I don’t have an X-Box, so I don’t have Kinect.
But. That could all change. Just so I can be like Tom Cruise.
DepthJS from Fluid Interfaces on Vimeo.
So cool. From here. This has been doing the rounds – I even saw it on the Herald website.
Category: Culture
Modelling the city: with maths
This is pretty cool, a feature in the New York Times about a guy who has “solved the city” – or rather, come up with mathematical expressions for certain inevitable urban constants.
“After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few exquisitely simple equations. For example, if they know the population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate, with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system. These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people “agglomerate,” cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars…
“What we found are the constants that describe every city,” he says. “I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.”
Daily Mail Fail: Interesting flood coverage
When I want to know what’s going on in regional Queensland I turn to that bastion of quality reportage – England’s Daily Mail. Because they have all the bases covered. Reporting not just on Queensland but the separatist state of Capricornia – there will be some in North Queensland who think this is a good thing indeed.
From the Daily Mail, via Findo.
2010 on St. Eutychus
I missed my end of year wrap up yesterday because I was reading a book. Sorry. But here are some facts, figures and highlights from the year that was.
Stats
In 2009, 31,705 Absolute Unique Visitors made 48,733 Visits, making 82,916 Pageviews
In 2010, 31,869 Absolute Unique Visitors made 52,965 Visits, making 83,668 Pageviews.
At the time of writing I have 78 Facebook fans (become a fan – I’m now sharing links to stuff I don’t blog, or that is in my queue, to Facebook fans ahead of time), and 22 Google Connections.
So small increases across the board – but more importantly. No decreases. Hooray.
In 2009 I posted 1,106 posts here on St. Eutychus. In 2010 I managed 1,434. A 29% increase. And some people said being a college student would slow down my blogging. As it was – I used college as an opportunity to create more content.
My favourite college related series and posts from the year.
1. Some language resources (some for Mac, some for typing on a Mac)
2. Reflections on the “Disciplines of a Godly theological student”
3. My guide to First Year Greek
4. The things I love about College
5. The things I’d change about College
6. My Wisdom Literature Essay (part two, three, four, five, six) – my favourite essay of the year.
7. Pre-exam prep: New Testament 101, New Testament 102, Old Testament 101, Old Testament 102, Church History 101, Hebrew 102
8. Greece and Turkey Report(s).
9. Liveblogging Ben Witherington.
10. Liveblogging Gary Millar (one, two, three, four, five)
My favourite useful posts from this year
1. How to write a Media Release to promote your church event
2. How to talk to Atheists about Christianity
3. Awareness Raising is Overrated, (and the prequel – The Facebook Booby Trap, and the sequel about Movember, and a follow up about Social Media)
4. How to not raise bitter ministry children
5. Social Media Strategies for Churches (and a follow up on Venn Theology)
6. How not to be very good at Facebook
7. My election posts – Julia Gillard’s atheism, my Christian values election scorecard, why I won’t vote for Family First, wrap up.
8. Coffee and ministry.
9. Five cheap ways to exegete your suburb.
10. My Five Steps to Better Coffee series
Many of these are the type of thing I hope to post at Venn Theology this year (2011).
My favourite coffee posts this year
1. Seven Deadly Coffee Sins
2. From Cherry to the Cup – a look at processing and roasting coffee: part one, two, three, four, five
3. Brisbane cafe reviews: Dandelion and Driftwood, Cup, BlackStar
4. The sin of Instant Coffee.
5. Coffee and Ministry
6. A coffee gift guide.
7. Science says “don’t freeze your coffee”
8. How to make Greek Coffee.
9. A beautiful guide to coffee drinks
10. My “Five Steps to Better Coffee” Series
My favourite frivolity
But it wasn’t all serious. Here are some of my favourite posts/series from this year.
1. Ten steps to planting a mega church (with a follow-up “how to name your megachurch“)
2. 23 Bacon products that will take your breath away.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook.
4. The Devil Wants you Fat (series – that I probably should finish now I have a scanner).
5. Backwards Masking Unmasked (The Jacob Aranza Series)
6. Mad Skillz Week
7. Liveblogging Chuck Norris’ Invasion USA (part 2, part 3, part 4, Robyn’s report).
8. The Make Me A Mexican Challenge
9. About “Hot Wives”
10. About Church Slogans (a bad example).
11. A Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (part one b, part two, part three)
12. The definitive and authoritative guide to the six basic plot lines
13. A look at “Objective Ministries” crazy Christian conspiracy to take over the moon
14. Reverse engineering the perfect chip
15. The Art of Improvised weaponry
16. K-Strass the Yo-Yo guy
Most popular posts in 2010
Here are the most popular posts (mostly because google loves them) by visits this year. A couple of these were written last year and continue to attract a steady stream of traffic.
1. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast (2009), the 2010 follow up was equally popular
2. Five things that would make atheists seem nicer: this accounted for about a quarter of 2009’s traffic. By itself. Not so much in 2010, but still enough to rank second.
3. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook: This one had a bit of a spike in traffic around publication, but continues to get about 10 hits a day.
4. Ten steps to planting a megachurch: This was one of my favourites, so I’m glad it did well.
5. Chuck Norris Jeans: The little engine that could. Google loves this post.
6. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress: Certainly my geekiest post of the year.
7. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
8. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
9. Let’s not fly Jetstar: a 2009 post about a Jetstar nightmare.
10. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.
Most popular posts from 2010
A slightly different list – because it does away with a couple of “long tail” posts from last year.
1. Mark Driscoll Ruined Facebook
2. Ten steps to planting a megachurch
3. Chuck Norris Jeans
4. How to get the Facebook Like Button working on WordPress
5. Bible Stories for Boys: Ehud the Left Handed
6. Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online (and why I’ve mostly given up).
7. Facebook Login Fail: a little post about a funny story about people googling “facebook login” and landing in the wrong place.
8. Some Greek and Hebrew Resources
9. How to make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast How to Make Sizzler’s Cheese Toast: The 2010 follow up was equally popular
10. Typographic Moustaches
Thanks for reading.
Don’t Fret: Mystery Guitar man is here to help
This guy is impressive. Probably the most impressive thing I’ve seen on YouTube today…
Bohemian Rhapsody slide whistle style…
Flight of the Bumblebee:
Bottle Mozart
Cup Beethoven
Imperial March
Vuvuzela Symphony
A one man choir
A paper band
DIY Angry Birds
If I were crafty I’d make these. But I’m not that kind of crafty. Instead – I’ll craftilly put this out there and hope that crafty people in my life get the message and make them for me.
Can you name these traffic optimised books?
McSweeneys put together a list of classic books reworked for the Internet generation…
- 7 Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism
- The 11 Stupidest Things Phonies Do To Ruin The World
- 8 Surprising Ways West Egg Is Exemplary Of The Hollowness Of The American Dream
- 6 Shockingly Evil Things The Turn-Of-The-Century Meatpacking Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know
- 5 Insane Ways London Could Become a Dystopia (And How It’s Not That Far From Reality)
- 1 Weird Thing Caddy Smells Like
There are answers here. If you’re stuck. Which I was.
Incredible Coin Stop Motion
From two guys who call themselves Ninja Moped and do awesome stuff. They want to make a music video flinging 62 pianos over 100 metres in the air. At stuff. How awesome.
You might remember them from this 8-Bit lego stop motion.
Bohemian Rhapsody: Stringy edition
I’m a sucker for a Bohemian Rhapsody cover. Here it is arranged for violin.
Via 22 words.
P.S. I’m loving YouTube’s new iframe embed code. That’s a pretty geeky thing to mention – but it makes the embed thing a lot more html compliant. Speaking of which… I am going to be tweaking my design again in the next few days… hoping to iron out some glitches. So if there’s anything you don’t like currently – tell me in the comments.
BibleCloud
This is cool. While doing a little googling for that last post I came across this. It’s called 66 Clouds.
You can buy posters for each book of the Bible – or a coffee table book. It’s exactly what it looks/sounds like. Word clouds of each book of the Bible, get it on Amazon
Obviously you can make your own with wordle.net. Where you can even tweak the colours. But ’tis nice.
HaikuLeaks: Wikileaks in Japanese poem form
Some people out there aren’t big fans of Haikus. Those 5/7/5 Japanese poems. I am not some people. I even resigned my job with the power of Haiku. So I’m impressed with this website that searches the wikileaks site for naturally occurring haikus. Like these:
Instead, he gulped three
cans of Coca-Cola while
inhaling his food.
He added that there
should be ‘no blank checks, no checks
at all,’ for Hamas.
The vessels are met
either on shore or a short
distance off the coast.
It uses a snippet of code that you can run over any text you want. Which you can get here.
Six fun things to do with your new video camera
Did you get a video camera for Christmas? Wondering what cool projects you can use it for? I have some answers. Six, in fact.
Buy a sword. Attach it to the end.
Set yourself up as a first person shooter.
Do the (previously posted) third person car set up (language warning)
Attach the camera to a big helium balloon and send it into space (dizziness warning)
Follow this instructable and see yourself in third person. Computer game style.
I didn’t get a video camera for Christmas – but I did get one just before we went overseas. And I got a remote controlled helicopter (like every other male child adult this year). I don’t know how it would go if I attached one to the other… but here’s a purpose built cameracopter – that can be controlled by the power of iPhone. Which is awesome.
Beer Art: painted in beer
This is cool. An artist named Donna Munsel produces/paints art using beer (amongst other things – here’s her portfolio).
