Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

Dictapen

Livescribe is my next Christmas present. Unless I change my mind in the 350 days or so between now and then. It would take all the pain out of lectures. Because you can scribble and draw little bits and pieces – and the whole time it’ll record the sound that’s going on in the background. Sounds useful.

A real pearler…

This guy named Calvin Wright was one of those loud talkers on a train. But he had a better reason than forgetting that he was wearing headphones…

For 41 years, the Athens man had a pearl from his mother’s necklace stuck in his ear canal. ER staff at St. Mary’s Hospital discovered it when Wright came in suffering from bronchitis this month.

“The nurse was checking my ear and said, ‘Do you use Q-Tips?'” Wright said. “I said yes, and she said, ‘you’ve got one in your right ear, I’ll get it out.’ She tried getting it and then she was like, ‘Whoa, this is hard. This is not a Q-Tip. Looks like you got a pearl in your ear.'”

Halo-ween: Real Life Red v Blue

This could possible be the most intricately designed set of Halloween costumes known to man. The guy didn’t just make one of these Halo MasterChief costumes for himself – he helped out his friends too.

Details on how he did it, and a photo essay of sorts, can be found here.

Right now I’m just going to bask in his glory for a second. Wow. Lucky he made costumes for everybody or he may well have ended up single. The best bit, is that these are actually all the characters from Red vs Blue.

Helping out a street preacher:

The Dos and Don’ts of Facebook Photo Albums

My friend Steve Tran is a pretty top photographer, bloke, and coffee drinker. He wrote this post about Facebook photo albums that is worth thinking about if you’re the type of person who puts photos on Facebook. Like everything else in the world that’s good – he subscribes to a less is more philosophy of sorts. Read it.

He took this photo of me that I like so much I turned it into the background for my new about.me profile.

Here’s the reciprocal photo I took at the same time…

If Steve wanted to guest blog his photography tips from a presentation he did on our Toowoomba mission earlier this year I reckon that would be pretty worthwhile. Maybe I’ll ask him in this paragraph.

St. Eutychus Coffee Roastery now open for (more professional) business

Hey. Guess what. I sell roasted coffee. No doubt some of you know that. What you don’t know is two things.

I now have a snappy looking rubber stamp so my coffee bags are branded.

And also, you can now pay for the coffee as you order via Paypal. You don’t even have to have a Paypal account. Just a Credit Card. You can order from this page here. And I’m thinking I might even put the form in the sidebar on the front page.

Cool hey. I suggest you order away. You won’t regret it. Millions of people have already enjoyed coffee from St. Eutychus Coffee. And that’s the only exaggerated sentence in this post.

Floody Floody

Robyn spent the earlier days of this week on her parent’s farm starting the clean up after serious flooding in Dalby. Most farmers out there have insurance coverage that doesn’t include flood cover. The floods damaged crops, wiped out seed for the next harvest, and caused some serious erosion to the dam walls. Not to mention destroying a bunch of household goods.

Robyn shot some footage that she’s putting together into a lengthy production. Here’s an iMovie trailer I put up on Facebook.

Please keep farmers around Queensland in your prayers, and if you haven’t already, please give generously to the Premier’s Flood Appeal.

Art-key-type: Archetypal Keyboard Art

Remember ASCII art? No. Well. You’re not a nerd then.

But this collection of typed art leaves most of that ASCII stuff for dead – because it’s produced Old Skool. On a Typewriter.

More here, at artist Keira Rathbone’s portfolio.

Of Peas and Cues: Why some people need autocue

This video just goes to show that peas and cues matter.

The Ring Call: Wrestling for the Gospel

I posted something about Christian Wrestling somewhere before (the “Christian Wrestling” tag below will take you there). There’s a documentary about the industry coming out, a little too late to capture the zeitgeist inspired by Mickey O’Rourke’s The Wrestler.

Wrestling For Jesus Trailer from Nathan Clarke on Vimeo.

Interesting. And slightly oddway. You can follow the story of Wrestling For Jesus: The Tale of T-Money here.

I guess God wrestled. In Genesis. So it must be ok. And it was pretty “fake” too – so far as the outcome being scripted and the in ring storytelling being the most significant part.

Jacob Wrestles With God

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

The Religious Write

Posted for the pun. Which I stole from somewhere else.

You can get them from here if you want.

The Force: Coming soon to a church near you

This is doing the rounds of the blogosphere, but is too good not to post:

Benny Hinn and the Force.

Almost as funny as Benny Hinn and the song “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”…

Tagxedo: A shapely Wordle

Steve at Communicate Jesus dug this up. Tagxedo. It makes shaped tag clouds. Beautiful.

Here is a dove shaped cloud from the sermon I preached on the Beatitudes for my “trials for license” in Townsville.

Brewtiful toys

Amongst the really awesome presents I received this year were two most bits of coffee paraphernalia – a syphon with its own little butane burner thing, and an aeropress. Both are great. Both use filters. A solution for the constant necessity of buying filter papers for the aeropress comes in the form of these chemically etched filter disks from Coava

They used the same method to make a filter cone (which they’ve called a “Kone”).

Kones are used in filter coffee makers like the Chemex. Which will be my next coffee frontier.

Also on the Internet, here’s a comprehensive repository of different methods of preparing your morning cup of coffee.

Check it out.

Should you “friend” your parents on Facebook: Flowchart

My parents are on Facebook. Are yours? I had no problem friending mine. My theory on privacy is “don’t do anything in public you don’t want God/your parents finding out about”…

But for those of you not so comfortable with your parents tracking your every escapade, I give you:

From Cool Material.

Kinect: making dreams come true

I don’t have an X-Box, so I don’t have Kinect.

But. That could all change. Just so I can be like Tom Cruise.

DepthJS from Fluid Interfaces on Vimeo.

So cool. From here. This has been doing the rounds – I even saw it on the Herald website.