Category: Consciousness

Halo-ween: Real Life Red v Blue

This could possible be the most intricately designed set of Halloween costumes known to man. The guy didn’t just make one of these Halo MasterChief costumes for himself – he helped out his friends too.

Details on how he did it, and a photo essay of sorts, can be found here.

Right now I’m just going to bask in his glory for a second. Wow. Lucky he made costumes for everybody or he may well have ended up single. The best bit, is that these are actually all the characters from Red vs Blue.

Helping out a street preacher:

January 8, 2011

St. Eutychus Coffee Roastery now open for (more professional) business

Hey. Guess what. I sell roasted coffee. No doubt some of you know that. What you don’t know is two things.

I now have a snappy looking rubber stamp so my coffee bags are branded.

And also, you can now pay for the coffee as you order via Paypal. You don’t even have to have a Paypal account. Just a Credit Card. You can order from this page here. And I’m thinking I might even put the form in the sidebar on the front page.

Cool hey. I suggest you order away. You won’t regret it. Millions of people have already enjoyed coffee from St. Eutychus Coffee. And that’s the only exaggerated sentence in this post.

January 7, 2011

Floody Floody

Robyn spent the earlier days of this week on her parent’s farm starting the clean up after serious flooding in Dalby. Most farmers out there have insurance coverage that doesn’t include flood cover. The floods damaged crops, wiped out seed for the next harvest, and caused some serious erosion to the dam walls. Not to mention destroying a bunch of household goods.

Robyn shot some footage that she’s putting together into a lengthy production. Here’s an iMovie trailer I put up on Facebook.

Please keep farmers around Queensland in your prayers, and if you haven’t already, please give generously to the Premier’s Flood Appeal.

January 6, 2011

Work tomorrow…

Not sure how I feel about that yet.

January 3, 2011

2010 on St. Eutychus

I missed my end of year wrap up yesterday because I was reading a book. Sorry. But here are some facts, figures and highlights from the year that was.

Stats

In 2009, 31,705 Absolute Unique Visitors made 48,733 Visits, making 82,916 Pageviews
In 2010, 31,869 Absolute Unique Visitors made 52,965 Visits, making 83,668 Pageviews.

At the time of writing I have 78 Facebook fans (become a fan – I’m now sharing links to stuff I don’t blog, or that is in my queue, to Facebook fans ahead of time), and 22 Google Connections.

So small increases across the board – but more importantly. No decreases. Hooray.

In 2009 I posted 1,106 posts here on St. Eutychus. In 2010 I managed 1,434. A 29% increase. And some people said being a college student would slow down my blogging. As it was – I used college as an opportunity to create more content.

My favourite college related series and posts from the year.

1. Some language resources (some for Mac, some for typing on a Mac)
2. Reflections on the “Disciplines of a Godly theological student”
3. My guide to First Year Greek
4. The things I love about College
5. The things I’d change about College
6. My Wisdom Literature Essay (part two, three, four, five, six) – my favourite essay of the year.
7. Pre-exam prep: New Testament 101, New Testament 102, Old Testament 101, Old Testament 102, Church History 101, Hebrew 102
8. Greece and Turkey Report(s).
9. Liveblogging Ben Witherington.
10. Liveblogging Gary Millar (one, two, three, four, five)

My favourite useful posts from this year

1. How to write a Media Release to promote your church event
2. How to talk to Atheists about Christianity
3. Awareness Raising is Overrated, (and the prequel – The Facebook Booby Trap, and the sequel about Movember, and a follow up about Social Media)
4. How to not raise bitter ministry children
5. Social Media Strategies for Churches (and a follow up on Venn Theology)
6. How not to be very good at Facebook
7. My election posts – Julia Gillard’s atheism, my Christian values election scorecard, why I won’t vote for Family First, wrap up.
8. Coffee and ministry.
9. Five cheap ways to exegete your suburb.
10. My Five Steps to Better Coffee series

Many of these are the type of thing I hope to post at Venn Theology this year (2011).

