Can you help Salt Church?
I go to college with a guy called Dan.
He, along with a few others have recently started a new church in Wollongong, NSW.
They desperately need some stuff to be functional in a new building that they are moving into.
Watch the video below. You might even be able to help them.
please help from Dan Godden on Vimeo.
Mr Happy Man
I’m in the middle of what will be a very long day.
It is also raining and cold in Sydney.
This video just made my day.
Mr. Happy Man from Matt Morris Films on Vimeo.
Download this show…
I like technology. I like new technology. I even like some old technology.
I’m looking forward to this new radio show from Marc Fennell. Yep, it’s all about technology.
The Hobbit
Ok. I’m on holidays. Hence the videos.
This one is a trailer for the hobbit. The movie comes out next year. I’m a little excited.
Zeitgeist 2011: Year In Review
This is a video from Goggle. It is basically 2011 in review.
Quite a lot happened in 2011.
Introducing: Man Can Fly
Through the process of starting Tyro Designs we have made some friends. I want to introduce you to one of those friends in this post.
Originally we wanted to offer all kinds of design for people (web, print, digital and video), but very quickly we decided that it would be best to just focus our efforts on web and print. This meant that there was a hole in our aspirations to do some video work.
Enter our friends, Man Can Fly. They haven’t actually launched yet. But they will be focusing on doing video and motion graphics
Here is a cool video they did for a pastors conference a few weeks ago. This video is about giving.
2 videos for Christmas
This past week our church ran the carols in the school we meet in. Its a great opportunity for our church to be showing our love for the school by running an event for them.
Because we are running it, I had the pleasure of doing all the graphics and videos for the night. Unfortunately, I completely ran out of time and couldn’t put together all three videos we needed (i was also preaching this past week). I only had time for one.
So we ended up buying these two videos. I think they are both great. The first one is from the-ve, and the second is from Dan Stevers.
Bloodlines. Race, The Cross and the Christian.
Recently I had the pleasure of sitting under the teaching of John Piper at the engage conference. John Piper has a new book which is all about racism and the gospel’s response to it. This is a video that Desiring God recently made to promote the book.
I think it is really worthwhile watching.
It’s below if you have 18 minutes free. Maybe stop doing what you are doing and watch it anyway.
A video from Unearthed Pictures.
I’m back. Exams are done. First year of college is done. Time to get back to posing. I have a fair bit of stuff to share over the next 2 weeks. I’m looking forward to it.
Firstly, I wanted to share this video with you from Unearthed pictures. It is about Unearthing sexual exploitation of women. Before you watch the video, here are some quotes from The Resurgence blog.
When Unearthed was formed, we had our hearts set on producing a documentary that would expose the mechanics of the global sex trade. For a solid year, we traveled, filmed, raided brothels, rescued victims, and had our hearts crushed by the magnitude of sexual brokenness that surrounded us. You can watch some of that work here.
We all have responsibility to the victims of this injustice, and we’re thrilled that 85% of the money that comes into our doors goes right back out to some of the best organizations in the world that rescue, rehabilitate, and reintegrate the women & children that live in this hell.
Jacob’s story in the video [below] isn’t an isolated incident. Jesus is continually transforming abusers into protectors; addicts into free men and traffickers into rescuers. Over the next year, we’re creating a film called The Hearts of Men. It’s a raw, unfiltered examination of how sin distorts sex, who’s affected, and how the Gospel changes all of it. We know that to win this war, we need to engage men and right now they aren’t just asleep on the battlefield, they’re fornicating on it. A generation of God’s sons need to be reminded who they are in Christ: chosen, washed, sanctified, and justified.
Now watch the video.
Video: Making yogurt awesome
This is a new ad for Müller yogurt.
It is quite amazing.
You really should watch it!
Happy Birthday iPod
The iPod turns 10 today. The original iPod could hold 1,000 songs within its 5 GB of memory. Huge!
The iPod has come quite a long way since then, and quite a lot was said at the time of the first iPod. This quote is my favourite of all the responses on MacRumors.
All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.
Ten years on, the iPod has sold over 304 million units. I think it took off.
Watch these two videos. One is from 2001, the other is from this year.
2001
2010
The Paper Kites
Recently I took Kirsty to see Josh Pyke play at the metro in Sydney. I bought her the tickets for her birthday.
Josh Pyke’s music has a special significance for us. The last time we say him play was the night I asked Kirsty to marry me.
The night was great, the music was excellent.
One of the things I love about live music is hearing the great support bands that come before the main act. This night was no exception.
Supporting Josh Pyke was a band called The Paper Kites. We loved seeing them for the first time, and we bought their EP the other day. This is a video of my favourite song on the EP. It’s called ‘Featherstone’. Kirsty’s favourite song is called ‘Bloom‘.
Check them out. They might just be the band that we listen to over summer.
Possibly the best 12:42 of video on youtube.
This is the final dogfight in Top Gun. Possibly the best 12:42 of video on youtube.
Rebranding a phone company
Recently Australia’s biggest telecommunications company, Telstra, undertook a major rebranding exercise.
I really like what they have come up with. Lots of colour and liveliness. Here is one of their previous ad campaigns, and following is their new one. I like the new one best.
9/11: Recovering, Remembering and Rebirth
I wasn’t going to write anything about 9/11.
I have never really felt the loss of someone that was close to me, and I have never really been affected my any disasters.
I just felt that anything that I could say wouldn’t be appropriate. Mainly because I don’t know the kind of pain that people feel after an even like this.
That being said, I felt compelled to recommend an excellent documentary that we watched on Sunday night. It is called Rebirth. Rebirth is a documentary about the individual stories of of people and how their lives have been shaped by September 11. The basic premise was to interview the same 5 people each year after 2001 to 2011.
