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.

Top five rules for blogging: #3 write lists

Here are all five tips, and here’s my post on the first one, and here’s the second one.

I think this post is perhaps best expressed in list form… here’s a list I wrote some time ago about why I write lists, and another almost identical post that in turn is almost identical to this one.

And here’s why you should write them if you want your blog to keep going.

  1. Lists are quick and easy. They’re good for keeping momentum. If in doubt write a list.
  2. Lists kill writer’s block.
  3. Lists encourage discussion – nobody ever agrees with what you’ve included or the order in which you include it.
  4. Lists are linkbait – they get shared. My most amazing day of traffic ever came from a list.
  5. Lists allow you to share unfinished ideas in batches.
  6. Lists force you to structure your thoughts in a succinct manner. They’re good for the reader as well. I’ll read lists that come through my RSS feeds every time. They offer a good return on reader investment.

November 12, 2009

Build your own breakfast


My love for breakfast cereal knows no bounds. At least not when it comes to being pigeon holed into a time of day.

So I am excited by this site – which unfortunately appears to be a US only kind of deal.

If you can’t read the ingredients on the label of this bag click the image for a bigger version.

We need an Australian version of this. Soon.

November 12, 2009

Peak Rock

There seems to be a strange correlation between oil production in the United States and the production of good music (as qualified by Rolling Stone magazine).

“First, a little theory. The decline in U.S. oil production* is explained by the Hubbert Peak Theory, which states that “the amount of oil under the ground in any region is finite, therefore the rate of discovery which initially increases quickly must reach a maximum and decline.” Makes sense, right? The same theory can apply to anything of a finite quantity that is discovered and quickly exploited with maximum effort.

Including, it would seem, rock & roll. I know, the RS 500 list is not without its faults, but it does allow for some attempt at quantifying a highly subjective and controversial topic and for plotting the number of “greatest songs” over time. Notice that after the birth of rock & roll in the 1950’s, the production of “great songs” peaked in the 60’s, remained strong in the 70’s, but drastically fell in the subsequent decades. It would seem that, like oil, the supply of great musical ideas is finite. By the end of the 70’s, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, the Motown greats, and other genre innovators quickly extracted the best their respective genres** had to offer, leaving little supply for future musicians.”

Via Good.

November 12, 2009

More than one way to scan a cat…

This electron microscopic scanner is really impressive.

More impressive is the fact that the company selling them will scan and upload any sample you send them. Apparently.

Mmm. Cheese.


November 12, 2009

The sweet taste of the reformation

I would like some of this John Calvin beer. What a way to cap off a year celebrating the reformation… it’s predestined to be good.

Via David Ould.

November 12, 2009

Vatican readying evangelistic mission to outer space


Sometimes the Vatican do dumb things in the name of science. Like condemning scientists for their views on the position of the earth in relation to the cosmos…

It seems they’re trying to distance themselves from their historical shackles. How far can one distance themselves from this sort of stupidity? About as far as the galaxy reaches.

The Catholic Church really is the Empire.

“Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.”

The Vatican scientist coordinating the summit had this to say…

“If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound,” he said.

I would suggest, that biblically speaking, Christ died for mankind. You know. Humans. The ones made in God’s image. I think that’s where self image comes from. Isn’t it?

November 12, 2009

Cliff Hanger

John Woo’s Red Cliff is playing at the Sydney Travelling Film Festival in Townsville this Sunday at 2.30pm. I’m going. Any Townsville readers care to join me (and no doubt Robyn)?

This was a bit too arty to play in mainstream cinemas in Townsville – but it’s a very cool martial arts movie. Here’s the trailer.

November 12, 2009

Top five rules for blogging: #2 don’t blog for comments

Here are all five tips, and here’s my post on the first one.

Comments are great. All bloggers love comments. They make us feel special. Almost as special as a link. Depending on your blog love language (which Simone posted about back in January).

Comments indicate reader engagement. Comments – even negative ones – show that someone cares enough about your ideas to respond.

But if you hang your blogging hat on the number of comments you get – and make a decision to continue, or not to continue, on that basis – then you’re bound for disappointment. People don’t like to comment. I read about 300 blogs, I comment on a handful. I should comment on more – knowing as I do that people like getting comments.

Comments are not a measure of quality. They’re not a measure of how much your post is appreciated. They’re not really a measure of anything except how good you are at annoying people or how cleverly you hook your readers.

Because I like awesome scientific analysis I’ll repost this graph I made a while back.

And further analysis – I mentioned how bad my blog was when I first started the other day (prompting some people to head back to the archives). It was really bad. Terrible. And yet I scored more comments per post in those days by a long shot.

If you’re going to blog for any measurable outcome regular visitors and subscribers. Or blog for google keywords so that you can attract random visitors who might subscribe.

Blogging for comments is a thankless exercise.

November 11, 2009

Mac Minifig

November 11, 2009

Significant Objects: How to bump up your eBay sales with a story

I posted a washing machine being sold on ebay here a while back, and a bike. Both had great stories going with them that I thought must have worked wonders on their sale prices.

