Well, I did it! I finally took the plunge, held my breath, and upgraded to the Wordpress 2.5. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re really not missing anything. It’s just that if you open up the bonnet of this blog you find that the motor running this thing is an application called Wordpress. I have been reading some very scary things about what can go wrong when you upgrade, and all in all I haven’t lost too much hair so far.
However, you will notice that some of the doodackies (thingumibobs) in the sidebars to the right are missing, and depending on how the next couple of days go it may be a while before I get them back again.
You know those “dummies” books? When it comes to web design I’m definitely one of the target readers.
Two months of silence in the world of blogs is an eternity. This will be an interesting experiment to see if the small number of people who read this blog have completely given it up for lost, or whether I may be able to attract them back again. During these two months I must admit to have pondered on the potential and purpose of a blog, wavered backwards and forwards about the wisdom of divulging certain things over the Internet, and questioned some of the fairly self-centered and even narcissistic elements that one finds in the blogosphere.
But I’ve come back to the fact that I get a lot out of reading other people’s blogs, and I enjoy writing so why not carry on? It’s a good discipline, and who knows, there’s always the chance that from time to time I might contribute something useful to some online discussion. Is this a new year’s resolution? I’ve always been really good at keeping those …for the first week of January. So I’ll commit myself to writing this week, and next we’ll see what next week will bring.
Have been thinking a lot lately about the purpose of this blog. I’m aware that there are a number of things that we are involved with that aren’t really appropriate for posting on the Internet. But on the other hand I have benefitted so much in recent months reading various blogs of people, around Europe especially, who have been going through a similar transition to us. Especially in the area of seeking a simpler and more authentic experience of what it means to live out Christian community.
I’m also aware that there’s a lot of pontificating out there on the blogosphere which isn’t necessarily that helpful. It’s a great way of “living transparently” before people, but sometimes it’s hard to know just how transparent to be. I like that fact that it forces me to think about writing things that I would be happy for anybody in our various circles of acquaintance to read. It’s a good exercise in “being real”. I think the current buzzword for that is being “holistic”.
So I’d like to keep this going, but I think the blog is going through a bit of an identity crisis at the moment.
Some blog housekeeping: if you are a past commenter on this blog you may have noticed that your comments are now missing your name and link.
It’s not that we don’t love you! I installed an update for Wordpress (my favourite blog software), and unfortunately it has a few issues with my blog. This has affected the comments, and I have no idea how to fix it.
So don’t stop commenting! I think that all new comments should appear correctly.
A practical point about blogging: do you know about feeds? Feeds are an easy way of keeping track of what people are writing in your favourite blogs, without actually having to visit their site. Blog posts are “syndicated” in rather the same way as international press agencies like Reuters syndicate their reports to newspapers all over the world.
To read feeds, you need a “feed reader” (you see, it’s not rocket science). They are also called rss readers or aggregators (don’t worry about what rss stands for). There are two kinds. An Internet based rss reader is a website where you set up an account for free, which enables you to group the feeds of all your favourite blogs together, and it updates automatically every time you open your account page. A good example of this is Bloglines which is one that I use and am quite happy with.
The other option is to install a feed reader as a plugin on your Internet browser. Firefox even has its own feed reading feature with “Live bookmarks” (I wouldn’t now about Internet Explorer - I have evolved 
The one I use is an open source thing called Sage - it’s very easy to install and read. Every now and then when I’m working at the computer, I just click on “update feeds”, and can instantly see who has written new material.
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