December 09, 2005

And We're Back

It appears that the attack on this blog is over. Comments are open again in the usual way. Sorry for the interruption in service. I've had to pulled the three entries that were bombed, because I need to perserve the evidence for now but you shouldn't have to wait for them to load.

The police were very helpful in getting this matter sorted out and hopefully this will apprise any others who are tempted to comment bomb of the seriousness of this activity. You many have noticed my new little notice in the right column about the applicable law. I haven't specifically explained that it is a violation of the Misuse of Computers Act 1990. Nevada and Forida come into it because the site is actually hosted on servers primarily located in Nevada, with co-location servers in Florida. When someone acts in an unauthorised way on this blog, they violate the statutes of both of those states.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Posted by david at 10:31 AM | Comments (3)

December 07, 2005

Go Away

The Year 11 exams are marked, as are the Year 7 books. Whether I will have more time to blog, I don't know. I wanted to mention about the exams and the books, in case any Year 11s or Year 7s are reading this. Apparently my website has become popular reading amongst at least some of student body.

Just remember if you are reading this from school during lesson time, all internet activity is logged. Get back to work.

Posted by david at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2005

Comments Shut

No, it's not you. Comments have been shut down to deal with an incident of vandalism.

Posted by david at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2005

Memory Alpha

I just found out tonight that there is a wiki encyclopedia for all things Star Trek. There was a time when I would have thought that was really exciting. But back then there was no Intenet, not to mention wiki technology.

I'll still have a browse around.

Posted by david at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2005

Historical Perspective

Jonathan Ross on the witch trials of the late 17th-early 18th century: "It wasn't a great time for people who were into herbal remedies."

Posted by david at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2005

Against All Odds, or, You Win Some, You Lose Some

October 25 is an important date in the history of wafare. Or more specifically, it is best known for lopsided battles.

It is the feast of St Crispin, which fans of Shakespere or Kenneth Branagh will recognise as the date of the Battle of Agincourt. It's the 590th anniversary of this key battle of the Hundred Years' War.

439 years later, the English were again outnumbered, but with encumbered with less competent leadership. The Charge of the Light Brigade was a disaster.

It was the Japanese who were outnumbered 90 years later in the climax of the largest naval battle ever. The Battle of Leyte Gulf sealed the defeat of the Imperial Navy in the Second World War.

Finally, 22 years ago, it was the Grendians and their Marxist allies the Cubans who were outnumbered as Ronald Reagan ordered the invasion of that little island nation to rescue 600 Americans who couldn't get into medical school anywhere under the jurisdiction of the Stars and Stripes.

Posted by david at 10:34 PM | Comments (2)

Spam Attack

For the last several days, the spammers have been out in force. My apologies to anyone who has to endure any of these attempts at advertising before i=I can get to them and remove them.

Posted by david at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2005

Rummaging Through the Past

While sorting out the spare room, I pulled out my guitar to bang around on it. I wanted to see just how many songs I had forgotten.

I was rummaging around in the top of the case, under where the headstock rests, looking for a pick. I didn't find an elusive plectrum, but I did find the original draft of one of my best-known worship songs, the "Nicene Hymn". I wrote it on December 5, 1990, for those keeping score at home.

There was a brief time when it was being sung by churches on three continents. I taught it to a church I attended when I lived in London in 1992. The friend who had introduced me to that church while we were both visitng students from American law schools later that year went to China and introduced it to various churches there (whether he translated it into Chinese I don't know).

He found the woman who would eventually be his wife while he was in Shanghai. I sang at their wedding in Toronto - not the "Nicene Hymn" though. That was the wedding where I was also the official photographer (which was a job for the whole day) and helped re-write the wedding between the first and second rehearsals. The wedding was mostly in Chinese, though part in Cantonese and part in Mandarin. I was one of about half-a-dozen non-Chinese people in attendance. But that's a story for another time...

