Vive l’empreur! / on Instagram http://ift.tt/18SKfNF

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/ on Instagram http://ift.tt/18SsGNL

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Monkeys are a waste. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1cS0uPs

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Oh you’re a real Queenslander now, gurl! / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1bPtmXu

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Tonight’s viewing. A masterpiece. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/18TenLV

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An old favourite. The Perdomo Reserve Criollo. #cigars #perdomo / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1bM3yYR

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Take your son to work day. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/JuqlC2

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Parkour! / on Instagram http://ift.tt/19JkgIC

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Cthulu rises! / on Instagram http://ift.tt/19IGJ8u

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A couple of JW’s came a’knocking today, a lovely couple in their sixties – Phil and Margaret. Phil is from Arkansas and had a wonderful Dali moustache that I could tell he was quite proud of (and rightly so).

They offered me their magazine and I politely declined, explaining that I’m an atheist. Margaret asked why I am. I said it was because I’d spent decades reading scientific, religious and philosophical books and that I’d come to the conclusion that there was no evidence for either God or Jesus (as an historical entity).

This started a 30 minute discussion which would have been much, MUCH longer, if my mate Adam hadn’t turned up with a donation of baby clothes and cigars.

Here’s a summary of the central theme of our discussion.

P&M: Religion has been the cause of most of the violence in the world.

CR: Well I think greed has been the cause, but it’s often been justified by religion or “spreading democracy”.

P&M: Agreed. We’re scientists. But we don’t believe in evolution.

CR: Seriously? Why not? There is overwhelming evidence for evolution.

P&M: Only atheists believe in evolution.

CR: The Vatican believes in evolution.

P&M: Catholics aren’t true Christians.

CR: Who gets to decide who is and isn’t a true Christian?

P&M: God.

CR: And do you claim the know the mind of God?

P&M: No.

CR: So how do you know Catholics aren’t true Christians?

P&M: Because of the violence they have been responsible for.

CR: Do you believe that the Old Testament is the literal word of God?

P&M: Yes.

CR: So you believe that God ordered the genocide of men, women and children?

P&M: Yes – but he had good reasons.

CR: So you think it’s okay for God to order his believers to kill other people?

P&M: Yes – he has his reasons. They were non-believers.

CR: So if God appeared to you tomorrow and told you to kill me and my family because we are non-believers, would you obey?

P&M: He wouldn’t do that.

CR: How do you know?

P&M: Because he’s a god of love.

CR: But you just told me you believed he ordered genocide in the OT.

P&M: Yes but he wouldn’t do that NOW.

CR: Why not?

P&M: Because things are different.

CR: How?

P&M: It’s the end of days.

CR: How do you know it’s the end of days?

P&M: Because it’s in the Bible.

CR: If it’s in the Bible, how come people keep getting it wrong? Jesus told his disciples the second coming would happen in their lifetime. That obviously didn’t happen.

P&M: He meant the fall of the temple.

CR: Then why didn’t he say that?

P&M: mumble mumble

CR: Anyway, I want an answer – if God told you to kill me and my family, WOULD YOU OBEY?

P&M: He wouldn’t do that.

CR: DO YOU CLAIM TO KNOW THE MIND OF GOD?

P&M: No.

CR: Then don’t tell me you know what he would and wouldn’t do. So answer the question – would you do it?

P&M: (after trying to avoid the question for about 5 minutes) – No.

CR: Then you would disobey your God?

P&M: (Starting to get distraught and obviously confused, suffering from cognitive dissonance.) No.

CR: So you would kill me? Are you potential baby killers? My wife is pregnant and you’d be prepared to kill her and our unborn baby? YOU SCARE THE HELL OUT OF ME.

And that’s about when Adam arrived and they escaped.

Woodworking it. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/IEAXOw

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Holiday projects. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/18ldJbR

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I guess Chris grew out of his DLR phase. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1eYLhvt

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74 people at our second Sunday Assembly Brisbane! @sundayassembly / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1aK6GEs

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The shoe. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1dXBsRT

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Why not have a putting green in your front yard. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1cp37YU

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Today we are inundated with media options. Some people say it’s too much. Some people say we are oversaturated. Some people say all of this content is making us less appreciative.

Photo by Andrew Saltmarsh

I’m starting to agree. I remember appreciating music much more (or at least it seemed that way) when I’d buy a new album rarely and then listen to it over and over and over, becoming familiar with every nuance, every note. Today I still love those albums. Putting them on gives me the feels, releasing an oxytocin burst of the warms and fuzzies. Is it somehow due, at least in part, to their familiarity?

Perhaps less *is* more.

