Watching the flood

At the moment I’m sitting on level five of a building in Southbank, overlooking the river. I’m watching a truck out the window, across the river, on the Riverside Expressway. It’s crawling. The same truck has been in about the same spot for the last fifteen minutes.

I’m also playing with Instagram – an iPhone photo app that I like.



And delving into the Twitter hash tag world for the first time.

These floods are amazing – and weeks of watching the rest of Queensland go underwater have instilled an odd panic in lots of people. The office is pretty bare. Lots of people have left. Rumours are flying (thanks to Sky News) about the impending closure of Brisbane’s public transport system. Nobody is quite sure whether or not that’s happening. Us marketers/PR people are a hardy bunch, and will no doubt be the last out of the doors.

Yesterday my sister-in-law who lives in Toowoomba walked into a shop just before the inland tsunami swept cars and utes around the streets like an over-zealous street cleaner.

My parents-in-law are bracing for a second round of flooding on their farm outside Dalby. It’ll probably go higher than the last one – and doubtless do more damage.

These floods are crazy. Crazy.

January 11, 2011

Straight Talk: Another Christian guide to dating and relationships

On our college mission in 2010 we had the opportunity to sit through a presentation by Straight Talk Australia’s Jim and Faye Lyons. Perhaps Australia’s most seasoned abstinence campaigners.

I thought the presentation could have done with a smattering of “forgiveness” and “grace” alongside the “unwanted pregnancy” and “gonorrhea” – but it certainly scared me. And I guess if it can scare a married 26 year old it can scare a 16 year old. Right?

The presentation was interesting. It involved a video of one of America’s biggest abstinence campaigners – Pam Stenzel – doing her thing on an Australian tour in 1998. The video is dated, jaded, and Pam is wearing an off putting combo of high pants with a big belt buckle that draws altogether too much attention to her chest area.

This is one of the many videos of Pam at work on YouTube.

Anyway. I wouldn’t necessarily endorse the product. But I thought Ben Law’s take on the program in an essay for the Monthly (from a couple of years ago) was pretty interesting. Ben is a gay essayist of some talent, and growing repute. He was my creative non-fiction lecturer at uni, and I saw him perform some stand up as part of JJJ’s Raw Comedy competition (I was cheering on some of my friends). He’s a funny guy, and remarkable even handed in his treatment of the program for one so diametrically opposed to all it’s seeking to achieve – though Pam’s outfit was too much for him:

“The Lyons invited Pam Stenzel to Queensland in 1998, and made a DVD of the resulting school tour. The Price Tag of Sex is the core of Jim and Faye’s presentation at Inglewood. Stenzel, despite looking a little dated (she is wearing high-waisted jeans that rise above her navel), is aggressively charming. She speaks with that irresistible American mix of authority and mocking disbelief. Throughout the DVD, there are clear-cut rules she shoots out. “Absolutely no genital contact of any kind – none!”; “Keep your pants on – simple!”; “If you are not married, don’t do it. If you are married – go for it!””

It’s worth reading to get a feel for what outsiders think of the stuff you might put on in your churches and schools without much thought. His analysis resonates with my experience of the program too. And his concerns are my concerns – though we approach the issue from vastly different perspectives.

January 10, 2011

How would Calvin pick up Christian ladies

Xtranormal is a text-to-video editor that I used a while ago to make a video of my pet Nigerian Scammer.

Here it has been put to a different use – showing just how dumb a batch of Calvinist pick up lines might sound in real life. Just in case you’re working your way through the process of Christian pick up artistry.

The video comes via 22 Words.

January 10, 2011

Josh Groban sings Kanye’s Tweets

I’m a sucker for stuff related to Kanye West’s Twitter presence.

So this video that has been doing the rounds gets stamped “worthy of posting” and now, sits amongst the other webtritus (thanks Arthur for the term) posted here…

It’s been everywhere already, but I think I saw it first at ChurchCreate.

January 10, 2011

Of quick foxes and lazy dogs

I’m reading a book about fonts at the moment. A fairly long, and well written, entertaining book about fonts. It’s called Just My Type (Amazon). It pointed me to this video on YouTube:

And then mentioned that most fonts these days can be carefully examined using these two one word options:

Handgloves

or

Hamburgers.

Apparently all the rises, falls, and curves of the significant letters in a typeface can be tested in those two words. So there’s really no need for the fox after all.

January 10, 2011

Blogging Meet-up (of sorts)

Our friends Izaac and Sarah are visiting us this week. So tonight we’re having dinner with Andrew and Simone. A chance to turn the virtual into the real. Should be fun. I told Simone she had to come up with some controversial conversation topics. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Stay tuned for reflections on what it’s like to meet those people in real life, from the other people.

January 10, 2011

Guy named Dragan reinvents the term “jumping the shark”

When a television show channels its inner Happy Days and features something as ludicrous as the Fonz jumping over a pair of sharks on waterskis those in the media biz know its days are numbered. It is said to have “jumped the shark”… this is a pejorative description of the act of doing anything to garner ratings and attention. Or it was. Until now. A Serbian man named Dragan was swimming at the beach and decided that it would be fun to jump off a high diving board. He landed on a shark. A man eater. Killing it. Here’s the news story, corroborated on the New York Post’s website.

