof of this coolness – you need look no further than the fact that he has been featured in popular cultural texts as diverse as Ever After (the Cindarella Story) and Assassins Creed 2. Because his coolness is transcendent.
He was, it appears, an incredible self promoter. Here is a letter he sent to the Duke of Milan when he was thirty years old.
There are eleven points. You can read them all here. But my favourites are:
Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.
He was, it seems, a ninja.
I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.
A ninja who made tanks.
I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance.
It’s funny that Einstein is remembered for his contribution to weaponry though he set out to be a scientist – and Leonardo is remembered for his contribution to art though he set out to be a weapons developer.
Item number 11 on the list says:
I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.
The promises even come with a satisfaction guarantee and demonstration…
“And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency – to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.”
Clearly, in hindsight, he was both competent and capable. Which is probably the key to being successful. If you’re justone of these things without the other you’re doomed for failure.
Advanced guide to Espresso Production
Intelligentsia Coffee in the US is probably the world’s leading producer of quality coffee. It’s a big call. But their staff win all sorts of barista competitions.
Here’s a video that goes through all the basics of coffee production.
Espresso, Intelligentsia from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.
Via Davidould.net and CafeDave.
A new category is born
I suspect I’ll blog a fair bit about college this year. Given that it’s what I’ll predominantly be thinking about. So it seems fitting to have a College category.
For the record – I’m enrolled in a Masters of Divinity at the Queensland Theological College. Which is based at Emmanuel College at the University of Queensland.
I’m a Presbyterian Candidate which means I also have to study a bunch of subjects like church polity and the Westminster Confession.
Fun times.
Watch your Biblical language
Today’s mission is to learn the (biblical) Hebrew Alphabet. It looks a little something like this (from right to left as is its wont):
I’m told this website is pretty helpful.
I have already learned the (biblical) Greek Alphabet. Which looks a little something like this.
I have a feeling that my learning style is blogging.