Consciousness – Page 7

Welcoming Sophia Campbell

At about 10.43 this morning our world changed forever. Hopefully for the better. With the safe arrival, via Caesarian (somewhat unexpectedly after a routine appointment yesterday) of our amazing daughter Sophia. I’m very proud of my wife for carting our child around for nine months on the inside. And absolutely delighted to meet our daughter in the flesh. I suspected it was a girl all along.

We’re thankful to God for a safe delivery, great medical care before, during and after birth, and the love we’ve felt from friends and family who have expressed joy with us. Having children is not something we take for granted, and we grieve with those who feel a pang of sadness with this sort of announcement. But God is good – he answers prayers – and we can testify to that in a new way today.

Fatherhood changes a man. So much that my original very funny title for this post is now buried in the tags.

Mother…

Father…

Baby…

Grandparents…

And great grandparents…

Are all overjoyed with the news. It has been a pretty rollercoaster year for Robyn and I, so this is a nice way to end it. And being a Christmas baby, I’m thrilled for my daughter’s sake that she doesn’t have to share my birthday.

December 22, 2011

A new excuse for cheating at stupid games

There’s an adage amongst those who know my siblings and I, its almost axiomatic. When it comes to party games, and some board games (excluding Scrabble and Take Two which we generally take fairly seriously), we’re horrible cheaters.

I’ve never known why. I put it down to having a limited attention span and not believing most games are worth playing unless you win.

Turns out we’re just creative. So there. Stop oppressing us with your desire for boring conformity and let us think outside the box.

“The same enterprising mind that allows creative people to consider new possibilities, generate original ideas, and resolve conflicts innovatively may be what also helps them justify their own dishonest behavior, said the authors of the new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“Ethical dilemmas often require people to weigh two opposing forces: the desire to maximize self-interest and the desire to maintain a positive view of oneself,” wrote business professors Francesca Gino, at Harvard, and Dan Ariely, at Duke University. “Recent research has suggested that individuals tend to resolve this tension through self-serving rationalizations: They behave dishonestly enough to profit from their unethical behavior but honestly enough to maintain a positive self-concept as honest human beings.”

Turns out I’m also “ethically flexible”… who knew.

December 11, 2011

Tumblrweed: Godzilla Haiku

Haikus are my favourite form of poetry.

Especially when they involve Rebecca Black. And Godzilla.

Or are just haikus about Godzilla… those are pretty awesome too…

December 10, 2011

The “cult of done” pretty much involves half doing things…

Productivity is a modern idol. So too “getting things done”… Me. I just like “being effective.” That’s what I’ve decided…

Here’s a proposed manifesto for the getting things done movement. Illustrated.

The Cult of Done Manifesto:

There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you’re done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
Done is the engine of more.

What are your thoughts? Is prodigious production of products better than the production of polished products that do a job? I’m somewhere on that spectrum towards the polished product end. But I recognise that spending 80 hours on the last 20% of your product isn’t very efficient.

December 4, 2011

An update…

So, unlike all the other bloggers in Australian Christendom, or whatever sector of the blogosphere I occupy… I’m not taking any time off blogging wise over Christmas. In fact. I suspect a lack of sleep will mean I’ll be blogging more. Because blogging is what I do when I sit in front of the TV…

There are some big things on the horizon though. For Clan Campbell. Changes are afoot. We’re having a baby – any time in the next couple of weeks (or up until Christmas, if he/she really doesn’t want to come out). We’re moving house (not sure where yet). We’re changing churches (and sadly ending our time working for Andrew and Simone). But we’re off to Creek Road. Which will be different. I’m planning to hand in my last couple of pieces of college assessment for the year this week. We’re having a little holiday with family on Stradbroke Island at some stage in the next fortnight. And umm. I’ll be watching lots of cricket. Playing some Assassins Creed: Revelations. And eating banana paddle-pops. Also, my sister and her man became engaged today. So that’s also cool and newsworthy.

I blogged some coffee stuff at thebeanstalker.com this week (and I’ll post this semester’s essays up there when they’re all done and dusted), and some study notes at Venn Theology. And you canorder some roasted coffee with a “Really Useful Gift” kicker through the St. Eutychus Coffee Roastery between now and Christmas…

All in all a pretty busy couple of months in the pipeline – especially if you throw in a little bit of PR consulting (you can check out nathancampbell.com.au too, if you want to sling some work my way/me to sling some PR work your way…).

