St. Eutychus – Page 74

Bests of 2011

This isn’t necessarily indicative of release, it also includes stuff I discovered this year.

Best Music

Best Concert
Boy and Bear, supported by Jinja Safari was pretty amazing. But I can’t go past Gotye playing live at the Powerhouse in Brisbane. Sonic gold. The Whitlams playing with the Queensland Symphony was also pretty special.

Best Album
There were a few cracking releases this year. Gomez. Gotye. Radiohead. Jinja Safari. The Fleet Foxes. Boy and Bear. I’m going to give it to the Fleet Foxes by a whisker – but only because Gotye got best concert.

Best Film and TV

Best TV Series

Community. Hands down. Is probably my second or third favourite comedy series of all time. Up there with Black Books and Arrested Development.

Best Movie

In a year where the Transformers franchise stormed back to form with more alien robot carnage than you can poke a stick at, and when I caught the highly entertaining Scott Pilgrim vs the World, the best movie I saw, hands down, was Four Lions.

Best Books

Biography – Steve Jobs
Funny – The Brick Bible
Fiction – the Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire series.

2011 on St. Eutychus

My highlights:

We welcomed a daughter
I took on the ACL (1,2,3).
I interviewed Guy Mason and Mike O’Connor about doing PR as a church.
50 iApps for your iThings
The A-Z of Coffee
My guide to Fork Criticism

Your Highlights
The ACL posts linked above did well, they were some of the most popular posts this year. Also ranking well:

Why I bought Logos not Accordance (and part 1)

A Guide to Missionary Dating

Guy Mason’s Sunrise Interview

Driscoll on Video Games

Google’s Highlights
My Armchair Guide to Planking
Dance Like Thom Yorke T-Shirt
The Origins of a Fake Martin Luther King Quote
Instagram Web Profiles

Favourite Tags
Tumblrweed
Taxidermy

Stats
63,051 visitors made 87,160 visits and 119,111 page views.

January 2, 2012

What to do with the waffle iron that’s gathering dust in your cupboard

The answer, to not wasting possibly the world’s third least useful/used kitchen appliance – is cook eggs. Sure beats a fancy egg cooker.

This fancy egg was discovered by the Novice Chef Blog in the course of putting together a pretty cool croque madame recipe.

January 2, 2012

The Cheeseburger: Exclusively modern fare

For some reason I have a batch of food related posts today. I found this reflection on an attempt to make a cheeseburger from scratch somewhat inspiring.

“Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical—nearly impossible—to make a cheeseburger from scratch. Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year, and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive—requiring a trio of cows—and demand many acres of land. There’s just no sense in it.

A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.”

I am glad I live in the post-cheeseburger era.

January 2, 2012

Walking Taco/Nachos: A brilliant idea

Revolutionary. From the Zen of Making. I wonder how the typical corn chip bag would cope with hot mince.

January 2, 2012

Granny wins a car with a high odds hockey shot

This is pretty cool.

January 2, 2012

2011 in Legos

It’s that time of year again. The time when we wrap things up, reflect, and write lists.

I’ll put together my mega 2011 in the next day or so. But in the meantime. Here’s a Flickr Set from The Guardian compiling newsworthy events in Lego.

Rupert Murdoch cops a pie.

The Occupy Protests

The Situation Room – the day Obama got Osama.

The casual pepper spray cop.

Steve Jobs

Libya

December 29, 2011

How to get past slow walkers

Brilliant.

December 29, 2011

Ba Broom Tiff: Priests go hammer and tongs with broom sticks

That heading sounds like the punch line to some sort of joke. But this story is true, though not really in the spirit of Christmas. Some Orthodox and Armenian priests were cleaning the Temple of the Nativity in Bethlehem. One thing led to another. And they started hitting each other with broomsticks.

Higher quality video footage would lend itself to a Star Wars remix – the guys are already in robes.

Gary has his take on the matters at hand here. Via BoingBoing.

December 29, 2011

Walking in a kitchen wonderland

These animals are wanted house guests, and this macro photography project called Wonderland is pretty charming. It’s the work of a wunderkind named Aimish Boy.

Here’s what he says about the project:

“The WonderLand series, still under development, is being composed by using a unique but rather simple and elegant artificial lighting and household objects (from vegetables to plastic bags).
The photos are shot (mostly) in a miniature studio on my kitchen’s table with a Canon EOS 60D Camera, and a Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens and Flashes, they are real and NOT a digital manipulation. The outcome is a beautiful and magical set with a fairy flair to it. The small models were found in my apartment and on plants outside my window, none of them was hurt during shooting.”

Makes me want to buy expensive photography gear. Here’s a gecko hanging out on set.

December 28, 2011

High speed droplet photography

This is cool.

And this is the setup you need to do it…

Fun. Here’s the photostream on YouTube from user Cymaii.

December 28, 2011

Urban Speaker is art that lets you shout it in the streets

Dial a number. Harrangue a crowd. Fun when you’re tucked up in bed and want to feel like you’re out on the streets. This is the premise of Urban Speaker.

“The Urban Speaker resembles construction signage and blends in with its urban surroundings. It consists of a tripod with an amplified loudspeaker, smartphone, battery and a traffic sign. The signage instructs passersby to dial a phone number to speak in public. Users who place the call get an automatic answer and can speak their mind for sixty seconds after which the call is terminated. A QR (Quick Response) barcode on the sign allows some mobile phones to instantly access the urbanspeaker.mobi website for location, event and other details as well as quick dialing of the installation’s phone.”

December 28, 2011

Chuck Testa says no to knitted Taxidermy

Chuck Testa was one of my favourite internet finds this year. He’s a bona fide taxidermist. Not like Shauna Richardson, who knits her mounted animals.