Many men wish their handwriting was better and I’m one of them. This primer, How to Improve Penmanship, at The Art of Manliness, “will teach you everything you need to know about improving your cursive penmanship.” At least, that’s their claim. I have this notion that by training my mind, eyes, and hands to improve my penmanship, other skills I’m cultivating will follow. There are indications that writing by hand improves your cognitive abilities, but I’m hoping my art and creative writing will also benefit. We shall see. One specific writing skill I would like to acquire is the draftsman or architectural style of writing.… Read the rest
Category: <span>Blogging</span>
I have to concur with the writer, that “racking up mile after mile is difficult, mind-expanding, and hypnotic—just like putting words down on a page.” But, it’s also energizing and freeing to be out on the road, around town or through the woods, working out ideas and problems, step by step, mile by mile.
… Read the restFreedom, consciousness, and wildness: Running offers writers escape with purpose. When confronted with “structural problems” in her writing as the result of a “long, snarled, frustrating and sometimes despairing morning of work,” Joyce Carol Oates would ease her writing blocks with afternoon runs. For Oates and many other writers, running is process and proves especially useful for the type of cloistered, intensive work they do.
Why do I blog? There are a number of reasons, I suppose.
I came across a quote which answers that question and may give you some insight into why I do whatever I do:
… Read the restOur calling is to enjoy God as well as glorify Him. Real fulfillment relates to the purpose for which we were made, to be in reference to God, to be in personal relationship with Him, to be fulfilled by Him, and thus to have an affirmation of life. Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life. Christianity is able to make a real affirmation because we affirm that it is possible to be in personal relationship to the personal God who is there and who is the final environment of all He created.
This was something I posted back in 2005 and I thought it might be worthwhile to look back to where we’ve been and see how far we’ve come.
… Read the restIt has long been a dream of mine to redecorate our home in a modern theme, but it looks like that will have to wait for another 5-10 years. In the interim, we have decided upon a retro look and have been scouring thrift stores, garage sales and eBay for furniture and accessories from the same era as the ribbon-cutting on our home, i.e. 1961.
Today, Denise, and I were leaving a disappointing garage sale, when we happened upon a young gentleman (who happpened to be from New Zealand), standing in the driveway of his new home, next to this sectional.
… Read the restThe ministerial work must be carried on purely for God and the salvation of souls… They who engage in this as a common work, to make a trade of it for their worldly livelihood, will find that they have chosen a bad trade, though a good employment. Self-denial is of absolute necessity in every Christian, but it is doubly necessary in a minister, as without it he cannot do God an hour’s faithful service. Hard studies, much knowledge, and excellent preaching, if the ends be not right is but more glorious hypocritical sinning. Reverend Richard Baxter ((Baxter The Reformed Pastor pg.
Blogging is a dangerous business for the Christian to engage in: particularly when commenting on culture, politics, religion, art, humor, sexuality or other volatile subject matter.
One can come off sounding self-righteous and condescending, as I often do — being boorish. Then, there’s also guilt by association: “That’s fine coming from the religion that gave us the Inquisition, the Crusades and the Salem Witch Hunts.” From the other direction, you open yourself up to insults by, so-called Christians, who want to hunt down witches, launch a crusade against the infidels or turn you over to the inquisitors! Indeed:
Sufferings must be the Churches most ordinary lot, and Christians indeed must be self-denying Cross-bearers, even where there are none but formal nominal Christians to be the Cross-makers… Richard Baxter
I was studying Paul’s letter to the Romans and reached for Karl Barth’s classic commentary.… Read the rest
Now, here’s a blog I get. Jonah travels the length and breadth of America, sampling the fare from taquerias of all sizes, posting his reviews on the Burrito Blog. As of this writing, he hasn’t sampled the best yet, which can only be found at El Tepeyac. ¿Es verdad, mi familia?