It is really a great documentary. Seeing how each of these people were affected my the loss of husbands, mothers and best friends brought Kirsty and I to tears on more than one occasion, and seeing how they moved on with living was even more moving.
Here is the trailer. If you are in Australia you can watch it for free on iView.
Foo Fighters – Back and Forth
One of my anomalies as a person is my love of music. I have never been able to play any kind of instrument (except maybe the recorder, very badly), and I don’t think I can sing that well. But I really like music. Not all kinds of music though: Country does not feature in my CD collection.
One difficultly with music is that it is intensely personal. Different people like different music, and some people hate other kinds of music. I don’t like Justin Bieber and Country, some people really like Justin Bieber and Country.
Not really sure where this is going, but I wanted to share the trailer of a doco on the Foo Fighters that Kirsty and I recently watched. I was dubious at how good it would be, Kirsty even more so. But we really enjoyed it.
If you like their kind of music, have a look.
Space travel According to John
Recently I’ve developed a real interest in space exploration.
This is mostly sue to the recent retiring of the space shuttle program, and also the future plans for sending robots/satellites to places like Mars and Jupiter. My recent interest in all things space has made me remember times when I was a kid, when I would just be struck my the sheer enormity of space, and how my mind would imagine things about that the other planets would be like.
This week I stumbled upon a video that encapsulates perfectly the imagination of a child. His name is John, and this is what he thinks about space. Enjoy.
Christian Emotions.
This week at church we are starting a new series. It is a series on Christian Emotions.
We are running the series off the back of the same series, which has been running at the main site of Christ Church St Ives for the last little while. Our ‘mother’ church. I’m really looking forward to it.
It should be a really good series, my friend Luke Woodhouse will be preaching the series. Below is a promo video that Christ Church put together for the series. I really like it.
We Feel | The Gospel and Christian Emotions from Christ Church St Ives on Vimeo.
Do you need help understanding the internets?
The internet is a busy place. Sometimes it can be too busy. Technology is also a busy and ever changing industry. As soon as new technology gets released people seem to just start talking about the technology that will come along afterwards.
I felt this about a year ago when the iPhone 4 was released. As soon as it released, people started to talk about the iPhone 5. Which might be released in the coming weeks.
If you don’t have your head constantly in technology websites, you can miss stuff. Even more if you didn’t understand the technology in the first place.
If you are confused, it’s ok, there is some help. The ABC has put together a handy little website called “Technology Explained” to help out people who want to get caught up on where technology is up to. Below is a video about social media, and you can look at some more here.
Next Conference
There isn’t much to say about this video. It was made in 2009 for a conference called ‘NEXT‘. As far as ads for Christian conferences go, I think its the best ive ever seen.
Have a look.
Coming soon. Carbon Tax.
One thing I love about Australians is our ability to joke about almost anything.
In Australia we have a government run media group. It’s called the ABC, and it encompasses 4 TV stations, numerous radio stations and an excellent web presence.
On the TV arm there is a news program called 7.30. While this program provides excellent reporting, my highlight of 7.30 is the weekly comedy segment by John Clarke and Brian Dawe, where they make light of recent news topics.
This one is about Australia’s impending carbon tax. You will probably only understand it if you live in Australia.
Driving around Monaco at 270 Km/h
A little while ago I wrote a post about F1, and how much I love it.
This is another reason I love it. Sebastian Vettel flying around the streets of Monaco.
Have a watch if you want. It’s amazing.
Video: ‘Scars’ by Dan Stevers
I love finding good videos in the web. I also love it when I find a good video that is about christianity, and even better when that video is about Jesus. Dan Stevers continues to deliver great videos about both of these things.
Check this one out. It is called ‘Scars’.
Scars from DanStevers.com on Vimeo.
So you want to convert a video.
“Hey Tim, I’m going on a trip overseas and I have some videos that I want to convert so that I can play them on my iPad.”
“Hey Mate, I have an Avi file that I need to convert so that it will work in a powerpoint im giving in 30 mins. Can you help?!”
“I have an XBOX, and apple TV, an iPad and a Galaxy Tablet. How can I get my videos on all of these devices?”
These are all questions that I regularly get asked. The second issue is the most pressing, and the most stressful for people. Mainly because of the time constraints associated.
Thankfully I’ve been able to help everyone that has ever asked me for assistance. This is mostly because, in my last job I had to be responsible for the weekly organisation and production of video for a church in Sydney. While there were many aspects of the ‘video’ side of my job, one thing that I had to get sorted was the conversion of video.
I work on a mac, and for the first half of last year I had to make content that would work on a mac (Keynote), a PC (powerpoint) and also for the web.
All of these platforms require different things from video. Keynote will play most things (because it gets it’s codecs from quicktime. A plugin called ‘Perian‘ makes this possible), powerpoint is mostly useless (because with each version microsoft change what type of video it supports. Why do they love ‘wmv’ so much?) and video for the web have their own needs.
I came up with a few awesome tools that would let me convert videos into whatever format I needed. Most of these were free, and they all did an ok job. In these free versions there would always be some kind of bug associated with a particular video format. For example, handbrake stopped supporting .AVI and Evom never quite did an .MP4 video properly.
Recently I decided that if I wanted to find an app that will be able to do everything well, I would probably need to pay for it. In my searching I found a brilliant app that could do everything perfectly. It’s called Permute, and it is properly brilliant. All you do is drop the video into the app, select which output you want, and it quickly converts the video for you. Simple. It’s really quick too, and you can can convert batches of videos, saving you a whole heap of time.
If you need to convert videos to play on your different devices. Give permute a try. You can download a trial from their website, and you can buy it on the Mac AppStore for under $20. Bargin!
