This stylophone is the historyfuture of nerdy hip-hop.
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It’s pretty impressively demonstrated in the video below. Get yours here today…
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.
These guys have style-o-phone
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.”
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.
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…
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.
Literal periodic table
This is clever. I wonder what it’s made of…
Apostrophic flow chart
If you’re still struggling with apostrophe use check out apostrophe.me for a series of flow charts and nicely explained graphics. Here are some of them. There are a couple more.
Here’s the golden rule of apostrophe use.
Card carrying Pacfessionals
If you’ve got yourself a bunch of really awesome business cards (like these, these, or something this guy would be happy with) then you’ll need a business card holder that does them justice.
Try this on for size…
Trolley car
A US student rigged up a shopping trolley with golf buggy parts and produced this…
It works. I don’t recommend watching the whole eight minutes of this video. But you can read about the stuff he used here…
How to top Bacon Jam
Bacon and beer. Two food groups. Two concepts. Two things that go together. Together, traditionally, in the same way that milk goes with cereal. But together, in this post, in the same way that cocoa goes with rice bubbles…
I thought bacon jam was the pinnacle of culinary innovation, and then Brooklyn Brewery is putting together a special brew…
“It’s a special malt that was smoked in the same room with some of the bacon made by the legendary Allan Benton. “It’s almost terrifying how much the malt smells like bacon,” Mr. Oliver said.
He plans to brew about 15 gallons of barleywine with that malt. In the meantime, he’s been infusing a brown ale with the flavor of Benton’s bacon fat through a technique known as “fat washing.” Oh, and the bacon-fat-infused ale was also aged in bourbon barrels, because bourbon and bacon go together like, um, beer and bacon.
Eventually, the barleywine with the bacon-smoked malt and the bourbon-aged, bacon-fat-infused ale would be blended to create one monstrously bizarre beer.
Sounds delicious. Unfortunately it probably won’t ever be made available for purchase…
“Unfortunately, the answer is nyet. Brooklyn Brewery made 21 cases of Reinschweinsgebot for special events, which isn’t enough for even limited commercial distribution. And don’t expect it to go wide anytime soon. Oliver tells us that “the technique we used — which comes originally out of the perfume industry — involves transferring an aroma from a fat to a liquid without actually transferring the fat itself. Then to completely remove the fat and have none left in the liquid, it was very tricky.” However, he says he’s open to finding a way to simplify the process so that plebeians can one day enjoy bacon beer, too. Fingers crossed.”
Siege mentality
It’s funny that all theists immediately assume atheists have it in for their brand of belief in particular.
It’s like commenters who assume that every slur or use of the word “you” is directed at them personally…
There’s a pretty funny opinion piece in the Age from a Catholic who thinks that their rock solid beliefs make them a target for the new atheists. It’s worth a read. I like this quote.
“For some reason, contemporary Australian atheism seems to consider itself terribly funny. Its proponents only have to wheel out one of the age-old religious libels to lose control of their bladders. To outsiders, of course, it is a bit like watching a giggling incontinent drunk at a party. This is not to say that believers – and perhaps especially Catholics – do not get seriously irritated by atheists. They do, but not because atheists are fearfully clever or Wildely funny.”
Jeff posted this this morning, so I’ll give him the kudos – but my dad also emailed it to me to read. Keep the tips coming people…
Stuff “Christ Followers” like…
On the one hand these videos are really funny and poke legitimate fun at “bumper sticker” Christian sub-culture.
On the other hand, they’re pretty dumb and based on the pursuit of the Holy Grail of Christian authenticity. The “Christ Follower” totally listens to U2… he even says so… in the third video.
Both extremes are dumb… just as they are when it comes to the Mac v PC ads being spoofed – as this SMH article so humourously points out…
I hope the video is actually mocking both ideas – but I get the impression it’s pushing people to define themselves as “Christ followers” rather than Christians, as though the label is so loaded with negative ideas that it needs replacing. I end up feeling just as frustrated by both of them.
When you boil it down, both Macs and PCs are computers, and both the characters in these videos are sinners forgiven through the work of Jesus.
Besides there’s nothing more fake than the relentless pursuit of authenticity.
Design brief
I’m thinking of changing my blog design again to add a little colour and kill some clutter.
Anything you want to see scrapped?
Anything you think I should keep?
Speak now or hold your peace until I get bored again.
Dawkins in Brisbane
I’m going to this (in March next year. You should come too. Tickets are $15-$18. I’m sitting in the balcony.
Here’s the blurb…
“Britain’s greatest science writer, Richard Dawkins, comprehensively rebuts the creationists by pulling together the incontrovertible evidence for evolution.”
One can only wonder what all the other science writers in the United Kingdom think of such a bold claim. It doesn’t even say “arguably” the greatest science writer.