Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
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.
Putting the fun into PDFundo
http://pdfundo.net/convert/ – this might be worth keeping in mind if you ever have to unPDF a document.
One of the girls at work just used it and it worked.
Now to find a PDF to convert.
Putting the “product” in production
Following my post earlier today regarding the product placement posters – here are some interesting snippets from this SMH story today. It seems paying for product placement is no guarantee you’ll make the final cut – particularly in the new James Bond movie.
“Researcher the Nielsen Company reports that in the six months to the end of June 2008, the product placement market rose 11.7 per cent in the United States on the corresponding period in 2007.”
“…after years of Bond movies being used as vehicles to market watches, cars, clothes and phones, product placement in the latest movie is relatively restrained. Aston Martin, Smirnoff vodka, Sony and Virgin Atlantic may have paid millions but there is no guarantee their brand will be in the movie.”
“It appears everyone has learnt from the nadir of product placement – 2002’s Die Another Day – which had 25 brands, leading it to be dubbed Buy Another Day.”
Sony Ericsson saw a 20 % rise in sales after Casino Royale was released.
AN ODE TO CAPS LOCK
TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY* IN THE US (THE 22ND OF OCTOBER).
I DON’T KNOW WHY ALL CAPS HAS SUCH A BAD NAME.
OTHER NETIQUETTE RULES MAKE SENSE – AND ARE DESIGNED FOR A REASON. THIS ONE JUST SEEMS TO BE TO REDUCE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.
I DO NOT FEEL LIKE I AM SHOUTING – BUT CONVENTION SAYS THAT TO POST IN THIS MANNER IS TO SHOUT RUDELY.
I SAY CONVENTION IS RIDICULOUS. WHAT SAY YOU?
I would like to know where this rule comes from – but I can’t seem to find anything. Other than it just became broadly accepted because someone said so. Please. Enlighten me.
Part of the celebration of International Caps Lock Day is designing useful hacks to get your caps lock key to do something other than capitalise your writing**. I’m not sure what I’d get it to do.
Also, I think it odd that the Caps Lock key is not written in all caps. I also wonder why the keyboard is presented with capital letters when you have to hit shift to make the letters capitals by default.
Also – when it comes to capitals – we are minimalists according to our corporate style guide as mentioned previously. I still think you’re better off indicating that you’re shouting by using shouty words – ALL CAPS is just hard to read.
* That link contains swearing and generally bad English.
** This one probably has swearing but the English is ok.
Poster post
This is pretty cool. A graphic design company has released a series of movie posters featuring the products “placed” in those movies as stars.
IT Crowd
I’m in Sydney at the moment at a conference for users of our work’s Content Management System. It’s not what I expected it to be. I was thinking there’d be lots of young nerdy guys drooling over code and wearing pocket protectors. I was wrong. It’s actually mostly pretty old people – and a fairly even gender split. Sometime during the last two years I became our office’s official geek – I don’t know how it happened. But a lot of the stuff the people at this conference are getting excited about is beyond me. I sat at a dinner table with the guy who is pretty much everyone’s hero for some work he did with AJAX (the coding/script thing that pretty much powers Facebook) and the Content Management Platform – he presented earlier today. People kept coming up to him wanting to buy his work. He told me he’ll probably put it up for free, silly him. Dave Hughes MC’d the conference dinner. He was very funny. He apparently gets paid over $10k to do that sort of gig. Clearly I’m in the wrong career.
One of my favourite things about this conference has been the number of terrible tech glitches in presentations. Powerpoint appears to be the bane of even the technologically elite – although most of the presenters have been using Macs – and it’s beautiful presentation software. I decided the other day that I’d like a Mac. Especially one of the new ones with the funky touchpad. If my choice of luxury materialism comes down to a toss up between a Mac, a coffee grinder, an XBox 360 or a new TV – I’ll be in a real bind. At the moment I am probably leaning towards this option . Robyn remains unconvinced. It’s still cheaper than a piano though.
On Tuesday night I lugged Sheila (my tank of a coffee machine) to a lady’s Wine and Cheese night event that our church held. I made quite a few coffees using some El Salvadorian beans I roasted on Monday. I’ve been meaning to write a little bit about coffee on this blog – and probably will later. Right now there’s a bit of a fight going on on the street outside my hotel – I haven’t adjusted to daylight savings time very well so it still feels quite early to me but most people appear to be asleep.
I’m staying in a hotel called “The Dive Hotel” in Coogee. It’s very nice. A fairly large room in what appears to be a converted terrace house right on the beach in what I think is Sydney’s nicest suburb. Breakfast is a communal affair – and the in room brochure/manual thing warns guests (particularly children) not to pat the hotel’s aging dog – one of those little furry balls that only just passes as a dog – because in its old age it no longer tolerates children. Pretty funny stuff which adds to the homely appeal of the place.
Who would take a hurricane cal…
Who would take a hurricane called Norbert seriously?
