Mac time

I love clever billboards. This one from McDonalds is one of the cleverest I’ve seen for a while. Their outdoor advertising department is doing a good job…

October 6, 2009

Design brief

I have been doing a bit of web design stuff for work and on my blog for a while now – and I still find CSS glitches in my ad hoc approach to changing things.

Here are three essential tools for making web design using CSS an easier job.

  1. This Smashing Magazine CSS Tutorial is a must
  2. Firebug – the Firefox extension that allows you to chop and change your code and watch what it does to your page as you do it.
  3. A good CSS editor program (here are ten suggestions) takes out a lot of the grunt work.

Update – here are some cliched features to avoid. And my favourites listed in order of how annoying I find them…

  1. Autoplaying music
  2. Introduction movies with no skip button
  3. Comic Sans
  4. Overuse of stock images
  5. Animated Globes

One that wasn’t on the list that I find particularly annoying is talking ads that don’t pop up but move across the page. I guess people are trying to prove that they’re tech savvy and stuff…

Am I missing anything design people?

October 6, 2009

Gold diggers

We (Australians) ain’t nothing but a bunch of gold diggers. It turns out Australians are all rejoicing about our golden soil, and the national wealth for work equation.

Australians, according to the Economist, have the most positive self image.

It’s with good reason because figures just released show that we’re also the second most desirable country to live in, based on the range of factors considered by the United Nations Human Development Index… behind Norway.

October 6, 2009

Style guide

Kurt Vonnegut was a writer of some repute. His guide to stylish writing is worth familiarising yourself with.

  1. Find a subject you care about
  2. Do not ramble
  3. Keep it simple
  4. Have guts to cut
  5. Sound like yourself
  6. Say what you mean
  7. Pity the readers

Good tips for blogging I reckon.

Tip 6 came with this little gem… for more detail about the other points read the article.

My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

He’s also written eight tips for writing short stories:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

October 6, 2009

Coffee chemistry

Wired has a fascinating look at the chemicals at play in your daily espresso.

Here’s my favourite part of the chemical equation (if you thought caffeine you were wrong):

Trigonelline
Chemically, it’s a molecule of niacin with a methyl group attached. It breaks down into pyridines, which give coffee its sweet, earthy taste and also prevent the tooth-eating bacterium Streptococcus mutans from attaching to your teeth. Coffee fights the Cavity Creeps.

October 6, 2009

YouTube Tuesday: Kid ay?

If the North Queensland lifestyle had an iconic album it would not be Kid A – despite the reference to an endemic verbal tick. Ay.

Pitchfork has just listed the top 20 albums of the decade. And Kid A was number one. Here’s a nice little paragraph from their review.

“Radiohead were not only among the first bands to figure out how to use the Internet, but to make their music sound like it, and they kicked off this ridiculously retro decade with the rare album that didn’t seem retro. Kid A— with its gorgeously crafted electronics, sparkling production, and uneasy stance toward the technology it embraces completely– feels like the Big Album of the online age.”

And here’s a live version of the first song from the album…

October 6, 2009

The myth of the perfect minister

While I’m in a “reflect on Sunday’s sermon” kind of mood…

There is much talk in pragmatic circles about getting the “best” ministers possible. We all want the next Driscoll/Piper/Chandler/Jensen rocking up to preach on a Sunday – or being an assistant minister doing what we tell them to do.

In a semi-tangental point in last night’s sermon our minister made a reference to difference between Paul’s approach to team ministry and Barnabas’ approach. Paul didn’t want John Mark on his team after the guy had a bad first innings, while Barnabas was happy to give the loser a second chance (which later paid off).

I suspect those of us heading down the pathway of full time ministry see this story as a chance to identify with either Paul or Barnabas – the perfectionist v the whatever it is that Barnabas is. I wonder if most of us are more likely to start off being John Marks – people who stuff up a bit and cause a schism amongst the older generation…

Were any of these guys perfect? I’d say no. Paul was too picky, Barnabas was probably not picky enough, and John Mark? Well who wants a rookie John Mark type character on their team?

One of the great things about the list I posted in that last post is that every guy on it (except Jesus) has at least one pretty major character flaw, and in most cases it’s kept for posterity’s sake in the best selling book of all time.

That’s a more preachy tone than I’m normally comfortable with (unless I’m telling atheists how to be better people)… so I’ll leave it there. For now.

October 5, 2009

Ten Bible stories for boys

During the kid’s spot at church the other day our minister was talking about the gross cool stories in the Bible. It got me thinking about my ten favourite Bible stories (because I’m a boy) – the ten stories I’d put in a book of Bible stories to excite young boys.

If someone hasn’t already done this I’m going to turn it into a book. Ten chapters long.

Here are my ten favourite Bible men. Who are yours?

