Just incase - Registration

I have learnt from the didactic days that spambots love blogs (or anywhere they can post their crappy emails and links into), BUT I like to try and leave things open for genuine passers by So if you want your registration to be approved please comment on this post and evade the spam filter.... Or use the link within the "Contact Me" page to drop a line and I'll take care of it - At least the AKISMET filter marks down most of the spam from my experience, I need to see if it can be applied to User registration also and so have also made default login type revert to BANNED, we will see what that does and maybe it will reduce the incidence of passing spambots too?

Christ On A Bike - the blog is dead, long live the blog.

Well, I am making this post to the blog using PHPMyAdmin, which is far from ideal - some while back I discovered my login stopped working and then more recently the database got borked by hosting updates....

Anyway, then I find Chyrp WAS dead in the water, but hopefully it might show signs of a revival or I may get to spend enough time to just fix the problem here. Meanwhile I have had a birthday and my best beloved brought me a domain, which you can see over here....

Though we shall have to see how it goes with making use of it.... This has ended up being a slightly geeky entry, but I wanted to post something to explain why it is possible the blog seems to have "ended" when in fact I am simply disempowered from updating due to borked software.

Life is seeming a bit muddled lately, though happily there was time for me to read "A Pregnant Widow" over Christmas and finish a number of other books I had left unfinished from reading group. Hard to describe "A Pregnant Widow" to anyone who is not familiar with Martin Amis and his work. I would hesitate to suggest it is, quite simply, a return to "The Rachael Papers" from an adult perspective... With a little bit of "London Fields" thrown in...

Anyway, if you have a taste for Amis's writing then you'll find it a "hoot" and if not then I rather doubt it is an introduction that would leave you feeling like reading another of his works.

On the cycling front, watch this space (or eclectic.me depending on whether I ever fix the blog here!) for developments with Daisy, who may be retired a lot sooner than we expected, or maybe upgraded with a Rohloff hub... at this stage the jury is out although I should dearly love to find an outlet retaining tandems that could allow a thorough set of trial runs on various configurations. More likely there would need to be a special holiday with the express purpose of buying a tandem at the end of it.... Exciting as it may be that totally changes the amount it is going to cost and therefore means likely another year to "rub along" with Daisy....

Coming Soon

I know it has been a while without a post.  I have not been entirely idle so far as blogging goes though, I have taken a copy of my blog and upgraded it to Chyrp RC3.  However there are a few things I still need to get fixed and working (like all the old post tags).  I am persevering with that and I expect I shall get some support from the Chyrp community and overcome eventually.  You will be sure to notice just as soon as I do, because then I shall move my changes over here to “go live” and the blog will be all shiny newness.

One of the things I am hoping to change is to allow anonymous comments from guests (I was getting too many spam comments this way before).  There should also be a blog search function.  And generally a new look all round - I’ll probably review the sidebar too (though I intend to keep my blogroll and the books I am reading).

At the same time as reviewing the technology I use I have also been mulling over that the blog does not have a coherent focus and wondering if I should reconsider that.  One possibility would be to make this blog very specifically for my writing and about writers concerns and issues.  Another possibility would be to spin that off to a separateblog and keep this one somewhat “personal”.  I am aware from the blogs that I choose to read myself (see blogroll) that any “personal” blogs tend to make for the most awfully boring reading though.  And I confess that, now I have been blogging for perhaps three months, I have developed an appetite for growing my audience and getting more lively comments…. Any suggestions as to specialisations or blog “causes” most welcome!

A little light religion

Yes, maybe that is a touch tautological, maybe antonymic (bit of a contradiction in terms) but then that depends on where you are coming from spiritually.  For many faiths light and religion go hand in glove anyway.  In any case, it's Sunday and I'd like to try to lift my head above the domestic disharmony that overshadowed the weekend (nothing serious, just seven year old tantrums and stuff) so for better or worse here is my stab at a post aimed in a vaguely spiritual direction.

