If I could choose to develop one skill that I don’t have I think graphic design would be high on the list. It’s so important for effective communication.
I like this collection of posters.
Here are some of my favourites.
Category: Communication
What is design?
Finding Jesus on Wikipedia
Back in 2006 when nobody read my blog I came up with this unoriginal “six degrees of Wikipedia” game. I haven’t really played it since.
Boing Boing today posted “Click to Jesus” – a similar concept. See how you go.
1. Go over to Wikipedia.
2. Click “Random Article” just below the Wikipedia unfinished Death Star logo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
3. Choose the link in the article you think will get you closest to the Jesus article.
4. Keep track of the articles. Continue step 3 until you arrive at Jesus.
Scoring:
1 point for Random page
1 point for each click
1 point for Jesus page
You get style points if you start at Kevin Bacon – share your path from Kevin Bacon to Jesus in the comments.
Home Alone gets twitterfied
Home Alone is a classic movie. These days classic movies reach classic status when they are relived on Twitter. Apparently. So here’s a sample of the “Home Alone Project” that recently took place on Twitter. Check it out.
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Harry_Lyme
ARRRRGGHHH!!! Wooo woooooo wooo **sizzle** 1:50 PM Dec 25th from API
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KevinMcCal
LOL @Harry_Lyme just got a Blowtorch to the head… 1:49 PM Dec 25th from web
- Harry_Lyme
@KevinMcCal heh hehe You’re dead kid! 1:48 PM Dec 25th from API
- Harry_Lyme
@#¢€*&!! I’m gonna rip his head off…!!! 1:47 PM Dec 25th from web
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TallnCurly
**4″ nail + Foot** AARGGGGHHH!!! AAARGHH ARRRRGHHH ARRGGH!! 1:43 PM Dec 25th from web
- TallnCurly
Down to one red sock… WHO PUTS ROOFING TAR ON STEPS?!?!?!?? 1:42 PM Dec 25th from API
- Harry_Lyme
ouch. http://twitpic.com/v20o3 1:40 PM Dec 25th from API
- KevinMcCal
Yesssssss! Yes, yes, yes, yes! 1:39 PM Dec 25th from web
- Harry_Lyme
**sizzle** ARRRGGGGHHH!!!!! oow ow owww ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!!!!!! **sizzle** aaaahhhhhh 1:38 PM Dec 25th from web
- Harry_Lyme
@KevinMcCal Gggrrrr You little creep, where are you?? 1:37 PM Dec 25th from web
- Harry_Lyme
Oh, boy. That’s it, you little…**slip** You little son of a…**slip** No, not this time, you little brat!! 1:36 PM Dec 25th from web
- TallnCurly
Look what the kid just did to me!! http://twitpic.com/v1zhc 1:32 PM Dec 25th from web
- TallnCurly
**click** **RATTLE** … **SLAM** ..OWW!! ….**SIZZLE** 1:31 PM Dec 25th from web
- TallnCurly
**slam** 1:30 PM Dec 25th from API
- TallnCurly
**crow bar** … one tough door. **click** …oh. It’s open… 1:29 PM Dec 25th from web
The problem with surveys
You know what I hate more than anything else in TV news bulletins. The viewer poll. The viewer poll is not news – nor is it indicative of the public’s actual thoughts on an issue. It is a revenue raiser. A tax on those stupid enough to phone or SMS an expensive number.
You can write a survey and skew a question any way you want. For polling to be legit it needs to be carrier out objectively by a company that can produce and moderate results to ensure a proper sample of the community is represented – and it needs to include the number of people who didn’t care enough about the issue to respond either positively or negatively.
Dinosaur Comics explains…
Here’s a completely unrelated Dinosaur comic that made me laugh…
Rhapsody in iPhone
I thought having two iPhones was excessive – check out what this guy can do with six.
Via Human3rror
Gospel and Kingdom – according to adwords
Sometimes I click on online ads. They have to be really bad though. Sensationally bad. Like an ad on the Sydney Morning Herald website. In fact, it was on a Peter Fitzsimmons (an atheist) article about the canonisation of Mary McKillop (a Catholic) – so it was one of those juxtaposed ads for a fundamentalist Christian fringe. I’m happy to cost these people money by clicking their ad. This is what it looked like:
Ads by Google
I clicked it. And I was disappointed to find that the one true church is a bunch of nutbag conspiracy theorists who think that any reference to the “kingdom of God” describes a literal, earthly kingdom.
Check out this awesome eisegesis (meaning: the process of misinterpreting a text in such a way that it introduces one’s own ideas, reading into the text.)…
Standing before Pontius Pilate on the night He was betrayed, Christ gave an important clue to understanding the kingdom: “My kingdom is not of this world [this present society]” (John 18:36). We will discover the details later of how God’s government will be established on earth.
If you want to unlock this mystery for yourself you can read the rest of their tripe here.
Something about this image just screams “credibility” to me…
Periodic table of Internet
There have been a bunch of awesome periodic tables created for the internet – this one is created about the internet. Here’s the big version on Flickr.
