Another useful flow chart (from here)… 
Sadly, I realise that today is Wednesday, which means I missed my YouTube Tuesday post for this week. Thanks to the magic of wordpress it will appear in the past when I find a video worth posting.
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.
Go with the flow
Oversharing: If you can’t beat them…
Clearly I offended people by suggesting some details about your life (particularly gory parenting details) should be kept private and not trumpeted to the world via Facebook.
I am sorry.
There must be more to this oversharing thing than meets the eye… I thought. So, being the student of Gonzo Journalism that I am, I became part of the story, and investigated…
Here are my status updates from today – and the comments they generated…
I gave up after a while. I couldn’t handle the heat.
Moral Dilemma: What constitutes fast food
Readers who’ve been around for more than a couple of weeks will know that I swore off Fast Food as a new financial year resolution.
This presents me with an interesting dilemma. For years I have had a not so secret fixation with Nandos. Their Peri Peri spice is delicious.
Sadly, it has been an unrequited affair of the palate – there has not been a Nandos in Townsville. Until now. It opened pretty soon after I took my vow to forswear “fast food” – by which I meant the major chains – Maccas, KFC, Hungry Jacks and Red Rooster.
And so it comes to pass… I must decide whether Nandos is fast food, in the sense ruled out by the spirit of my self imposed ban.
What say you noble readers?
Horseplay: with wheels
Ralph Lauren polo shirts are one of those status symbols favoured by the rich and the famous. There’s a rule of thumb that says that the bigger the horse on the shirt the more the wearer is trying to draw attention to their awesomeness (ie the bigger the tool)
Segways are another such status symbol and Polo, the sport, is the last piece of this picture…
This is Apple co-founder “The Woz” playing Segway Polo.
I suggest the Ralph Lauren Polos of the future will feature a logo like this… you heard it here first.
Knowing the creators
Ben was a little bit upset that he didn’t make it into the creator category of my post about types of bloggers. He’s lifted his game since. His bed face post was exceptional – a blend of creativity and his inimitable style of biting social observation.
Check out the bed head indicators… and read the post. Gold.
A bunch of links – July 21, 2009
- Status symbols
- On Swearing
- New Rules
- Avoid These Automobile-Destroying Foods [Safety]
- Position Your Tongue Properly to Look Good in Photos [Photography Tip]
- UTube Ripper Saves And Converts YouTube Videos
- Navigon Almost-Free GPS For Your iPhone
- Political theology on the radio
- Apologetic issues in preaching Exodus 5-10
- Order in the physical world reflects the faithfulness of its Creator
Status symbols
You know what bothers me about Facebook… some people have annoying statuses. PC World has put together a list of common status update themes.
“English professors claim that there are relatively few distinct story plots, and that every piece of literature is just a retelling of one of those narrative archetypes. I’m convinced that the same is true of the things people write in their Facebook status updates.”
The list captures most of them – including my personal unfavourite – “Too much information” update. This is generally perpetrated by parents (or parents to be). Sorry parents. It’s true. People who aren’t parents (not just married people who aren’t parents…) don’t want to hear about
a) the pain involved in child birth
b) the funny thing your child did the point I was trying to make here is probably better summed up by the rest of the points. I’m fine with amusing stories, just not with the expectation that we love your child as much as you do, and not with funny stories pertaining to items covered by points c) and d).
c) Breastfeeding, toilet training, any other milestones…
d) Your child’s bodily functions
e) Your child related bodily functions
f) Running commentaries on your pregnancy
My other unfavourite is the “Christian” update – the bible verse etc – if it annoys me, and I’m a bona fide bible bashing Christian – imagine what it’s doing to your non-Christian friends. It’s not a witness to anything but your own sense of personal holiness.
Me, I prefer writing boring updates about the cricket or coffee, interspersed with occasional bursts of what I think is wit or insight.
That is all.
On Swearing
I don’t often swear, nor am I offended by it. Simone’s latest post has some choice words in it (choice not in the New Zealand sense but in the “offensive to people who don’t like swearing” sense).