A little while ago I "dugg" this article which I somehow googled towards (Disclaimer; that is not my newspaper of choice, and I have no recollection how I chanced on the article).  It prompted me to muse a little on human nature and how Religion and society interact.  I'm participating in a series of Sunday sessions entitled "twelve [[Quakers]] and..." which tonight is dealing with "... and God". No doubt that played a part in my looking into the article.  Quakers often have issues with the big G in God and the big R in Religion.  Although Wikipedia defines Quakerism as fundamentally a Christian faith there's actually a bit of a schism over that, with the [[Universalist Quaker Fellowship]] at one end of the spectrum and "evangelical" Quakers at the other.  I'll confess I once made a wiki edit to remove Quakers from the Christian category of religions, but it did not even last 12 hours!  Guess that tells you which end of the spectrum I am at (either that or I'm a bit of an anarchist)!.

Coming back to the article, it seems [[Dorothy Rowe]] has quite a back catalogue of self-help psychology publications, but this is surely a piggie back on the [[Richard Dawkins]] book.  I was most provoked by her assertion that "No religion accepts us as the person we know ourselves to be" because I cannot think of anything that jars more with my Quaker faith!  Of course there does remain the question of how far I "know myself", but setting that to one side I do feel accepted as I am within the Religious Society of Friends.  It is interesting how something has to be provocative to get the thought process going.

I know what she is referring to and I can recognise it in many faiths, particularly fundamentalist ones, but to me this is almost the antithesis of religion.  At the very least it surely shows sloppy thinking on her part?  I do enjoy examining religion from a polytheist or atheist point of view though.  I find it more spiritual and thought provoking than any belief in certainties.

When I tell people I am a Quaker I have to prepare myself for questions like "are you a Christian?" and "what do you believe in?" and "Do you believe in God?" and my responses have evolved and are always changing.  I've never really tried a silent response, the Quaker silence can freak some people out and in this context would be misconstrued.  Early on I might proffer a few Fox quotes like we believe "in that of God in everyone".  I have cited the example of a Quaker who got into a heated parking space dispute before Meeting and when asked - "But how can you fight with me over this space, you're a Quaker?" replied with - "Yes!  That's WHY I'm a Quaker!".  I have tried talking about the sharing of common values (like peace, simplicity, community, discernment, charity).  I have been prepared not to snigger or take offense when people think I am [[Amish]] or that I can be polygamous (both have occured!).  People become confused by our lack of sacraments, it seems they need a certain amount of "smoke and mirrors" before they can regard something as "religious".  I think Quakers hold the totallity of life as their sacrament, and since that makes religion somewhat all-pervasive it becomes hard for others to recognise.  I guess it makes Quakers particularly sensitive to Ellas position rather than Siegfrieds?  But the majority of Quakers are very much empowered and driven to aspire to change things in this life, so I think the comparison with Ella ends there.

I am now considering remembering this quote and citing it as the antithesis of what Quakerism means to me.  Perhaps the approach of telling people what Quakers are NOT, whilst exhausting, might be more productive in the long term than trying to sum up what we ARE?  I already see a pitfall though, because the mis-conception that I find the most irritating about Quakers is the commonly held belief that we are "wishy washy" or somehow will not commit or be pinned down on what we do believe.  This misconception is even harder to correct because, believe it or not, Quakers are highly mistrustful of words when it comes to spiritual matters.  If you look into Quaker history you'll soon see they are people of action not afraid to commit and usually highly principled (EG if called to "take an [[oath]]" in court Quakers would refuse, [[George Fox]] having set a Quaker precedent).

This has probably been one of my longer posts.  I hope it did not seem like a sermon!

I have not adopted one of those blogging "code of ethics"; so I'll say here that any comment other than spam will be allowed to stand.  You can even say "God's a s**t", but that will not be very original in this context!.

You will sometimes find me indulging in a little light word play (as when I began this post).  That is part of the reason I added Wordie to the sidebar.  Similarly the Digg flash widget is partly there so that I can "Digg" things I want to flag as possible future post material.  I would appreciate feedback if anyone finds the site becoming too cluttered - already I think I have reached the limit and possibly exceeded it.  My thinking on that subject is that since many of the extras are there to be handy for me as much as any reader I may have two different sidebars and only load the "bloated" one when someone is logged in - that way first time visitors and casual readers will not be troubled by my twittering or "Digging" etc.  Those that want the extras can log in to get them.

Right - well that will give me some coding to play around with tonight, after me and my Friends have discussed our views on God!  Incidentally God is big enough that we do him for two months in a row!

By the way (if any readers are left!) I'm also aiming to upgrade my Chyrp! Blog software to v2rc2 this week - I'll try to put up a "back soon" page while the work is in progress... But I know I don't have THAT many readers just yet!