Mirror, mirror on the floor – who’s the best player of them all?
I spent a disproportionate amount of my time in grade 11 and 12 trying to answer that question. Downstairs. At my parents house. Playing table tennis.
If only we’d had a table this cool:
Mirrored table tennis tables and glass pool tables are the future. The future is now.
The rules for gunfighting. Just in case you needed them. There are 28 here.
Highlights:
1. Forget about knives, bats and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.
10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet if necessary, because they may want to kill you.
For those parents out there looking for more information on the baby mop from yesterday… here’s an ad.
Baby Mop from Chris Milk on Vimeo.
Some people come up with really good ideas for earning money using the internet. Like the guy who sold the world (I bought Liberia but it seems this site has shut down since).
He stands to make $US66,795 (and get a year’s supply of t-shirts) by wearing people’s shirts. And blogging/videoing the experience. Here’s the description:
“Everyday in 2009 is for sale!! January 1 is $1 and each day goes up a buck until December 31 at $365. Want me to wear a shirt to promote the launch of your company? Want an interesting way to wish you friend Happy Birthday? You are free to buy any day(s) throughout the year. If you want to buy multiple days, email me.”
I was alerted to this site by my relative, and sometime blog reader, Martin Howard’s Facebook status. He’s got today. US time. The 20th of February. To promote his book on subliminal marketing. Which I haven’t read, but it’s genetically predisposed to being good.
Unfortunately, when it comes to booking your shirt space all the cheap seats are gone – he’s sold every slot until September.
Here's what has excited me from the blogosphere today.
Ben Bathgate’s GTD series mentioned Evernote as a useful tool – here are some more reasons to use it.
Luxury Segway.
Interesting article on coffee roasting – the difference in flavour based on different levels of “roast” colour.
Never trust or hire a motivational speaker with a mullet.
I couldn’t think of an Apple pun better than that. Sorry.
Marketing expert Martin Lindstrom has released Buyology, a book on modern marketing, covering the results from a study onto response to common marketing methodologies and global brands.
The findings, featured in The Australian, suggest that sex no longer sells. And that Apple is probably a cult. But we all knew that.
They found an enormous correlation between a powerful religion and a powerful brand. Precient points are:
“In a world where religion in many societies has begun fading away, brands have begun to take over the role of belief. We as human beings need something to believe in and brands have become almost mini-religions,”
“Think Apple, they have their own ‘temple’: their flagship store; their own religious leader: Steve Jobs; their own cross: the Apple logo; their own rituals (hundreds — just ask an Apple fan); their own enemy (Microsoft) … you name it.”
“These days sex isn’t as mysterious any more as it is everywhere, so that’s the reason why sex doesn’t sell.”
Miranda Devine sparked controversy by pre-emptively blaming green policy for the fires in the SMH last week. There was an outcry. I even wrote about it. I started following a fake Miranda Devine on Twitter (there’s also a fake Andrew Bolt) – but I can’t link to them because Twitter is down again.
The same venerated publication has another scribe – who leans more to the left – Elizabeth Farrelly. She fired this verbiage seemingly in the direction of her colleague in her take on events.
“Cut the trees! Burn the undergrowth! Hunt the sharks! Lynch the greens! Reprise, repay, repel. But in truth, to swim fish-filled, murky waters at twilight is to tattoo a big ‘BAIT’ sign on your behind. And to inhabit the bush, especially as climate change takes hold, is to make yourself fuel.
Certainly, we should feel compassion. And certainly, there should be regulations. Quite probably there should be more assiduous back-burning. But to blame green policies – to cull already endangered shark species, to reduce tree cover – is to blame nature for human folly.”
Now all the Herald’s big guns (except Annabel Crabb and Peter Hartcher who both write exclusively about politics) have had their say on the matter.
I mentioned earlier today that I’m not really comfortable giving parenting advice. But whipping up one of these little practical costumes seems like a reasonable idea to me. Put your kiddy’s crawling to good use. It’s much cheaper than a roomba.
Also spotted at bookofjoe.
This is the greatest invention since sliced cake. Seriously. Ever tried being obsessive compulsive and cutting a cake for a wide range of size preferences? No? Me neither.