It would appear a good description can up the value of your silly ebay items by as much as 6000% – it’s just a shame I didn’t do this with my Star Wars characters – though the Q&A section did get a little bit interesting.

There’s a site called Significant Objects that finds crappy things, writes good descriptions and sells the things on eBay at a significant profit.

Check out their top ten. Here’s an example.

This Russian Doll cost $3. It sold for $193.

Here’s part of the story (here’s the rest).

Figurine of St. Vralkomir (glass cover not included)

This is an icon of the fourteenth-century saint Vralkomir of Dnobst, the patron saint of extremely fast dancing. Handcrafted in a snowbound convent by the nimble-footed Sisters of the Vralkomian Order, it was given to my grandmother—then a nine-year-old girl—as she boarded the ship that would take her to America from Dnobst, a narrow pie-wedge of land bounded by the Dnobst River, the Grkgåt Mountains, and the Great Western Fence of Count Pyør the Litigious.

Vralkomir was a competent cobbler, but he was brusque and taciturn, conversing only to the extent he was required to for business. His fellow citizens found him odd, and they would hurry back out into the year-round cold as quickly as they could. Some said his towering jet-black hat, which he’d knitted of his own hair, would trigger vertigo in those who stared up at it for too long. Many were annoyed by his incessant tuneless humming.

November 11, 2009

Pac-Roomba

I really want a Roomba. I suspect it would scare our free range turtles. So I won’t get one. But I’d actually really like five. Because then I could re-enact this re-enactment of Pacman. Using Roombas.

Australian Roombas are marketed as iRobots. Which is a bit Will Smith if you ask me… only I can’t imagine a Roomba ever turning on humans and killing them. How would it? What’s it going to do? Suck my face off?

November 11, 2009

How to get the quilt cover on the quilt…

It seems that despite my wife’s protestations to the contrary I am not the only person in the world who struggles with this activity.


Folding:
How To Put On A Duvet Cover

November 11, 2009

Movin’ to the country

Life in country Australia is pretty peachy. It’s just a shame that we can’t seem to convince Sydneysiders of that fact…

This topic of conversation always gets me in trouble in Christian circles – so I apologise in advance for the offense I’m about to cause you city dwellers. I know some of you know people who are going to regional Australia. I know some of you are keen to go overseas. I know some of you have good reasons to stay in Sydney and feel “called” to do so – but if everybody is “called” to be in Sydney you’ve got to start questioning where the calling is coming from…

My friend Mike, a minister in a regional centre in Queensland, posted a fairly innocuous appeal to city ministers as his status yesterday. And he got in trouble.

I’m going to play the role of cavalry.

This is what he said: Mike wants to remind my friends that the mission field is bigger than Sydney!

He copped a bit of a comment flogging. He was accused of empire building. Which I thought was odd. Mike is from Sydney. His family live there. He’s traditional Sydney staying fodder. And he left. Much respect to him…

And this old chestnut came up:

Australia’s population is not evenly spread – almost 1 in 5 Aussies live here. It would make sense then that 1 in five workers is here also. (There may be more than that I’m not sure).

Newsflash – that means 4 in 5 people in Australia aren’t in Sydney. Sadly two out of four of Australia’s reformed evangelical training institutions are in Sydney. I would suggest that more than 1 in 5 reformed evangelical workers are in Sydney.

Someone somewhere should do some research – but anecdotally speaking – I’d say there are only a handful of graduates from either Moore College or SMBC in Queensland. I’d say the case is similar in other states.

Off the top of my head there are only about 15 graduates from these colleges operating in Queensland (but this is largely limited to Presbyterian circles). That’s a rough head count.

According to this site Sydney occupies about 2100 square kilometres. According to this site Australia is 7,686,850 square kilometres.

I know there’s this big “theological” push to do city based ministry – but really, our regional towns are the size of Biblical cities in some cases.

Can someone tell me how we’re meant to reach the other 4 in 5 people in that sort of space with the concentration of good ministry stuff we’ve got going on in Sydney?

November 11, 2009

Harnessing your blogdom for the power of awesomeness

Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like has turned a good idea into a book deal, notoriety, and one of the Christian blogosphere’s most popular blogs.

This week he’s turned his blog into a money raising powerhouse – securing $30,000 in donations for a new Vietnamese orphanage in about 18 hours.

That’s pretty awesome.

Abraham Piper helped out with an interview – and has announced that this week he’ll be focused on raising money for worthy causes – starting with child sponsorship.

I like these ideas. So much that I’m setting up a Tear Really Useful Gift Shop as an experiment. I’d like to buy goats and cows for villages  in the hope that they’ll be called Eutychus.

Click here to buy a really useful gift. Prices start at $5 for fish farms. I don’t expect anyone to buy a cow for $300. But it’s an animal, so I included it in the store – along with some vegetarian options.

If you want to donate part of a cow let me know in the comments.

November 11, 2009

Cuddle up to some H1N1

Mmm, microbial toys… I’ve posted some of these before – but this one is swine flu. So it’s topical. And cool.

November 10, 2009