Over the last decade I’ve become something of a miner bird, foraging on bits and pieces of media all day long – a song here, a song there, this blog, that blog, 10,000 Twitter feeds, 1,000 Facebook feeds, 100 books on my iPad, watching YouTube clip after YouTube clip, TV torrents by the bucketload – from dawn until midnight. And it’s not limited to the media I consume, it also extends to the media I produce. I might take 10 photos a day and several videos. I tweet. I Facebook. I blog. It’s too easy to produce gallons of crap.

Less is more.

What if I limited myself?

I limit myself in other areas of life – eg I only eat ice cream (and sugar free at that) on weekends – what if I limited myself digitally as well?

What if I limited myself to taking one photo every day? If I’m only allowing myself one photo, it had better be the best photo I can take.

What if I limited myself to listening to one album of music every week? No more shuffling. One album. I’d have to listen to it over and over until I knew the grooves inside and out.

What if I limited myself to writing one Tweet / Facebook post per day and writing one blog post per week? I better make sure they are good.

What if I limited myself to one episode of TV per day? One YouTube clip?

What if I reduced my Twitter feed to ten people? The same with Facebook. They better be the best feeds I can find.

What if I reduced the feeds in Flipboard and Zite to only one or two? Would it make me choose what I read more carefully?

I’m going to treat my media consumption and production with the Polaroid philosophy. I’m going to force myself to set artificial limits, a media diet. Because I really do believe that less is more.

I had the opportunity this morning (5:30am my time!) to participate in a live discussion on Al Jazeera with John Pilger, the famous Australian investigative journalist, supporter of Julian Assange, and documentarian, about his new documentary “Utopia”, which looks at the current state of Australia’s treatment of our indigenous population. Although I barely got to speak to him (my one question comes in at the 30 minute mark), it was terrific to listen to him explain what he believes is the role of journalism and, in particular, investigative journalism. I want to be him when I grow up.

Utopia Trailer:

I asked Troy what tool he recommends for clipping content from iOS apps into Evernote and he introduced me to the Lightly app made by Ignition Soft, the same company that makes Everclip, one of my other favourite iOS apps. So that was a win. (FWIW – Lightly is great for copying certain lines of text from a page you’re reading on your browser into Evernote, but I prefer Everclip for copying content out of other apps, like iBooks, etc).

Afterwards, Troy said the only thing he hasn’t figured out yet is how to get Facebook posts into Evernote. I said “I can do that!”

It wasn’t easy, but I nutted it out a few weeks ago when my wife, Chrissy, announced she was pregnant on Facebook. I thought it would be nice to save that for the baby book – and of course, the natural place for it is in Evernote.

So if anyone else is trying to work out how to clip a Facebook post (and its comments) into Evernote, here’s how I do it.

How To Clip A Facebook Post Into Evernote

STEP 1.

Open up the post you want to save. Facebook will open it in “Theater mode” – which is nice to look at, but annoying to try to clip into Evernote. Select the URL in the address bar and copy it.

Step 2.

Post that bad boy into a new tab. The resulting page should look like this:

Step 3.

Expand all of the comments (if you want them to end up in Evernote).

Step 4.

Cick your good ol’ Evernote Web Clipper, select “Full Page” and “Save”.

Step 5.

Hey presto! Once you have synchronized Evernote, you’re post will look just like it did in Facebook!

I hope that helps some of you to get more out of Evernote!

by Cameron Reilly

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Last Friday night we launched Sunday Assembly Brisbane – a godless congregation or atheist church. #sundayassembly / on Instagram http://ift.tt/IrHPOC

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On the beach with my parents. 1971. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/17Pn6ON

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Future violins. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1e5AO0L

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Smoko. #cigars / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1jnOBAS

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A professional football player says he walked away from the NFL, leaving more than $1 million on the table, after studying the works of Noam Chomsky and the Dalai Lama. (link)

“I’ve saved enough. It’s not like I’m sitting here and I’m a millionaire,” Moffitt said. “That’s what I kind of realized. I’m sitting here and I got to this point and I was like, what is the number that you need? How much do you really need? What do you want in life? And I decided that I don’t really need to be a millionaire.”

 

#1. I know this is a “first world problem”. I live in the first world. So yeah.

#2. I’m a former Microsoft employee but this has NOTHING to do with ex-employee griping (which is how many Microsoft employees like to write things off).

#3. Don’t tell me “you shouldn’t use Office, you should use iWork / OpenOffice / LibreOffice / Google Docs and just import/export”. Bullshit. I’ve tried them all and the import/export stuff is still broken. Fonts go missing, images move, and when you work (as I do) in MARKETING, writing and editing client documents, FORMATTING MATTERS. Do you think I pay Microsoft because I hate my money? NO.

#4. I don’t expect anyone at Microsoft to give a shit, but I’m writing this JUST IN CASE THEY DO.

Right. So. Rant done. Well… that part of the rant, anyway. Let’s get onto the REAL rant.

I just wasted an entire day of work thanks to Microsoft “tech support” (and I used that term loosely). 

