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.

Five essential skills for being a better husband

This is perilous territory, but I’m running out of areas to hand out my wisdom… But two years in I know everything there could possibly be to know… except the parenting stuff… I am being sarcastic by the way…

  1. Learn to say sorry, and mean it.
  2. Figure out the subtle non-nonverbal communication – when your wife says something and means another, or doesn’t say something in an ominous way.
  3. Learn to cook dinner (and to clean up).
  4. Learn your wife’s “love language” it sounds dumb, but this was a pretty helpful book.
  5. Learn that when your wife comes to you with a problem she doesn’t want an immediate solution, but rather someone who’ll listen.

October 1, 2009

Five essential skills for the modern worker

I don’t really like giving advice where I’m not qualified. But I’m Gen Y. So I know everything about work. Here are my five essential ways to get ahead in the workplace…

  1. Communicate better. Learn to do public speaking – it’s invaluable in meetings and day to day interactions to be able to confidently put forward your views. Learn to write in plain language. Keep things simple. Don’t waste people’s time.
  2. Learn to say no to things you can’t do – outsource. Paying an expert is often the best decision you can make.
  3. Learn the 80/20 rule. Be prepared not to be perfect in order to do more stuff.
  4. Keep up to date with new developments in your field. Read the right blogs and magazines, keep in touch with technology, find new ways of doing things and suggest them to others.
  5. Learn a little bit about desktop publishing and graphic design. The basics are easy.

October 1, 2009

Five essential skills for trainee geeks

I’m not sure if I’m a fully fledged geek or not… but here are five areas I think are essentials…

  1. Learn to put together wires and boxes (like an amp, TV etc) – particularly learn about cable varieties and all the terminology involved in audio and visual stuff.
  2. Learn to put together a computer – learn what the parts do from the CPU to the fans, and everything in between.
  3. Develop an obsession – past the point of normality – for me it’s coffee. Once that obsession has gone past normal points pick something new.
  4. Learn as many subsets of jargon (or niche languages) as possible, particularly acronyms.
  5. Get a multitool, like a leatherman.

October 1, 2009

Five essential skills for men

As a follow up to my last post – here are five skills that are almost essential for successful manliness…

  1. Learn to BBQ – especially steak.
  2. Learn to kill bugs/mice/pests.
  3. Learn to buy flowers without thinking it’s a waste of money.
  4. Learn to read manuals.
  5. Learn to cook breakfast.

Again, feel free to share your own “skillz” in the comments…

October 1, 2009

Five not so essential skills

Kottke has a list of essential skills for living (ages ago, I’m clearing out my queue)… you should read it.

Here’s my list of not so common skillz that I’ve decided are important.

  1. Write a haiku – they come in handy for classy SMS invitations. Limericks are also useful.
  2. Make dangerous things that impress children – glove guns are a classic.
  3. Pull apart a piece of technology, try to get it working again, then turn it into a piece of art.
  4. Learn to tell dad jokes – this is an important skill – I don’t recommend starting with the tractor joke, but learn it to punish people.
  5. Get a party trick. You never know when you might need to save your life by performing some sort of miraculous and spontaneous piece of entertainment.

Share your non-essential skillz in the comments.

October 1, 2009

How to choose your next favourite band

With a quick and easy flow chart… (some words may slightly offend)…

From here.

October 1, 2009

Human Tetris

These guys get style points for getting the piece shapes right, and getting the theme music spot on too.

Thanks to Scooter, whose blog seems defunct so I won’t link to it in order not to get your hopes up.

October 1, 2009

Spellbinding art

I love books. The idea of defacing them kind of hurts… but maybe if you find an old copy of something atrocious like Joel Osteen’s “Your Best Life Now” it would be worth turning it into something truly wonderful and edifying… like these sculptures that were used in an advertising campaign in Prague…

I love gangster books. Both novels and the “true” confessions of mob informers who use their tell alls to fund life on the run. I was going to write a gangster novel once. Then I got distracted.

By medieval books… I love medieval books – all those swords…

But swords get tired pretty quickly… what really gets exciting is undersea monsters… and pirate ships…

There are heaps of other creative book based artworks here. Well worth your time.

October 1, 2009

Pet peeves

Losing a family pet is never easy. I should know. I once had about nine pet birds die in one day, and then there was the night of the long flush this year when I said goodbye to four fish in once morning. I can understand wanting to preserve the memory of the good times shared with a pet dog through the miracle of taxidermy….

What I can’t understand is why you’d then try to sell your dead dog when you move house…

October 1, 2009

Broadening your culinary horizons

I haven’t had fast food from a major chain for more than three months. I stopped on July 1. It’s a pretty big effort because I love fast food. Especially KFC.

I was just reading an article about “secret menu items” that I’d kept in the blogging queue for a couple of months. I just hadn’t got around to posting it yet.

But the point of this post is to share with you my infinite fast food wisdom… some of you may know this already, but other people I’ve spoken to don’t…

You can literally create whatever you want at Maccas from the available menu items – and they’ll make it for you.

Some of my favourites included the Chicken Patty Big Mac, the Flake Shake with chocolate sundae sauce, double bacon cheeseburgers (before they were put back on the menu), and the legendary “pounder”… used in Christian bucks parties around the country.

If you really want to broaden your fast food horizons though – check out the Fancy Fast Food website I posted about a while back.

October 1, 2009

Block knock offs

An artist/photographer named Mike Simpson has taken a series of classic photos and recreated them using lego. Check out the gallery here.

He’s done everything from major political and cultural events…


Through to sport…


October 1, 2009

Merrie Maladies

Cartoon characters have all got a little something wrong with them. But perhaps you’ve never diagnosed just what was wrong with your favourite…

This little chart does the hard work for you…

October 1, 2009

Comical dinner party

Comics are fun. I wish life was a comment. Filled with speech bubbles for my words and every thought…

That dream is a step closer. Dinner time can now be a comic conversation with these comic plates. Perfect for your next comic convention.

October 1, 2009

Happy Coffee Day

October 1 is Coffee Day in Japan.

Here’s my photographic tribute from the farm to my cup…

October 1, 2009

The Jelly Show

So you have a stack of left over jelly. You don’t know what to do with it. You’re stuck watching TV reruns. Lightbulb moment…

Because everybody needs a party with Bill Cosby jelly cups as a centre piece.

October 1, 2009