My favourite coffee posts this year

1. Seven Deadly Coffee Sins
2. From Cherry to the Cup – a look at processing and roasting coffee: part one, two, three, four, five
3. Brisbane cafe reviews: Dandelion and Driftwood, Cup, BlackStar
4. The sin of Instant Coffee.
5. Coffee and Ministry
6. A coffee gift guide.
7. Science says “don’t freeze your coffee”
8. How to make Greek Coffee.
9. A beautiful guide to coffee drinks
10. My “Five Steps to Better Coffee” Series

My favourite frivolity
But it wasn’t all serious. Here are some of my favourite posts/series from this year.

1. Ten steps to planting a mega church (with a follow-up “how to name your megachurch“)
2. 23 Bacon products that will take your breath away.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook.
4. The Devil Wants you Fat (series – that I probably should finish now I have a scanner).
5. Backwards Masking Unmasked (The Jacob Aranza Series)
6. Mad Skillz Week
7. Liveblogging Chuck Norris’ Invasion USA (part 2, part 3, part 4, Robyn’s report).
8. The Make Me A Mexican Challenge
9. About “Hot Wives”
10. About Church Slogans (a bad example).
11. A Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (part one b, part two, part three)
12. The definitive and authoritative guide to the six basic plot lines
13. A look at “Objective Ministries” crazy Christian conspiracy to take over the moon
14. Reverse engineering the perfect chip
15. The Art of Improvised weaponry
16. K-Strass the Yo-Yo guy

Most popular posts in 2010
Here are the most popular posts (mostly because google loves them) by visits this year. A couple of these were written last year and continue to attract a steady stream of traffic.

1. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast (2009), the 2010 follow up was equally popular
2. Five things that would make atheists seem nicer: this accounted for about a quarter of 2009’s traffic. By itself. Not so much in 2010, but still enough to rank second.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook: This one had a bit of a spike in traffic around publication, but continues to get about 10 hits a day.
4. Ten steps to planting a megachurch: This was one of my favourites, so I’m glad it did well.
5. Chuck Norris Jeans: The little engine that could. Google loves this post.
6. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress: Certainly my geekiest post of the year.
7. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
8. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
9. Let’s not fly Jetstar: a 2009 post about a Jetstar nightmare.
10. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.

Most popular posts from 2010
A slightly different list – because it does away with a couple of “long tail” posts from last year.

1. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook
2. Ten steps to planting a megachurch
3. Chuck Norris Jeans
4. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress
5. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
6. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
7. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.
8. Some Greek and Hebrew Resources
9. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast How to Make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast: The 2010 follow up was equally popular
10. Typographic Moustaches

Thanks for reading.

January 1, 2011

My dad: By Simone

December 30, 2010

Font Funnies

If fonts were people/super heroes.

From College Humo(u)r…

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

December 28, 2010

DanKam: Make your Colourblindness disappear

I’m colour blind. If you’ve been reading for a while you’ll know this already. If this is a shock – please, take a seat, sip some water and calm down. It’s ok. I know you’ve just figured out why my clothes never really match and the explanatory power of that opening sentence has caused a revolution in your perception of me. But ease up turbo. Because this next bit of news will truly shock you.

There’s an iPhone app, called DanKam (apparently also available for Android) that essentially cures colourblindness. It is amazing. Following the success of Word Lens I thought “anything iPhone app developers say is now believable” and I took this for a spin. I was able to see one of those dot tests, well, the number in one of those dot tests, for the first time… but I’m not sure what I’m meant to be seeing in the right hand circle here…

Here’s a post on the programmer’s blog to explain away some of the magic.

Hopefully this will also help me overcome difficulties in such areas as calling my shots in pool (as in snooker, or billiards…) and driving (as in operating a motor vehicle).

December 27, 2010

Merry Christmas

I’ve pretty much, as much as possible anyway, avoided writing anything too Christmassy this year. Because the Christian blogosphere tends to descend into a sea of red and white triteness at this time of year – or it starts banging on about some war on Christmas. I’m not hugely interested in writing either of those posts. So, let me say this: Merry Christmas.

