I shared this on Twitter a while back, but forgot to blog it. How remiss of me. A colouring in book for the executive types. A great way to kickstart your career, or at least to catalyse it. Buzz words that render the difference between sentences essentially meaningless are another part of this process.
It is pretty excellent, and there are more pages here (including evidence that it is a real book, or at least a convincing fake).
What would Jesus Tweet. It’s an important question for any would be Christian Confucius out there looking to use Facebook or Twitter as a platform for spiritual warfare.
Here’s a not very funny or self aware song that ponders a similar question… (via JesusNeedsNewPR)
It’s weird that when old people try to be hip and cool they use images of Dell desktop PCs from about 10 years ago in their hip, cutting edge, satire.
But that’s neither here nor there. This is a public service announcement for those out there who:
a) think posting one liners worthy of a church sign is of some benefit.
b) can’t come up with their own pithy one liners, you know, by reading the Bible.
c) want to use Facebook to annoy their friends, both Christian and non-Christian, rather than to bolster real relationships.
If you are that person, then rest easy. Here is a website that is a suppository of options, you can pull them out of your… ChristianStatusUpdates.com…
Here’s a sampling from today…
“____ The best way to start any day off right is to tell God how thankful you are.
____ P.U.S.H.> (P)ray (U)ntil (S)omething (H)appens
____ is strong because I know my weaknesses. I am wise because I know I’ve been foolish. I laugh because I’ve known sadness.
____ Don’t pass judgment on someone else’s life without looking at your own life first…
____ You know it’s grace when God gives you something you don’t deserve.”
Here’s the Thing is a quite brilliant web series that reduces the lives of every day people into the signature things that they own, via a commentated photographic tour of their household. Thanks to the awesome crowd sourcing power of Kickstarter the Here’s the Thing team will be touring the United States.
So what are your things? While I don’t buy into the idea that you are defined by your possessions, it is interesting to think about the impression the odds and ends in your house make about your character. This is the reason I used to take a cursory glance at bookshelves and CD collections (before the age of internet distribution) to get a feel for a person.
I think a tour of my life via our house would include the wedding picture on our wall, my bookshelves, littered with Bibles, theology books, and novels, my laptop and Apple gadgets, an array of coffee paraphernalia, our pets, the musical instruments that Robyn plays, but I don’t, and our litany of kitchen gadgetry useful for creating just about every dish known to man, but largely pulled out upon a whim. Then it would be my series of novelty hats from around the globe, my plastic Bob Hawke head drink dispenser, and whatever other items of kitsch have survived decluttering bouts over the years.
This is a truly sensational pun based sculpture.
Just amazingly clever and intricate. It’s not for sale. It’s art. Incredible art from a bloke named Tim Hawkinson.
Wendi Deng’s amazing boxing skills notwithstanding, this is probably the only real legacy of Rupert Murdoch’s “I don’t know, I wasn’t told” appearance in Britain last week.
Via Tumblr somewhere.
I love books. Physical books. I like reading on my kindle, and even more on my iPad. But the tactile experience of a book, and the visual thrill of a well-stocked set of shelves will keep me heading to second hand bookshops, the book depository, and whatever physical bookshop is still solvent after this year.
Turning books into lamps is now old hat. Well. I saw these ones a while ago. I meant to post them, but then I forgot. The light comes on when the book is opened.
There’s a how to, including a video, here.
I love these ones for the steampunk bulbs. I can’t imagine they’d be cheap to replace if you kicked a soccer ball, or a shoe, or some sort of miscellaneous projectile into it.
This one, from Suck UK is a lamp/bookmark combo.
And here’s another that has a little more spine… each lamp uses a single book.
But for something a little more classy, you could always have a crack at putting together a book chandelier (or just buy one for 440GBP).
There’s something irresistible about this video, maybe it’s the matching colours. Maybe it’s the bright house. Maybe it’s the incongruous dog. I don’t know. It’s certainly not the worst or weirdest Christian music on YouTube.
Nor is this, which apart from the ghostly severed heads is pretty cute.
It turns out it’s less dangerous (as you’d expect) for a monkey to get hold of a camera, where they’ll take delightful self portraits…
… than it is for a monkey to get hold of a machine gun.
Popular gaming blog Kotaku has an interesting article on a Christian Game Developers conference they tagged along to recently. Telling mostly for this para on what adding “Christian” in front of a media type does for a non-Christian audience. I’ve written a bit about Christian video game stuff before, this is basically an update on that front.
““Christian,” as an adjective, arrives with a lot of freight in the secular world, especially as branding within entertainment media and markets. For example: Christian TV programming, Christian radio, Christian rock, Christian books and bookstores. To the secular mainstream, it’s all assumed to mean insipid edutainment, ulterior-motive prosleytization or oogity-boogity intolerance. So Christian game developers, simply by identifying themselves as such, are up against that assumption of intent.”
The article is a worthwhile read if you’re interested in gaming specifically, or Christian isolationist approaches to the arts in general, because it shows a nice way to approach participation in a cultural/media industry.
Impressive. I love a good Rube Goldberg Machine.
Font whizzes Hoefler and Frere-Jones have come up with a pretty nifty and amazing little way of tweaking fonts. It is said that symmetrical faces are more beautiful, so beautiful people will doubtless make nicer fonts.
“Behold Andy modeling his latest creation, which employs Kyle McDonald’s FaceOSC library, GlyphMath from RoboFab, and Tal Leming’s Vanilla to mutate the geometries behind our Ideal Sans typeface in realtime.”
Check it out in action.
font-face from Andy Clymer on Vimeo.
Via Kottke
R-B. Rebecca Black. Chances are this won’t get over 160,000,000 hits on Youtube. There’s a law of diminishing returns operating here. But I’m happy to extend R-B’s fame to 16 minutes.
Sean Bean has made an artform out of the dramatic and graphic cinematic death. This video contains 21 examples of his work. Don’t watch it if you don’t handle violent movie scenes well. Do watch it if you want to see the same expression on his face 21 times. It doesn’t matter what era, or if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, he still manages to demonstrate the same perplexed “why me” look each time around.
This is amazing. Mind blowing. I’ll never watch Arrested Development in quite the same way again…
Take, for example, a comparison between the two lead characters…
Michael Corleone
In The Godfather, Michael Corleone wants to leave his family business behind and find a normal life on his own terms. However, he is forced into the family business when an attempt has been made on his father’s life, as he is the only one qualified amongst his brothers and sister to continue the family business. Michael is practically the only one who looks after his father, helping to evade further attempts on Don Vito’s life while he is incapacitated in the hospital. He has a spouse that dies during his stay in Italy, and is unable to sustain a functional relationship with his girlfriend/wife Kay because of his devotion to family affairs.
Michael Bluth
In the pilot episode of Arrested Development, Michael Bluth wants to leave his family business behind and find a normal life on his own terms. However, he is forced back into the family business when his father is taken to jail, as he is the only one qualified amongst his brothers and sister to continue the family business. Michael is practically the only one who looks after his father, visiting George Sr. frequently in jail. He has a spouse that died at some point in his past, and is unable to sustain functional relationships with various women because of his devotion to family affairs.
The similarities don’t end there. My mind blown.
For some reason this song was in my head last night.
And watching that clip, I found this one. That’s some impressive banjo.