Posted by david at 01:41 AM | Comments (1)

October 08, 2005

Counting Again

I've been getting some mileage out of my revelations concerning the shortness of time.

Yesterday, one of my students was asking what the date was because it was covered up by the LCD projector screen. I replied that it was 7th of October 2005 and there would never be another one, so she should make the most of it. She didn't seem to think it was very important. She thought she had a lot of days ahead of her and this one didn't really matter too much.

I said, "I'm guessing you're 14." (It wasn't a difficult guess - nearly everyone is 14 at the beginning of Year 10.) "Let's say your life expectancy is 85. [Actually is it probably closer to 90, but I only calculated that later.] So you have 71 more years. Sounds like a long time. That's less than 26,000 days."

She was a bit shocked. "That's all?!"

"It's shorter than you think. How long do you think it would take to count those days, if you did it slowly - just one per second? Just over seven hours."

"That's like a school day!"

"Yep, if you came to school one day and spend the whole time counting, by the time you went home you would have counted out every day of your life. That's how important each day of your life is. You only get one shot at it."

Posted by david at 10:19 PM | Comments (4)

October 02, 2005

Anniversaries

Today is the 170th anniversary of the Battle of Gonzales, the beginning of the Texas Revolution.

It is also the 55th anniversary of the Charlie Brown's first appearance in major newspapers in the Peanuts comic strip.

Posted by david at 01:11 PM | Comments (2)

September 11, 2005

Staying Awake

According to Schott’s Food and Drink Miscellany, instant coffee has less than half the caffeine of filtered coffee. A 6 ounce cup of the real thing contains about 105 mg – the freeze-dried variety contains only 60 mg. In either case, this is much more than a cup of tea with a mere 35 mg.

Posted by david at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

July 20, 2005

36 Years

Today is the anniversary of the first Manned Lunar Landing.

What were the first words spoken from the Moon? "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."? Nope. "Contact light," spoken by Buzz Aldrin. Armstrong's more famous line wasn't until 18 seconds later.

Posted by david at 01:24 AM | Comments (4)

July 19, 2005

Musical Thoughts

At twelve, she was the Voice of an Angel. At sixteen, she had the Rear of the Year and took up with a useless boy with a dodgy background she called her "bit of rough." At eighteen, she took control of her multi-million pound fortune. She was photographed falling over drunk in every trendy and not-so-trendy club in Cardiff. Certainly one of the favourite tabloid fillers in the UK is Mrs H's fellow countrywoman Charlotte Church.

Now she has made the jump from classical to pop. Her new album is at #5 in the charts and the first single peaked at #2. This is clearly a case of riding on her fame. Her pop voice is very good. From appearances on Jonathan Ross and Top of the Pops, her live performance is very, very good.

Unfortunately she decided to help write most of the tracks on this album. Stick with what you know, darlin'. Now I will admit I've only heard the first single and her own favourite "Confessional Song". But if this is the cream of the album... I was writing better lyrics at 16. Really. Charlotte if you are looking for a songwriter for your next album, look no further. This could be my big break. Clearly if this crap can make it on the radio, I should quit teaching and still pay the bills.

And speaking of mediocrity, is it just me, or has Sir Elton John written his last good song sometime several years ago? He is currently at both #2 and #4 in the singles chart. Again, this has to be a case riding the fame wave. On the #2 "Ghetto Gospel" he is just sampled together with the late 2Pac. The #4 is from the stage version of Billy Elliot. Why is anyone buying either of these?

On the other hand, I was rummaging around in the garage and came across the box of CDs that didn't make it into the house when we moved here two years ago. There is only room for about half our collection indoors. Finally seeing the light of day again, I pulled out the limited edition Phil Keaggy Revelator CD from 1993. Most of my Bruce Cockburn collection was out there. I also pulled out Bob Bennett's Songs from Bright Avenue.

