Category Archives: Blogging

Posts about blogging, fellow bloggers, and blog administration

Best Bible poll; British and American Bible differences

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For the first time for a long time I have actually posted something on this blog every day for a week. That was not a deliberate decision so much as an indication that I have not been too busy with other things. Next week may well be busier, but I will try to keep posting at least several times a week.

But today’s post is only a pointer to posts elsewhere, because that is what I have been busy with today: I have posted twice to Better Bibles Blog.

First, I posted about the Amazon.com UnSpun Best English Bible Translation poll. This gives you the chance to vote for which Bible translations you like – and don’t like. Follow the link to cast your vote.

Then I posted something which I had meant to write for some time, on British and American Bible version differences. I have found some differences between American and Anglicised editions, in more than just spelling, apart from the well known one between “rooster” and “cock”. Again, follow the link to read more.

Thinking Blogger award

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Henry Neufeld has given me a Thinking Blogger award. Thinking Blogger award I am apparently one of his “5 Blogs That Make Me Think”. Thank you, Henry!

With this award comes a tag to nominate five more Thinking Bloggers. Well, one of my first candidates would be Henry himself, especially for his recent review of The God Delusion, but he doesn’t qualify because he already has the award. So here are my five nominations:

  1. Jeremy Pierce for Parableman, especially for his long and continuing Theories of Knowledge and Reality series.
  2. Ben Witherington for his often thought-provoking posts.
  3. Eddie Arthur for his fascinating miscellany at Kouya Chronicle.
  4. Suzanne McCarthy for her recently revived Suzanne’s Bookshelf, as well as for her posts (which don’t officially count for this award) at Better Bibles Blog.
  5. Finally, an award to Adrian Warnock, although this is a bit double-edged. I am giving this not so much because he thinks himself, although he does when he is not simply quoting one of his preacher idols, as because by annoying me he makes me think, if only to clarify in my own mind why I disagree with him.

Not banned in China

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One bonus of switching from Blogger, hosted at blogspot.com, to WordPress, hosted on my own site, is that my blog is apparently no longer blocked in China. I discovered this by testing this blog’s URL at greatfirewallofchina.org (which I found from here via a link in the WordPress documentation, but see the cautions in the comments on that blog entry), which gave the result “Your URL is available”, whereas for both my old blog and Better Bibles Blog the result is “Your URL is Blocked!” And I know that they really were blocked, because a friend who was in China couldn’t read them.

Meanwhile my ClustrMaps map shows that I do have at least one reader in China. But then I was getting the same result with my old blog, so maybe that one reader is a censor. Well, I hope he or she finds this blog interesting, but in a positive sense and not one which provokes a ban.

Good advice for controversial writers, like myself

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Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds quotes John Newton, writing in a letter on controversy (The Works of John Newton, 1:273-274):

It seems a laudable service to defend the faith once delivered to the saints; we are commanded to contend earnestly for it, and to convince gainsayers. If ever such defences were seasonable and expedient, they appear to be so in our day, when errors abound on all sides, and every truth of the Gospel is either directly denied, or grossly misrepresented.

And yet we find but very few writers of controversy who have not been manifestly hurt by it. Either they grow in a sense of their own importance, or imbibe an angry contentious spirit, or they insensibly withdraw their attention from those things which are the food and immediate support of the life of faith, and spend their time and strength upon matters which at most are but of a secondary value.

This shews, that, if the service is honourable, it is dangerous. What will it profit a man if he gains his cause and silences his adversary, if at the same time he loses that humble, tender frame of spirit in which the Lord delights, and to which the promise of his presence is made! …

(Justin’s quote continues, see also another post on the same subject.)

Good advice for bloggers and other writers of controversy on the Internet. I can think of others who I think should read these words. But first of all I need them for myself!

Fighting spam with the sword of the Spirit

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To make things harder for spammers, I have replaced the short list of biblical names which I was offering as verification words with a much longer list of 6 and 7 letter biblical names, over 1000 of them from “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17 TNIV). The names are taken from RSV, because I had a handy list; other Bible versions differ.

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New blog takes shape

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As Lingamish rightly pointed out, the design of this blog was lacking something. It was in fact the WordPress default template based on Kubrick. This is a nice clean design, but not very interesting and overused. So I have at last got round to finding something different, an impressive (I hope – I didn’t take it) picture of a large qaya – not the church in the foreground, but the mountain behind it. I also chose a new theme, Ocean Mist 1.2 by Ed Merritt, and edited it to show my chosen picture, and so that the blog name and tagline appear on the picture instead of above it. Lingamish, I hope you now consider this “cool”.

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Welcome to the new "Speaker of Truth"

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Welcome to this new version of my blog “Speaker of Truth”, hosted on my own website and powered by WordPress 2.1. I have imported all of the posts and comments from the old version, hosted and powered by Blogger. The old version of the blog remains accessible but is closed to new comments.

For the moment I am using the default WordPress template, but I intend to change to something more distinctive soon.

Not much to say

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Things have been quiet here for no particular reason – indeed so quiet that Lingamish has been able to catch up with me in the Technorati blog rankings. Should I do something about that? Actually the rankings seem so arbitrary that I don’t think I’ll bother. I have been quiet partly because I have actually being working quite hard for a change, and had a nasty cold last week.

But also I have been quiet because not so many interesting topics have come up recently. For this perhaps I could blame Adrian; as I predicted, his now almost commentless blog is not nearly as interesting as it used to be, and no longer provides me with plenty of material for posts here. But then his first post when he returned was wise advice on not blogging for the sake of it but only when we have something worthwhile to say. So perhaps I should be thanking rather than blaming him.

Well, as I don’t really have anything worthwhile to say now, I will leave it there except to quickly mention two things. I will be away on a business trip from 31st January to 17th February, and so this blog will probably continue to be quiet for that time. I am also planning to move this blog to a subdirectory of my own website, which I am currently moving to a new provider, and this means I will also be moving to the WordPress blogging software. I’m not yet sure when this will happen, maybe not until after my trip, so watch this space for further announcements.

Adrian is back

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As I was blogging about Adrian’s blog being dormant, Adrian must already have been preparing the posts with which his blog woke up again. In part five of his personal story he tells how he learned an important lesson, and one which I have been learning afresh in recent months: what is important for us in God’s sight is not what we do for him, but what we are, his children who worship him. In another post Adrian wonders if we should write less and think more. Indeed it is important that we don’t rush into writing without thinking, not only of the accuracy of what we write but also of whether writing it is helpful for building up the body of Christ.

Smenita is back

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The infamous word “smenita” is back! A few months ago this word was regularly appearing as a word verification word for Blogger comments, and was causing all sorts of problems largely because it was not being recognised. Indeed at least one whole blog, belonging to my friend Lingamish, was devoted to the study of Smenita. But then she seemed to disappear; at least, hardly anyone seems to have blogged about her for months, until one hour ago. Well, at least Crazy Mrs Nancy’s post confirms to me that it is not just me seeing Smenita again.

Smenita’s reappearance has been in the comment forms for both this blog and Better Bibles Blog. She reappeared just after Blogger had been down for several hours; perhaps they had to restore an old version of some software. But Smenita doesn’t seem to be the problem she used to be. In the past when I typed in her name Blogger didn’t recognise it, and gave it to me again for word verification. Now Blogger does recognise “smenita” and accept the comment, and repeats the same word verification.

I wonder how long Smenita will be around this time?