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 top five rules for blogging

I have been meaning to post this since reading Ben’s reflections on blogging. I’ve noticed that a lot of people I know start blogs (and I get really excited). And then the blog dies. After about a week. Mine didn’t. So here are my tips.

  1. Blog regularly
  2. Don’t blog for comments
  3. If you want hits, write lists
  4. If you need to write about stupid stuff in order to keep writing, then write about stupid stuff.
  5. If you want regular readers comment regularly elsewhere.

I’m going to turn this into a little series and expand on each idea during the week. In the meantime, share your tips in the comments.

November 9, 2009

Birthday Wishes

My lovely wife turned 25 yesterday. An alarming number of people (six) wished her a happy birthday on her Facebook profile expressing a hope that I had “spoiled” her…

Now, I don’t buy into the whole “spoiling” thing. I think I treat Robyn with due specialness all year round…

But I did “spoil” her. With an almost surprise high tea party organised at the last minute after she told me quite clearly a week in advance (after having previously told me that she didn’t want anything) that she still didn’t want a party, but that if she did, she’d like it to be a high tea.

Thanks to those who brought stuff. I would have photos to post had I remembered that I owned a camera – and had I not been churning out the coffees and hot chocolates and making sure children didn’t trample our turtles.

Since I didn’t have a camera with me here’s an old photo.

November 9, 2009

Shirt of the Day: What Space Invaders really look like

Ever wondered exactly what you were seeing when you were playing Space Invaders as a child… well. Here you go. A behind the scenes look at the alien space craft…

November 9, 2009

Don’t push the red button

Rule number one in the joy flight manual should be “don’t touch the controls”.

Let this guy’s mistake be a lesson for all of us…

“The man, a civilian joyriding with his air force pilot friend, accidentally grabbed the eject lever while trying to brace himself.

He was instantly fired through the aircraft’s perspex canopy and blasted 320ft (100m) into the sky by the rocket-powered chair.

He then floated down to the ground with a parachute that opened automatically.

Experts said he was lucky to escape unharmed from the bizarre accident last week in South Africa.

Air Force bosses scrambled a helicopter to pick him up after the blunder near Langebaanweg airfield, 80 miles north of Cape Town.

The yellow-and-black eject levers are fitted as standard in the jets to allow pilots and their passengers to escape in the event of an emergency. It only needs to be pulled 2.5cm to activate two rockets attached to the chair.”

November 9, 2009

Stupid Inventions, great concept

I have lots of ideas for stupid inventions – so I can totally sympathise with the creators of this YouTube series…

Here are some great stupid inventions…

November 8, 2009

It’s a steel…

Watching Australia play the West Indies is one of the only cricketing experiences that isn’t better in a comfortable couch with a big screen.

It’s better live. And it’s better live for one reason, and one reason alone. Steel drums.

But now you can watch the cricket from the comfort of your lounge with your own set of finger drums to keep things dialed to “chillaxed mon”…

November 8, 2009

Put a cap on it

So. Picture this. You’re a closet Billy Ray Cyrus fan, but you’re also a professional in a serious office. A surprise concert is announced… but you’ve got no mullet… what do you do?

Don’t panic. You can just order one of these caps with a built-in mullet to get your trailer trash on…

November 8, 2009

Poster mash

Here’s a clever collection of mashed up movie posters. Some much better than others…

November 8, 2009

Intelligent design

So, how bout this new design…

Any comments?

Any obvious glitches?

The new logo was drawn by Ben back when I picked my new name… I like it. He has kindly given me permission to use it.

November 8, 2009

Prayer pears

A Chinese farmer has taken fruit moulding to new heights with these Buddha shaped pears.

” This year, he harvested more than 10,000 baby-shaped pears and sold them for the equivalent of £5 each.

Gao said: “I noticed people were selling shaped water melons for a good price, so I thought of doing something similar with my pears.

“It was more difficult than I expected. You have to test when the best time is to put the moulds on the pears is, and when to take them off again.”

November 8, 2009

These guys have style-o-phone

This stylophone is the historyfuture of nerdy hip-hop.

It’s pretty impressively demonstrated in the video below. Get yours here today…

November 8, 2009

To ‘postrophe, or not to apostrophe

Continuing in my campaign for better apostrophe use comes this news story about a man in England who has taken the unusual path of adding apostrophes to signs.

The most significant problems with apostrophe use involve the overuse – but this guy wants to ensure they don’t die out altogether…

“The 62-year-old’s defence of the apostrophe comes after Birmingham council announced it would scrap the punctuation from council signs for the sake of ‘simplicity’.”
Mr Gatward, who served for four years in the Gordon Highlanders in the 1960s, is not just a campaigner for the apostrophe.

He will not join the ‘five items or less’ queue at the supermarket, in protest that the sign should read ‘five items or fewer’.

He also gets annoyed when people-neglect the ‘Royal’ in ‘Royal Tunbridge Wells’, and was vexed when he saw a major chain store advertising sales with signs saying ‘until stocks last’ rather than ‘while stocks last’.

‘I fought for the preservation of our heritage and our language but some people seem happy to let that go. I’m not,’ he said.

Read more here…

Sadly, Brisbane’s council has the opposite problem and probably should be following the flow chart. Its error is set in stone.

Here’s a photo dad snapped on his iPhone of a new footbridge.

It’s in the sentence:

“Although many changes have occurred along the river, it’s spiritual significace endures.”

November 8, 2009

Gladwell on writing

I like Malcolm Gladwell. His writing is engaging and he is able to link lots of disparate things together into a cohesive big idea. His books are interesting. I commend them to you…

This article doesn’t really. It goes close. It’s examining the phenomena that is Malcolm Gladwell.

It contains a quote from Gladwell about what writing is. I liked it.

“Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade… It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head–even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d really like to be.”

Speaking of good writing – I read through the first year and a half of my blog yesterday at work. It was not good writing. I thought about deleting it all. Just in case you’ve ever stumbled through the archives.

November 7, 2009

What about me?

Here’s a nice little video expressing the problem with some Christian music… It’s an old point, but a good point.

Via Faith and Theology…

November 6, 2009

Inside an iPhone

This iPhone circuit board doesn’t make the magic of the device any clearer to me, but it is interesting.

From Maga Maps.

November 5, 2009