But I imagine this cake tin that does the distributing for you is the answer. Found at bookofjoe.
$US36 seems a small price to pay for party parity. Ok, not really parity in the mathematical sense, more parity in the sense of being satisfied with your portion size – I just liked the alliteration.
Kottke.org is a mostly terrific blog on the “liberal arts 2.0”. It’s where I found that Abbey Road timelapse. And many other interesting things. Including this. Perhaps an iconic image depicting the current economic climate…
Huh? It’s a bunch of shipping containers you say. What has that got to do with the economic times you ask. Well, they’re stockpiling containers in Hong Kong because China’s exports have slowed dramatically. So there you go.
The Hotel Noorla in Ingham has a couple of shipping containers converted into almost quaint hotel rooms. Maybe some entrepreneur should get in and buy the lot of them.
I would hate to live somewhere iconic. Particularly somewhere iconic involving The Beatles. Like near the famous Abbey Road pedestrian crossing.
You’d have to watch this every day. People trying to relive the glorious moment.
There’s a joke I was told once about a Native American named “dead bird smelly”. I can’t find it online and that’s a travesty. It’s very similar to the joke about the kid named refrigerator.
Speaking of dead birds… Twitter is broken. Again. It is apparently the most regularly broken social networking site.
I’ve never been one for gurus. Particularly self proclaimed ones who spit out pithy statements at random intervals.
Simone just hailed me as a guru of trivia, which was nice, which got me thinking about the concept of a “guru”.
Gurus tend to annoy me. Today, I’d like to introduce you to the guru of the internet. Seth Godin. I subscribe to Seth’s blog – mostly because he is a marketing guru. And sometimes he says useful things. The rest of it is twaddle. Like this:
“If it acts like a duck (all the time), it’s a duck. Doesn’t matter if the duck thinks it’s a dog, it’s still a duck as far as the rest of us are concerned.”
That’s a quote from a post on “Authenticity“.
Seth is a guru to so many people – but he has gurus too. Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired is one of those gurus. He’s like the grand daddy guru of the internet. He does seem pretty cool.
Kevin Kelly has gurus too. His gurus are people involved in the emerging church movement. He says as much here. Almost. He’s a Christian and he likes relevant stuff.
Being a fan of the emergent church means being a fan of Mark Driscoll. Almost. He was one of the people who started the movement but has since distanced himself from it. In writing. It’s probably not fair to lump him in with them – but it works for the sake of this little soliloquisious (surely the adjectival form of soliloquay) syllogism.
Mark Driscoll is now the guru of a generation of young Christian men who want authentic Christianity.
His guru is Jesus. So following the chain from Seth Godin – everybody’s guru – gets you to Jesus.
I guess my point is: Everybody you may consider a guru will have their own guru – once you get to the top of the pile of gurus that’s the guy worth following. Follow the guy with no gurus.
From Flickr via CrunchGear
I may or may not be allowed to talk about Robyn’s school and things that she tells me. But I thought this was pretty crazy.
We were talking about this last night – and a timely study has revealed children are now getting their first mobile phone at eight in the UK.
A certain teacher I know had to write a note home to parents asking them not to call their children on their mobiles during class time.
I’m all for children having mobile phones. That’s great. Provided they’re not just using them to send naked pictures to each other like the Herald keeps pointing out. I’m no luddite. My kiddies will have their own mobile phones and Facebook pages at birth. That way I’ll be able to keep tabs on them. That’s probably an exaggeration. But calling them while they’re at school? In class? No way. How embarrassing for the kid who gets a call from his mum during spelling:
Kid: Hi mum
Mum: Hi kid, did you remember to brush your teeth this morning.
Kid: Yes mum, I did remember to brush my teeth this morning.
Mum: Good, just checking.
Kid: I really don’t know why you needed to call me to talk to me about it.
Mum: Just checking up because I care. I love you.
Kid: (mumbling) I love you too.
Mum: What was that? Speak up son.
Kid: I love you mum.
Entire class: laughter, teasing, poking, prodding…bullying.
Why would you inflict that on your child? Seriously.
I’m really not qualified to give parenting advice. But parents. Don’t try this at home.
Plus there’s the disruption to the rest of the class. I think that’s the point of this teacher’s objections.