This is a good album, but ranks well below 1982's Matters of the Heart. Anyone who has heard this knows why CCM magazine listed it as one of the top 20 Christian albums of all time. Sadly, I don't know where my cassette copy of a friend's vinyl is - probably in Texas. If anyone has a copy of this long out-of-print CD, let's talk.

For the time being, Bob has "1951" as a downloadable Song of the Month on his website. You can also download the song he wrote for his son who recently did a tour of duty with the Marines in Iraq.

Maybe if Charlotte doesn't want me to write her songs, she could hire Bob.

Posted by david at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2005

Things I Didn't Know When I Woke Up This Morning

Red Skelton was a Hoosier.

Gavin McLeod (of Mary Tyler Moore and Love Boat fame) is half Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indian.

The Ojibwa are the third-largest group of Native American in the US (after the Cherokee and Navajo).

Who Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan was.

Bob Denver (of the title role in Gilligan's Island) was once a high school teacher.

And speaking of Gilligan's Island, while Tina Louise played the glamourous Ginger, Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) was Miss Nevada in the 1960 Miss America pageant.

Posted by david at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

June 25, 2005

Reason not to Cheat #213

Be sure you own your own car.


Lotus Esprit Turbo
price: £0.50
Ended: 17-Jun-05 00:26:49 BST
Start time: 17-Jun-05 00:21:46 BST
Buyer: goddamm7 ( 0 )
Item location: birmingham
United Kingdom
Post to: Will arrange for local pickup only (no postage).
Postage costs: Check item description and payment instructions or contact seller for details

"I need to get rid of this car immediately - ideally in the next 2-3 hours before my cheating arsehole husband gets home to find it gone and all his belongings in the street."

It sold in 5 minutes and 3 seconds.

H/T: Greg Wallace

Posted by david at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2005

Chicago, We Have a Restaurant

You never know what you might wander across surfing the net.

One of my all-time favourite films is Apollo 13. Anyone who has read this blog for very long knows I'm big on all things outer space, but surely even for the most earth-bound person, the the return to the home planet of Jack Swigert, Fred Haise, and Jim Lovell in a crippled ship is one of the great voyages of history. They traveled 297,315 miles after the explosion and had to manually line up a re-entry angle of between 5.5 degrees and 7.5 degrees.

If you've seen the film, you'll remember the young teen Jay Lovell away at military school in Wisconsin, watching on television to see if his father would be burned to a crisp an Odyssey-turned-incinerator.

If you want to see the artefacts of Jim's space travels and drink astronomically named martinis, you will have to visit Jay's restaurant in Lake Forest, Illinois. I have to say I was a bit shocked that my mental picture of Jay Lovell has gone from that of young actor Max Elliot Slade to Dom DeLuise.

If you dine at Lovells of Lake Forest, bring your MasterCard (or Visa, or anything else they will take), because dinner doesn't come cheap. Dinner for two, with salad and entree, sharing an appetizer, will set you back about $100, plus $50 for a mid-range bottle of wine. Cigar and cognac not included, of course.

Posted by david at 11:13 PM | Comments (1)

May 06, 2005

The Cardinalmobile

Now that Benedict XVI has use of the Popemoblie for the rest of his life, he has no need for a Volkswagen Golf.

His old car has been sold on eBay.

I doubt that most of my readers could have afforded the final price. It went for €188,938.88 (approx. $244,562.47).

Posted by david at 01:49 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2005

Shocking Trivia

While trying to find out more about the US Vice-Presidential mansion, I came across the rather stunning fact that in the year 2000, the electricity bill was $135,300.

Because the 33-room white brick Victorian house is on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory, the cost is split between the Navy and the Vice-President's budget.

Posted by david at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2005

When You Have a Minute or Ten

The new David's Mental Meanderings is now online. It's a little longer than usual, so you might need to get comfortable.

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

Posted by david at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2005

Other Writing

While I've been working on a new Meandering, I wrote another Wikipedia article.

