Consciousness – Page 42

Phonetics

I’ve now had my iPhone for two months. More than enough time to get used to it and post some useful reflections…

The iPhone is the most beautiful piece of gadgetry I’ve ever owned. In fact, I’d go further and say it’s the most beautiful piece of gadgetry my family has ever owned (and there have been lots of bits of gadgetry, and now my mum and little sister number 3 have them too)…

It’s interface is typical of Mac stuff – user friendly though slightly idiosyncratic. I like it. The form factor is elegant, my desire not to scratch it is greater than the desire I’ve felt with anything else – so much so that I forked out $17.95 for what’s essentially a rubber sleeve.

The best bit about the iPhone (other than the nice touch interface which plays a significant role in making every thing good) is the applications. And there are bucket loads… actually, having said that I’m reconsidering – wifi is also sensationally useful…

The worst bit is that I don’t get to play with it much at home – because my wife monopolises it.

I think, given that I’m in need of blog fodder for this blog off, that I might reflect on individual categories of applications – utilities, education, games, and miscellaneous – in separate upcoming posts.

June 3, 2009

Self filtering

You’ll be happy to know (particularly those following the whole blog off thing) that I generally only post about 40% of my ideas. Which means a 60% increase in posts shouldn’t be a problem.

June 2, 2009

Pick your battles

This SolaPanel post comes at a particularly relevant moment what with all my inner-argumentative-angst navel gazing and debates about what issues are worth fighting for.

Fight for what is right. (truth)

Argue for what will work. (tactics)

And keep quiet about everything else. (preference)

Fight for the God-given Biblical principles, argue for how to put them into practice and just leave all the personality or preference issues up to each person to work out for themselves. I can hesitate on preference, in a meeting I can even back down on my view of tactics, but I must never back down on truth.

Me, I fight on all three, but care about 1 and 2 almost equally (and interchangeably – the media is the message afterall… Or something like that).

June 2, 2009

Posts at dawn

Simone, Ben, myself and others have entered into some sort of blog off. The rules have already been rigged so that I can’t win. But I plan to anyway.

Here’s how they’re sticking it to the man (me) with the rules… but feel free to enter…

Nathan’s first 50 posts don’t count. Sorry they just don’t. We need a little head start. So Nathan starts at -50. For the rest of us, we start at zero. Blogger with the most posts at 11.59pm on the 30th of June wins.
Any post that clearly has no point isn’t counted. To judge a no-pointer, we look to the blogger’s blogging history. If they wouldn’t have posted it last month, it doesn’t count this month. (luckily this doesn’t really rule out anything for me…)
You (I) can only count posts in your main column!

Thankfully, I can’t see this actually harming the quality of the things I post.

June 2, 2009

Things I don’t Care About: The fuel subsidy

Premier Bligh has decided to scrap the 8c a litre fuel subsidy. I don’t really care. Anything the government is subsidising is being paid for by us (the tax payer) anyway. So it seems that I’ll get taxed less and have more money to spend on the things that go up in price. Balance. Plus, there have been a number of price hikes in recent years to cover increased fuel costs – and I haven’t noticed decreases to cover the drop in fuel prices since. So it should all just work itself out.

That’s what I think anyway. I wonder why all the lobby groups in the world are up in arms about increased costs when we’re still about 22c ahead of where we were six months ago. I tried to make our line on the issue consistent with my thinking – but keeping the customers (the tourism industry wants the subsidy) satisfied won the day. Oh well. More fool them.

June 2, 2009

Air lines

One of my favourite things about Lifehacker is that it will often provide a little gem of information amidst a bigger piece of information.

Lifehacker Australia’s editor Angus Kidman has been trying to live out of just one bag for a couple of weeks – because airlines are now taxing checked luggage – which has been an interesting experiment in and of itself. This post is a list of small things he learned on the way…

And this is my favourite…

“Qantas never has enough ginger beer on its domestic flights. If you like ginger beer, you’ll need a seat near the front.”

I’d never considered picking a seat on a plane based on having the full range of menu items available (or in fact being close to the front so that you get off quicker)… I’m much more concerned about trying to snatch an exit row seat.

Any flying tips you’d care to share?

Also, my other favourite tidbit of info that the writer picked up was this one:

Far too many hotels still think it’s acceptable to offer International Roast coffee.

June 2, 2009

Things I hate #43 – CC’ing

You know what I hate, people who write emails to me an carbon copy (CC) other people in on them. Not group discussions – just emails asking me to do stuff and showing everybody else that they’ve asked. That means when I refuse to do said stuff I need to provide my rationale to a wider range of people than would otherwise be the case.

I particularly hate it when someone CC’s my manager into something as though that is a tacit endorsement from my manager of the task this individual is asking me to do. It’s not. And I won’t do it on principle. Then I have to go to my manager and say – “disregard that email, the person is a twit”, or find out that I should in fact do the task for said twit. It would be easier to just send an email to me asking if I’ll do something, or send an email to my manager asking to get me to do something. It saves us all unwanted hassle and stress.

That is all.

June 2, 2009

Convicted

I realise that at times I am stubborn, obstinate even, in discussions on this blog. But I really like to argue.

So this is a bind.

There’s at least one person who has exiled themselves from commenting because I’m arrogant.

And that’s convicting.

I do really like to argue – though I have a habit of divorcing myself from the implications of the argument and just enjoying the progressive development of ideas.

