This Brooklyn Cemetery has a lot of rules. And for every rule, there’s a sign. I can’t for the life of me figure out who goes to the cemetery to wash their car…
Category: Consciousness
Atlantisn’t
There’s been oohing and ahhing over the weekend as some Google Earth watchers thought they might have found Atlantis. The blogosphere went crazy over the idea. Chris just posted a link to the googleblog today. Sunken mythical cities don’t really excite me. But this idea from the googleblog does. And google would be one company with the resources to make it happen.
“But we could map the whole ocean using ships. A published U.S. Navy study found that it would take about 200 ship-years, meaning we’d need one ship for 200 years, or 10 ships for 20 years, or 100 ships for two years. It costs about $25,000 per day to operate a ship with the right mapping capability, so 200 ship-years would cost nearly two billion dollars. That may seem like a lot of money, but it’s not that far off from the price tag of, say, a new sports stadium.”
That would be cool. And cheaper than building a real life, working, death star or Enterprise – or whatever was in those links I posted for calculating the cost of unrealistic science fiction technology a few weeks ago.
Wordle 2.0
The previously mentioned Wordle has got some great new functionality. Like adding an RSS feed for immediate analysis. Saves copying and pasting every post of your blog like I did last time. Although my feed is limited to just the last ten posts or something.
Here it is:
This story here about speeches from Springboard and Blight are an interesting example of the tag cloud as an assessment of being “on message”.
Speaking of which – here’s a wordle of my sermon from Sunday. Which did, as Simone and dad both pointed out, go for a bit too long. 30 minutes. I cut a bit out though. That’s the longest I’ve ever preached and I’m sorry for boring people and going past the 22 minute attention span of the average television watcher.
And here’s the passage itself.
Hidden Valley
If I was a ninja looking to double think my opponents I’d put my top secret hidden base at a place called Hidden Valley. Which is probably why the platypus lives there.
Robyn and I had a nice getaway last night with our friends Chris and Julia. They’re visiting from Sydney. We were thinking of a day trip to Magnetic Island today but it’s raining so we decided the rainforest was the best option in this sort of weather. We made the trip via the Herveys Range Heritage Tea Rooms. Where we stopped for a leisurely lunch. They’ve now got baked potatoes on the menu – I think they’re a new addition. They do seem a little expensive though at $10.50 for two potatoes.
I rang the guys at Hidden Valley Cabins on Saturday and booked two cabins for Sunday night. I mentioned we were coming up in my Excel. They laughed. But said it should be ok. They were in the process of filling in pot holes.
10km of dirt road can feel like 100km. Particularly if you have to take the road at about 5km an hour to miss massive puddles, ditches and pot holes. If you’re going to make the drive in an Excel – wait until the road there is sealed by the Charters Towers Regional Council – that’s meant to happen in 2009. So stay tuned.
We made it up in one piece. Hidden Valley is Australia’s first carbon neutral resort. It’s also Australia’s first solar powered resort. Dinner at Hidden Valley is a family affair. We ate with owners Ian, Bonnie and Ross McLennan. Ross’s fiance Chelsea was back in town. All guests there get this kind of hospitality. It was a nice touch. Dinner was good too.
Prior to dinner we took a platypus tour. We didn’t see any platypus. There’d been a fair bit of water running through the areas they knew were platypus habitat so the poor little things had moved. Maybe. Turns out that platypus are the ninjas of the animal world. Here’s a list of their ninja attributes:
1. They have an inbuilt, poisonous, sharp sword on their back right leg. This can inflict pain on humans comparable to a stone fish.
2. They have an immunity to the poison of other platypus swords.
3. They hunt by detecting motion rather than sight, they have thousands of motion sensors on their bills.
4. They are nocturnal.
5. They’re almost invisible at night.
6. Light does not glimmer off their eyes.
7. They create intricate traps for predators in their burrows.
8. They are made for aerodynamic movement.
This morning we hit the waterholes in Paluma – Little Crystal was gushing, and Paradise Lagoon was nice until we got smashed by rain.
Saturday night television
We’re having a night in tonight. Tomorrow night we’re heading up the Paluma range to the much celebrated Hidden Valley Cabins. Australia’s first carbon neutral, solar powered tourism operator. I guess staying there is like buying a carbon indulgence. We should probably turn the aircon down a couple of degrees. We’ve got friends coming to town from Sydney and I’m taking Monday off. That will be nice.
I have left my coffee machine on all day – so that’s churned out the carbon.