I discovered that the link for Gary Chapman was a redirect to the article about his ex-wife Amy Grant. As I found this rather insulting for Gary, I drafted a new bio for him.

Posted by david at 12:57 AM | Comments (3)

March 07, 2005

Kids Ask the Darndest Things

You never expect to hear this as an honest question. One of my Year 7 history students actually came up to me in the lesson and asked, "Is the Pope Catholic?"

Posted by david at 10:20 PM | Comments (3)

March 06, 2005

Remember

Eight score and eight years ago today, 189 Texans were killed in battle. It took 1800 Mexicans to do it. That's almost 10 to 1. An estimated 600 Mexicans were killed. That's a kill ratio of over 3 to 1.

Fourteen days later it took 1,000 Mexicans to force the surrender of 300 Texans in the open field of battle. These and 42 other prisoners of war were massacred a week later at Goliad. That's lots of Mexicans with guns and Texans with none. Even being taken out and shot at point-blank range, 28 managed to escape.

Less than a month after Goliad, with the odds a little closer to even, it took 18 minutes for 910 Texans to kill 630 Mexicans, wound 208, and take 730 prisoners, none of whom were, as far as I know, shot by firing squad or otherwise summarily excuted.

Posted by david at 11:10 PM | Comments (2)

February 08, 2005

Still Here

This continues to be a very busy term. I try to read most of the blogs on my roll every day or every other day, but I just haven't had any time to write. Marking, reports, lesson planning, piles of general admin... It just goes on forever.

It is only three days now until half-term, so hopefully I will be able to surface long enough to throw out a few pithy comments about the state of the world.

Posted by david at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

December 20, 2004

Hiatus

Comments will be closed for the next few days, as I will not have time to attend to the blog during the Feast of the Nativity.

In the words of Jim Lovell to Mission Control as Apollo 13 was about to lose radio signal on the dark side of the Moon: "OK, we'll just sit tight then. See you on the other side."

Posted by david at 02:59 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2004

Mega-Rant

The Diversion that should have filled this space went on for to long, so it has been replaced by a new Mental Meandering.

Posted by david at 11:35 PM | Comments (2)

October 25, 2004

R & R

I'll not be blogging for the next few days. Because I won't be around to remove all the spam, I am closing comments until my return.

Posted by david at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2004

New Blogs

I've come across a couple of new Ortho-blogs recently and added them to the links.

Justin's Torrent of Consciousness has been around about as long as these Diversions, but somehow I just now found it, thatnks to his comments in one of the entries below.

Philippa's Lost in-Elegant Cogitations is a brand new blog.

Posted by david at 04:53 AM | Comments (1)

August 14, 2004

Hiatus

The computer is going into the shop later today for what is anticipated to be a week. Sadly, I shall be silent until it returns.

I will also be closing comments before it goes, because despite my efforts the spammers are continuing to use what little window of opportunity I have given them, managing just tonight to put 40 comments in just two pages of entries. So if you have anything to say, say it now!

Posted by david at 02:17 AM | Comments (1)

August 11, 2004

Things You Never Cared to Know

The spork was patented on this day in 1970.

Eating at KFC and Taco Bell has never been the same.

Today is also the independence day of that country which played such a pivotal role in the 2000 Presidential election - Chad.

And it is the 2484th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae.

Posted by david at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

As She Looks Out Her Window

Welcome to another UK Orthoblog, Elizabeth's The Garden Window.

Elizabeth has commented frequently here. Now I will must return the favour!

Posted by david at 02:32 PM | Comments (1)

August 09, 2004

Thing I've Learned as a Wikipedian

Do you remember the functions of all the buttons on the Mach Five in Speed Racer?

Laura Ingalls met and married Almanzo Wilder after her family settled in De Smet, South Dakota.

Kim Sun-Il, who was beheaded by Jama'at al-Tawhid wa'l Jihad in Iraq, was hoping to become a Christian missionary in the Middle East. May his memory be eternal.

