It seems I can’t go anywhere without my camera these days.
I’ve decided I’m far too excited by sillhouette photos and photos with the sun in shot. And clouds. Clouds are fun too.
I also, strangely, find this picture of shoes compelling enough to make it the “album cover” for my Picasa album.
We had church camp over the weekend. An interesting time with some important discussions about the future direction of our church – we’re looking at a plant in a new suburb/growth area in Townsville.
That’s all by-the-by. I’ll probably talk about it shortly.
The campsite we were staying at (a Girl Guides site in Bluewater) was powered and had a shared kitchen. Which to me is an opportunity to not suffer through hand grinding beans for the stove top. I brought Sheila* with me. And made a lot of coffees (and hot chocolates).
We went through 42 litres of milk (I think that’s right – by my count it was 14 three litre bottles). Close to 1.5kgs of coffee. And by my very rough estimate made about 150 drinks. Which awesomely justifies my decision to purchase Sheila on “ministry” grounds.**
I had catered on the basis of previous camp experience (and a bit of dinner catering experience) – which left me about half a kilo wrong in my calculations – people drink lots of coffee on camps, especially at morning tea. This meant buying coffee from Woolworths – which is an ethically difficult thing to do if you’re a believer in the superiority of freshly roasted coffee. There’s stuff on the shelves that was roasted in Italy – which surely sits on ships, in warehouses and on pallets in the store before even making it to the back of the shelf. In a word, it’s stale. I am going to, in its very own posts, formulate some sort of scored index of coffee.
I spent so long yanking the portafiller in and out of the machine that I have blisters. Barista blisters.
* My hundred kilo three group Rancilio Coffee Machine – named after the tank from Red vs Blue.
** not the website where I buy my coffee – but on the basis that I’d use the machine “for ministry” it’s how I internally justify every infrastructure splurge…
The Cronulla saga is dragging on and on. The media are having a field day with the club and in one way or another the focus on the club’s on and off field discretions (and its culture) has claimed some pretty major scalps, including:
I wouldn’t be surprised if it now claims Ricky Stuart as well… his team isn’t performing, he was sacked as Australian coach for his tirade against a referee, and he’s now been embroiled in this whole CEO scandal.
The Sharks need a change of culture pretty quickly in order to save the club – and part of the cultural problem is a problem endemic in club sports – where mateship rules and indiscretions are swept under the carpet.
There have been a number of different scandals that have almost damaged the Sharks brand beyond repair. In fact, it may well be past the point of no return. The scandals came at a time when the club was already in dire financial straits – they’re in debt, they’re looking to sell or get the NRL’s blessing to relocate, since the Johns scandal they’ve been hemorrhaging sponsors – with their primary sponsor also pulling the pin.
They’ve been caught up in immorality, racism, violent assault and drug taking. And the media is loving it. The Sharks are buried in a quagmire of bad publicity – which is a PR nightmare (or opportunity if you like Crisis Management). And it’s been pretty poorly handled all round. The board has failed, the CEO has failed, the Shark’s PR girl is one of their main accusors, only the NRL and the NRL’s predominant media partner have come out of it in improved positions.
The NRL has taken a pretty down the line, hardline, stance – calling for cultural change and including to back its associated club. David Gallop has had far too much practice in this sort of situation to do anything less than a good job.
Nine has put Matthew Johns through the ringer (gaining great ratings in doing so) and managed to both distance themselves (through his sacking), show empathy (through Phil Gould’s tears on the Footy Show), and they’ve left the door slightly ajar for Johns with the Sam Newman precedent… they’ve also changed the content of the Footy Show – and made it less offensively boorish and more about the game.
In a couple of cases – particularly with Matthew Johns and Frank Zappia – there has been a clear instance of media manipulation as their respective PR people try to turn the tide – discrediting whoever has made the claim against them… in both cases women, and in both cases about inappropriate treatment of women.
The Sharks have an endemic cultural problem – but that’s an altogether different topic. But they have also failed grossly in managing and protecting their brand. When the accusations first came to light they should have immediately stood down their board and elected fresh faces (which they tried to do but this was politically circumvented by the current board), sacked the CEO, and started a massive proactive “cultural clean up” – instead they’ve, to steal a mafia term, “gone to the mattresses” – they’re trying to fight it out, while hiding. The Chairman was re-elected unopposed at a board meeting, the CEO was given support despite obviously financially mismanaging the club – and not taking appropriate action regarding the culture. And they’re paying for it – because the net effect of taking these steps has now been realised – but it wasn’t voluntary. And it looks like the media has forced their hand.
They’ve also tried to play the media outlets against one another – which is never a good move. Fairfax blasted them for allegedly engaging in a number of immoral practices to essentially keep the players happy – and they ran to News Ltd to publish a counter story – now their ex-PR representative says the stories were true. News Ltd now has egg on its face. When managing a crisis you should never, ever, lie. It is, if there is a worst time to do it, the worst time to do it.