My sermon is done. I think. I haven’t printed it yet so there’s always time for revisions. Robyn is playing poker on Facebook – and for some reason two of us playing simultaneously seems to kill its performance. .
So I find myself faced with Saturday’s incredibly lacklustre lineup of television programming. I remember a time when Saturday was the be all and end all of TV scheduling. I am probably biased in Saturday’s favour base on my parent’s obsession with The Bill.
Look no Hans, Solo garage sailing and ebay news
Fresh from the successful sale of Luke Skywalker for a 150% profit on eBay I hit the garage sales this morning looking for a new breadmaker. I’ve given up fixing the old one.
This was my first solo garage sailing experience. It’s not as much fun by yourself. I did not manage to find a new breadmaker – I did however manage to find a new heatgun. It has never been used, and I got it for $20. They’re over $60 new. This one even has temperature control – a feature I would have liked on the old one.
Other than that the trip was pretty unproductive – I hit eight sales in less about an hour. One was selling miniature garden gnomes, another healing crystals and another a collection of stylised antique pencil sharpeners. Or pencil sharpeners shaped like antique furniture. They were $2 each. I didn’t buy them.
Luke Skywalker went to a lady from Glenelg – which is a palindrome. So that’s pretty cool. I listed a bunch of other Star Wars figurines last night – if they all go for anything like $5.50 Craig and I will feel pretty good about the whole thing. The Tie Fighter Pilot I listed last night is already up to $6.50. Here’s all the items I’ve got listed at the moment.
Knives and gunfights
The rules for gunfighting. Just in case you needed them. There are 28 here.
Highlights:
1. Forget about knives, bats and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.
10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet if necessary, because they may want to kill you.
Mopping up
For those parents out there looking for more information on the baby mop from yesterday… here’s an ad.
Baby Mop from Chris Milk on Vimeo.
Money for nothing
Some people come up with really good ideas for earning money using the internet. Like the guy who sold the world (I bought Liberia but it seems this site has shut down since).
He stands to make $US66,795 (and get a year’s supply of t-shirts) by wearing people’s shirts. And blogging/videoing the experience. Here’s the description:
“Everyday in 2009 is for sale!! January 1 is $1 and each day goes up a buck until December 31 at $365. Want me to wear a shirt to promote the launch of your company? Want an interesting way to wish you friend Happy Birthday? You are free to buy any day(s) throughout the year. If you want to buy multiple days, email me.”
I was alerted to this site by my relative, and sometime blog reader, Martin Howard’s Facebook status. He’s got today. US time. The 20th of February. To promote his book on subliminal marketing. Which I haven’t read, but it’s genetically predisposed to being good.
Unfortunately, when it comes to booking your shirt space all the cheap seats are gone – he’s sold every slot until September.
Ladder of trust
Never trust or hire a motivational speaker with a mullet.
Road rage: Life on Abbey Road
I would hate to live somewhere iconic. Particularly somewhere iconic involving The Beatles. Like near the famous Abbey Road pedestrian crossing.
You’d have to watch this every day. People trying to relive the glorious moment.
The guru’s guru
I’ve never been one for gurus. Particularly self proclaimed ones who spit out pithy statements at random intervals.
Simone just hailed me as a guru of trivia, which was nice, which got me thinking about the concept of a “guru”.
Gurus tend to annoy me. Today, I’d like to introduce you to the guru of the internet. Seth Godin. I subscribe to Seth’s blog – mostly because he is a marketing guru. And sometimes he says useful things. The rest of it is twaddle. Like this:
“If it acts like a duck (all the time), it’s a duck. Doesn’t matter if the duck thinks it’s a dog, it’s still a duck as far as the rest of us are concerned.”
That’s a quote from a post on “Authenticity“.
Seth is a guru to so many people – but he has gurus too. Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired is one of those gurus. He’s like the grand daddy guru of the internet. He does seem pretty cool.
Kevin Kelly has gurus too. His gurus are people involved in the emerging church movement. He says as much here. Almost. He’s a Christian and he likes relevant stuff.
Being a fan of the emergent church means being a fan of Mark Driscoll. Almost. He was one of the people who started the movement but has since distanced himself from it. In writing. It’s probably not fair to lump him in with them – but it works for the sake of this little soliloquisious (surely the adjectival form of soliloquay) syllogism.
Mark Driscoll is now the guru of a generation of young Christian men who want authentic Christianity.
His guru is Jesus. So following the chain from Seth Godin – everybody’s guru – gets you to Jesus.
I guess my point is: Everybody you may consider a guru will have their own guru – once you get to the top of the pile of gurus that’s the guy worth following. Follow the guy with no gurus.
