The Bible - illustrated

What? Simply because an entire label on my blog has been devoted to blasphemy, you immediately assume this is going to be some disgraceful and offensive link or set of pictures? Shame on you.

No, this is an ever expanding set of stories from the Bible, illustrated by an evangelical minister who wants to share the Word of the Lord with as many people as he can.

Through Lego.

You'd think I would have mentioned this in one of my previous seven posts about Lego - but apparently not.

Now, before I continue with the predictable hyperlink and some sample pictures, I feel compelled to post this following Not Safe For Work (NSFW) notice for those of you wasting your employer's time reading these ramblings. I believe it's a standard disclaimer at the front of all Bibles - let me know if not..

_{To be honest, this disclaimer was the only reason I started this post..}

The Hyperlink:

The Brick Testament


The Sample Images:

1. Epic battle scene. Literally, epic. And I'm sure it's not at all blasphemous to depict God as a bit of Lego.


_{And Yahweh struck down all of Israel before Abijah and Judah...}

2. You'll find some bits of the Bible you didn't know about too, like the following (which explains why Christians always look so uncomfortable on the tube):


_{'Whenever a woman has her menstrual period, she will remain in a state of menstrual pollution for seven days. Anyone who touches her will be unclean until evening.'}

3. I had other cheap jokes, and I was dying to end on a sex scene, but I couldn't resist putting in this one. It's given me so many ideas for a LoTR Lego photoshoot. Anyone got a spare year? It'll be an Internet phenomenon (the following is Sauron vs Gandalf in my head):


_{Moses then reported to Yahweh what the people had said.}

More blasphemy (now in picture format)

I love the internet.







The bottom two are from the Perry Bible Fellowship, highly recommended. Click all images for higher-res versions.

LolHymns

The LolCat Bible project that I mentioned a while back is coming along well, with 61% of the Bible now translated into kittah speeks.

People have also started adding some fringe stuff too, including translating a few hymns into Lolhymns. There's only 11 up there right now, so it's a great time to get involved - there's a short guide to speaking lolcat available too, for the uninitiated.

I'll leave you with the utterly fantastic hymn, 'All Fings Brite an Purdyful';

All Fings Brite an Purtyful

All fings brite an purtyful,

    All kittehs big an small, 

    All fings wize an wunnerful, 

    Ceiling Cat mekked dem all. 


Teh teeny flwrs dat open,

    Teh burds an flying fings, 

    He mekked ther tasty gudness, 

    He mekked ther teeny wings. 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh hoomans wiv big howses,

    Teh ones livin on teh street, 

    Dey has difrent siez burgers, 

    But all can stil has eats. 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh big hills an teh mountins,

    Teh deep sea an teh ground, 

    Teh Lolrus an his bukkit, 

    Dat nevar wil be found;− 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh chilly winz in wintar,

    Teh niec wawm summy sun, 

    Teh ripe noms an teh catnip,− 

    He mekked dem evry wun: 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh Caturdays iz win-ful,

    He mekked Cat Monorail, 

    He mekked teh lolz an capshuns, 

    Wivout dem we has a Fail;− 

    All fings brite ... 


Dees fings iz not invisible,

    Cos He givved us eyez to see, 

    Epic Ceiling Cat iz Epic, 

    Cos He invntd ICHC! 

    All fings brite ... 

    (Akitteh) 

LolBible

In the beginning, the internet created the LolCats, and web geeks saw that it was good, and it was Dugg.

Then, the internet created LolCode, and coding geeks saw that it was good, and there was much rejoicing.


_{Today's Lolcat from ICanHasCheezBurger}

But, still...there was the issue of the religious geeks to take care of. Where could they see the things they wanted to see, but through the medium of cute cats and bad grammar?

Well, Easter Sunday seems a reasonable time to share this little link, which solves that problem once and for all, it's a labour of love and quite frankly, the best thing on the internet ever:

The LolCat Bible

Genesis 1
³At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz. ⁴An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin. ⁵An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

Kids

On my way into work yesterday - the 8.20am commuter rush from Reading Station to Thames Valley Business Park - I was a bit amused to see two small children boarding the bus, each carrying what looked suspiciously like a laptop bag.

Now, I'm aware the government is diverting nearly half of its educational advertising budget to convince people not to continue on to unnecessary higher education (the other half advises people to do so). But still, this does seem a bit over the top.