Now, if you’re ever in the Los Angeles area, you want to head over to East LA and find 812 N Evergreen Ave., between Brooklyn and Wabash. El Tepayac is across the street from a large Catholic church, in a neutral zone, and there’s usually a real long line outside.… Read the rest
That’s the vista or view of Julio Ojeda-Zapata in his review, Vista’s pretty, but it’s a shameless Mac OS X imitator Bottom line. He sums up Windows Vista this way:
Get a Mac with OS X unless your home-computer needs are Windows-specific, or if the fine Media Center is a must for you. You likely won’t regret a Vista-PC purchase, but I’m betting you’ll enjoy a Mac much more.
An amusing tongue-in-cheek video by David Pogue covers the same ground in a more creative fashion. I have to say that I use Windows XP at work and I really don’t mind it that much.… Read the rest
This weekend, I’m cleaning up all of my eMail SPAM and webforms on my sites. So far, success! The highlight is this anti-SPAM plugin for WordPress that really works. It’s called Did You Pass Math? and requires the commenter to solve a simple arithmetic problem before the comment is submitted. Fortunately, robots aren’t smart enough to know that 2 + 2 equals 4… yet.
Next, I’ll be checking out some spell checkers… The last one I tried didn’t work.… Read the rest
I found a professional writer (or, he found me), who loves John Wayne more than I do (T-Bone Burnett and C.S. Lewis, too) and he’s got a new blog. Check out Write Fink! and then follow his profile to his pro-site. Great stuff!… Read the rest
Today I checked out the statistics on my sites for the first time since moving to GoDaddy ten months ago. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my Overcoming Necrotizing Fasciitis site had over 1.5 million server requests and 213,000 page hits in less than a year. When the flesh-eating bacteria is in the news, traffic picks up and we average a couple prayer requests a week for someone in the hospital suffering from the disease. Students of all ages contact me for interviews or permission to use the materials on the site for assignments, papers and other class projects at least a couple of times a month.… Read the rest
Well, I finally got most of the posts from my old blog stripped out, the template has been shaped up and there are now some resources linked in the right column. Last night, 2-7-2006, we spent most of our Bible study talking about hermeneutics or the science of Biblical interpretation and how it relates to the study of Revelation. So, I will be posting to the blog more regularly from here on out.
There are a number of good resources for understanding the book of Revelation. Steve Gregg’s Revelation: Four Views has a helpful introduction for the layman (regular folks like us).… Read the rest
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Well, it starts here… Thanks to Levi for explaining Mac file structure, while passing along PHP/MySQL installation and configuration secrets. To show my appreciation, I am in the process of bidding on some obscure CDs on eBay.
Kudos to GoDaddy. After reading all the horror stories in preparation for installation, I can honestly say your MySQL activation and configuration instructions were absolutely simple. I can close the 40 tabs I have open to various GoDaddy/WordPress discussions and installation nightmares. The big problem it seems is hosting on a Windows server vs Linux.… Read the rest
I just got home and my head feels pressurized… like it’s about to explode. So, I don’t have anything too profound except that in my meanderings this morning when my head felt like it was imploding, I came across these funny jpegs. The first one was found at Nacional sos el Decano del Futbol Uruguayo, which appears to be some sort of soccer fansite. The Salisbury’s always felt a certain kinship with the Simpson’s… perhaps that was all in my head.
Next, I found this jpeg titled “We found Nemo!” at Middle Age Madness. It made me hungry… a Philadelphia Roll, perhaps?… Read the rest
Pronunciation: 'prag-m&-"ti-z&m
Function: noun
1 : a practical approach to problems and affairs
Many years ago as a young man, I read very little, wrote even less and never dreamed I would write a journal of any sort, let alone a personal log on a space-age device like the computer I am tapping away on. That has all changed.
Now, I read a lot and I write even more!
So, I conceived a plan — a very pragmatic plan, really. Since I would never be published, I decided I would create a website and share my thoughts with anyone who may find them entertaining, enlightening, encouraging or exasperating (strange, but some people do find a certain level of satisfaction in exasperation).… Read the rest