Ok, so I already posted a shirt today. But this one’s cool. It’s got a segway. Being driven by Prince. And it’s $23. I guess for Prince – who according to John Safran’s Music Jamboree is a Jehovah’s Witness – this would make witnessing easy, you could slip your tracts into a nice custom built front pocket or something.
Category: Consciousness
Shirt of the Day: Clever? Stupid
Ambigrams are cool. Palingrams (which is I think the correct description of a palindromic ambigram) are cooler. The company we use for our internet hosting and Content Management at work has a palingram for a logo. I saw it at a conference I went to but haven’t found it online or I’d include it here.
Anyway, Ambigrams are cool. Shirts derived from popular novelty shirt concepts with mirror image antonymic ambigrams are cooler. Like this one. From neatorama. It’s clever. Or stupid. Depending on your perspective. It’s also cheap at $US10.
Work Experience
There’s a guy looking for work in Canada. Here’s a summary of his listed qualifications
* Owned and operated successful multi-vessel fishing business, with one airplane
* Owned an island and processing facility
* Simultaneously owned a fleet of tractor trailer trucks conducting business in the west
* Executive level management of 120 employees worldwide
* Ran a business with an annual turnover of $100 million
* Expert in all levels of security
Would you hire him? need more details? His business was a global pot smuggling network – he’s just out of a 10 year stint in prison.
A work wanted ad printed in Canada. This guy just came out of a ten year stint in prison for smuggling 75 tonnes of dope. That’s more than Schapelle Corby. Found here.
It’s all Greek to me
Robyn and I are taking on a few “extra curricular” activities this year. We’ve stepped back from leading Adventure Club – the Friday night kid’s club we ran with a great team last year, and our church activities are largely focused on preparation for bible college at some stage in the not too distant future.
We’re using this year to get a competitive advantage on people we’re studying with. That’s what bible college is all about…
On top of the regular preaching gig at church that I think I already mentioned (I’m preaching this Sunday morning) we’re also trying to learn some New Testament Greek – also known as Koine Greek – and we’re looking at one of the Presbyterian Church’s fundamental doctrinal statements (what the Presbyterian Church believes) – the Westminster Confession of Faith (that’s a link to the Confession of Faith itself). Last night was our first bite of the Westminster Confession cherry.
Here’s a snippet from the Wikipedia entry on the Westminster Confession of Faith…
“The Church of Scotland had recently overthrown its bishops and adopted presbyterianism (see Bishops’ Wars). For this reason, as a condition for entering into the alliance with England, the Scottish Parliament formed the Solemn League and Covenant with the English Parliament, which meant that the Church of England would abandon episcopalianism and consistently adhere to Calvinistic standards of doctrine and worship. The Confession and Catechisms were produced in order to secure the help of the Scots against the king.”
We’ve also had our first little Greek lesson from Dave Walker – so far I’ve learned the alphabet and Robyn is on to more advanced learning of words and stuff. She’s a pretty dilligent little worker. Here’s what I know so far…
It’s something unpredictable
But in the end it’s right… I can not believe I just referenced a Greenday song.
Readers may be shocked to learn that this blog was not listed in Time Magazine’s 25 best blogs of 2009. Maybe next year. Here’s the list of the 25 best and the 5 most overrated. Some are probably worth subscribing to.
Youtube Tuesday: More than meets the eye
This HD Transformers 2 trailer was “leaked” online this week. Awesome. So very, very, awesome.
48 shades of brown
Nick Earls is a pretty good writer. I enjoyed his books. Other than the title this post has nothing to do with Nick Earls.
Back when I was redesigning my old blog I was looking for the quintessential coffee colour. You can see the results here. That would have been much, much easier if I’d had this little web tool to help me. All you have to do is upload a picture and it gives you a colour palette complete with hex codes. You can download the palette as a photoshop palette file too. Very useful.
Here’s my colours of coffee series screenshots. The last image does arguably feature the titular 48 shades of brown too. Though some could be better described as shades of black or red.
Ad busters
The quality of advertising in regional Australia lags about 15 years behind the quality of spots produced in capital cities. Local advertising can be frustratingly bad.
Townsville suffers from a paucity of quality ad producers. Too many advertisers rely on quick fix production from the local networks. There’s a massive gap in the market for a creative video producer to come in and change that status quo.
There are three local advertising phenomena that I think are particularly odd.
1. Patio World v Superior Patio Systems – how is it that two competitors in a very narrow niche can afford to wage a long running advertising battle. One featuring an annoyingly catchy jingle – the other featuring a good looking girl the local paper rated as one of the region’s most famous faces. I don’t get it. Is it a perpetual motion loop where one advertises and the other can’t be out done so they advertise and the other can’t be outdone so they advertise… To end this viscious cycle both would have to stop at the same time – otherwise there’d just be one patio company out there on the airwaves.
Rachel - the face of Patio World
2. There’s an ad for a local computer repairs company where the young lady requiring computer repairs calls up using an iphone – and in what could be described as a continuity error – is calling up about a beige computer tower that looks like it was built in the 80s or bought at an ex-government auction.
3. There’s a Kip McGrath Tutoring ad that has just started running locally that I think was probably actually produced in the 80s. This is not a figure of speech. The tutors feature moustaches and are wearing brown. It’s like one of those dodgy, dodgy corporate training videos. I know economic times are tough but rerunning ads from 20 years ago to cut costs is ridiculous.
700
I hit 700 posts today. That’s 100 posts in 13 days. Can I keep up this pace? Who knows? Should I keep up this pace? Probably a better question for you, my 8 loyal readers.