John Newton was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1982, 13 years before Charles Wesley and 21 years before Amy Grant.

One of my favourite dishes, the doner kebab, was invented in Germany.

Enoch Powell turned from atheism to Anglicanism, but believed that Jesus had been hanged rather than crucified.

Taco Bell was founded by a man named Glen Bell, hence the name. The first run for the border was in 1962 in Downey, California.

Posted by david at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)

August 04, 2004

The Pooh

Aidie got a new Winnie-the-Pooh video a couple of days ago. This made me think...

Why is he called "Winnie-the-Pooh" or "Pooh", but never "Winnie"? Does this not strike you as a bit strange? I can't think of anyone else who has ever been known like that.

After all, a lot of people have been known "the" something or other.
No one refers to William the Conqueror as just "Conqueror". I don't think anyone ever called Attila "Hun" - except maybe his wife.

You can't really argue that it's because he's a fictional character. I've never heard Bob just called "Builder" or Thomas just "Tank Engine". What makes Pooh so special?

And what is a "Pooh" anyway? It may be strange, but generally appellations that include "the" seem to always mean there are others outside the immediate context. If he is "the Pooh" this implies that there are other Poohs. After all Uriah wasn't the only Hittite, nor Eric the only redhead, nor even Jack the only ripper.

Clearly I have too much time to think during the summer holidays.

Posted by david at 02:13 AM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2004

Mopping Up

Thanks to a minor spillage on the laptop keyboard by a user other that myself, all of the keys have been knocked out of commission except the "1", "a", and "q". (I am using an external USB keyboard to write this.) It is not clear what other damage may have been done.

This means that the machine will have to go into the shop. I'm not sure when it will go in or come out. Neither do I know if it will hold up in the meantime.

I'm just posting this message to explain any hiatus you may notice.

Comment are currently closed because I got bombed in a major way last night. In the future, I will be closing comments after entries leave the home page to reduce the opportunities for these detestable people post links to even more detestable sites. I am in the process of closing the rest of the comments, which has to be done manually for each entry. With nearly 500 entries, this may take a little while - especially if I don't have a computer.

Posted by david at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2004

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Edmonton

While I was looking at Wikipedia for something else, I found out on the home page that today is the anniversary of the flight of the Gimli Glider, the only funny story I've read about an air disaster, or at least near disaster.

I just thought I'd drop the link in for your reading enjoyment.

Posted by david at 07:47 PM | Comments (2)

July 22, 2004

Of the Buying of Books

I have finally started utilising my Books page on the website. I am including links for books you find in my "Off the Bookshelf" section of the column opposite. I offer links to both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

This really isn't a money-making enterprise. I just figured I might as well use the long-standing affliliate accounts I've had with the book (and everything else) distribution giant, just in case someone sees something they like.

Posted by david at 01:41 AM | Comments (1)

July 01, 2004

Another Invasion

The spammers have struck again. About 80 times today. Comments shut off again. This is unbelievably frustrating.

Posted by david at 01:54 AM | Comments (0)

June 30, 2004

Okay, Let's Try Again

Commenting back on for the moment.

Posted by david at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2004

On Again, Off Again

Yet another 100-comment spam yesterday caused me to shut down commenting again while I cleaned it out. I'm thnking of switching from Movable Type back to Blogger to see if I can eleviate the situation.

Posted by david at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2004

Commenting On For Now

I know it's a risk, but I'm turning the commenting back on since I'm pulishing a few things here and there.

Posted by david at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2004

Down Time

It looks like I will have very little time to write even the shortest blog entries for the next week or two. This is the crunch time for everything I've been doing since September.

Hopefully I'll have time to come up for air to say something significant about Abby's baptism next Saturday.

Because I also don't have time to clean out 100-entry spam bombs, I'm leaving comments closed right now.

Don't have too much fun while I'm gone!

