Category: Consciousness

Would you like beer with that marshmallow?

The other day, over at thebeanstalker.com (my coffee blog, read it, click some ads – I make money), I did a little experiment with coffee and beer. I bought a proper coffee beer and made my own. It was science. Tastebud stretching science. I like beer. Nothing beats it on a hot summer’s afternoon. I also like marshmallow. And chocolate. But I’m wondering if chocolate-coated beer-marshmallows is taking things a bridge too far (though coffee beer probably is too). Why not just enjoy all these things separately…

But they look so good.

And here’s how to make them. To whet your appetite – here are the ingredients from this recipe.

Chocolate-Dipped Beer Marshmallows with Crushed Pretzel Garnish
Makes 18-22 marshmallows, depending on how you cut them

For the Bloom:
1 1/2 tablespoons (just under 1/2 ounce) unflavored gelatin
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/3 cup (2.5 ounces) flat dark beer

For the Sugar Syrup:
1/4 cup (2 ounces) flat dark beer
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons (5 ounces) corn syrup or sugar cane syrup
3/4 cup (6 ounces) granulated sugar
pinch salt

For Coating and Topping
10-12 ounces milk chocolate
2-3 teaspoons canola oil, optional – for thinning the melted chocolate
1/2 cup stick pretzels

 

March 1, 2011

A beginner’s guide to keeping pet turtles

Somebody, somewhere (I think it was a guy named Andrew, who I think, based on his email address, was a leader on the schoolies camp I went on – how random that he would be reading my blog ten years later) suggested I blog about having pet turtles more often. I think that’s a good idea. Pet turtles really are the coolest thing since pet rocks. And pet rocks were cool.

They do funny stuff. Like this:

Why you should get a turtle

  • They’re exotic, a little left field, and people (especially kids) love them. They love watching them in the water, and the love watching them run around. Turtles have a funny way of running, with in built comedic value.
  • Turtles are relatively low maintenance (eventually).
  • Turtles are amphibious. Amphibians are awesome. So are reptiles. Turtles are both.

What you should know before you buy a turtle

A hatchling

Our turtles at a very young age

  • There’s really no such thing as a penny turtle. You might remember having one as a child. What you had was a baby turtle that you probably grew out of. Our turtles started off the size of 50c pieces. Now they’re somewhere between the size of a bread plate and a dinner plate. They start small, but grow big.
  • There’s a bit of set up cost involved – you need heat lamps, UV lights, docking platforms, and eventually a big tank. If you get two (which we did) there’s a good chance they’ll fight. And you’ll need extra space. Most of our problems have been caused by turtle fights.
  • Get lots of Betadine. Betadine fixes everything. If your turtle has a wound, a fungal infection, a spot – Betadine will fix it.
  • You can’t tell if young turtles are male or female. It’s a gender lottery.
  • In some (many) Australian states you need a reptile license. You get these from the EPA in Queensland (or whatever they’re now called).
  • Turtles bite. But only really in the water.
  • If in doubt – take them out of the water – they only need to be in the water about an hour a day. They like being in the water. But sometimes their shells need time to dry out. For a long time ours slept in a box, wrapped in towels.
  • The internet is your friend. There are heaps of good turtle resources online. I even bought ours on the internet and had them flown up to Townsville from Brisbane. When I was worried about one of them I turned to the internet for help. One of our turtles, Rosie (short for Roosevelt) was a little more sickly than the other, Frankie (short for Franklin) perhaps because Frankie used to bite her around the neck and take her for a death roll.
  • Get a bucket to feed your turtle in. Turtle food stinks. And feeding them in their tank is a recipe for an incredibly stinky weekly clean up job.