Nevertheless, I was happy to write it off as some weird coincidence, except that as the bus stopped at Oracle - I noticed a couple more younger children walking around the campus. The original two got off at BG Group's offices. Then, today, there was a lovely 11 year old chap who was on work experience in the Microsoft offices.

I looked after him for an hour, but as other interns had stolen my thunder by showing him Silverlight and Photosynth already, I was left with the other cool DPE stuff to show him - SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Seriously, if you haven't seen Photosynth yet - you *have* to check it out. It's based on the equally cool Seadragon (which I saw the hottest internal demo of today...will share as soon as it's public).

Rather than have the youngest suicide on record in Reading, I decided to stick to what I knew instead and helped him to whip up a WPF project in Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2008. I know I've been talking up how productive and easy these two tools are a lot recently, but I can now legitimately say that even an 11 year old can use them - maybe that'll help with the Java compete stuff.

On a vaguely related topic (it's a stretch, but I've had no excuse to blog this for weeks), I was in a very nice restaurant not too long ago when I saw a hilarious message at the bottom of the menu. Unfortunately I didn't get a decent photo, but:

Well behaved children will be tolerated in the dining room before 7pm

Classic. Though, not quite as good as this sign:



And, on the subject of kids, I couldn't resist sharing the photo I found sitting right next to that one above over inside a Facebook group:

Christmas Platitudes

The spoken phrase 'Merry Christmas' has become so ubiquitous now that it can often fails have to any impact whatsoever upon receipt - especially if uttered in passing by a stranger (such as a shop assistant, or friend of a friend), or merely used as the sign off to a conversation.

In writing too, 'Merry Christmas' can almost be overlooked - although this is even more context specific. This Yuletide I've decided to rank the ways I've received 'Merry Christmas's, according to what I find most important...

1. A hand-made Christmas card, given to me in person

Cost: 6/10
Effort: 10/10
Sincerity: 10/10

Overall: 26/30

Obviously this method suffers, with no postage cost involved - and was probably made with materials the sender already possessed. Top marks for effort and sincerity though.

2. A shop-bought Christmas card, posted to me

Cost: 10/10
Effort: 7/10
Sincerity: 6/10

Overall: 23/30

Cost of card, ~£2. Probably bought in bulk, so the effort rating here isn't great. Cost of stamp, ~36p, again probably bought in bulk. Then there's also the writing, finding of my address and taking the thing to a postbox to take into account, which gives this form a very respectable score for effort. It's nice to know I was thought of, but I doubt the sender would lose much sleep if I didn't get their message.

3. A shop-bought Christmas card, handed to me

Cost: 8/10
Effort: 6/10
Sincerity: 8/10

Overall: 22/30

Well, as you can see, marks have been lost for both effort and cost - but the sincerity factor makes up for that. A card that's physically handed to you is likely to be opened on the spot, so the sender will have written something fairly interesting, more often than not.

4. An e-card

Cost: 0/10
Effort: 2/10
Sincerity: 1/10

Overall: 3/30

Seriously, just because I work in technology, and hang around on the internet all day, does not mean it's acceptable to send me an e-card for any reason. Ever. If I wanted flashing images and garish text on a badly coded webpage, I'd go back to the 90's. Or Yahoo. On the plus side, these sites are notoriously hard to navigate, and so there's a smallish amount of effort involved.

5. A text message

Cost: 1/10
Effort: 1/10
Sincerity: 0/10

Overall: 2/30

Your text message has interrupted something really important I was doing. My mother is now in tears, the windows are smashed and the kitchen's on fire. I hope you're happy, you've ruined Christmas.

6. Writing on my Facebook wall

Cost: 0/10
Effort: 1/10
Sincerity: 0/10

Overall: 1/30

I get it - you're bored and looking up people online. You want one of them to reply to you but you're not feeling quite pathetic enough to actually call them or send them a message. Or maybe you don't have their number or email address, because you're just some weirdo who stalks them online. So - you leave them a friendly wall post, hoping they'll feel emotionally blackmailed into getting back to you. Not me kiddo.