Posted by david at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2004

Cleaned Out

Commenting will be open again after I next post anything of substance. I finally manually deleted all of the advertising spam. I wish i could get MT Blacklist working again!

Posted by david at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2004

Commenting Suspended Again

Having just been bombed with over 100 spam comments, it will take a while to get them cleaned up. I hope to be up and running with comments again ASAP.

Posted by david at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)

June 04, 2004

Experiment

I'm going to try to briefly unblock comments and see if I get any legitimate ones before the spambots overwhelm me.

Posted by david at 12:32 AM | Comments (8)

May 30, 2004

Just a Reminder

Since this notice has dropped off the first page, for those who might be newcomers or interlopers, please note that the commenting feature for this blog has been turned off. This is nothing personal. I would love to have your comments. Unfortunately, spam adverts outnumber real comments by about 20 to 1 and it takes ages to dig them all out. My anti-spam software has been non-functioning since my webhost "improved" my service.

Posted by david at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2004

It's Not Your Fault

I'm just bumping up the message that I have had to shut off commenting for the time being do to a software fault that prevents me from blocking all of the porn and enlargement advertising.

Feel free to email comments about anything.

I am working to resolved this ASAP, but we have a lot going on at the moment.

Posted by david at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2004

Browserism

I've blogged about this some time in the past, but I can't remember when. I have noticed over the last few weeks that I had difficulty getting blogspot blogs to load. They just come up as a bunch of gibberish. Usually when I reload the page, it comes out okay, but tonight this technique ceased to work.

Then the light came on and I tried them in Internet Explorer. They all loaded perfectly. Surprise, surprise. Seems that Blogger has become even more optimised for IE. I do not like IE. I only ever use it because I can only access all of the editing functions in Movable Type with it, so I have to write this blog in it. I use Netscape for everything else.

Mozilla browsers (such as Netscape) are so much better -- so much more functional. Just the tabbed browsing functionality makes it worth switching.

Anyhow, I think this favouritism toward IE amounts to browserism. There was sexism, racism, and ageism - now there is browerism. I could even suggest that Blogger is inciting me to browser hatred - something that may need to be criminalised.

Posted by david at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2004

Second-hand Humour

Some of you may have already seen this, because there has been some media coverage in the States. This is the funniest thing I have seen in a long, long time.

If you haven't seen the listing for the ebayweddingdressguy, you must read it to believe it. Apparently he will have his own website up soon.

Posted by david at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2004

The Silence is Deafening

I still haven't come up with a solution to the commenting problem.

I have tried everything I know.

I know I don't get a lot of comments, but I love the ones I do get and I miss them.

Posted by david at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2004

My Continuing Apologies

As some of have not seen my previous entry about this, please note that your inability to comment has nothing to do with you. You have not be blocked personally. I have had to turn off commenting because there continues to be a problem with MT Blacklist and without it I get many spam porn comments every day.

I have been seeking to get my entire website back to the condition in which it was running prior to a server change by my webhost, but have thus far been unsuccessful.

Posted by david at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2004

Up and Almost Running

Well, I have the blogging back, but my MT Blacklist is not working. I have been gotten lots of spam porn ads in comments and have to delete them one at a time. Until I can get this situation rectified and get Blacklist up and running again, I have to turn off comments.

I hope to have comments open again very soon.

Posted by david at 01:46 AM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2004

This is Only a Test

I'm just testing to see if my blog is working correctly.

It worked.

Posted by david at 11:15 PM | Comments (1)

April 04, 2004

Trouble with Comment Spam

My web host has made some changes which are keeping me from rebuilding my site when I delete spam comments. If anything particularly rude is found, please accept my apologies until it can be eradicated.

Posted by david at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2004

Spammer Be Gone!

Thanks to Katherine I have now installed MT Blacklist. Seems to have set up properly. Now we will see if the purveyors of all things obscene will be kept at bay.