Here’s how it went down.

I turned on my Macbook Pro (2010 model, not that it matters) and it told me I needed to update Microsoft Office to 14.3.9. Fine. So I let it download and tried to install it. FAIL. So I manually downloaded the update pack and tried again. FAIL #2. Re-boot the Mac. Try again. FAIL #3.

So… and here’s where I made a mistake – I LOGGED A MICROSOFT SUPPORT CALL.

A nice lady with a delightful accent (whose name I will leave out) offered to log into my machine via LogMeIn and sort it out for me. Great. She tried to install the pack and, again, it failed. She spent another couple of hours trying to make it work AND IT STILL FAILED.

Okay, now this is the good bit. She advised that she would have to un-install Office and re-install it. ARE YOU KIDDING?? Sigh. Okay.

So… an hour to download a 1GB .dmg. Then she installs it. Then she tries to install the update. Oh, but wait – she has to install TWO updates – because the .dmg doesn’t include them. THEY FAIL.

Finally – and by this stage it’s about 1pm (and this has taken up my entire day because she is using my laptop) – I say “THAT’S ENOUGH! I’ll just use the old version of Office because I have work to do.” Then I open Powerpoint and… it won’t open. It’s borked. I can’t even sign in because it’s asking me for a product key and I don’t have one because I bought the Office 365 licence (where you pay by the month or something). I ask the lady “how do I get a product key?” She says she has to install the updates before I can login with my email address. BUT THE UPDATES DON’T WORK, I say. Yes, she says, I know, so I need to keep working on it.

Resigned to this, I agree to let her keep working on it.

TWO HOURS LATER – this is about 3pm, mind you – I look at my laptop and notice nothing is happening (I’ve been talking to her in a chat window). I type “hello?”. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

So I ring the Microsoft support help line, wade through the options, talk to someone, explain the situation, she puts me on hold for a few minutes… and then comes on to tell me this:

“Oh they cannot help you at this time because their support tools are being updated. They will have to call you back in an hour.” 

I ask… befuddled.. “Why would she choose to update her support tools IN THE MIDDLE OF A SUPPORT CALL?”

“Well it’s not her, it’s an automated update, it’s out of her control”, I am informed.

I SHIT YOU NOT, ladies and gentlemen.

BUT WAIT – there’s more.

I wait for an hour. No phone call.

Then I say “fuck it” and look over what she had done to my laptop. I notice that the version of Office she downloaded for the fresh install seemed to be the WRONG VERSION OF OFFICE. She downloaded and installed the standard version – NOT THE 365 VERSION. Which, of course, is why it was asking for a product key.

So I go to http://www.office.com/myaccount, log in, download ANOTHER 1GB file, install – and PRESTO, I have Office back! I can work again!

OF COURSE, IT IS NOW 5pm and THE DAY IS OVER.

PS – Tech Support don’t know that I’ve fixed it and they STILL haven’t called me back after updating their “support tools”.

PPS – This time I’m not going to bother with Microsoft’s “critical update” 14.3.9″. Fuck it. I’ll take the risks until I have another day to waste.

Just installed a new battery in my MacBook. Kind of wish I’d bought a new hard drive too. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/18hJYqt

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I am the way, the truth & the light. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/17zBabP

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Seeing double. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1cB2GZr

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Byron Bay. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1gTePOQ

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Yes it does. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1bMsAt6

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Not sure whose signature this is. Cale? / on Instagram http://ift.tt/18bPU4z

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My mum, age 14. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1bzci8B

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I’m special. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1gPL3KV

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Just realized what long skinny feet my wife has. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/186As9F

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One of my fav photos of @hunterreilly123 & @tayreilly / on Instagram http://ift.tt/HIOZ0Y

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/ on Instagram http://ift.tt/18eQBGt

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Making coffee ice cubes. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1eq7m90

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Cigar & coffee flavoured. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/1goadjz

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This week I again try to get down to basics – how do we form our political beliefs? Where do our ethics come from? Do we even know?  

It must be nice to disappear, to have a vanishing act. To always be moving forward and never looking back. – Lou Reed, “Vanishing Act”

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I asked some questions about the promotion from a marketing perspective when it was first announced (and before we found out that we were going on it). It’s fair to say that I was skeptical about it from the beginning. After the trips (we actually went twice, in October and February), ACT Tourism asked for feedback and I took the time to write them a long, thoughtful note. I didn’t hear back from them, which was kind of surprising, but I’m assuming they sent the journo to talk to me because they knew I had some criticisms.

However, let me clarify a few things that didn’t make it into the Canberra Times story.

1. We had a good time. The ACT Tourism folks treated us like royalty. We had zero complaints about our treatment. The hotels were lovely, the food was wonderful and the ACT Tourism crew were friendly.

