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.

Cool stuff that you notice after doing a bit of Hebrew

Melchizedek (Genesis 14) is a cool king of Salem (Jerusalem) who blesses Abraham. His name, in Hebrew, means either “king of righteousness” or “righteousness is my king”.

Adoni-zedek (Joshua 10), is also the king of Jerusalem, who summons an army of other kings to fight Israel. His name, in Hebrew, means “lord of righteousness” or “righteousness is my lord”…

Bit of a contrast there…

Mario, you’re toast.

How to play Scissors, Paper, Rock against yourself

Just build this glove. Stick it on your hand. And Bob, as they say, is your uncle. The glove will learn how you play, and tel you what it thinks will beat you.

Swiss Army Axe*

For when a knife just won’t cut it

*Not really Swiss.

Some changes

Well, by pretty popular demand I have killed IntenseDebate. It’s back to no-frills commenting. Hopefully that brings more of you out of the woodwork.

Facebook is trying to take over the internet – they announced some new toys for web developers and bloggers last week – I’ve included one (though haven’t quite got it working yet – it should be fixed by the time you read this though…) that allows you to “like” a post both here and on Facebook with the click of a button.

I’ve also finally (and I’m pretty ecstatic about this one) managed to rewrite the code of my blog so that if you go to page 2 you don’t get page 1’s “Curiosities” you get the next ten. That was really annoying me.

If you think this post is largely pointless be sure to check out the tags (on the site) and you’ll see why I’ve posted it.

You know what’s sad…

Staying awake until 2am writing website code trying to fix a little bug that nobody will notice anyway.

Sadder still is posting to tell you all about it (and to clear my cache so that the changes will happen).

Font of font knowledge

A font flow chart for every occasion – though it doesn’t include Helvetica. Sadface. Click to make bigger.

Via Lifehacker.

Update – as Gav points out, Helvetica is there. I just missed it.

YouTube Tuesday (almost): Balloon alien robot

Optimus Prime in balloon sculpture greatness. Need I say more…

I hooked one

Long time readers will be familiar with my scambaiting efforts from last year. I’ve been trying to get a photo of a Nigerian Scammer holding a bible verse. I got one. Finally. Not the John 3:16 reference I was after, but I’m working on that. Meet my friend Kenny. That’s what I call him.

Stay tuned for the story – I don’t want to blow it yet, I’m still hoping for that elusive John 3:16 poster. I’m pretty sure other scammers have googled themselves and ended my game because of what they found.

Here’s his favourite Bible passage:

1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

5And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

Paper thin argument

The CEO of a paper company has called on people to print everything. Paperless offices kill the economy. Or something. This is why the Tobacco industry pays lobbyists to make egregious claims. You just look self interested and stupid when you come out telling people they need to use your product when a better alternative exists. You need a third party to do that for you.

John Williams, the president and chief executive officer of the Montreal-based fine-paper and pulp company, says the “think before you print” messages are “just bull” and he wants people to feel better about using paper responsibly.

“There is an appropriate use for paper. You should feel comfortable to use it appropriately and you shouldn’t be feeling there is some environmental negative when you use it,” Mr. Williams said at a news conference Monday.

“People do not have to feel guilty about using paper to print.”

Replace the word “paper” with “alcohol” and the word “print” with “drive” and you get some idea just how silly and selfish this campaign is.

IntenseDebate

So I’ve been using IntenseDebate for my comments for a while now. And while it allows cool features like giving you the ability to post YouTube Videos and pictures, to log in using various online accounts (like Facebook or Twitter) or as a guest, a pretty good spam filter, and the ability to vote comments up or down – it can be a little bit slow and annoying.Plus, nobody uses those features anyway.

I’m thinking about canning it. What do you reckon? If you’re hanging around wishing you could comment but put off by complexity just “like” this post and I’ll assume that’s your indication that I should kill the system.

While you’re telling me what you think of that system feel free to raise any other things that annoy you about the design or technology behind this blog… I’m always interested in fixing those issues because it gives me a chance to play with code and design stuff.

Over to you.

Transform(er) your church

I would really like to slip these windows into a church. Just to see how long it would take an eagle eyed child to notice. Given the amount of time I spend looking at the windows, while preachers studiously try to make eye contact with me, I reckon it’d take less than five minutes.

From this DeviantArtist – AutoBotWonko.

This is Spinal Tape

Really. It is.

Shirt of the Day: c0ffee

Hexadecimal colours have just opened up a whole new world to me – colour code humour. This shirt features the word c0ffee printed in the colour (#c0ffee). Clever.

No more passive aggressive notes

Tired of sending passive aggressive post-it note messages to your colleagues? Get actually aggressive with this post-it note machine gun (which is currently only a concept – nay – a figment of the cubicle dweller’s imagination).