7. Leaving a picture on your blog for anyone who happens to visit

Cost: 0/10
Effort: 0/10
Sincerity: 0/10

Overall: 0/30

Ok, actually I've never been on the receiving end of this one. Unfortunately for you, that's a claim you can never make again:



Merry Christmas :)

I love Gib

Two people today have mentioned the lovely picture below, taken on a rather drunken night out to me, in two completely unrelated conversations. I say completely unrelated, but I should point out that they were both half-hearted attempts at blackmail - as if anyone could really win an argument with me...


_{Doesn't my hair look lovely?}

Homo-eroticism aside, I do quite like the picture - I'm not just posting it up here to ensure that no-one can try to use it against me. Most people assume it's a guy and a girl kissing (in either permutation), although I have heard one person react with 'cool, lesbians', which was quite amusing. I particularly like the over-exposure on the lips :)

As I reach the end of this rambling post I should point out that the person in the picture who's not me, for those of you who don't know him, is Kieran 'Gib' Hawkes, one of my lovely artists on Tie-Dye Heart. He's the one with the completely illegible signature.

The Great British Pint

The EU's had a lot of stupid ideas in the past, and quite often they've managed to annoy the people of Britain, which might explain the national reluctance to completely join in all the fun. That and the fact that the average Brit is inexplicably xenophobic (I'm no exception) and would rather die than associate themselves with the French.

The EU made a lot of progress winning over the English voters when they left wales off a map - but unfortunately forgot that the level of literacy in Wales has increased by leaps and bounds in recent times - 9/10 farmers can now make their mark on a voting slip.


_{...the UK Independence Party (Ukip), which wants Britain to pull out of the EU, welcomed the removal of Wales. - BBC News}

They've thrown all their hard progress away though, with recent attacks on the much beloved British pint. Brits could put up (grudgingly) with not being allowed to sell goods by weight in pounds alone, and being forced to used grammes. Our milk suddenly got measured in litres, but as the dairies cleverly kept the quantities the same, no-one minded too much, and everyone still talks about pints.

When they tried to make us ask for half a litre of beer though, that was one step too far, and so it's with pleasure that I can tell you The EU are backing down - and we can keep our antiquated, nonsensical measurements, all of them. Thanks to Anthony for letting me know about this one.

Under the covers however, they've slipped in a stealthy change to our pint, which is the first step on the road to having us all wear berets and carry around rings of onions. No longer shall we see the Crown on new British pints, instead we're being forced, despite a petition to the PM to have some crappy European symbol on glasses.

As such, the penalty for smashing a pint glass will no longer simply be being kicked out of the pub for the night - but instead a mob lynching up on the nearest lamp-post. You have been warned.

Jewgle

So, Google has taken the very interesting step of apologising for some of their search results. Apparently, there's been a lot of fuss recently from people who have searched for the term Jew and found some anti-semitic content - specifically the top ranked site, 'Jew Watch' (which I shan't link to, for obvious reasons, go look it up if you feel the need..). This has been an issue, I discover, digging deeper, since April 2004, which has recently resurged for whatever rhyme and reason is driving the internet's fickle attention span, and Google are sticking to their guns by returning any site which meets their guidelines (mostly related to not cheating on SEO) and is legal in its host country, but in this case apologising.

This brings into the spotlight the interesting question of search engine morality - should providers be returning results which may be extremely offensive to a proportion of people likely to be looking up a specific term?

Personally, I'm with them on this one, as there are so many other search terms which result in extremely offensive content - and removing all of these offensive sites would cripple their business. Indeed - morality is always relative - I'm sure that the anti-semites running Jew Watch find some of the Jewish websites returned to be extremely offensive too. With something as dynamic and anonymous as the internet, it becomes so difficult to establish a common moral consensus that it's best to simply make available all of the information people wish to create, and allow the end user to decide which sites to give their attention and respect.

I think the real answer to this problem however, is the original meaning of that horrifyingly ubiquitous buzzward (buzzward; n; 'a misued and bastardised buzzword' - anyone else fancy helping this word I just made up take off? *grin* - I've just added it to Urbandictionary at the link above) Web 2.0 - a semantic web with each item associated with metadata. Microsoft have had a stab at this with Tafiti but the real problem's going to be convincing content producers of the value of adding real metadata to their information. For example, once JewWatch is properly associated with the metadata 'anti-semitic', then it's a simple query to filter it, along with other related sites, out of a query for 'Jew'.

Here's Google's apology, for those of you who are interested, by the way.

