Author: Nathan Campbell
Houstons, we have a problem…
So the Hillsong takeover of the Garden City Church is in full swing – with the church to be renamed: Hillsong Brisbane Campus.
The Houstons are turning their global domination strategies back to Australian shores and focusing on “multisite” expansion – ala Mark Driscoll.
Here’s how the previous minister of Garden City felt about the expansion – this is an excerpt of an article in the SMH today:
Garden City’s senior pastor for eight years, Bruce Hills, was forced out before the arrival of the Houstons. Garden City Christian Church announced Mr Hills’s resignation in December, amid criticism that the church was not growing enough. Yet in an address to a Christian conference at Easter, Mr Hills revealed he had a nervous breakdown last September. “Emotionally I just imploded,” he said.
When he returned from eight weeks’ leave, Garden City Christian Church elders told him: “We’d rather have more of a CEO leader than you. We’d like you to resign.”
Describing it as “the deepest, darkest experience I’ve ever been through”, Mr Hills said he was “really angry about what these people had done”.
Steve Dixon, who has been acting pastor at Garden City since Mr Hills’s resignation, will now be “campus pastor” of Hillsong Brisbane.
I love the way this church – and Hillsong – have been so caring and compassionate to their leader. Very biblical. Especially the bit where they sacked him because the church was not growing enough… I assume they mean numerically, because this would certainly indicate a level of spiritual immaturity.
Oh, and Craig reckons they’re now a denomination. In completely unrelated news – have you ever noticed that you only have to switch one letter in denomination to make it demonination? That would be a Freudian slip if ever I saw one…
Plumbing new depths
Turns out the farting office chair – or more correctly the tweeting fart detecting office chair – wasn’t the lowest you can go with new technologies.
Here’s how to make a toilet that tweets on each flush…and here’s the Twitter account for you to follow. Here are some samples:
- plop plop fizz fizz
- blue?! WHAT were you eating?
- plop plop fizz fizz
- you sank my battleship
- hey tweeps, i just wanted to share this awesome moment with you
What can I say – I’m all about enriching your day to day lives.
At the movies…
My fixation with ninjas is well documented… but did you also know that I’m fascinated with assassins – largely due to two of my favourite game franchises – Hitman and Assassins Creed, and martial arts movies… So something bringing all of those elements together is enough to warrant a Sunday afternoon post. I give you the poster for “Ninja Assassin” possibly the most eagerly anticipated movie release of 2009 (except for Transformers 2)…
It’s directed by the guy who directed V for Vendetta, and the special effects were put together by the guy who did the Matrix and Speed Racer – so it should be awesome.
Reality bytes*
Video games these days are so much more fun than they were when I first picked up a console controller. I can’t remember which came first – the NES or the CD TV – it’s all a bit of a blur. Having a father with a casual gig writing games reviews had its perks. Actually, it must have been a NES. Unless the Vic-20 counts as a console…
It did, from memory, plug into your TV… in fact, as a delightful tangent – I should point out that Dad’s game reviewing gig came after he wrote and published this book – unavailable for GBP4.95 from The Book Depository – for those of you who aren’t link clickers it was called “Beyond Simple Basic – Delving deeper into your Vic-20”. Seriously, with a father like that what chance did I have of not turning out as a geek.
Anyway, that’s a significant digression from my original point – but the Vic-20 was an 8-bit machine, so it’s tangentially related. My point was – games are now better. And I’m going to suggest that graphic violence is what makes that so. So it warms me to the cockles of my heart to see this Flickr set – of 8-bit characters rendered beautifully and experiencing graphic deaths. Here’s the demise of a Goomba – cleverly titled Goombash…
There are plenty more where that came from. Including this Pac-Attack…
* the title is only vaguely clever if you know that there are 8 bits to a byte. I have actually always wondered why 8-bit machines weren’t called one byte machines. I might have to look that up…
A bunch of links – May 9, 2009
- Cheap Webhosting
- This is Stephen Colbert’s NASA Space Station Treadmill
- Social notworking
- How to Create a DVD from Any Video File
- Hot Tip: Do More With Your Coffee Grounds Natural Home Magazine May 2009
- DIY Invisible Floating Bookshelves [Weekend Project]
- Find All The Acronyms In Word Documents
- Bikies, Drunks and Doing Something
- 47 comments this week!