Stripped Wire
Robyn and I started watching “The Wire” last week. This doesn’t mean watching cables outside, but a highly recommended TV series labeled by some as the best thing since the West Wing. That may be true. There’s even a university course dedicated to dissecting it. But three episodes in, it hasn’t really gripped me. It’s hard for me to put a finger on just one thing. There’s a lot of swearing. I’m not really all that sensitive to swearing – Robyn is though. I don’t like watching television my wife isn’t comfortable with. It makes me uncomfortable in turn. The dialogue is certainly pacy. Which is nice. That was part of the West Wing’s charm. It has compelling characters. Which is another box ticked.
A lot of the discomfort I think I’m feeling is to do with the scenery. Half the scenes with the villains are set in Strip Clubs. I confess I don’t see why this is necessary. It’s hackneyed. The Sopranos already did it. Suddenly the strip club is essential for gangster office chic. Is that what it’s like in real life? Should we be more concerned about K-Rudd’s notorious visit to Scores? Was he really getting down and dirty with the seedy underbelly?
There’s a long, well documented association of organised crime and the flesh trade, and by association the drug trade. And The Wire is certainly pushing for the “gritty reality” crime drama merit badge. That’s the vibe they’re going for. So I can understand the move from a screenwriting standpoint. It doesn’t make as much sense from a commercial standpoint. The “cult hit” nomenclature is an oxymoronic attempt to sell more DVDs. It means “non mainstream success” or “salvageable bomb”. Nobody sets out to make a cult classic.
You’ve got to wonder if steering clear of material that is likely to make husbands uncomfortable to watch the show with their wives is part of the recipe for commercial success. I know I’d feel more comfortable watching without the gratuitous nudity. I’m not sure if this is just because I’m a Christian or if non-Christians feel the same awkwardness. Obviously my moral compass has a lot to do with my Christianity. But this just seems like a case of bad commercial sense. The people who get kicks out of all the gratuitous nudity are unlikely to switch off because of its absence. It’s almost a lack of confidence in their product.
You’ve got to wonder what strip clubs are thinking of this premium exposure. Does it help or hinder their cause to be portrayed as the ubiquitous criminal hangout? Even in 21, the Kevin Spacey card counting flick the team of college card counters made a Vegas strip joint their “out of casino” headquarters.
Time Management
Had an interesting little meeting this morning on time management strategies. It was one of those “break out into little clusters and write lists of suggestions” type meetings. I think that’s ironic given the massive amount of duplication in the suggestions and the time taken to report back to everyone.
But I wonder. Does anyone have any good time management ideas they can share? I spend a lot of time reading about how to be more productive and this hasn’t necessarily translated to increased productivity. I’m enjoying Ben Bathgate’s introductory series “Getting Things Done” philosophy – anyone who reads lifehacker knows about the GTD philosophy already. It seems like a good idea – and I’ll no doubt be sharing a lot of Ben’s posts via my shared links posts.
The funniest bit of today’s meeting was that I was in the breakout group with our CEO – a noted perfectionist – and one of my “miscellaneous time management” suggestions was that the pursuit of perfection can be a time waster. The difference between “good enough” and “perfect” can be minimal but achieving perfection often takes a long time. She “agreed with the sentiment” but couldn’t find the words to describe it when we were reporting back to the team.
Any good tips you’ve got for me – or others – share them in the comments
Maths fail
I have been meaning to post this for a while. Spot the problem. From failblog.
All fixed now
Well, almost. My blog was down for a while today. My hosting provider – dedicated host – had some issues switching over to a new payment system. They lost payment details and suspended my account. Apologies to anybody who has been trying to get on today…
Dedicated Host have the best customer service I’ve experienced from an online company. I emailed today at about 4.00pm notifying them of the problem and I had a response in minutes and the problem fixed very shortly thereafter. And a free month’s hosting as a sweetener. They get an A+ for customer service.
As do Coffee Dominion. My coffee machine issues were not as simply fixed as I thought last weekend. There was a leaking seal spraying water all over the control panel’s circuitry. Water and electricity don’t mix. I normally order parts online through coffeeparts.com.au – who are good. But postage for a small o-ring is expensive and the Coffee Dominion team pointed me to their local seal supplier. Who were also helpful. My machine is now up and running safely.
I isolated the power issues in my computer – my video card died a painful death at the hands of either the tropical heat or humidity. I’m not sure which. But it’s working now too. Thanks to the onboard video card.
So, now it’s just the breadmaker. Which has been almost completely dismantled. In fact, everytime I overcome one problem with it and get a little excited, I break something else in my haste. There aren’t many more pieces left to break. And I now know exactly what goes into a breadmaker. I guess that could be exciting for some people.
Race around in blocks
Little sister number two has a long held, deep seeded (or seated?) ambition to install lego boards into her car’s dash and keep pieces for passengers to play with in the glove box. She’s been outdone. Check out this Flickr set. There are a bunch of other car modification ideas here.
Autocomplete this sentence…
Autocomplete based on popular google searches is a pretty dangerous thing. Don’t type random vowels into YouTube – you’re likely to be shocked by what other people are looking for.
I don’t know if this is a photoshop job – I haven’t tested it yet. But I will.
Update – I tested these phrases in the autocomplete searchbar in Chrome. It seems they’re legit.
Gizmodo has shared a couple of pretty funny stories about Google autocomplete this week. Pictures below. Click them for a link to the full sized image if you can’t see the hilarious autocomplete results.