After Matthew Johns was brought to tears and the point of collapse on A Current Affair stories started to circulate from “unnamed friends” of “Clare” that she had in fact spent the weeks following the incident bragging about her conquest. Stories that began to paint Johns in a new, less guilty light. Here are two stories from the opposite ends of the media spectrum (ABC and Fox Sports) released within an hour of each other… notice the similarity in the headlines:
Now, after Frank Zappia stands down, we see a story aiming to discredit the key witness in his prosecution. A girl he allegedly punched in the face and then suggested receiving a “spanking” as appropriate recompense. She apparently signed a document clearing him of wrongdoing. The woman at the centre of the claim is on the record as wanting to keep her job – despite the incident. This couldn’t be a factor? She’s also got that pesky audio recording that would seem to suggest the wrongdoing occurred – despite what a signed, written report might say. Channel 7 is having a field day with that exclusive.
The best PR, if you’re guilty, is to fall on your sword with grace and aplomb. Not to go down fighting. That drags your brand down with you. None of the men involved are bigger than the club they represent – and none of them are acting as representatives by staying on. They can’t fix the problem when they are the problem. There’s a precedent here too. The Bulldogs have essentially resurrected their brand (and their performances on the field) following a similar cultural cleanout – that encompassed both playing personnel and backroom staff. Their fullback Luke Patten had some wise words for the Sharks to consider…
“I guess the club just made some tough decisions.”
“Anyone that was stuffing up, they got rid of them and they brought (CEO) Todd Greenberg in and he just made decision after decision really – new coach, all new staff, new players and with that everything’s changed.”
“There’s a new attitude and everyone’s working really hard for that and maybe the Sharks, that is something they can look at.”
I’ve tracked down the original home of the printed out Wikipedia (or at least what I think is the original post). Turns out it was only the “featured articles” that were printed.
Here’s what it would look like if the whole thing was printed using this criteria…
“If you were to print out the whole thing (not just the featured articles), this is what it would look like based on volumes 25cm high and 5cm thick (some 400 leaves), each page having two columns, each columns having 80 rows, and each row having 50 characters.”
These are nice. Sculptures made of sticky tape (there are more). From Daily Vowel Movements (possibly the coolest surname based pun ever). That Andrew (one of the many who occasionally comments here) has just been writing a series on jargon which has been most interesting.
It seems my blog-off rival, the dazzlingly insightful Ben McLaughlin knows which side his blog traffic is buttered on – he’s joined the Tetris loving fun – pointing to Google’s 25th birthday tribute… which looked a little like this…
Well, I was expecting to see a spike in visits thanks to that bookofjoe linkage so I checked my stats. And there was a spike – though not from bookofjoe – instead it comes from this German? site (translated). 777 visitors. From an article about Tetris featuring this translated passage:
“Even a Tetris Olympics is on the way.Real Tetris fans will Gesumse not all that upset. They sing the song to the peddlers.And wait for the next block. (Detlef Borchers) / (It / c’t) “
I’m the “Real Tetris Fan” linked there. Bookofjoe has so far produced nine hits.
I feel like I’ve hit blogging gold. After all these years of meaningless toil it appears that the “World’s most popular blogging anesthesiologist” over at bookofjoe has visited my site – because I’ve scored a link.
Awesomeness.
Oppression of pie eaters is everywhere – no longer can one take one’s pie eating break at work without attracting the scowls of colleagues. No more. Up with this we shall not put… with just a permanent marker there’ll be dedicated pie eating areas in all the least popular real estate in town…
I thought this piece of Graphjammy goodness was too good to pass up after last week’s music debate.
I put U2 on the right hand side.
Homer Simpson spawned a legacy of men wishing they could wear their dinner on their heads with such panache.
Well now you can. Thanks to this little tutorial all things are possible.
Squirt your (ex-)friends in the face with this “now that you mention it, it’s obvious” practical joke from Wired, it’s harnessing the awesome powers of science…
In honour of Tetris’s 25th birthday I give you this. A geeky Tetris wedding cake. Beautiful. No doubt my wife (and little sister number 1 – who made our cake) is thankful that we’re already married.
This is part of an article featuring geeky wedding cakes which also featured this Mario cake…
Segways are our future. So it’s great to know that in the future there’ll still be something like Motocross for bogans to enjoy.
Speaking of Motocross reminds me of an old motorbike racing game Paul (best man at my wedding – currently in South America and occasional reader) and I bought once where you could design your own awesome tracks and win money to upgrade your bikes… it was awesome.
Anyway, I found this at Gizmodo.
David Thorne gained international (or at least internet) notoriety for trying to pay his bill with a drawing of a spider.
So he’s not the kind of guy you should send this sort of letter to. You’re really just asking for trouble…
There’s some pretty funny stuff on his site – but also some not so funny stuff. Be warned.
Here’s a sample from the string of emails he sent to his real estate agent…
“Currently I only have eight dogs but one is expecting puppies and I am very excited by this. I am hoping for a litter of at least ten as this is the number required to participate in dog sled racing. I have read every Jack London novel in preparation and have constructed my own sled from timber I borrowed from the construction site across the road during the night. I have devised a plan which I feel will ensure me taking first place in the next national dog sled championships. For the first year of the puppies life I intend to say the word mush then chase them violently around the apartment while yelling and hitting saucepan lids together. I have estimated that the soundproofing of my apartment should block out at least sixty percent of the noise and the dogs will learn to associate the word mush with great fear so when I yell it on race day, the panic and released adrenaline will spur them on to being winners. I am so confident of this being a foolproof plan that I intend to sell all my furniture the day before the race and bet the proceeds on coming first place.”