Journalism and literal blowholes
The exploding whale video is one of my favourite YouTube videos of all time – and is in fact one of the most popular ever uploaded.
The journalist who reported the story in 1970 has now written a book about the story.
“We’re hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. A piece of blubber the size of a fingernail could kill you if it hit you in the right part of the head, so we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats.”
Now he’s pigeon-holed as the whale guy.
Linnman, now a reporter and morning host for KEX Newsradio 1190 AM in Portland, said not a day goes by that someone doesn’t mention or reference the story to him.
He has learned to accept his fame and people’s undying interest in the bizarre story by writing a book, “The Exploding Whale and Other Remarkable Stories From the Evening News,” featuring detailed accounts of his day on the beach along with some of his favorite feature stories from his career.
The Links effect
It’s been a while since I last shared some significant link love. And I like doing these posts – it reminds me how much fun the blogosphere is…
I’m looking forward to working at a church that cares about the small things – like fonts – next year (not that our current one doesn’t – it’s just I don’t work for it). Simone is writing a new series of Sunday School material on 1-2 Kings.
Jeff’s sermon on evangelism prompted some interesting application of his application. He also posted on the gender pay issue that cropped up in the comments of Benny’s last (or second last) post.
Ali noticed that conversation starter cards are springing up everywhere.
Kutz designed a cool shirt and perhaps started a sub-movement.
Ben created a word game.
Tim posted some good analysis of the World Cup bid (and other Football goings on) via YouTube – Play Fair,
NIKE: TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL (high quailty), Balanced view of the world cup
Stephy at Stuff Christian Culture likes covered the wardrobe choices of “relevant” preachers in the US. But before that she took on two of my favourites – prayer requests as gossip and oversharing via prayer request. What’s worse than oversharing via prayer request is oversharing via prayer request on Facebook.
Lee who has turned into a regular comment in these parts has a couple of blogs – I guiltily enjoy Lemon Harrangue Pie more than the serious one about being a Contemporary Calvinist. But both are good stuff and I commend them to you.
Dave Miers has a great list of books people should read in their first year out of highschool – at the very least you could put them on your holiness shelf.
Andrew managed to pick a fight with some atheists on Tumblr. Having first picked one on Twitter.
Stuss reviewed Australia. She didn’t like it. I haven’t seen it. I don’t plan to. It’s a bit like the Passion. I know all the good bits so a movie is only going to cheapen the experience.
Conference blogging was all the rage – Izaac shared some thoughts on NTE talks.
Over at Christian Reflections Mikey liveblogged the Geneva Push’s In the Chute conference. There were lots of posts. Here were 24 I enjoyed.
- The future of The Geneva Push – Al Stewart
- Future of The Geneva Push – Andrew Heard
- Three dangers for evangelicals and the Bible
- Paul Dale 12 things we can do to hamper growth
- Paul Dale on humility
- Al Stewart on doing less
- Dever on normal way to grow as a Christian
- Dever on evangelistic programs
- Dever on contextualisation
- Dever on social welfare
- Dever disses vision statements
- TB on the danger of minsitering to subcultures
- WP on buying a building in working class areas
- TB on being underground church
- WP on putting ‘community’ in the church name
- Cultural style of our church gatherings
- We’ve got Mentos mints in little bowls on our tabl…
- Where do I plant?
- Geneva opportunities
- Control versus Growth
- Andrew Heard on finances
- It’s important to extract principles
- A good thing about Andrew Heard’s ministry is
- Cross the pain barrier
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the good stuff around the blogosphere but it has, for now, exhausted me.
If you’ve got something you wrote or read that is worth sharing – put it in the comments for all to see.
More on appropriate iPhone use
I meant to post this photo with the iPhone flowchart I posted this morning.
Clearly iPhones are designed to be used when you’re on holiday in Townsville…
They’re all playing LineUp.
On the Passive Aggressive Link comment
Sometimes my blogging friends post things that I’ve posted months before as though they’re original, or exciting.
This hurts my precious blog ego. Until I remember that I post so much stuff that sometimes I forget it, and I don’t read 90% of other people’s posts fully (except for you, dear reader).
To draw their attention to the fact that their post is old news I post a nice, agreeable comment. Including a link to my take on the post from months back.
It’ll read something like this…
“Oh yeah, I totally agree, especially in this post I wrote about the same thing four months ago”…
This is the ultimate passive aggressive blogging action. It uses one of Simone’s blog love languages (the comment) to gently rebuke the recalcitrant reader while simultaneously asserting one’s own superiority.
I will try to stop this. My last passive aggressive link comment was last week. I think I’m doing better already.
When to use your iPhone
We all know that iPhones are the world’s most awesome piece of technology. They’re proof that God exists and wants good things for his creation. We don’t need the Large Hadron Collider. Shut it down now. Actually, wouldn’t the LHC be cool if it was controlled by iPhone. We had an Ergon person speak at a function recently and he told us they use an iPhone app to control and monitor substations in remote areas. How cool is that?
Anyway…
Here’s Gizmodo’s helpful iPhone usage flowchart.
