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.

My Cricket Clearance List

This is, in order, who I’d get rid of from the Australian cricket scene if I could.

1. Ricky Ponting. Can’t bat (anymore). Can’t captain.
2. Bill Lawry. The most annoying commentator in the world.
3. Mark Taylor. Only just beaten by Bill Lawry. These two have ruined my summer almost more than Ponting.
4. The selectors. Seriously. Get some new material.
5. Mitchell Johnson. Bowls well sometimes. Doesn’t know what he’s bowling the rest of the time.
6. Michael Clarke. Doesn’t seem to be able to see the ball most of the time.
7. Phillip Hughes. Needs some time to get his head right.
8. Peter Siddle. Hard worker, gets wickets eventually, but seems to lull opposition batsmen into form with his boringness and stupid goatee.
9. Ben Hilfenhaus. How long can we carry this guy? Has done so little that I almost forgot that he was in the team.

December 28, 2010

Buy Your Plastic Jesus

I’m sure some people could find some use for this commercial for a non-existent Jesus action figure (there are real ones out there).

December 28, 2010

New Third Eagle Single out now.

Check it. It’s about having children. Surely a sign that the end times aren’t happening just yet…

December 28, 2010

Yogi gets it in the neck

Boo Boo always struck me as slightly repressed. And because he’s short this was always going to happen. You can never really trust your shorter friends.

December 28, 2010

Visualising Facebook Friendships around the globe

This is a nice little visualisation of Facebook connections around the planet. All the lines on the map are created by connections between people (the brighter the line the more friendships exist along that axis.).

You can see it bigger, and read about the data set, here.

December 28, 2010

Mario: This is your life

Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto recently gave a tell all (almost) interview about the character Mario. The guys at ChurchCreate put some bits of the interview into nice graphics that you should totally check out.

You’ll learn all sorts of intereting bits and pieces about the mustachioed plumber.

Miyamoto made an interesting point about Mario’s development alongside the Nintendo platform from pre-NES days to the Wii.

“When we create games, the gamer really is the main character. In that regard it may not really matter who the main character is onscreen. But you know, Mario is someone who has become very familiar and I think it is that people are comfortable with becoming Mario.”

Mario really has grown and changed and evolved with the evolution of digital technology. The new technology is fresh and exciting and the next thing you know it becomes familiar and Mario follows that. He’s a familiar character, but he is also fresh because he is always doing new things based on what the technology allows him to do.”

Via ChurchCreate.

December 27, 2010

Shirt of the Day: Font Face

If Helvetica were a Mexican wrestler it would be called El Vetica. Or luchador (for those who know about these things).

Buy here.

December 27, 2010

News headlines posterised

This is cool. Some guy named Johnny Selman is turning news headlines into posters hoping to encourage more people to follow the comings and goings on the global stage.

Some samples:

“ANARCHISTS BLAMED FOR ROME EMBASSY BOMB ATTACKS”

“NUCLEAR SUBMARINE HMS ASTUTE RUNS AGROUND OFF SKYE”

December 27, 2010

DanKam: Make your Colourblindness disappear

I’m colour blind. If you’ve been reading for a while you’ll know this already. If this is a shock – please, take a seat, sip some water and calm down. It’s ok. I know you’ve just figured out why my clothes never really match and the explanatory power of that opening sentence has caused a revolution in your perception of me. But ease up turbo. Because this next bit of news will truly shock you.

There’s an iPhone app, called DanKam (apparently also available for Android) that essentially cures colourblindness. It is amazing. Following the success of Word Lens I thought “anything iPhone app developers say is now believable” and I took this for a spin. I was able to see one of those dot tests, well, the number in one of those dot tests, for the first time… but I’m not sure what I’m meant to be seeing in the right hand circle here…

Here’s a post on the programmer’s blog to explain away some of the magic.

Hopefully this will also help me overcome difficulties in such areas as calling my shots in pool (as in snooker, or billiards…) and driving (as in operating a motor vehicle).

December 27, 2010

Dough, a deer, a dough reindeer

An artist named Christopher Neimann set out to make some cool dough art for the NY Times. He succeeded. I think. There are more there.

Here are some more of my favourites.

Christoph Niemann - Holidays

December 26, 2010

Word Lens = Amazing

Check this out.

I downloaded the free version (a Spanish to English or English to Spanish module will set you back 4.99). And it works. Magic.

December 26, 2010

Fighting the war on Christmas

While I may think that some of the stuff these guys are saying is true – I may even agree with some of their thinking – I don’t think the way to fight the “War on Christmas”TM or put the “Christ back into Christmas” is to take an inflatable Santa to a firing range in order to pump him full of lead.

Dumb.

December 26, 2010

If Bieber were a Christian singer called “technopraise”…

He would look and sound like this monstrosity.

This kind of performance gives carols a bad name.

December 26, 2010

Dear Parents: a lesson in not giving your children instruments, iMovie and an internet connection

Once these videos are online, and have been discovered, there’s no turning back…

December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas

I’ve pretty much, as much as possible anyway, avoided writing anything too Christmassy this year. Because the Christian blogosphere tends to descend into a sea of red and white triteness at this time of year – or it starts banging on about some war on Christmas. I’m not hugely interested in writing either of those posts. So, let me say this: Merry Christmas.

And then let me point out that Christmas is about Jesus and church. That’s where the “mass” comes from. Right? But you don’t see anybody suggesting a “War on Church” – I guess because xmas still has the mass bit…

Anyway. Eat lots. Be good to your mother/wife/significant other. And if you are a mother/wife/significant other make sure you’re not doing all the work.

That is all.

December 25, 2010