The mobile generation
From Flickr via CrunchGear
I may or may not be allowed to talk about Robyn’s school and things that she tells me. But I thought this was pretty crazy.
We were talking about this last night – and a timely study has revealed children are now getting their first mobile phone at eight in the UK.
A certain teacher I know had to write a note home to parents asking them not to call their children on their mobiles during class time.
I’m all for children having mobile phones. That’s great. Provided they’re not just using them to send naked pictures to each other like the Herald keeps pointing out. I’m no luddite. My kiddies will have their own mobile phones and Facebook pages at birth. That way I’ll be able to keep tabs on them. That’s probably an exaggeration. But calling them while they’re at school? In class? No way. How embarrassing for the kid who gets a call from his mum during spelling:
Kid: Hi mum
Mum: Hi kid, did you remember to brush your teeth this morning.
Kid: Yes mum, I did remember to brush my teeth this morning.
Mum: Good, just checking.
Kid: I really don’t know why you needed to call me to talk to me about it.
Mum: Just checking up because I care. I love you.
Kid: (mumbling) I love you too.
Mum: What was that? Speak up son.
Kid: I love you mum.
Entire class: laughter, teasing, poking, prodding…bullying.
Why would you inflict that on your child? Seriously.
I’m really not qualified to give parenting advice. But parents. Don’t try this at home.
Plus there’s the disruption to the rest of the class. I think that’s the point of this teacher’s objections.
Sermonising
I’m writing my sermon for Sunday in Google Docs. It’s on 1 John 1:1-4.
Here’s the Google Docs analysis of what I’ve written so far:
| Counts | Selection | Document |
| Words: | – | 3815 |
| Characters (no spaces): | – | 16912 |
| Characters (with spaces): | – | 20720 |
| Paragraphs: | – | 82 |
| Sentences: | – | 524 |
| Pages (approximate): | – | 5 |
| Readability | Selection | Document |
| Average sentences per paragraph: | – | 6.39 |
| Average words per sentence: | – | 7.28 |
| Average characters per word: | – | 4.43 |
| Average words per page: | – | 763.00 |
| Flesch Reading Ease: [?] | – | 84.78 |
| Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?] | – | 3.00 |
| Automated Readability Index: [?] | – | 3.00 |
That’s the formula (from this test) that gives a readability level of 3. I guess that’s good. It’s probably not helped by the number of sentences. I write punchy sentences for sermons. I also speak naturally at about 160 words a minute (that’s the broadcast standard for journalism) – but should slow that down. At that pace this sermon should go for about 23 minutes.
Here are the stats on the passage itself:
| Counts | Selection | Document |
| Words: | – | 103 |
| Characters (no spaces): | – | 433 |
| Characters (with spaces): | – | 535 |
| Paragraphs: | – | 1 |
| Sentences: | – | 5 |
| Pages (approximate): | – | 2 |
| Readability | Selection | Document |
| Average sentences per paragraph: | – | 5.00 |
| Average words per sentence: | – | 20.60 |
| Average characters per word: | – | 4.20 |
| Average words per page: | – | 51.50 |
| Flesch Reading Ease: [?] | – | 78.33 |
| Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?] | – | 7.00 |
| Automated Readability Index: [?] | – | 9.00 |
I think it’s a good thing that my sermon is more simple than the passage right? Shouldn’t an explanation be easier to understand than the thing you’re explaining? Otherwise it would be pointless.
Out of interest I pulled one of dad’s sermons off the MPC website and ran a comparison.
| Counts | Selection | Document |
| Words: | – | 3032 |
| Characters (no spaces): | – | 12835 |
| Characters (with spaces): | – | 15893 |
| Paragraphs: | – | 58 |
| Sentences: | – | 276 |
| Pages (approximate): | – | 4 |
| Readability | Selection | Document |
| Average sentences per paragraph: | – | 4.76 |
| Average words per sentence: | – | 10.99 |
| Average characters per word: | – | 4.23 |
| Average words per page: | – | 758.00 |
| Flesch Reading Ease: [?] | – | 82.04 |
| Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?] | – | 5.00 |
| Automated Readability Index: [?] | – | 4.00 |
Band names
I read something somewhere about band names today. It reminded me that I need to record the following for posterity’s sake.
If I were in a band – and that’s a big if because it would require musical talent – I would call my band Panache Attack. I am putting that here, now, to claim it.
If I were in a punk band – not such a big if because it doesn’t require musical talent – I would call it Disorderly Fashion, and we’d all wear the same suits on stage.
If you had a band what would you call it?