Easily the best T-Shirt I’ve blogged this year – and appropriately a 2009 calendar…
“T-shirt screenprint of the 2009 calendar. A pen is attached so that the owner can fill in one box for each day that the shirt is being used. After one year the t-shirt design is finished.”
Brilliant. The geekier you are the blacker the shirt ends up.
– This stuff is similar in origin to Kopi Luwak – but the guys from the Heritage Tea Rooms don’t think it’s quite as nice.
– More RLSHs
– And another one…
– Another best of round up of a pretty handy blog – The Simple Dollar. A guide to living well within your means.
– The best thing about holidays is nap time.
– Some people like to take all the fun out of life by drinking low fat decaf soy lattes… which to me is one way of saying “can I have some coffee flavoured water please”… here’s a pocket caffeine test for those thinking the barista might be sparking said order with some of the heavy stuff.
– Rebranding can be painful. So much work goes into what is such an insignificant insignia in the long term. Nobody really pays attention to a logo – they’re more interested in the services you provide. And yet a good logo can be a vital part of your brand. Catch 22. This website offers an instant logo. Free. They do one a day. Painless rebranding.
– “Kiva enables you to make small $25 or above loans to an individual or small group of individuals in a developing country. They use these small loans (aggregated to about $200-$400) to finance a food stall, repair shop, hair salon, sewing machine, new cash crop, etc. When they pay it back to you in about 11 months, you can then re-lend it to another person of your choice.”brbrThis is the kind of thing that harnesses the power of Web 2.0 and peer-to-peer stuff for good rather than for whatever Facebook harnesses it for…
– More goodness from six revisions. I hope that link text doesn’t get broken by this rss import.
– When my holidays are over and I’m back at work looking to do something with my blog I’ll probably install a few of these plug-ins. I like plug-ins. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the “related posts” list at the bottom of each post’s page but it’s pretty clever. There are a few great links at the bottom of this article too listing Firefox plug ins and Windows software for making blogging easy. Does anyone who reads me use Twitter?
There are a surprising number of songs about heroes. Marvel has made a pretty penny lately turning their archive of comic book superheroes from the Marvel Universe into silver screen stars. But that’s a well that will eventually run dry. They’ve only got the finite character resources of the Marvel stable available…
This poses a problem for movie makers – given the cinema going audience’s penchant for a good superhero flick – they’re in dire need of some new material that will cut through to the cynical comic book aficionado. Realistic heroes fighting the good fight. Fighting for truth, righteousness and justice. Whatever are they to do? Luckily there’s an as yet untapped resource out there. The World Superhero Registry a one stop shop for active Superheroes currently patrolling earth. It seems to me that this is a dangerous resource, letting all those unlisted supervillains out there know just who might come charging through their doors at any time. I don’t know about you – but I’m really glad that Citizen Prime is out there patrolling the streets with his cohort of RLSHs (Real Life Super Heroes) …
Citizen Prime
What’s a Real Life Superhero?
According to the World Superhero Registry FAQs:
“A Real-Life Superhero is a person who does good deeds or fights crime while in costume”
How do you become a RLSH?
“Usually, we become aware of a Real-Life Superhero’s activities and add them on our own initiative. If you wish to request to be added to the registry, please read the recommended submission guidelines. We will review your request and if we feel it meets our standards, it will be added.”
Perhaps to inspire RLSHs – or in a bid to develop some user generated movie superheroes – Marvel have an online Superhero character creator. I give you: Yellow and Blue Man… a bearded sword wielding hero guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of wrongdoers everywhere.
– Why do even the best restaurants serve dishwater coffee?
I have my Facebook access back. Can I suggest not using an intuitive
word and 123 as your password. I’ve learned my lesson. I also managed
to almost get my hacker convinced that I’d buy my account back off him
for $US250. He told me he “only did it for the money” and wished me a
happy birthday. What a friendly hacker.
– One of the dilemmas we face when going on holidays is feeding the fish… here’s a real time internet based fish feeder.
– Another Christian response to the “clean feed”. Another chance for Senator Conroy to show just how little he understands about his portfolio.
How come shops can knock 40% off the price of things on Boxing Day? Doesn’t this just mean they’re purposefully ripping us off for the rest of the year. Particularly in the lead up to the Christmas cash cow.
The title speaks for itself really.
My question from this Christmas is: Why don’t we sing carols all year round? Especially “O Holy Night”… although I can take or leave my little sister’s interpretive dance on that number.
– Driscoll on Santa… I guess for the WWMDD camp this settles the debate…
– This is my project for 2009.
– Wii is dangerous – not only can you destroy your shiny TV, or deliver a stunning backhand to an unsuspecting husband while he sits on the beanbag… they’re also proving to be a health hazard while making you healthy…
I’ve been taking part in a couple of discussions (and reading others) around the net on “false teachers” lately. Basically, my position is that I think “false teachers” as described in the bible have a particular intention – while wrong teachers are just confused, like we all can be sometimes.
They were largely prompted by this post on the solapanel by Gordon Cheng, who followed up with a pointer to that post on his blog.
“Just to be clear, let me say that I think Brian Houston, Rowan Williams, NT Wright and Karl Barth are false teachers.
I’m angry at people who treat their teaching seriously, in the same way that a few years ago, there was a sense of outrage that racist politician Pauline Hanson got any thoughtful attention at all from political leaders.”
Now Michael Jensen has weighed in with his views on the matter.
A follow up comment on that post gave his position on the issue with some clarity. I’d have to say that’s where I sit on things – but all those other posts (and I think, my comments) are well worth reading if you’re at all interested in a somewhat contentious issue.
Don't mention the law
I mentioned Godwin’s Law in the last post. It’s an interesting law – originally coined by Mike Godwin in 1990 to address the trend of usenet users throwing Hitler into arguments.
Originally expressed Godwin’s Law read:
“As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 1”
The basic application of the law was that the first person to mention Hitler lost the argument.
Godwin has an interesting explanation of his side of the story here.
“Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.”
“I understood instantly the connection between the humiliations inflicted there and the ones the Nazis imposed upon death camp inmates—but I am the one person in the world least able to draw attention to that valid comparison.”
The problem with people blindly accusing people of breaking Godwin’s Law is that they’re going by the letter and not the spirit of the law. This probably only happens to me, because I engage in frivolous discussion with art studenty type geeks people… the kind of people who know what Godwin’s Law is to begin with.
There’s another article on pretty much the same thing here. That argues the repeal on the basis that Hitler should be fair game as a test case in arguments.
“The rules of snippy online debates, though, are nothing compared to public discourse. The Anti-Defamation League has beaten the hell out of anyone who’s dared use a Nazi analogy over the last decade. ”
“Thus, despite all efforts at regulation, the market has repeatedly decided in favor of the N-bomb. There simply isn’t any other tableau, in history or fiction, that offers the same variety of evil and oppressive examples as the Third Reich. Why compare some propaganda to 1984 and some slaughter to Srebrenica when you can double down and link both of them to Nazism?”