She speculatively mused on Twitter that this might offend some people. It probably will. And using such language will always do so. My thoughts on swearing are probably best expressed in list form…
- Swearing is not always “unwholesome talk”
Language changes with time. “Bugger” would have been incredibly offensive 50 years ago, it’s not now. But saying inappropriate things about one’s mother will always be “unwholesome”. Language moves and evolves. It’s stupid to have hang ups about particular words. - Swearing is about intention, not about content
One thing I’ve never really understood is people who take a moral stand against swearing but use a substitue word like “sugar”. The intention is exactly the same. Who cares if one word means faeces and the other is a product of refined cane – swearing is about intent. You’re just as guilty either way, you may as well not look like a self righteous prude while being guilty. - Swearing is usually grammatically and contextually innappropriate
Honestly, the words that we most commonly “swear by” are pretty lame and can only be applied appropriately in limited circumstances – they describe body parts, bodily functions, excrement, and the act of procreation – there are only limited circumstances where these words can be used appropriately. There is an interesting, but highly offensive, documentary cartoon floating around detailing the myriad uses of the “f” word – that show that its definition has been allowed to creep too far. I’m all for swearing – provided the usage is justified both situationally (for shock value/catharsis) and the word usage is correct - Swearing for the purpose of offense is wrong
- Swearing for the purpose of expression is lazy
There are better words available. Use them. - Swearing in the presence of those offended by swearing is wrong
For Christians swearing is a food sacrificed to idols deal – it’s not wrong in and of itself but it’s wrong because people think it’s wrong
New Rules
Wired has a great little feature called New Rules for the Highly Evolved – it features contributions from Brad Pitt.
It’s a feature providing all sorts of tips for how to use social technology in a socially acceptable way. I’m sure there are some rules that I’m breaking. But here are my favourites.
There’s this graph on when it’s appropriate to reveal TV spoilers…
And these great little articles (there are more that I wasn’t really enamoured by…
- Don’t blog or tweet anything with more than half a million hits – I’m probably guilty as charged, though I see my blog as a repository of things I’ve found on the internet and while I care deeply about you, dear reader, I’m not worried if you’ve seen stuff before.
“The things we forward, tweet, or post send a message about who we are,” Berger says. “And you don’t want the message to be that you’re behind the curve.”
- Delete stuff you don’t want on your wall from your online profiles – While I’m all for freedom of speech the thing that annoys me most (almost) is being misrepresented. I do enough damage to my personal branding on my own, without people sabotaging it.
An example: people using my phone to send stupid SMS’s to girls I was interested in.
You’re judged as much by your associations as by your actions so take heed of this advice:
The only way out is to police your wall, even if that’s awkward. Don’t be shy about deleting untoward graffiti, eliminating your name from tagged photos, or even asking friends to remove incriminating pics that weren’t meant for public consumption. “You might damage a friendship,” Donath says, “but that’s one of the costs of the collapse of social circles.” Then again, you could migrate to MySpace. Nobody pays attention to anything written there.
- And lastly, the great social conundrum of our time – knowing which ringtone to choose – that won’t ever be a problem again thanks to this handy flow chart.
A bunch of links – July 20, 2009
- 5 (useful) links #13
- What I learned from the Mormons
An interesting piece of reflection on some interaction with Mormons in Utah… point 6 was insightful:br”While they say they are disciples of Jesus and recipients of his grace, clearly they are not. I read somewhere that Mormonism is like an American form of Islam. There is something in that; it is a religion of works, self-improvement and legalism (Col 2:20-23), as opposed to authentic Christianity (Eph 2:8-10). They believe that orthodox Christianity, as we know it, is deficient. “
Catharsis
There is something cathartic about unsubscribing from an annoying blog you subscribed to on a whim. I can now appreciate the joy with which Strongbad yells “DELETED”. Though it’s a double edged sword because it hurts when the number of people subscribing to your own annoying blog drops…
Page turner
Woohoo. After a fair bit of frustrating experimenting with php I’ve got the “older posts” link to actually display older posts, rather than just the same 20 posts that appear on the front page. Now I just have to get the sidebar behaving correctly… But now I have a headache.
Guestimate
XKCD’s take on the craziness of Microsoft’s ability to analyse waiting time.
It’s much like calling the RACQ – which I had to do last week after leaving my headlights on for a day.
Graphical truth
GraphJam is awesome. And it appears that it has been overtaken by acerbic Christian wits and journalism graduates… such is the level of cynicism displayed by these posts…
A bunch of links – July 19, 2009
- Meeting cost ticker
- I#39;m here to interview you, who are you?
For an interview with Gerard Butler (aka the head Spartan in 300), Esquire sent Cal Fussman in cold. He was given an address and a first name and told to go get the story. - How to disappear
Frank Ahearn used to be a private investigator but now uses his PI experience to charge up to $30,000 to help people disappear. - 12 Essential Security Tips and Hacks for WordPress
- 10 Free High Res Coffee Stains Textures
- Your CPU came from sand…
- 8 Tips To Effectively Boost Your Wireless Router Signal
- Learn the Economical Art of Wet Shaving [Shaving]