The incredible Laurence Tureaud
Who is Laurence Tureaud you ask… he’s Mr T – the bodyguard/actor/wrestler/reality TV star/face of Snickers/recording artist/kitchenware endorser/Christian/cartoon character famous for roles in the A-Team, the first ever Wrestlemania and Rocky.
He’s been around. He’s an interesting guy. And he’s so diversely talented that there’s a little bit of Mr T to appeal to everybody.
For a starter he’s dead against “your mum” jokes – as this film clip demonstrates…
If that wasn’t your cup of tea – here’s his cartoon from the early 80s…
Here’s Mr T in the kitchen…
Here he is in action in the very first Wrestlemania tagging with Hulk Hogan…
Here’s his “Get some nuts” snickers ad…
And a collection of Mr T’s wise sayings from the A-Team…
And here, finally, for your viewing pleasure, is Mr T’s first fight against Rocky in HD…
Clockwork
It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow – or perhaps Mothers’ Day – depending on your marital status – or indeed your understanding of the definition of the day. Perhaps you’ve forgotten to buy a present. Well, you’re out of time. Unless you buy something online – and perhaps, given that you’ve forgotten your mum, you should buy a clock. Here’s some fun ones from around the interwebs – and where to buy them. The good ones aren’t cheap.
The “back to university maths” clock
A bunch of links – May 8, 2009
- One Arminian’s Proof-Texts
- Free 50-Page PDF of The Simple Dollar’s Best Advice [Personal Finance]
- Map Motive Mashes All Your Facebook Friends On A Google Map
- Google Maps Mashup Shows Opposite Points On Globe
- On children#39;s ministry: or, where to find the most impressive person in Princeton
- Church Leadership from a Mobster?
- Intellectually topless
Slingo
I guess that’s the lingo slings talk? Maybe, anyway, as a title for my only post so far today it’ll have to do – and it adequately describes these slings that save you all the hassle of explaining your obvious injury. And anybody who has ever been obviously injured knows this is a painful thing to have to do. They’re designed by this guy – and they were here when I first sore (sic) them.
A bunch of links – May 7, 2009
- MPC Style Guide
- 50 gallons per mile?!? That’s the water cost of corn-based ethanol
- The most accurate television show about the medical profession? Scrubs.
- Bad jokes
- MeatCards: Print Your Business Cards On Beef Jerky With A Frickin’ Laser Beam
- Learn the Basic Chemistry of Marinades [Grilling]
- Easy Ways To Graph Your Life
- XBMC 9.04 “Babylon” Updates For All Supported Platforms
- Early Beach Boys Hit Song Topics#5 In A Series Of Pop-Cultural…
- Arcing: John Piper on How He Studies the Bible
- The Joy of Presbyterianism (Carl Trueman)
- Townsville plaza planned shelved
- Thunderbirds are go for Townsville
- CJ Mahaney on Biblical Productivity
- Chief Army Chaplain in Afghanistan distributes local-language Bibles, orders congregation to convert locals
X-rayted consoles
Some guy has decided it would be a good idea to x-ray consoles and their controllers and then put the results on Flickr. He’s probably right. It does look pretty cool.
Found here.
New twist on portable coffee
Meet the mypressi TWIST. A completely portable espresso machine that produces pressure courtesy of a cylinder of pressurised air (the same type used for whipped cream guns and soda siphons) in the handle.
It’s probably not the “first” portable coffee maker – I wrote about one a while ago… but it was bike pump powered.