--

As to how I stumbled across all of this just now; I was attempting to track down a little story I'd heard at work about an online store run by a Jewish couple who are very strict on their faith. So strict in fact, that they still honour the tenet of not working on Shabbat - and as such will allow users to view items on their website, but will not accept any orders between sunset on a Friday and sunset on a Saturday. They even go so far as to change this every week to take into account seasonal variations, and calculate it from the physical home of their webserver. They really do have a kosher machine..amazing.

--

_{When I next connect to the Microsoft corporate network, and they notice all the anti-semitic websites I've spent my weekend visiting, I'm so going to get sacked...}

Logic

Thought of the day:

• God loves everyone.


• Jesus Christ was (is) God incarnate.


• Christian means 'like Christ'.

So, should all Christians be bixsexual?

I guess this is Aristotle defending his sexuality from beyond the grave...

Edit: Though, obviously, he wasn't a Christian.

It's not me, I swear

Just found this line, from when I returned some hardware, in the quote archives of #astoncompsoc:

Quote 373 of 658: (+Sol|Food) The guy at the Pub said he was impressed Jesus brought his switch back XD

I'm staying away from anyone Jewish tomorrow, in case there's another case of mistaken identity..

Religious Networking

I'm sure that the creators of MySpace, of YouTube and lately, of Facebook are all raking in a pile of cash, and quite frankly, I think the marketplace is still wide open.

You see, the problem with those sites, is that they're open to pretty much anyone. This means that they're missing out on custom from all the religious fanatics who refuse to mix with people of other religions, or at least, severely frown upon such mixing. So I’m thinking, a good way to be among the next wave of .com millionaires is...religious networking!

The structuring would be simple, the site would be open to registration for anyone, but instead of sending out a confirmation email, you’d be required to provide the details of a cleric of your particular order, who could then vouch for you.
This would also discourage the many Jedi Knights from signing up, because, as far as I’m aware, George Lucas is holding all the holy men of that order at ransom in his basement and refusing to release them (at least, until he’s screwed with them some more).

Once you’d signed up to the site, you’d be able to meet like-minded believers from around the globe, and add them to your friends list. Like Facebook, the site would be divided up into ‘Networks’ based on religion, with only small degrees of interaction between networks allowed. For example, I’m sure there wouldn’t be too much problem in allowing Orthodox and Roman Catholics to message one another, but I wouldn’t even let those guys see the pictures of someone of the Islamic faith. Obviously, you could only add friends of the exact same religion.

However, here’s where I envision the first problem – I really can’t stand the MySpace trend of having a thousand friends you barely even know the names of, and I’m pretty sure that would crop up without some intervention. As such, I think we could kill two birds with one stone, by implementing a feature which I’m currently calling ‘Crusade’.
Basically, once every fortnight, people are matched together into teams with those in their friend list. These are then sent off to a certain location where they’ll meet a team from another network (aka, religion) and attempt to win points for their religion. I’m still tweaking the scoring system, but here are my initial ideas:

• Proving your God exists – 100 points


• Proving their God doesn’t exist – 75 points


• Making their entire team doubt their faith – 50 points


• Converting one of their members to your religion – 50 points


• Making three of their members act outside the rules of their religion – 25 points


• Killing one of their clerics – 10 points


• Turning up dressed so blasphemously (to their religion) that they’re unable to even look at you – 10 points


• Killing one of their regular members – 5 points

Obviously, the points stack up – so if you manage to kill the 9 regular members in their team and their cleric then you get an easy 55 points without even having to debate anything.

Every month or so, the top religion will get to choose the text to go in the ‘Faithbar’. This will be a bar going across the profile page of every single member of the site, regardless of their network, which will have a message printed on it. Naturally, I’m hoping for some classy stuff to be hosted on here, something that’ll really piss off the members of other faiths and get them interested in the competition.

Obviously, these bi-weekly crusades won’t be the only way to win points, and the site will be running competitions every now and then. I’m not yet decided on what forms these competitions will take – I was thinking of ‘most blasphemous picture & caption’ but most of the religions could score a lot of easy points by just drawing the prophet Muhammad and writing “Hi” on the bottom, so that one might need reconsidering.

Finally, and most importantly, what am I going to call this website, you ask? Well, I’m still stuck between Faithbook and HisSpace...

Xx

Edit: Looks like HisSpace is already taken. guess I'll go with Faithbook then.