Steps to getting your pet turtle

  1. Check licensing requirements where you live. Organise this first.
  2. Find a breeder – normally there’s enough time between contacting a breeder and getting the turtles to complete the next step.
  3. Set up the tank – you’ll need a dock of some sort (a rocky platform will do), a UV lamp to keep the shells healthy, and a heat lamp to keep their blood warm. A heater in the water is optional. They’ll get on their docks more if the water is cold (this is good for their shells too). You need to set up a tank a week before you put the turtle in it to get the chemical stuff happening properly. Apparently.
  4. Get some food – we use pellets and frozen turtle cubes (fish guts). We’ve tried with some cereal based pellets and they hate them. We also occasionally give them fruit and veggies. Which they seem to like. We put feeder fish in their tank, about 100 at a time. And they gradually disappear. But if you want some fun – kill one and hand feed it to the turtles and watch them go nuts trying to catch more.
  5. Get your turtles. Watch them swim. Enjoy some LOLs.
  6. Check your turtles regularly (especially when they’re young) for little blotchy spots on their shells and skin. These are bad – and should be treated pretty much straight away. Keeping them out of the water a bit will help.
  7. Take them for walks outside (but watch for birds). The sun is good for them.
  8. Wash your hands after touching them when they’re little. Turtles carry salmonella. And trust me. You don’t want that. Buy some of that reptile wash. Trust me. A week of gastro isn’t fun for anybody. They grow out of this after a while – I’m not sure at what point – but I don’t wash my hands anymore.

Some links

March 1, 2011

Onan the Barbarian: A seedy affair

My sermon from the weekend is up. Have a listen if you want. It’s 27 minutes. I think.

Not my favourite passage in the world, not my favourite sermon, and not my favourite ending to a sermon (I should have just left out the last five minutes).

But people have said nice things, and I’m probably a harsh, but realistic, self-critic.

When I illustrate I don’t really stick to my notes. And I think that’s heaps more listenable and engaging. So that’s something to work on. I’m much better at telling a story when I know how it all hangs together – and I suspect I can do the same thing with the passage after I’ve worked it up. But preaching from notes is good discipline and hopefully prevents rambling.

March 1, 2011

Preaching and adrenalin

I love public speaking. I’m not one of those people who gets filled with dread standing up in front of a crowd. In fact, the bigger the crowd the better. I guess at that point I’m classically extroverted. It’s a rush. Preaching is the thing that excites me most about vocational ministry. It’s not that I think I’m good at it. I’m not. I’m not bad – this isn’t an exercise in false modesty. You’d hope with a journalism degree I’d be ok at stringing some words together. But there are a few things I struggle with. But this isn’t a post about today’s sermon.1

I’m wondering about the long term effects of the adrenalin rush I get every time I preach. I love it. For me it’s like sky diving or extreme sports. The act of getting up in front of people – regardless of what I’m actually saying. I love MCing stuff as well.

Will I get addicted to it? Is that why preachers sometimes travel the globe preaching? Does this pose long term risks to my health? Most importantly, I’m wondering how sustainable my Sunday afternoons are going to be with the post adrenalin crash. Man. What goes up sure comes down. By about 2pm I can hardly keep my eyes open. I go blank. All that energy that I gain in the morning as I get ready to preach (I reckon the adrenalin kicks in at about 8am when I’m preaching at a 9:30 service) drains out, and takes whatever reserves I have with it. I’m pretty sure the adrenalin is what gives other people preacher’s belly – though for some it’s doubtless channelled as fear rather than exuberance.

I’d love to know how others go on the adrenalin front – is the Sunday arvo crash a common thing? Not having a night service anymore seems like such a good innovation on the days I’ve preached in the morning.

1Today’s sermon was mostly good. The last little application bit felt a little tacked on, and I really wasn’t sure where to go once I’d established that I didn’t think the passage was about sexual ethics, but rather about seeking God’s kingdom. So I said that. I talked about commitment. I tied it to Jesus (which was easy because of Matthew’s genealogy). I compared the righteousness of Tamar with the unrighteousness of Judah. But blah. Blah. Blah. That’s how I felt about the last fifth of my talk.

My other little bit of self critique (and I’ll post the audio for this sermon when I get it) is that I’m much more engaging (in my opinion) when I’m illustrating and telling a story entirely in my own words, as I would naturally. And in most of these cases I leave the script behind. At times I feel like I suppress my personality a little in the writing of my talks and I end up cold and robotic rather than talking how I would normally talk. Actually, I don’t sound robotic, I sound like a journalist, not a real person. On the plus side, all the old ladies tell me I speak clearly and audibly. I don’t write an essay – I try to write the way I talk, but I suspect I haven’t beaten out the writing for TV part of my previos training. There’s something just not quite right. It’s like I’m preaching in black and white rather than colour too. For the most part. Or at least that’s how I feel. Feel free to chime in if you heard me this morning (or once you’ve listened to the audio).

February 27, 2011

Preaching tomorrow

On Onan the Barbarian.

Here’s a wordle. See if you can figure out what my big idea is.