November 27, 2011

A song with a story: It Is Well…

Last Sunday I was on the Atherton Tablelands for this year’s round of my Trials for License. A process that people who want to become ministers in my denomination are forced to endure (thus the name) during their candidacy. It was fun. The Tablelands are a nice part of the world. I spoke at the Youthgroup up there about using Facebook for Jesus, and did a couple of different sermons (one in the morning, one at night).

My morning sermon was on Psalm 122. A song of ascent. A song about the security God’s city offers his people in the OT, and I talked about how Jesus changes the idea of security and “God’s place” in the New Testament, especially in John 4 (talking to the Samaritan woman about where to “worship”) and John 14 (talking to the disciples about not being afraid because they have the Spirit).

I talked about what it means to not fear, and to put your trust in God for security in a fallen and broken world. And I talked about Horatio Spafford as an example… Horatio wrote my favourite church song of all time, a song that does stir me emotionally, mostly because I know this story, and as I sing it I marvel at his ability to write these words when he did.

Mars Hill put together (or at least uploaded) this little snap shot of the story behind the song.

Amazingly powerful stuff.

November 2, 2011

Clayton’s Tapley: The Co Co prophet of the End Times

Wow. Not only does this guy, Richard Hackley (read more about him here), sound a lot like William Tapley – he shares similar production values (at least when it comes to sound – he doesn’t do much of his own video stuff).

It sounds a bit like Dire Straits. Only not.

I’m not sure about the clip with the ladies jelly wrestling.

November 1, 2011

My wife is a Babe…

My dear wife just finished writing an assignment. To celebrate she played this clip over and over again. Singing along.

I am still working on said assignment.

October 28, 2011

Stellar Service

Link blogger Jason Kottke made a bookmarking service that feels a bit like Twitter but is better than the new Facebook (which seems to just consist of people sharing semi-lame web comics and pictures that used to belong on Tumblr – has anybody else noticed this?). Kottke’s service is called Stellar. And I’m on it. And it’s great. It’s like the web being curated by people who have taste. Or something. I’ve posted a fair bit of stuff here that I’ve found there. And you can follow my stream (the stuff I share there – by favouriting elsewhere). I think it’s at a Beta stage where you request an invite still – but my invite came about 2 hours after my request. So get on board. And let me know.

October 14, 2011

Water, water, everywhere…

Wow. What a storm. We just survived the craziest ever drive from Brisbane to Dalby. It rained. It poured. The old man snored… when we left college this afternoon the gutters almost kidnapped my thongs (as in footwear). A soaked walker asked to use my phone to call for a lift. You may have had enough of water for today. I haven’t. You may also have had enough beautiful timelapse photography. I haven’t.

So there.

October 13, 2011

Sunday Night Music: Gotye, Hearts A Mess

A few of us went to see Gotye yesterday with “orchestra” at Brisbane’s Powerhouse. It was sensational. The instruments were slightly different to the array in this version from JJJ. But this song was insane. It gave me goose bumps.

As a bonus – here’s Eskimo Joe covering Somebody That I Used to Know.

October 9, 2011

Food fun from around the interwebs…

Rather than posting all of these separately, here are some food related stories I currently have in my queue of stuff to blog.

Peel garlic in 10 seconds

I want to try this. It’s amazing.

How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.

Make your own marshmallows

Serious Eats has a quick run down on making marshmallows.

I had no idea it was this easy. I probably should have. I know plenty of people who have made marshmallows – but the home made version has never really struck me as being as good for toasting, or putting in hot chocolate.

Make a biscuit bowl

This has been doing the rounds – but it seems so much smarter than trying to make a bowl in the inside side of a muffin tray…

Wilton.com has a recipe for biscuit bowl success.

Cheeseburgers at home

Maybe it was self discipline, maybe I just forgot – but I didn’t take advantage of the amazing $1 cheeseburger happy hour deal that McDonalds was running as a birthday celebration.

Lifehacker tried to figure out how much it would cost to make a cheeseburger at home. They calculated the cost at $1.38. That’s a cheap lunch.

Some “Babushka” knives

These don’t just look cool – they’re conceptually cool in their use of Fibonacci ratios.

Details on Design Sojourn. You can buy ’em for millions (well, hundreds) on Amazon.com
.