2. I’m sure most people had a good time. Who doesn’t enjoy a free holiday? That said, while we had a good enough time on the first trip, we seriously were apathetic about going on the second trip. We told ACT Tourism that we had been selected twice and expected them to politely pull us off the second trip. They didn’t. So we went, but if they’d pulled us off, we wouldn’t have minded in the slightest.

3. My main complaint was from a marketing perspective. As I said to Westcott, if I was in charge of marketing Canberra as a tourist destination, I’d be trying to work out what Canberra has that Australia’s other major destinations do not. In marketing speak – what’s your unique value proposition? Why should people spend their vacation in Canberra instead of, say, Melbourne? Yes – Canberra has some nice restaurants and hotels. BUT WHAT ELSE? And please – don’t tell me it has Parliament House. BORING. Or the Australian War Museum which, quite frankly, I found distasteful. I know, I know – they don’t glorify war – BULLSHIT. It’s ALL about glorification of war. If it wasn’t, the AWM would be full of overt messages saying “WAR IS STUPID AND LET’S NEVER DO IT AGAIN UNLESS WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO”. Instead the message it projects is “Weren’t those brave Aussies who sacrificed their lives wonderful and shouldn’t we admire their memory?” That’s glorification of war, people. Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter.

I talked about it with @IanKath during the trip in February and he recorded our conversation.

4. Of course, I wasn’t the only person who wasn’t impressed. Chrissy wasn’t impressed either, but mostly because our agenda was set in stone – and we don’t travel like that. The ACT Tourism folks treated like a typical famil – set schedules to eat, drink, bus, see this, do that, etc. We HATE that. We would have much rather they give us a couple of airfares, cab vouchers, restaurant vouchers, and say “here’s a list of things we recommend you see, but if you’d like to do something else, let us know how we can help”. For example, we wanted to spend a lot of time sitting in front of BLUE POLES – and we did, but we had to sneak away from the group and pay our own money for taxis. Now maybe everyone else was happy with the set agenda – but the first rule of marketing is KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER. They didn’t even ASK us what kind of agenda we’d like. They just assumed. From our perspective, it was a failure.

Anyhoo… we’re not ungrateful. We enjoyed the trip and appreciated the experiences we had. The lesson here (if there is one) is that marketing anything, even a national capital, has to be thought about in terms of WHAT WILL MAKE CUSTOMER HAPPY and WHAT IS OUR UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION?

Ex. Ter. Min. Ate. #cigars #doctorwho / on Instagram http://ift.tt/16KsuyY

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Goodnight Lou. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/18ZLv4s

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Just one more example of how the banksters have got the system rigged. These bastards are laughing at you, especially you Democrats who still think Obama is the Great Hope.

This week I try to get down to basics – how do we form our political beliefs? Is government really about ethics? What political ethics do we want our society to strive towards? Are psychopaths screwing up the world? Do they make up a large percentage of the 1%?

Time for lunch. #cigars #rockypatel

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Nap time. / on Instagram http://ift.tt/16seb1Z

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For the six years I’ve been using a Mac, I’ve often wanted to learn how to use AppleScript to automate processes I repeat. Today I finally did.

As part of my routine for keeping my Mac running efficiently, I like to re-boot it every couple of days. And to make sure it continues to boot quickly, I’ve made sure I’ve deleted everything that wants to auto-startup at boot. That way, I get a nice, clean, quick boot if I need it.

However, there are also a number of sites and apps that I use all day that I need to run. So instead of opening them all up individually after a new boot, I’ve written an AppleScript to do it for me.

Now if you’re an old AppleScript hand, this is probably stupidly simple. But I know lots of friends and family who have moved to a Mac in recent years and who aren’t programmers, so this is for them.

The Steps.

1. Open AppleScript. It comes pre-installed on your Mac. Find it by searching Spotlight.

2. Start a new script.

3. Cut & Paste my code from below. Change the URLs you want to open and the App you want to run according to your tastes.

4. Click “Compile” on the AppleScript toolbar.

5. Flie > Save. Save it to your Applications folder. Make sure the “File Format” is “Application”. Call it whatever you want – mine is just called ‘Startup’.

6. Lastly, open up the Applications folder and drage the icon for the new app to your dock. Close AppleScript.

Now, when you boot, after the dock loads, just run the new app and it will open all of your sites and apps for you.

open location “http://gmail.com”

open location “http://facebook.com”

tell application “TextExpander”

activate

end tell

tell application “Alfred 2″

activate

end tell

tell application “CrashPlan”

activate

end tell

tell application “PopClip”

activate

end tell

tell application “Bartender”

activate

end tell

tell application “Fantastical”

activate

end tell

tell application “Moom”

activate

end tell

tell application “Skype”

activate

end tell

tell application “TweetDeck”

activate

end tell

tell application “Evernote”

activate

end tell

tell application “Spotify”

activate

end tell