The year in photos

 

Buildings and debris are seen floating in the Cedar River against a railroad bridge Saturday, June 14, 2008, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Days after it rose out of its banks on its way to record flooding in Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River has forced at least 24,000 people from their homes, emergency officials said. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Buildings and debris are seen floating in the Cedar River against a railroad bridge Saturday, June 14, 2008, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Days after it rose out of its banks on its way to record flooding in Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River has forced at least 24,000 people from their homes, emergency officials said. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

A collection of pretty awesome photos from Boston.com

Electrifyingly cool

Anyone who has played Red Alert knows that Tesla Coils are the ultimate home base defence system. And anyone who hasn’t, but knows what a Tesla coil is knows that they’re totally awesome. 

That’s why this guitar amp is cool:

And, why this photographic re-enactment of Red Alert is also cool.

Red Alert: Tesla Coil

Red Alert: Tesla Coil

If you’re not convinced that Tesla coils are the coolest thing since electricity then check out this gallery from the Red Alert Tesla Guy (an Australian) on the SMH.

Things I’ve Read

CAPTCHA their attention

Moderating comments could be a real pain. I’m thinking about fighting off spam bots with this baby . It’s just a shame I can’t answer the verification question myself.

Worlds best CAPTCHA

World's best CAPTCHA

Plastic workers make for positive office culture

Corporate Minifig

Corporate Minifig

Last week was BYFMTWW. Or “Bring your favourite minifig to work week”. I’m sorry I missed it. For those still not clear on what a minifig is:

Anatomy of a minifig

Anatomy of a minifig

Shirt of the day – 18 December 2008

Haiku in a shirt<br>totally very awesome<br>should I buy it now?

Haiku in a shirttotally very awesomeshould I buy it now?

Things I’ve Read

Faking it

Fake engineer and fake prince sent to real jail.

On the surface you’d think a guy that pretended to be a Qantas
engineer and worked on planes – endangering lives – would be worthy of a longer sentence than the fake prince. But the fake prince got 12 for claiming to own three banks, a $40 million home and three Australian islands… who owns claims to own one bank, let alone three banks? Other than the guy in that Credit Union ad.

Things I’ve Read

Goodshirt

Goodshirt were a cool Kiwi band that Australia never managed to claim. They had this cool song called “Sophie” that had a very cool acoustic version.

But I digress. Glennz.com is my current favourite shirt site (I haven’t bought any yet – but I’d like to. Thanks mostly to these:

Experimental Music

Experimental Music

Self Maintenance

Self Maintenance

Extreme Beginnings

Extreme Beginnings

Evolution

Evolution

After Hours

After Hours

If anyone buying me Christmas or birthday presents hasn’t done so yet – you can’t go wrong with a good novelty T-Shirt.

Controlled Evolution: Intelligent Design?

How many of these have you used? Are designs getting clunkier and more complex? Or more intuitive?

Really, it’s just a cool pic.

Here’s the original post – complete with family tree

On shoes

Lesson in PR from this week:
If you can dodge a journalist’s questions with consumate ease – you
should be expected to be able to dodge their shoe with the same, if
not more, ease. George Bush has obviously learned that lesson early.
He handled that situation with grace and composure. The reporter
probably deserved a tongue lashing – he’ll be lucky to be spared a
literal lashing in Iraq. Ironically, if Saddam was still in power he
probably would have been executed. That’s the best shoe pun I could
come up with because the Facebook George Bush already used “sole
searching.” The Facebook George Bush is not me.

Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about shoe tossing. Including an
interesting look at “shoefiti” the act of throwing shoes onto a
telegraph wire. Which I was always told was to indicate drugs could be
bought nearby.

Wiimote controlled television

Whoops. Make sure you’re keeping those safety straps on. There have been photos of wiimote damage posted – and funny videos of wiimote tragedies. But to Gizmodo’s knowledge this is the first video of said carnage.

Home is where the heart is

I’m almost ready to pull the switch to my very own wordpress.org blog at nathanintownsville.com. Check it out – and let me know what you think of the very clean template. I am thinking about including some colour – but haven’t really figured out where yet – or what I’d change.

What’s in my reader today

  • 10 Forums You Can Go to For Technology Help
  • December 15, 2008 – I’d add coffeesnobs.com.au to this list for help with coffee related problems…

  • Dewey defeats Truman
  • December 15, 2008 – “Headlines effect your bottom line” would have been a better title on this Seth post on the value of headlines.

  • How shall we preach?
  • December 15, 2008 – To exposit or not to exposit? Listened to some Mark Driscoll and John Piper in the car on the weekend. I’m leaning towards systematics as the best model of preaching to contemporary (or young) audiences – but believe expository preaching has its place. The comments from our car were that Driscoll took lots of liberties with the text – but provided good Godly wisdom. It was one of his Song of Songs talks.