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.

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.

January 5, 2011

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.

January 5, 2011

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.

January 5, 2011

Work tomorrow…

Not sure how I feel about that yet.

January 3, 2011

Modelling the city: with maths

This is pretty cool, a feature in the New York Times about a guy who has “solved the city” – or rather, come up with mathematical expressions for certain inevitable urban constants.

“After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few exquisitely simple equations. For example, if they know the population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate, with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system. These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people “agglomerate,” cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars…

“What we found are the constants that describe every city,” he says. “I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.”

January 3, 2011

Daily Mail Fail: Interesting flood coverage

When I want to know what’s going on in regional Queensland I turn to that bastion of quality reportage – England’s Daily Mail. Because they have all the bases covered. Reporting not just on Queensland but the separatist state of Capricornia – there will be some in North Queensland who think this is a good thing indeed.

From the Daily Mail, via Findo.

January 3, 2011

Gingerbread Cities: The only way to celebrate Christmas

You know that Chrisco mob who start advertising for next year’s Christmas hampers in November, just when you realise that you have to do all your shopping for Christmas. Well. This is not like that. Really.

But if you’re into impressing people with gingerbread architecture – then you need to check out these 15 Gingerbread cities/landmarks.

Here’s Sydney.

January 3, 2011

How to survive the Rapture (if not raptured)

There are plenty of services for pet care post rapture that you can google. But what do we do about people? Well. For posterity’s sake – this guy recorded a survival guide for the dirt/paper eaters who want to survive post rapture.

January 3, 2011

How to stop the atheists

Every time you sing this song/prayer an atheist loses his wings. And his Dawkins library.

January 2, 2011

A new candidate for “worst Christian song ever”

Ouch.

January 1, 2011

More “Drunk” in the Spirit nonsense

I can not believe that there are more than five people in the world who are part of this creepy and crazy movement.

But here you go.

This guy has a mo-hawk.

This guy has a goatee.

Both are completely bonkers.

January 1, 2011

This is the Lobster Pot suit you have been waiting for

So, you didn’t buy me a Christmas present.

Well. It’s not too late. This costume will do.

If you buy it for me I will invite you around for dinner. We’ll have seafood. And I’ll wear the costume.

January 1, 2011

2010 on St. Eutychus

I missed my end of year wrap up yesterday because I was reading a book. Sorry. But here are some facts, figures and highlights from the year that was.

Stats

In 2009, 31,705 Absolute Unique Visitors made 48,733 Visits, making 82,916 Pageviews
In 2010, 31,869 Absolute Unique Visitors made 52,965 Visits, making 83,668 Pageviews.

At the time of writing I have 78 Facebook fans (become a fan – I’m now sharing links to stuff I don’t blog, or that is in my queue, to Facebook fans ahead of time), and 22 Google Connections.

So small increases across the board – but more importantly. No decreases. Hooray.

In 2009 I posted 1,106 posts here on St. Eutychus. In 2010 I managed 1,434. A 29% increase. And some people said being a college student would slow down my blogging. As it was – I used college as an opportunity to create more content.

My favourite college related series and posts from the year.

1. Some language resources (some for Mac, some for typing on a Mac)
2. Reflections on the “Disciplines of a Godly theological student”
3. My guide to First Year Greek
4. The things I love about College
5. The things I’d change about College
6. My Wisdom Literature Essay (part two, three, four, five, six) – my favourite essay of the year.
7. Pre-exam prep: New Testament 101, New Testament 102, Old Testament 101, Old Testament 102, Church History 101, Hebrew 102
8. Greece and Turkey Report(s).
9. Liveblogging Ben Witherington.
10. Liveblogging Gary Millar (one, two, three, four, five)

My favourite useful posts from this year

1. How to write a Media Release to promote your church event
2. How to talk to Atheists about Christianity
3. Awareness Raising is Overrated, (and the prequel – The Facebook Booby Trap, and the sequel about Movember, and a follow up about Social Media)
4. How to not raise bitter ministry children
5. Social Media Strategies for Churches (and a follow up on Venn Theology)
6. How not to be very good at Facebook
7. My election posts – Julia Gillard’s atheism, my Christian values election scorecard, why I won’t vote for Family First, wrap up.
8. Coffee and ministry.
9. Five cheap ways to exegete your suburb.
10. My Five Steps to Better Coffee series

Many of these are the type of thing I hope to post at Venn Theology this year (2011).

My favourite coffee posts this year

1. Seven Deadly Coffee Sins
2. From Cherry to the Cup – a look at processing and roasting coffee: part one, two, three, four, five
3. Brisbane cafe reviews: Dandelion and Driftwood, Cup, BlackStar
4. The sin of Instant Coffee.
5. Coffee and Ministry
6. A coffee gift guide.
7. Science says “don’t freeze your coffee”
8. How to make Greek Coffee.
9. A beautiful guide to coffee drinks
10. My “Five Steps to Better Coffee” Series

My favourite frivolity
But it wasn’t all serious. Here are some of my favourite posts/series from this year.

1. Ten steps to planting a mega church (with a follow-up “how to name your megachurch“)
2. 23 Bacon products that will take your breath away.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook.
4. The Devil Wants you Fat (series – that I probably should finish now I have a scanner).
5. Backwards Masking Unmasked (The Jacob Aranza Series)
6. Mad Skillz Week
7. Liveblogging Chuck Norris’ Invasion USA (part 2, part 3, part 4, Robyn’s report).
8. The Make Me A Mexican Challenge
9. About “Hot Wives”
10. About Church Slogans (a bad example).
11. A Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (part one b, part two, part three)
12. The definitive and authoritative guide to the six basic plot lines
13. A look at “Objective Ministries” crazy Christian conspiracy to take over the moon
14. Reverse engineering the perfect chip
15. The Art of Improvised weaponry
16. K-Strass the Yo-Yo guy

Most popular posts in 2010
Here are the most popular posts (mostly because google loves them) by visits this year. A couple of these were written last year and continue to attract a steady stream of traffic.

1. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast (2009), the 2010 follow up was equally popular
2. Five things that would make atheists seem nicer: this accounted for about a quarter of 2009’s traffic. By itself. Not so much in 2010, but still enough to rank second.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook: This one had a bit of a spike in traffic around publication, but continues to get about 10 hits a day.
4. Ten steps to planting a megachurch: This was one of my favourites, so I’m glad it did well.
5. Chuck Norris Jeans: The little engine that could. Google loves this post.
6. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress: Certainly my geekiest post of the year.
7. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
8. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
9. Let’s not fly Jetstar: a 2009 post about a Jetstar nightmare.
10. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.