February 26, 2011

Bieber Fever: My wife is funny

My wife is pretty against things posted online that start with “my wife is” and end with a husband spamming the world about how awesome their wife is. We get it. You love your wife and she is awesome. That’s great. It’s why you’re married.

But my wife is going to see Justin Bieber’s 3D movie. She doesn’t know it yet. But that’s her punishment for signing me up to receive Justin Bieber’s ever popular twitter feed in my Google Reader. She’s funny, but this joke may have backfired.

She loves a little bit of Justin. She sings his hit song that goes “Baby, Baby, Baby Oh” when she thinks I’m not listening. She’s been looking forward to the movie for a while. I have a photo to prove it.

My wife is funny. And hot. We’re going to plant a mega church. Justin Bieber will be our “Worship Director”…

February 26, 2011

How to organise your bookshelf

We picked up a couple of new bookshelves on eBay over the holidays. So now we have space. Lots of space. For new books. Because, you know. New books are where it’s at. Although now I have Logos and the Kindle new books will be squarely in the “2nd hand purchases from garage sales” category, or the “huge donation of books to college” category.

Anyway. That’s neither here nor there. This is how to organise a bookshelf:

Via Kottke, I think. I was actually a little disappointed that this was really cool, and not at all a tutorial on how to organise your bookshelf.

February 26, 2011

Return to Sender: Space monkeys and transitive verbs

Long term readers will know that I surprisingly regularly receive emails that aren’t meant for me. I’m not talking Nigerian Scams either. I know plenty about them. Previously this has brought us such stories as the Washington University Essay Project and the Make Me A Mexican challenge.

It happened again today.

Good afternoon Mr Campbell

 

Thank you for your telephone call concerning your intereset in obtaining a pre-owned Ford Transit 17 seat minibus.

I have attached our latest list of pre-owned minibuses for your information.

If you require any further help or assistance then please feel free to contact me.

Kind regards

Steve Newby

This email came with an attached catalogue. Now, unless I was talking on the phone to a UK car dealer in my sleep, this wasn’t me.

Here’s my response.

Hi Steve,

Great to hear from you!

Though I don’t recall our telephone call. I’m very interested in obtaining a fleet of Ford Transits. But I’m actually after the 24 seat version because they will convert more easily into the spaceship I would like to build. I think if I weld together 18 Ford Transits with 24 seats each I’ll be able to take 431 monkeys into space with me (I’d be the driver, so that would be the 432 total passengers).

I may need to get a couple of extra transits to carry supplies. I imagine I need lots of bananas to feed that many monkeys, if they turned to cannibalism they’d doubtless get mad monkey disease and the consequences, in space, would be catastrophic. Or perhaps monkeystrophic. I don’t like cats.

So if you could draw me up a quote on 22 x 24 Ford Transits that would be much appreciated. They’d have to be the rocket fuel versions, I plan to pipe together the fuel tanks in sequence to power my trip to space. I don’t mind what year they are – so long as they are all the same.

I’m wondering if actions performed in space in a Ford Transit would be an intransitive verb? or a transitive verb? Do you know anything about the niceties of grammar?

Perhaps if you have the phone number for the guy who gave you this email address you could call him, and tell him to stop giving out the wrong address. Even if this email does get me a step closer to going into space (serendipitous, what?) it’s a little annoying having to take time out of my busy, world conquering, schedule to answer random emails from random people on the other side of the world.

I’m from Australia. Do you know what side of the road people drive on in space? I’d prefer right hand drive transits if you have them.

I really like the clip art “sold” sign graphics. Could you send me the clip art file you used? I’d love to use it on seat allocations so that when the monkeys book their historic spots on my maiden voyage there is no confusion.

If you can find me the vans I’m after, I would like to offer you a spot on my maiden voyage in lieu of payment.

Regards,

Nathan Campbell
(not whoever you thought this was)

Here’s my spaceship design. With two of the pilots.

I’ll send it to him if he replies.

February 26, 2011

Awesome coffee tour

Five cafes. 11 shots. One chemex. Three friends (and me). One morning. Crazy times.

Here’s a slideshow.

I’ll be reviewing the tour and a couple of the cafes individually over at thebeanstalker.com tomorrow. In the meantime – you should order some beans off me.

Here’s a photo my friend, coffee companion, and photographer extraordinaire Steven Tran took of me at Veneziano Caffe in West End.

