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.

When naming competitions go a wry

User generated content based competitions are all the rage. They encourage better consumer engagement and produce content and ideas a corporation may not have the budget to produce by itself. But they’re open for abuse. They can be hijacked – particularly if someone with a big enough following turns on you.

I like Stephen Colbert a lot. So I’m hoping NASA goes through with its promise to name a new space module after the most popular response to a recent competition.

“NASA’s mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report” to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.

NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April, but will give top vote-getters “the most consideration.””

Let that be a lesson to anybody running user generated popularity contests – it means you have no control over the outcome. And if you do choose to exercise your right to disregard the competition it will be terrible PR. Unless you’re the people who put people into space – your coolarity is already so high that you can get away with just about anything.

March 24, 2009

Garfield: Lost in translation

A couple of weeks ago I posted a link to garfield minus garfield a few weeks back. It’s a great existential journey through Jon Arbuckle’s head… you should check it out if you didn’t see it then.

This week Garfield has been lost in translation – translated out of English into Japanese and then literally back into English again. With the following effect:

March 24, 2009

Full disclosure

Apparently Senator Conroy is not the Internet killing free speech hating barbarian the Internet community claims.

I’ve been having a lengthy email conversation with the guy who called me a Greens Party Stooge (which still hurts) and he pointed me to this article and these quotes:

Conroy also reiterated that the Government has made clear which content is to be filtered and how.

It will attack RC [refused classification] content, he said, by the same rationale ACMA already classifies content under the existing Broadcasting Services Act for television, radio and print publications.

“There is no political content banned in the existing Broadcasting Services Act,” he said.

“We are not building the Great Wall of China. We are going after the filth – like child pornography. Its been done around the world and it can be done here.”

How it is done “will be guided by the outcome of the trials.”

Most of the assertions otherwise are “patently a scare campaign [against] a policy objective we think is fair and reasonable,” he said.

I have no doubt there is good intention behind this plan. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like child pornography or other illegal stuff being on the internet – including piracy.

But while I think this “policy objective” is fair and reasonable the policy being promoted to achieve it is not. If this is the case – why the secrecy? If this is the case why are there two trials – one of the ACMA blacklist, and one of a smaller list of illegal sites? And why is Whirlpool facing fines for providing a link to the leaked ACMA blacklist – which demonstrated the lack of vetting of content added to the list (eg a dentist’s site).

So, Conroy wants us to “show good faith” – how bout showing the people of Australia some good faith by making the blacklist process as open and transparent as the classification process? The argument that the blacklist based filter will be “opt in” doesn’t hold water if those who don’t opt in don’t know what’s on it.

Personally, given the choice, I’ll sign up to the filtered version. But that should be my decision – and we should know what we can’t access when signing up.

March 24, 2009

Important news

Threadless has extended the $5 sale until the end of March.

Three posts ago I hit 1,000 posts. I’ll do some sort of best of those 1,000 posts to celebrate in the next day or so. To me, every one of them is like a wicket for Glenn McGrath – I remember them all. Maybe.

Speaking of Cricket. Australia has an all rounder. A bowling all rounder. Mitchell Johnson. He’s from Townsville you know.

Here’s Roebuck’s view on Johnson’s all round credentials:

“Several of the batsman had fallen foul of Harris’s Disease, the name nowadays given to batsmen who suddenly play boneheaded shots against apparently innocuous spinners. Hereabouts the main topic on spectators’ tongues concerned the tourists’ ability to take the match into a fifth day.

The next hour was startling as the Australian’s launched a two-pronged attack. Johnson’s innings is etched in the memory. After a quite start, he hurried to 50 in 51 balls whereupon he raised the tempo sufficiently to reach three figures in 86 balls. He did not swipe. He did not depend on luck. Instead he produced a stream of swashbuckling strokes all around the wicket, executed with a free and full swing of the bat.

Some of his strokes stirred the cricketing soul. Johnson took the ball on the rise and dispatched it through extra-cover or he stayed still and smote lifters into the 10th row at deep mid-wicket. Without exception his pulls and hooks went forward of square. Some of them dashed past mid-on. Moving in for the kill, the South Africans tossed the ball to Makhaya Ntini and Dale Steyn. Even Jacques Kallis had a crack and he, too, was swiftly swamped.”

