Adam, a friend from Brisbane just won a piano competition. A biggish one (as much as I can tell about piano competitions) and the reaction on Facebook from our mutual friends.
There’s a streaming thing where you can watch his performance in the heats. And probably the semis and the final as well.
Now that the Australian Festival of Chamber Music is over I’m clearly lacking in cultural content on this page – so here it is. For your viewing pleasure.
Kettles come in all shapes and sizes. Music doesn’t. There’s sub genres of sub genres (math rock anyone?). Ben (from Vanishing Point) likes Thrash Metal. Or something. Now, we can coin a sub-sub-genre. Kettle Metal.
Generally, the whistle a kettle makes sounds pretty similar (and horribly atonal) from model to model. Kettles have thus been an unheralded part of the musical ensemble. Well not until now… You can program it to play your favourite song.
There’s nothing more English than English Breakfast tea… except of course the English royal family. So combining them seems to be the most natural thing in the world… especially when you come up with a name like “Royaltea“.
Here’s the description of how it works from mocoloco.
“Narrow rays of light that sneak through small slits in the bezel act as second, minute and hour hands”
It was designed by a Japanese design group called Mile Project.
Talking clocks are pretty annoying. Clocks without hands that tell you the time in words and come in various colours are just plain pretty. And pretty expensive.
Imagine a world where playing with your food is obligatory. When towers of biscuity goodness are limited only by the height of your roof. Are we on the same page?
Ready. Set. Go.
While I was thinking about the whole PK issue the other day I was struck by a comparison that I’ve thought of in the past but not, until now, documented.
Being a PK is just like being Harry Potter. Hogwarts is the broader church, the houses within Hogwarts are either the different types of people within a congregation or representative of multiple denominations. Atheists are muggles, and people who come to faith from outside of Christian homes are “mudbloods” according to some of the less tolerant members of the church – obviously only the nasties. (this actually closely reflects some comments I’ve heard from people who come into the church from other backgrounds).
So being a PK is like being a child of promise – and you rock up to Hogwarts and all the faculty know you by reputation and have expectations.
I promise this will be the last time (for a while) that I mention Harry Potter. But it seems a valid meta interpretation of the world in which the wizards operate.
What say you?
Also, the picture at the top comes from this great article about how Christendom has suddenly decided that Harry Potter is OK because they’ve figured he’s a messianic figure with plenty of plot allusions to Christ.
This video is rightly being hailed as the best lego stop motion 8-bit tribute of all time.
It’s a pretty small pool I guess – but all the typical post fodder is included – Pacman, Mario and Tetris make an appearance…
If you’re a Christian and you want to evangelise and you need convincing that being loving is the best to achieve this outcome then you need to watch this interview that Denton did with a former leader of the Klan.
If you’re either not a Christian, or already convinced that speaking the truth with love is already the way to go, then you should watch the video too…
I am fascinated by the fact that both Denton and BoingBoing (where I found it) push the guy in question’s courage when the thing that strikes me is his love for his enemies.
It’s been ages since I last paid out U2 and their myriad fans. This little rant is Ben’s fault, well, more correctly it’s Warren the word over-use watchdog’s fault. Warren doesn’t like the word edgy – because edgy people/groups/things don’t need to proclaim their edgyness. As soon as they apply the label they lose their edgyness. Immediately.
Which brings me to this guy:
Surely he’s now about as edgy as James Blunt and should consider a more appropriate sobriquet. As Warren would say:
“But as soon as you drop the ‘E’ word, you’ve set yourself up for a fall, and you sound like your daggy uncle saying ‘I really like to get jiggy and bust a move to 50 cent, dog, for real’. Not good.”
Want to know what happens when a resident gets so sick of traffic chaos that they erect their own road sign?
The police fine people for breaching it. That’s what.
Tim posted this a while ago. I watched it today. It is the worst piece of “Yoof Ministry” ever – and it’s not a parody.
Worst line: We’re having a Holy Ghost Ho Down…
If there’s one thing I’ve learned through reading Vanishing Point it’s that a blog without a Ben is barely a blog at all.
I’ve been toying with the idea of having more people write stuff here – and I’ve offered that to a few select people. I’m not a control freak – though I may appear to be – so I find the idea of other people producing content quite liberating.
I will, as I introduce more people, make it more readily apparent that you can subscribe to posts from particular people (which means missing the stuff from others).
For now, I’d like to introduce you to Benny. He guest wrote a post a while back about protectionism. He’s an economist. And an expert on strange laws that are still in force in Queensland (he’s not a law lecturer, despite the billing he gets). He’s happy to take media engagements on this basis. Actually he’s not. Despite repeated calls to do so from Sunrise.
I went to school with Benny in Brisbane. Good times were had by all. We started a spam newsletter that on retrospect was funny and offensive. And we harvested emails from forwards we received. Turns out that is pretty illegal.
Anyway, Ben intends to blog a bit here. He’s sent me a couple of incredibly long emails. He works best with word limits. I’m going to give him 500.
Here’s what he has to say about this opportunity.
Well, Nathan has said I can be an occasional contributor to his blog. this is most awesome, cause I don’t want to set up my own blog, and Nathan is an interesting person, so I like to comment about him. Further, it seems that this blog and all its affiliates are very Christian focused. So I guess instead of just whinging to Nathan via email, our background discussions with the alternative viewpoints can be brought upfront.
So, first up, it has to be said that quite often I have a very alternative views about things to Nathan. this has included religion (so very, very often), the role of public representatives, taxation policy, the merits of tax subsidies for childcare/rent/home ownership, abortion, stem cell research, home ownership v renting, the Iraq war, religion in schools/school prayer, speed limits/alcohol allowances, police procedure and police powers, criminal punishments, privacy regulations, preferred presidential candidates (well I think we both wanted Obama but one of us had more confidence in his potential success), the definition of marriage and marriage rights, and many other things.
Probably Nathan’s current distinguishing feature is his immense Christianity. I have also noticed that since I have known Nathan (since we were 15) that his Christianity has become a more and more prevalent feature. And it has really ramped up the last few years. We also know he is a good writer (so much so I remember him getting a few writing awards at school), whereas I care little for perfect grammar. And less for word counts. I like long posts. But since Nathan has full edit access, this probably won’t be such a problem.
That title is not a typo. This is an open letter to any of you out there with a culinary bent.
Tonight I’m teaching a friend of mine to cook. He’s got fried rice and steak down pat but is looking to expand his recipe book. We’re also going to talk about the significance of the book of Acts.
Given my published (here) culinary repertoire features replica Sizzler’s Cheese Toast, toasted mars bar sandwiches, a little number I like to call “Baked Bean Ravioli Surprise”, and Butter Chicken, I need your help.
We’ll do home made pizzas next week (including dough), then a variation of my mum’s Satay recipe, then my world famous, yet to be published, Spaghetti Bolognese. After that I’m open to suggestions. We’ll have covered the major food groups – Indian, Italian and Thai. What’s left?
Tonight we’re doing Butter Chicken. Feel free to give me a list of “must haves” for any single guy’s recipe book.
Unbroken breaks
Just in case you have previously considered commenting but were turned off by the lack of appropriate spacing in the comments to indicate paragraph changes… or for those of you who have been complaining about the long standing issue…
I fixed it. If you are here because you googled “WordPress Comments paragraph spacing” or something related to WordPress Comment formatting…
The offender was this little piece of code in the CSS:
.comment-text p {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
Just so you know. You should remove that if you’re having the same issue.
August 28, 2009