From the Vault 2 – the CD32
I made fleeting reference to this in the lego post – and decided that since I’m waiting around for some approvals on some things before I do any work today I’d write about it now.
The Amiga CD32 was the most technologically advanced Amiga I ever played with – and I got to play with a few courtesy of dad’s freelance writing gig (reviewing computer games).
Released in 1993 the console was out a year and a half ahead of the PSone – and offered pretty much the same capabilities – just without the volume of games.
It was a last ditch effort to save the mother company – Commodore – which declared bankruptcy in 1994.
Pretty much the coolest thing about the console was the game it came bundled with – or vice versa – Diggers which probably inspired a generation of mining exploration in the same way that lego inspired modern architecture. It was a race to find valuable minerals – teams of five race(r)s all with unique racial characteristics – literally battled for underground supremacy. You could win by wiping out the other teams – or by reaching certain cash thresholds. Mining revenue could be spent improving equipment – with automatic drilling machines vital weapons in the battle to (un)cover the most ground.
I think I downloaded a Diggers ROM to play using the Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator (UAE) and it was still fun years later. You can download it for PC here.
The lego brick road
A while back I made a nostalgic post about the CDTV – the first CD based gaming console I ever played. Those nostalgic console stories will probably continue – I haven’t mentioned the Amiga CD32 or the 8-bit goodness of the NES yet – but today’s trip down memory lane will focus on the original 8 bit entertainment. Lego.
“if all the Lego bricks ever produced were to be divided equally among a world population of six billion, each person would have 62 Lego bricks.” –An interesting fact from the wikipedia article
I probably spent more time playing with Lego than any other toy or game in my childhood. Lego was is awesome. A little while back, after I started earning a wage I thought about buying some new lego to play with – but the little men – apparently called minifigs (like the little pirate below) had been replaced by these cretinous things that almost had opposable thumbs.
I was distressed.
Anyway, Lego is probably responsible for today’s architects and engineers – lego architects and engineers broke new ground recently, by creating the world’s tallest lego tower.
“At 96.73 feet (29.485 meters) this Lego tower built in the Rathaus Platz in Vienna has broken the world record for the tallest Lego construction in the world. It took nearly 460,000 bricks and it was built over four days. The views from the top are quite stunning” – from Gizmodo
That’s some impressive legoing.
Equally impressive is this Flickr collection dedicated to BrickCon’s Zombiefest.
And for those of you who don’t have a lego arsenal capable of taking on the zombie hoards – there’s always this collection from BrickArms to get you by.
Coming soon to a keyboard near you
I was all set to post a “word of the day” type post using the word dilettante – which is essentially a dabbler in the arts – but not an expert – when James sent an email containing a word/new punctuation mark that could revolutionise the way people express themselves. The “Interrobang” – not only does it have a cool name, it combines a question mark with an exclamation mark. Like so:
I can see it having all sorts of applications in rhetorical questions. Seriously though, I hate exclamation marks. They are a tool of lazy writers. The in house style guide I wrote for work basically bans them. If you can’t express yourself significantly without telling the reader specifically that something requires emphasis – you shouldn’t be writing. Bolding and underlining are also right out. As is bold underlining.
I also had a long running battle with a guy from work who I will refer to only as the “Capital Punisher” – he knows who he is. Perhaps he’ll find this blog. Capitals, like exclamation marks, are right out – and should only be used for proper nouns and at the start of sentences.
Finally, a bible you can read anywhere…
Not sure how useful this is – but the previewed Revelation image looks like a cool desktop.
A Swedish marketeer is set to release the New Testament in magazine format for the borderline illiterate.
Fully sick
Is there anything worse than being at work sick?
Yes, there is, being at work sick on a deadline for your most important project of the year.
At least I have Ben, James and Paul’s emails to keep me company. Today we’re talking about the falling Aussie dollar and how it has ruined Paul’s Christmas because importing his presents is now prohibitively expensive. Good times.
Yesterday we talked about Ben’s inability to write analogies. Paul and James mostly talk about computer games. Which only mildly interests me because they’re not talking about the Nintendo 64 – which is the only console I’m currently playing. Just to keep you in the loop – I only have three 00 Agent levels to go. 1337 – is that how you write “leet” – I’m sure James will correct me.
Yes, there is, being at work sick on a deadline for your most important project of the year.
At least I have Ben, James and Paul’s emails to keep me company. Today we’re talking about the falling Aussie dollar and how it has ruined Paul’s Christmas because importing his presents is now prohibitively expensive. Good times.
Yesterday we talked about Ben’s inability to write analogies. Paul and James mostly talk about computer games. Which only mildly interests me because they’re not talking about the Nintendo 64 – which is the only console I’m currently playing. Just to keep you in the loop – I only have three 00 Agent levels to go. 1337 – is that how you write “leet” – I’m sure James will correct me.
Wondering what business ideas …
Wondering what business ideas Hilton came up with? Anything exciting? Like opening a cafe…