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.

Morning is broken

Like Joel, I’m not a morning person. I hate mornings. I hate waking up. I hit snooze three times before I do. I get to work later than my colleagues – some of whom are here before I even wake up. I can’t start the day without a coffee – but that’s the same if I get up after 10am.

The Geek Dad blog at wired.com has a great ten tips for people who struggle to get up in the morning. One of which is to put your alarm over the other side of the room so you get up when it goes off. I’m all for that – especially if it means I take into account the 20 minutes of “snooze” I have every morning and set my alarm later. Here’s why:

“The thing is, snoozing sucks. It’s low-quality sleep that doesn’t leave you feeling restful in any way. My groggy brain is not rational enough in the a.m. to understand this. So there is no alarm on my bedside table.”

February 26, 2009

Grammar Nazis

There are a couple of subtitled swear words here – but this is funny. And worth a watch. Does a video comparing grammar pedants with Hitler break Godwin’s Law?

February 26, 2009

Life as a mathematical expression

Sister number two thought she was really clever when she first discovered vectors. “Everything is vectors” she said. And she would find ways to express everything in vector terminology. At least that’s how I remember that annoying phase of her life.

Here is a website that goes one better. Envisaging life and philosophical concepts in the form of mathematical equations.

So in this case the equation would be:

morenewmaths = sister number 2 + vectors + 1.

Like these.

February 26, 2009

Obamaprime

We’ve had Optima Prime, and the Obamicon, but now fusion. Bringing two cool things together. Obama and Optimus Prime. I give you “Obamaprime – Change Into A Robot” a poster by Tim Doyle. It has sold out. But it’s awesome.

February 26, 2009

Link list

If you happen to visit my site today you’ll notice I’ve finally added a “blogroll” a list of links to blogs I read. Starting with “personal blogs” from people I know in real life, or whose personal blogs I subscribe to.

Next up will be a list of links to useful sites and blogs I read. Exciting stuff. If you didn’t make the list and think you should – let me know.

The list is not ordered by anything in particular – I just added them as fast as I opened them from Google Reader.

February 26, 2009

Joyce on Lateline

I fluctuate between being mildly annoyed by Barnaby Joyce and admiring him. I interviewed him as a journalism student for a story on a topic that I can’t remember – possibly VSU and its potential effect on campus life – and he gave me about 15 minutes of his time – for an interview being broadcast on community radio 4EB – a bulletin only parents of journalism students listen to.

He seems pretty down to earth – and is quite genuine about his Christian faith. His maiden speech to parliament is worth a read.

Joyce was on Lateline last night. Hot on the heels of the launch of his Liberal colleague’s Godwin’s Law breaking efforts yesterday.

Tony Jones challenged him on his “denier” status and Turnbull’s stance on increasing the target for carbon reduction.

Here’s my one of my favourite Joyce moments on the Emissions Trading Scheme white paper:

Well, what I see is the – something that looks like the Magna Carta, the Old Testament and ‘War and Peace’, wrapped up in a piece of policy called the white paper. I know that that’s gonna cost about 50,000 mining jobs in Queensland, 165,000 other associated workers. I can’t accept that Queensland and Australia shouldn’t accept that. Malcolm Turnbull’s put forward a process of trying to design a way so that we don’t toss these people out onto the street. And that’s what it’s gonna do. If people have a moral position that they believe in an ETS, that’s fine: let their job be the first one to go.

Preach it brother.

It’s a great interview – and well worth a read, it covers a wide range of topics and Joyce is forthright in his answers.

February 26, 2009

A bunch of links – February 26, 2009

February 26, 2009

Speech Wars

This little site lets you pick two words and compare the number of times they’ve been used by US Presidents (and candidates) in State of the Union, inauguration and election campaign speeches from the 2008 election.

I ran some interesting tests – firstly with the candidates on their own names. It turns out Obama talked about McCain by name a whole lot more than McCain talked about Obama – although he did forget his name a few times…

mccain-v-obama

Then looking at State of the Union addresses I ran tests on faith v hope, war v peace, and must v cannot… the results weren’t surprising – hope is more popular than faith – I think because it’s more positive. Speeches should be positive. War is more popular than peace – and that’s pretty logical when you look at US foreign policy. Must is more popular than cannot – because taking positive action is better than not doing something negative – and there are a lot of synonyms for cannot but not many with the same power as “must” for the affirmative side.

Here are the pics:
faith-v-hope
war-v-peace
must-v-cannot

February 26, 2009

Worth your salt

These Rubik’s Cube salt and pepper shakers are the perfect accessory for your multicoloured kitchen. Admit it. You’ve been waiting for me to post a stupid gadget all day – or since I posted the drinking cups with the peeing boy.

They’re just £11.99. Each. Here.

February 25, 2009

Hollowgram

This is cool. It was in my list of links today – or yesterday – but deserves a post of its own. Find out how to make one here.

February 25, 2009

Garage Sailing Redux

My Star Wars Auctions on eBay finish up today – actually there’s one item that seems to have slipped through the posting cracks – two if you include the Boba Fett that I haven’t listed for Tim’s benefit.

The good news is that I’ve hit the break even point on the auctions and will actually make a profit. That’s bound to keep Robyn happy.

Feel free to jack up the prices with some last minute bidding action. You may score yourself a bargain. Darth Vader and R2-D2 are due to finish in just over two hours.

February 25, 2009

Power to the people

Not only will this bad boy have you singing Snap!’s I’ve Got The Power. It will also generate 2 watts at normal walking speed. That’s enough to power personal electronic devices. It’s being spruiked as a solution for power generation in Africa.

February 25, 2009

Political football

Murray Hurst, The LNP candidate for Townsville has a problem. He’s been pigeon holed as “the former North Queensland Cowboys coach”. Which he was. In 2001. After that he was a councilor at Thuringowa City Council – a much more credible position if you’re running for election. Unfortunately Mr Hurst has a problem. His campaign strategy seems to be to remind people that he was the Cowboys Coach.

“In many ways it’s like a rugby league team at the highest level,” said Mr Hurst, who coached the Cowboys in the 2001 and 2002 NRL seasons.

“You’ve got to worry about your own backyard without being overly concerned about who you are facing in the election.

“It’s always a case that you’ve got to have a good team behind you. Obviously now with a new opponent, one I didn’t expect, it may be different but it’s me and my team against the Labor Party.

In this interview from the Brisbane Times he goes on to talk about important stuff. Like infrastructure spending and health. But it’s too late. The horse has bolted. If you’re reading this Murray – and no doubt your crack campaign team has a google alert set up to tell you when people are mentioning your name – no more football analogies. This is an election campaign.

February 25, 2009

Who said this…

“I had two women police officers come around who looked like cabaret artistes – all fishnet stockings and deep cleavage – and they did not exactly engender confidence.”

Answer: Australia’s celebrated feminist Germaine Greer after her home was broken into. Talk about undermining equality in the workplace.

February 25, 2009

Fire branding

One of the elements of longevity for media coverage of the aftermath of a disaster is a good name. The twin towers attacks will always be synonymous with September 11. Or 9/11. The Boxing Day Tsunami had the fortune of hitting on a public holiday.

As I listened to the news on the Today Show before heading to work this morning I heard the Victorian Bushfires called the “Black Saturday Fires”.

Is that the best the media could do? Surely it wouldn’t have taken a marketing genius to call them the “Black Sabbath Fires”.

Who gets to choose these names anyway?

They should sell naming rights to the highest bidder. Insurance companies would love that.

That is all.

February 25, 2009