February 19, 2011

I’ve been Introduced…

Sarah’s blog is nice. Which seems fitting, because she’s nice too. Today she introduced me.

If you want to know more about me you should read that post. If you want me to know more about you – you should introduce yourself. Sarah is almost always willing to introduce more people.

February 15, 2011

Port Hinchinbrook: Beautiful one day…

This is the Port Hinchinbrook marina when I visited a couple of years ago with some travel writers.

This is Port Hinchinbrook today.


Image Credit: ABC News.

I am pretty thankful that I’m not confronted with the task of putting North Queensland back on the map for tourists…

February 3, 2011

Cyclone Yasi

I’m a bit concerned for my Townsville friends (and friends scattered throughout North Queensland) as they prepare for the imminent arrival of Tropical Cyclone Yasi. My first day selling Townsville to the world was the day of Cyclone Larry – this is heaps worse. So North Queensland is going to need a lot of help post cyclone – not the least of their worries is getting tourists back into towns dependant on the tourist dollar.

But images like these are going to make that job difficult. This cyclone is massive and scary. And makes me glad that just over a year ago (1 year and 5 days) we moved south.


Image Credit: NASA

This cyclone is the same size as the US. Almost.

Praying for those I know, and those I don’t, staring down the barrel of this incredible weather system. And thinking about praying that a dislodged branch may fly from North Queensland and strike Danny Naliah down for the stupid dribble he brings out at times like this…

It is very sad that this dark chapter in Australia’s history is led by an atheist Prime Minister in Julia Gillard and an openly homosexual Greens leader who seems to be the Deputy Prime Minister by default, both who have no regard for God nor Prayer.

Catch the Fire Ministries president Dr Daniel Nalliah said Julia Gillard was not elected by the majority of the Australian people, but rather the personal decision of two power hungry independent MPs who catapulted Ms Gillard to the top job.

“Are we Aussies all paying for that decision? It is very well known that throughout history, in a time of national crisis, Kings, Prime Ministers and Presidents of countries around the world have turned to God, irrespective of whether they were Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim and asked for help or at least called the nation to pray for protection and for the victims of the disaster,” Dr Nalliah said.

“However, for the past several weeks, right through the flood crisis across Australia, I have not heard our Prime Minister call the people of Australia to pray and ask God for protection and for help for the tens of thousands of people who have become victims of this major disaster,” he said.

I’ve said it once. I’ve said it twice. The man is Christianity’s equivalent of an ambulance chaser. With the same propensity for cashing in on people’s misery in order to benefit himself.

February 2, 2011

Batman meets Toy Story

I love mashups like this. Buzz as Batman.

February 2, 2011

New theme. Check it.

I’ve applied a proper professional theme here. Let me know if you think it needs anything else…

February 2, 2011

A collection of web 2.0 bits and bobs…

Mikey posted a bunch of reflections on the web and ministry the other day in a stream of consciousness bullet point diatribe. They’re tips that are worth reading – and a good perspective from somebody who is in ministry and thinking about how technology can be used as a platform for the gospel and for building relationships.

Blogs are definitely different now Part 1

Blogs are definitely changing now Part 2

Blogs are definitely changing Part 3

Blogs are definitely changing Part 4

Blogs are definitely changing Part 5

Once you’ve finished reading those and you’re all depressed about the internet and stuff…

I’ve recently started using Twitter heaps more. It seemed all I needed was a better app on my iPhone and the new Mac app. You can follow me @nm_campbell if you like. Let me know if you’re a Twit too.

I’m also getting close to having 100 fans on Facebook. Which is cool. I’ve started using that Facebook page to share links that I maybe once upon a time would have posted here (and possibly eventually will). These links appear on the top right of the blog proper, so if you’re a feed reader I suggest you join the masses and “like” St. Eutychus.

If you are a feed reader you might have noticed a bunch of new links on the bottom of feed items – these come courtesy of feedburner – you can now click a few different links to share stuff you like where you like. Isn’t that exciting. I like it when people share the stuff I’ve found. It somehow legitimises the time I waste on the Internet. So please do it.

And, I’ve installed a theme that I paid for (called Standard Theme) on my coffee blog and Venn Theology. I’m trying to decide whether or not to install it here too. Check them out. Especially my coffee blog – thebeanstalker.com. I’m pretty happy with it.

That is all.

February 1, 2011