I have, as a way of warning prospective commenters, introduced a disclaimer to this site. You should read it. Though it’s annoyingly written in third person…

If you’d like to suggest anything that should be added – do so in the comments… though I may disagree with you…

You should also check out the discussion I’ve been having with Dave about the ACL, government and all that stuff, for an example of an argument where I don’t really believe exactly what I’m arguing, but also disagree with some of the counter-arguments. Feel free to chime in their too…

June 1, 2009

Things that go bing

Microsoft wants to kill google. Perhaps. Killing google is the in thing – unless you’re a mobile manufacturer, then it’s killing the iPhone. Anyway, Bing, Microsoft’s “google killer” is in beta. And it’s disappointing. When I bing myself I don’t appear until the second or third page. And my blog doesn’t appear to appear at all…

I wonder if bing was the shortest available combination of letters left for Microsoft to choose from.

June 1, 2009

At liberty

For those of you reading from the top of the page down – in the last post I mentioned some comments from Dave on a previous post, you should read that… anyway, he also had this to say:

“I think it taps into broader questions of what the role of the government is. Liberalism says the role of the government is to provide as far as possible for the liberty of its citizens and should interfere as little as possible with the choices citizens make. This depends on a shift from ‘government’ to ‘individual’ as the centre of moral decision making.”

I’d be interested in your thoughts on whether or not the government ever had a role to play in “moral decision making”… I would have thought that always essentially occurred via the individual because the government is not operating behind closed doors.

I probably lean towards classic “liberalism” but not so far as libertarianism as suggested by others in previous clean feed debates.

But you know who is a libertarian? WWE’s Kane. That’s who (or at least the guy who plays the character – Glenn Jacobs) – don’t ask me how I know this, but if you’re political views align with a guy who looks like this it’s probably time to reassess…

May 31, 2009

Lobbying for God

Dave (Walker – there are far too many Daves for this just to be a first name thing) and I have been thoroughly enjoying a discussion on the role of government (and Christians in relation to government) back on this post.

Dave, for the uninitiated, is the same guy who spoke at a conference in Brisbane recently and made a joke about me without realising that very few people in the audience knew who I was… this time round he’s called my doctrine of creation anaemic. I would have thought it was slightly lumpy myself, congealed perhaps…

Anyway, I was relaying the debate to my wife (who probably agrees with Dave)… and considered for the first time that while the government in the New Testament era was far from democratic, the model we see of Paul relating to those in authority while on trial is almost, almost, an example of Christian lobbying. With Paul playing the role of the advocate. I would stress that the distinction I see is that he’s not seeking to impose Christian morality on others, but to protect the rights and freedoms of Christians. I’d never really considered Paul in that light before. I see some inconsistencies between this sort of advocacy, and that practiced by the Australian Christian Lobby.

May 31, 2009

Turtle mail

Believe it or not turtles are ferocious – but that doesn’t negate this being a pretty awesome direct mail campaign from an insurance company…

“Based on the information obtained in the research, they sent warning plates, like those used for wild dogs, customized with the families’ pets.”

This one would not be out of place outside our house – Franky (short for Franklin) is a particularly vicious little reptile. We took a video of him stalking (and biting) my finger the other day that I’ll put up here one day.

May 31, 2009

Wave goodbye to the past

There’ll be a couple of links in my links post later today about Google’s latest innovation – Wave – which is being billed as “the way we would have invented email if it was invented now”… or something like that.

It raises an interesting question – what other things do we do that would be done completely differently were they thought of now? There are heaps of examples I can think of where ideas are refined and developed rather than being groundbreaking.

But I’m wondering more about church – particularly in the context of my ongoing discussion with Izaac.

My question is this… if Sydney’s Anglican church (or in fact any church/diocese/denomination anywhere) were starting from scratch today would they go about things with their church in every suburb (exaggeration)/saturate the market geographically strategy?

Is what we do in any situation ever the best model just because it’s been developed from experience? Or should we step back and reinvent the wheel at every turn. And do you need Google’s billions to do that?

This isn’t a groundbreaking concept by any means, I just haven’t really thought it through with regards to everything I do before. We tend to be so keen on natural progression that it rules out lateral decision making at every step of our processes.

May 29, 2009

Rubber and roads

There comes a time in any transaction where you come across “the rub” – the point of friction – the place where everything starts to make sense. Where you have to put up, or shut up. I plan to do neither. Michel has other plans. Lets see who wins out…

“Dearest Daddy Campbell,

Yes I am baptised so my sin are been forgiven. Sir, the lawyer called me now that he has verified the cost of the legal documents needed to change of ownership of the consignment in your name. The lawyer said that they required us to pay a total of €2500 before the legal documents can be issued in your name as my apointed foreign trustee. Please I do not have the money and it becoming source of my worries. please I am pleading to you to help me pay the money to the lawyer so that the lawyer will get the documents today and the security company will process the change of ownership by tomorrow and the consignment will released immediately.

Michel”

I do plan to point out the flaw in Michel’s hyper-baptist position – but first I have to weasel out of paying him his €2500…

That is a lot of money Michel. Enough for me to be a little worried. It will take me some time to gather that – the exchange rate between our countries currency and British Pound is not so good.

I am glad to hear you are baptised – it comforts me that should things go wrong you will be safe in the Heavenly Father’s arms. We will meet in heaven if not here on earth…

I will do my best to secure the money – it is complex because my accountant watches every penny. I will need to take on a degree of risk. You promised me this would not be a risky transaction.

I really do need some sign of good faith – proof that you are not trying to swindle me. I feel compelled to trust you. I really do. But I need to know that the face at the other side of the camera is a trustworthy one – and that you are a real person. I really must insist that you provide that photo with the John 3:16 sign – how else will I know that you are who you say you are if you can not provide me with this.

Yours in Christ.
J

May 28, 2009

ClosedID

Ok, I have heard your feedback (or lack thereof) and turned off the OpenID plugin. I assume that’s what’s stopping all of you commenting. Go crazy. Go nuts. Go crazygonuts. Comment away. To your heart’s content. All barriers to you sharing your feedback (except my scathing critical wit) have been removed.

May 28, 2009