March 24, 2009

UrbanTrends: Wake up cross

Here’s a clock that’ll keep you alarmed but probably not alert. First of all it sings Amazing Grace to you. Then it will read you a random bible verse.

It’s also tastefully printed with “The Prayer of St Francis”.

March 24, 2009

Our daily Fred: Coaster to coaster

These coasters are a sure way to make dinner party guests feel comfortable – hopefully not too comfortable or you’ll be cleaning up after their spills for days.

This bad boy’s even got a built in bottle opener.

March 24, 2009

Shirt of the Day Redux: The pick of the bunch

I’ve used my morning sorting through the Threadless sale so that you don’t have to. Here are my favourites. Click the image for the link.

Little sister number 3 has this one

Little sister number 3 has this one

March 24, 2009

Shirt of the Day: Interpretive Dance

Threadless is having a $5 sale – that’s $US5. Chief amongst the awesome cheapies is this one – but my size is gone, and there aren’t many left. And the sale finishes today.

It’s a shame I didn’t get onto this earlier – they would have made a great uniform for a dance ministry.

March 24, 2009

A bunch of links – March 23, 2009

March 23, 2009

UrbanTrend: a knife’s throw away

I suspect UrbanTrends is going to give worldwidefred a run for its money in little sister number 2’s books. She declared worldwidefred her favourite site yesterday. And yet here we are, looking at a different site – probably worthy of a rival series of morning posts. So for the next nine days they’ll go head to head. Starting with the coolest knife block ever. Cooler than the voodoo knife block.

I always said that if I could be anyone in the circus I’d be the knife thrower. And now I can practice at home.

If your bench doesn’t have room for a fully fledged knife throwing block – how bout the set of matching steak knives as an alternative…

March 23, 2009

Toastered TV

Here’s a device that could one day make the weather man obsolete.

This contraption looks interesting you say. But what is it? Possibly the most awesome device ever to be posted on my blog.

No more reading tea leaves or chicken entrails for your morning auguries  (unless you have liverwurst on your toast) – It is a weather forecasting toaster. It prints the day’s forecast on your morning bread. It will one day be available in stores. It was launched at a Java conference eight years ago. I can’t believe it’s not out there in stores yet. It’s the ultimate convergence device.

March 23, 2009

Irregular Expressions

Dan has started blogging much more frequently – perhaps turning his clever blog name into a misnomer. This can only be a good thing. He’s done a little series recently on this Hillsong bus ad.

Which is worth a read.

March 23, 2009

Sanity prevails… maybe

iiNet has pulled themselves out of the cleanfeed trial citing an inability “to reconcile participation in the trial with our corporate social responsibility, our customer service objectives and our public position on censorship.”

Their decision came after wikileaks was blocked last week for publishing the ACMA blacklist. Which was meant to be a top secret “for government eyes only” document…

“It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes.”

March 23, 2009

No pun intended

I am totally taking up this hobby. Especially now I know puns are a mark of geekiness – not nerdiness. I am embracing my inner geek. With a little sci-fi I’ll be 10/10 in no time.

March 23, 2009

Can K-Rudd hear me

Some time ago I posted a link to one man’s audacious bid to be heard by google. Can Google Hear Me won the hearts and minds of millions. Including Google – who were interested enough to take this man’s journey to the next level.

And now – following news that the Federal Government will now trawl critical blogs I ask the question. Can Kevin Rudd hear me?

It hasn’t taken long for people to make a connection between trawling blogs for criticism and the clean feed/blacklist campaign – particularly because the Government’s own media release listed Whirlpool.net.au’s criticism of the blacklist as one of the examples the Government’s beady eyes were watching.

I have said several things about the Ruddster and his ability to make even the most clear things unclear through erudite obfuscation. That was Rudd speak for using simple words in a complicated way so as to make things impossible to understand.

Kevin, if you’re here, and you can hear me – of if your staff are and they can – let me know in the comments. Perhaps you’d like to give me a job making your unclear communication clear.

Who knows. Perhaps you’d like to read through all the things I’ve had to say about you in the past.

Regards,

Nathan

March 23, 2009