And then let me point out that Christmas is about Jesus and church. That’s where the “mass” comes from. Right? But you don’t see anybody suggesting a “War on Church” – I guess because xmas still has the mass bit…

Anyway. Eat lots. Be good to your mother/wife/significant other. And if you are a mother/wife/significant other make sure you’re not doing all the work.

That is all.

December 25, 2010

My 2010 in photos

2010 has been a pretty big year for us. Moving. Changing churches. Starting a new job (or study)… they’re meant to be some of the most stressful things around. But is has been fun. Here are some photos. Consider this a photo essay of our year… If I can be bothered I’ll caption some of the photos later.

December 25, 2010

Trials and Tribulations

After a few days holidaying in Airlie Beach and catching up with friends in Townsville, which have been really nice, tomorrow sees me “trial for license” – part of the ongoing process of becoming a Presbyterian minister.

I’m preaching at a fairly old school Presbyterian Church in Townsville in front of a few members of the North Queensland presbytery who will “appraise” my performance and pass judgment on my ministry suitability.

I’m preaching on the Beatitudes. Here’s a paragraph from my sermon.

“But I want to suggest, at this point, that we’re not looking at the beatitudes right if we understand them as a set of rules to follow to be part of God’s kingdom. I grew up thinking that the word “beatitude” was a description of what these verses mean – I thought they were a set of instructions for how we should behave, and what our attitudes should be. The beatitudes. But I think the meaning of these verses does hinge on what the word beatitudes actually means. It’s latin. It means “blessings.” And it picks up on that repeated “blessed are” phrase at the start of each verse.

The beatitudes aren’t about what we have to do to be in the kingdom – and in fact, as soon as we read them that way we’re slipping into the same trap as the Pharisees. We’re making rules and regulations for belonging to the kingdom.”

Then I say that the beatitudes are about God’s blessing of us, through Jesus, whose life and ministry are modeled on the beatitudes. Doesn’t seem heretical to me… how about to you?

December 18, 2010

Also (pretty official)…

I have a new day job. For January at least. But I haven’t signed any of the paperwork yet. Doing some marketing of some sort for a government department that houses books. I’m not sure what the rules about writing about this sort of thing are yet (because I haven’t started). But it’s pretty providential timing. And I’ll be working with my friend Amy. Who is an occasional commenter here. Should be fun. I like the idea of not completely losing my marketing/PR skill set. But this job also has some nice menial components to it which won’t entirely do my head in during the college break.

December 18, 2010

Is your logo elegant and simple?

While looking around the interwebs for a page of logos to flog for this post I found this little infographic. It’s nothing new. But it’s a reminder that logos seem to have devolved rather than evolving into increasingly complex things – even though we have the technology to reproduce much more complicated designs online and in print.

It seems that the companies that have gone against the trend, adding complexity, are the ones most people would say are going backwards (Microsoft and IBM).

There are certainly advantages in terms of printing and reproduction for having a simple logo, and for recognition and memorability.

But it’s also interesting that as “branding” has become a big thing, logos have become smaller and less significant. Which is good. Because a logo isn’t a brand, it’s just a visual tag that makes people think of your brand.

Cross posted on Venn Theology.

December 14, 2010

Muse: An iPhone Video

It’s almost a week since Robyn and I went to see Muse. It was a pretty amazing concert. Here are some of the bits of lighting magic I managed to film before my phone went flat. The sound quality is awful. It is, afterall, an iPhone video. And we were sitting a long way away. As I write this I’m watching a Blur: Live at Hyde Park concert on ABC2. And I’m thinking “wouldn’t it be amazing to have musical talent and be in a band so you could perform to tens of thousands of screaming fans”…

December 10, 2010

Where’s ya bin? I bin at the beach

You may be wondering why things have been a little quiet here until about three hours ago. The answer. I was at the beach for a little break with my wife, and my parents.

It was even sunny.

Heading to Townsville on Monday, so blogging may be sporadic again for a while. I might try to queue something up though…

December 10, 2010