Here’s a snippet:

“Dragan climbed on the jumping board, told me to hold his beer and simply ran to jump. There was no time for me to react or to try to stop him, he just went for it” says Milovan.

“Dragan jumped high and plunged down to the sea, but didn’t make as much splash as we thought he would”, explained Milovan.

The reason could be because Dragan Stevic ended up jumping straight on the shark which was lurking near the beach, probably looking for its next victim. Dragan had nailed it right in the head, killing it instantly. The Egyptian police found the shark washed out on the beach that morning.

Sadly. The story is a fake. Not even a good one. And it’s an indictment on the state of modern journalism that the New York Post decided to run it just because it had already reached a viral tipping point online. They have jumped the shark.

January 9, 2011

Bowled over: a salad bowl of toy soldiers

If there’s one thing Toy Story (the first one) taught me it’s that toys are made for being melted. Well, especially plastic soldiers. I was more inspired by the nasty neighbour’s treatment of his mangled army of toys than by good old Andy’s treatment of his coterie. So I had a collection of melted soldiers, and the associated burns on my legs and arms. Plastic and fire don’t play nicely together.

Little did I know that what I was doing could probably be classed as “art”… and sold on the internet as a “bowl” that “makes a statement” for almost $200.

January 9, 2011

Dictapen

Livescribe is my next Christmas present. Unless I change my mind in the 350 days or so between now and then. It would take all the pain out of lectures. Because you can scribble and draw little bits and pieces – and the whole time it’ll record the sound that’s going on in the background. Sounds useful.

January 9, 2011

A real pearler…

This guy named Calvin Wright was one of those loud talkers on a train. But he had a better reason than forgetting that he was wearing headphones…

For 41 years, the Athens man had a pearl from his mother’s necklace stuck in his ear canal. ER staff at St. Mary’s Hospital discovered it when Wright came in suffering from bronchitis this month.

“The nurse was checking my ear and said, ‘Do you use Q-Tips?'” Wright said. “I said yes, and she said, ‘you’ve got one in your right ear, I’ll get it out.’ She tried getting it and then she was like, ‘Whoa, this is hard. This is not a Q-Tip. Looks like you got a pearl in your ear.'”

January 9, 2011

Halo-ween: Real Life Red v Blue

This could possible be the most intricately designed set of Halloween costumes known to man. The guy didn’t just make one of these Halo MasterChief costumes for himself – he helped out his friends too.

Details on how he did it, and a photo essay of sorts, can be found here.

Right now I’m just going to bask in his glory for a second. Wow. Lucky he made costumes for everybody or he may well have ended up single. The best bit, is that these are actually all the characters from Red vs Blue.

Helping out a street preacher:

January 8, 2011

The Dos and Don’ts of Facebook Photo Albums

My friend Steve Tran is a pretty top photographer, bloke, and coffee drinker. He wrote this post about Facebook photo albums that is worth thinking about if you’re the type of person who puts photos on Facebook. Like everything else in the world that’s good – he subscribes to a less is more philosophy of sorts. Read it.

He took this photo of me that I like so much I turned it into the background for my new about.me profile.

Here’s the reciprocal photo I took at the same time…

If Steve wanted to guest blog his photography tips from a presentation he did on our Toowoomba mission earlier this year I reckon that would be pretty worthwhile. Maybe I’ll ask him in this paragraph.

January 7, 2011

St. Eutychus Coffee Roastery now open for (more professional) business

Hey. Guess what. I sell roasted coffee. No doubt some of you know that. What you don’t know is two things.

I now have a snappy looking rubber stamp so my coffee bags are branded.

And also, you can now pay for the coffee as you order via Paypal. You don’t even have to have a Paypal account. Just a Credit Card. You can order from this page here. And I’m thinking I might even put the form in the sidebar on the front page.

Cool hey. I suggest you order away. You won’t regret it. Millions of people have already enjoyed coffee from St. Eutychus Coffee. And that’s the only exaggerated sentence in this post.

January 7, 2011

Floody Floody

Robyn spent the earlier days of this week on her parent’s farm starting the clean up after serious flooding in Dalby. Most farmers out there have insurance coverage that doesn’t include flood cover. The floods damaged crops, wiped out seed for the next harvest, and caused some serious erosion to the dam walls. Not to mention destroying a bunch of household goods.

Robyn shot some footage that she’s putting together into a lengthy production. Here’s an iMovie trailer I put up on Facebook.

Please keep farmers around Queensland in your prayers, and if you haven’t already, please give generously to the Premier’s Flood Appeal.

January 6, 2011

Art-key-type: Archetypal Keyboard Art

Remember ASCII art? No. Well. You’re not a nerd then.

But this collection of typed art leaves most of that ASCII stuff for dead – because it’s produced Old Skool. On a Typewriter.

More here, at artist Keira Rathbone’s portfolio.

January 5, 2011