Posted by david at 11:55 AM | Comments (1)

March 17, 2004

Is It Worth It? or, Return of the Spammers

No sooner did I fix the error to the commenting feature that I had created, allowing you good people to make interesting, helpful, and insightful comments, than I am innudanted with spam comments scattered throught the blog. They attempt to bury the spam deep in the blog, creating links by thinking that no one will notice. Then when I get Googlebotted, as I do daily, they increase in page rank.

Just in the last six hours or so, I got seven spam comments. Since I re-opened commenting I have had at least twice that many. Fortunately I can see all the recent comments with their porn links reagrdless of where they have been hidden in the blog. It just means I have to rebuild the site several times a day to get rid of them!

Normally I would ask myself what sort of scum would try to hijack someone else's website for their own end. When even the URLs have unmentionable content, not to mention the sites to which they link (I can easily assume), it is easy to tell what sort of scum they are.

However, to keep your speech free on my site, I will continue to fight them.

Does anyone else have this problem?

Posted by david at 03:17 PM | Comments (2)

March 16, 2004

Commenting Error Fixed!

I just received an email from someone who couldn't post comments. I wondered why there hadn't been any lately. It appears that when I attempted to ban a spammer, I accidentally banned everyone by leaving the banned IP address blank.

Please feel free to go back and comment on any previous posts. I do like to know what you think!

Posted by david at 02:46 PM | Comments (1)

March 14, 2004

Happy Anniverary

Yesterday I forgot that it was the first anniversary of my life in blogdom.

Posted by david at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2004

Googlewhacked

I have just been informed by a reader that I am a Googlewhack. If you Google "j*rkin*ss plac*ntas" replacing the asterisks with the letter "e" (I've done this to preserve the whack when Google indexes this entry) you will see that my archive page for July is the only listing. That's because I mentioned the former term on the 15th and the latter on the 14th.

Googlewhacking is the practice of entering a search of two words normally found in the dictionary which bring up only one result.

Posted by david at 01:26 AM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2004

Linking Up

It is easy to get into a reading rut and just visit the same blogs. It had been a while since I linked out from my regular reading to their regular reading. I'm still reading the same blogs -- I've just added to them.

I think it all started with an link in Paradosis. James of the Northwest referred to something over on Confessio, where I discovered I was linked (albeit to my old URL, but it forwards here just fine). Then I was reading my old friend Josh Coolman's Grand Unified Mystery and clicked on the link to Decimation & Reconstruction and saw that Kevil Basil Fritts had linked to me as well. Then, while on my usually at-least-daily visit to St Stephen's Musings I clicked on his link to Jan Bear, more than anything because I'd not noticed it before, and I discovered that I am on her A World of Speculation. Jan also writes for the Orthodox take on the Onion, namely the Onion Dome.

As is my custom, I have added reciprocal links in the right column of this page (which may appear at the bottom of the page, depending on your browser and monitor configuration). This is for my benefit as well as yours, as I tend to use my links as blog bookmarks.

Posted by david at 03:02 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2004

Link Update

Thanks to a comment made to yesterday's post, I have now linked to another Ortho-blogger, Laura's Front Porch.

Posted by david at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2004

Happy New Year

I'd like to wish all of my readers a Happy New Year! May you experience God's blessings in the coming months.

Posted by david at 03:30 AM | Comments (2)

December 30, 2003

Taking Time for a Little Admin

I have made some changes to my list of "Blogs I Visit Regularly". Some of them had not been visited very regularly at all. Others were blogs where I had initiated an intended reciprocal link, but after 6 to 9 months I kind of get the hint. (I don't just do reciprocal links, in case you are wondering.)

I have added a few new blogs, most of which have started since I last updated the links. These include some old friends from Indy, Seraphim Sighs & Wonders and The Grand Unified Mystery. I have also added catachumen Jonathan David's Philalethia.

Posted by david at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)