  1. Abraham – gets a hot wife, goes on adventures.
  2. Joseph – goes to prison, becomes the boss. It’s a rags to riches story. Plus his big brothers beat him up, and he gets a chance to get back at them and does the right thing.
  3. Moses – stands up to a king, fights for injustice, does magic, starts a revolution – Che Gueverra was Moses-lite.
  4. Ehud – well, he’s partly disabled (left handed), he assassinates a king ninja style, then hides him in the toilet and coolly escapes pursuing armies.
  5. Samson – two words. Donkey. Jawbone.
  6. David – kills a giant, has fun killing bad guys with his best friend Jonathan who also manages to kill lots of bad guys, then takes over as king from Jonathan’s dad without him getting angry about birthrights and stuff.
  7. Elijah – Single handedly takes down another religion with his alter v alter shenanigans. Does other cool stuff.
  8. Elisha – shows a gang of bullying teenagers that baldness is no laughing matter – by getting wild bears to attack them.
  9. Jesus – Stares down the devil, collects a posse of merry adventurers and rages against the social and religious machines. Then dies and rises.
  10. Paul – A reformed bad guy who travels the world by foot and by ship – gets shipwrecked, stoned almost to death and eventually executed by the state, and writes half the New Testament in the process.

Good list. I’d like to be manly like them. Who wouldn’t.

Don’t go stealing my idea now people…

October 5, 2009

Comical discussion

A week after the PZ effect my traffic is just about back to normal… But for some of us the fun continued after discussion on that thread concluded.

Andrew Finden – opera singer extraordinaire (seriously, YouTube him) was in the blue corner, while a Canadian “stand up comedian” going by the name of Salvage was in the red corner.

I am going to call Andrew the winner in their 30 round match up. Salvage, like so many atheists before him, made the mistake of assuming:

a) that Andrew would be shocked to find out that Christians disagree about stuff.
b) that Christians have no idea about conjecture about the historicity of the Bible.
c) that Christians fail to grasp the basics of logic and argument.
d) that they, the atheist, on the basis of their rejection of Christianity, are in a better position to understand and critique the Bible.

He also couldn’t get past his notions of what Christians believe and actually engage with what it is that Andrew, and to a lesser extent me (he dismissed me on the basis of my disclaimer).

I’ve been pretty proud of the way Christians have conducted themselves in these threads – firstly Stephen on the original thread and then Andrew have handled obstreperous comments with grace and aplomb.

October 5, 2009

Nathan’s guide to better photography #1

When taking photos for publication don’t take photos of the back of people’s heads. These photos are unusable. They don’t tell a story. And it’s frustrating when you think you have photos of an event to use and you can’t use them.

That is all.

October 5, 2009

Speakers in disguise

I don’t want these. They’re tacky. But you know, if you’re putting together a Transformer themed bedroom – or a Transformer case mod they might come in handy.

If you do want Optimus Prime speakers you should get em here…

October 4, 2009

A unified theory of Supermanness

A scientist have finally figured out Superman. He was, until this point, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. A blue and red enigma. Why do superheroes wear tights? Is it for mobility or aesthetics?

This new study, by a guy named Ben Tippett, started by debunking commonly held misconceptions about the Kryptonian.

“Siegel et al. Supposed that His mighty strength stems from His origin on another planet whose density and as a result, gravity, was much higher than our own. Natural selection on the planet of krypton would therefore endow Kal El with more efficient muscles and higher bone density; explaining, to first order, Superman’s extraordinary
powers. Though concise, this theory has proved inaccurate. It is now clear that Superman is actually flying rather than just jumping really high; and his freeze-breath, x-ray vision, and heat vision also have no account in Siegel’s theory”

The report found that Superman does not have many powers – he in fact has one power that manifests in different ways.

“We conjecture that all of Superman’s powers come from His ability to alter the inertial mass of objects in his immediate vicinity or with which he is in personal contact.”

The findings were supported by convincing diagrams.

October 4, 2009

Five reasons to write lists

  1. Traffic. If there’s one thing I learned from the last week it’s that lists work. Every “how to write a better blog” post I read suggests writing lists.
  2. They’re easy – lists are the easiest of posts to write. You start with a half baked idea and build.
  3. They’re easy to read – the structure is nice, points are enumerated,   discussion is easier.
  4. They’re finite – the reader knows what they’re getting. You know where to stop.
  5. They’re controversial – lists start discussions. That’s why magazines have had “top 100” features forever. People have different ideas about what shouldn’t be on the list – or thoughts as to why your list is wrong.

There’s a great article here about why “lists of n things” are such popular fodder. You should read it.

Some quotes…

Structurally, the list of n things is a degenerate case of essay. An essay can go anywhere the writer wants. In a list of n things the writer agrees to constrain himself to a collection of points of roughly equal importance, and he tells the reader explicitly what they are.

It’s fine to put “The” before the number [in the title] if you really believe you’ve made an exhaustive list. But evidence suggests most things with titles like this are linkbait.

Lists are in. They are great Internet fodder. If you want to get discussion happening about something – write a list.

October 4, 2009

Nobody likes Beck

Glenn Beck is a bizarro Christian shock jock in the US. Atheists hate him.

He praised Muse on his show this week. A representative from Muse apparently emailed him asking him to retract. He was going on about how Muse are libertarians who don’t want a one world government.

Beck retracts his endorsement at four minutes and twenty six seconds into the story.

October 4, 2009

Robobama

And we worry that K-Rudd might be robotic. Check out the amazing consistency of Obama’s smile.

Barack Obama’s amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

October 3, 2009