mountain masala

new divx and movies

i've just updated my version of divx (mp4 movie player and encoder) and also downloaded three of their free, high-def short films - Sintel, Elephants Dream, and Big Buck Bunny. The DivX player software is free, and the Pro Encoder only US$20 and very useful if you're planning to make cross-platform movies for WWW.

You can find the short films here. Stunning image quality and a reminder of why I love digital animation!

baptism & confirmation resources

two weekends ago i was at our national Christian education reference committee, where I'm involved in a few ongoing projects. one is the next gens project, which is about the church's ministry with people in the 'first third' of life. the website hasnt got much on it but thats about to change.

we're also forming a task group based in Adelaide to work on developing new resources for preparing older young people and adults for confirmation and baptism. i was involved in shaping the last set of stuff, called "The Belonging Kit", along with cheryl lawrie who was the writer and editor of the resource. i remain really proud of this resource.

but after about a decade its time to refresh and recreate. last time we worked in the ferment of a whole lot of clarifying of the nature of confirmation by the UCA. unfortunately most ministers and congregations are still working from an outdated notion that confirmation is about church membership. it isnt. it's a repeatable reaffirmation of baptism, which is itself the rite of church membership.

last time we framed confirmation education in terms of discipleship, not just belief. we also recognised that faith is developmental, so that it was as much about people exploring and clarifying their current place on the journey of faith, as it was about 'receiving' the faith of the church, so to speak.

i look forward to the work of the group and to hearing your ideas as we develop it.

 

how to be alone

i may be as often the last person to see this but its stunning:

 

the other kylie

a trip into cappos on glen osmond road on friday meant a weekend of cooking cheap seafood (local prawns for $9 a kilo)

friday night was kylie kwong's wonderful stir-fried prawn omlette from recipes and stories. you cook up a sauce of julienned ginger, tomato wedges, 2 tbs shao hsing wine, 1 tbsp sugar, 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1 tbsp light soy and 1 tsp black vinegar (I knew I bought that lonely bottle for a reason!), and 1/2 tsp sesame oil.

the omlette is cooked with ... eggs... garlic, lup cheong sausage (didnt have any 'cos I snacked on the last lot), white radish, mustard greens (I used chopped baby cos lettuce), prawns and shallots.

music

andrew zuckerman, author of the wonderful book and DVD, Wisdom, has followed it up with a new book & movie, "Music." zuckerman photographs and interviews 48 musicians about the sgnificance of music for our lives. this time, the film is a 370 mb download rather than a DVD. the film goes for 51 mins.

musicians include burt bacharach, kid rock, bic runga, iggy pop, philip glass, henry rollns, ornette coleman, daniel johns, sinead o'connor, neil finn, rosanne cash - so its pretty diverse.

here's the film trailer:

 

imagination

i'm in melbourne briefly for the annual meeting of our national Christian education reference committee. blog on that to come! but also writing stuff for the devozine mentor's guide for the upper room - very overdue!

one session is about imagination. here are some links to creativity ideas (all care and no responsibility from me!):

Marelisa Online

More from Marelisa....

EyeWire Creativity Cards (direct link to PDF download. 45kb)

A List of Creativity & Brainstorming Cards

Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards online (BTW Eno has a new album coming out 2 November)

Check out the IDEO Method Cards App for iPhone too...

more to come as I check these out more

and look at the devozine leaders site.

fx on my phone

my iRig plug finally arrived, to let me plug my Fender into my iPhone and use the Amplitube ap for guitar FX and speaker cabinets. woo hoo. now I just have to get the Tele back from the luthier so I can try it out!

twins turn 21!

yes, our ladies hit the big 21 this week. thursday night we had a family dinner with a bottle of Moet, pan seared bugs and king prawns with skoedalia, sauce vierge, cos lettuce and red capsicum essence, foillowed by asian pork belly with roast veg. and a nice cheese platter and birthday cake.

tonight they're off to celebrate with their friends at Adelaide's annual Zombie walk followed by a pub crawl.

they are wonderful people and usually a delight to have around. we feel very blessed to share our life with them.

paper cranes

in canberra last weekend for the wedding of a nephew. the event was help at the tulip top gardens on the way to lake george. i've never been much of a flower person but the gardens were stunning. took loads of pix.

the wedding photos and video we done by paper cranes. this consisted of several guys shooting video and stills on Canon 5Ds. one guy had a counterweight for the motion shots and another had a mini dolly /glidetrack.

the remarkable thing was that these guys offer a package where they show a film of the wedding at the end of the reception. so one of them was editing in the corner on Final Cut Pro all through the reception. they produced a FANTASTIC video, color graded. the quality of moving images that these cameras produced was AMAZING, and the did seriously good shooting and editing. go and look at their aware-winning showreel.

I want a Canon 5D!!!!

 

beggar inc

grace is doing introductory sculpture this semester, and this somewhow includes performance art

beggar inc is a simple but clever idea that suggests further possibilities, to me at least.

his litter mandala appeals to me a lot.

it remains to be seen whether grace's public rundle mall performance art video will see the public realm!