October 7, 2011

A lull in blogworld…

All the people based blogs I read (except Al’s, Findo’s, Gav’s, and Gary’s, and to a lesser extent Arthur and Tamie, and Sophie, at the Fountainside, who tend to post on a more disciplined substantive regime anyway) appear to be going through the motions of blogging, or not at all,* at the moment. Come on people. Harden up. Drop us a bone. Especially those of us who use the internet to procrastinate.

The current state of affairs makes me sad.

Come on Ben. Simone. Izaac. Scott. Post something. Anything. GIVE ME CONTENT…

I’ll start taking note of all those articles that say blogging is dying otherwise.

* I realise and acknowledge the irony that I am a contributor to this general state of affairs…

September 29, 2011

Back, to the future…

Ahh. Melbourne. Coffee. Home. Essays. Sermons. That’s the story of my life this week. We left Melbourne yesterday, and that was the last real holiday I think we’ll have before our family gets a new addition.

So, in the next few days blogging will be a little sporadic. I’ve got three sermons to write before this weekend. One on Psalm 122 for my trials for license (complete with a 3,500 word exegesis paper), one on social networking and what it teaches us about the human desire for relationship (for another church’s youth group on Saturday), and one on Paul’s method of connecting the gospel to culture (based on Acts 17) for church on Sunday.

Plus, I’ve got a tutorial presentation paper and essay on the Psalms to prepare for the first week back from holidays (next week). So that’s an ouch.

Anyway. Here’s some photos from Melbourne to tide you over.

This dessert was the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

And this was the best pork belly ever… both were from Axil Coffee.

Reviews of our caffeinated long weekend in Melbourne are up on thebeanstalker.com (I’ve got a couple more to go)

September 28, 2011

Fun times in Batmania

I can’t be the only person in the world who thinks that while Melbourne is a cool city, it would be cooler if the name Batmania had stuck…

We’ve been here since Friday. It has been cold. We’re staying with my friend Mika, which has been fun. We’ve been to a bunch of cafes (stay tuned for reviews on thebeanstalker.com). We’ve been to a wedding (the real reason we came down here), a wedding that featured a surprise opera performance during the toasts. We’ve caught trams. We’ve been to City on a Hill (the church run by Guy Mason, the guy who did that Sunrise interview)… and despite all that fun stuff, and the amazing coffees, probably my favourite part was meeting Arthur and Tamie of Cyberpunk + Blue Twin fame. First off, Tamie makes possibly the most amazing Baklava I’ve ever tasted (and I spend two weeks in Greece and Turkey trying to find amazing Baklava), secondly, the meeting of the minds and the warm and engaging conversations we shared yesterday are a reminder of the beauty of being part of the kingdom of God, and one of the tangible benefits of doing this blogging thing. People who read and participate in conversations online are real people, and it was nice to be reminded of that – it’s also nice when you meet people and the real life version of the person is pretty much what they display online only in three dimensions. So that was fun.

The League of Honest Coffee – our first Cafe stop

City on a Hill was interesting. I’ve never seen a church with such amazing branding and design, they meet in a cinema which offers the most comfortable church seats I’ve ever been in, they had a video Bible reading featuring cool shots from around the city with key parts of the text written in chalk. It was a really hip and happening deal. The two criticisms I have, and I’m not really in the business of taking shots at other people’s models of ministries (unless they don’t talk about Jesus) were that the cinema setting made conversation difficult – nobody really said hello to us until the end of the service, even though we were about five minutes early, and the music, while tight and enjoyable, featured the occasional repetition of line/verse that wasn’t indicated by the powerpoint, which made singing a long a little bit disjointed.

I loved how “on message” people were in up front stuff, it was clear that if you were new at the church your next step is to become part of a “connect group” (via a newcomers information evening), and it was clear that this is a church where the expectation is that you role up your sleeves and be on mission. So that was pretty cool too, in that it seemed to recognise the limitations of doing welcoming/connecting with new people in the venue that they’re in, while conveying the church’s desire to incorporate new people into the flock, and move people into the process of serving one another.

The sermon was on 1 Corinthians 14, on Spiritual gifts, tongues and prophecy – so there was plenty of interesting mental fodder. Guy managed to hold and nicely articulate the tension between skeptical cessassionists and tongues-loving reformed charismatics nicely, while pointing out that spiritual gifts are only spiritual gifts if they point people towards Jesus. So that was nice.

September 25, 2011