I’m looking forward to this new radio show from Marc Fennell. Yep, it’s all about technology.

This one is a trailer for the hobbit. The movie comes out next year. I’m a little excited.

Quite a lot happened in 2011.

One of the most difficult things about being at bible college is also being a student minister. Ok, not the actual job of being a student minister, that is great. I’m talking about the reality of moving around a couple of different churches over your time at college.

I am planing on being at college for four years, which means, being at roughly three different churches over that time. The breakdown then ends up being, two churches for one year and one church for two years.

Recently Kirsty and I made the difficult decision to finish up were we have been serving for this year, St Ives Family Church. It was a hard decision. But it is one that brings with it lots of excitement as we think about being able to meet with a new church.

We have just done a whole heap of our ‘last things’. A few weeks ago we had our last bible study leaders lunch, we have both had our last bible studies (me with the mens group, and Kirsty with her mixed bible study) and this coming week we are having our last Sunday morning.

One of the highlights of these last things was the opportunity for me to preach my last sermon, which happened last Sunday. I preached on Love from 1 Corinthians 13. I encouraged them to continue to be a church that continues to, a) Love each other and b) Love their community.

Family church has been a church that has shown so much love to Kirsty and I. We love this church. Leaving is hard.

p.s my sermon is below if you want to listen to it. note: my mic dies around the 6 minute mark, but it gets replaced with a much better one after then. I promise.

p.p.s as of the end of January I will be working as a student minister at the Cammeray site of Naremburn Cammeray Anglican Church. We are really looking forward to it!

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.

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.

It seems like ages since I first posted about tyro designs. A little design project that a mate and I have been working on.

Well this week, after many months of clarifying our direction and designing everything to suit, we went live. We are pretty excited about what might come out of this. We already have a few exciting things lined up for the next month in the lead up to christmas. But ill let you know about them when the time is right.

In the meantime you can check out our website.

Let us know if you need anything designed.

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.

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.

It is quite amazing.

You really should watch it!

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

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.

If you use OS X, Android or iOS you shouldn’t be thankful for Steve Jobs or Google. Well not entirely anyway. Sure, they played a big part in their respective developments. But there is one man who played a much bigger part.

OS X, Android and iOS are written using a programming code called ‘C‘. Two other programming codes are used for OS X, Android and iOS are C++ and Objective C (they are basically just later versions of ‘C’), but ‘C’ has been a foundation of both of these operating systems since their beginning.

Anyway, to get to my point. C was invented by a man called Dennis Ritchie. He invented it while working at Bell Labs between 1969-1973. Dennis Ritchie passed away this past week at the age of 70 in his home.

No-one really heard about his passing. Dennis Ritchie was a huge player in the personal computing world. I especially like this quote about him.

“As the news of his death spread throughout the computer science world, historians and computer enthusiasts compared the bearded, introverted Dr. Ritchie to media-savvy Apple co-founder Steve Jobs“

And this one.

“It’s sort of ‘apples’ and oranges,” said Paul Ceruzzi, a Smithsonian historian and expert on the history of computers. “Ritchie was under the radar. His name was not a household name at all, but . . . if you had a microscope and could look in a computer, you’d see his work everywhere inside.”

Dennis Ritchie was a big player in the development of the computers, mobile phones, iPod’s and media centres that we use today.

I am thankful for him.