BlogRodent: Pentecostal Rumination & Review

If you're like me, you want to know whether anyone's eating the meat you grind out from the butcher shop of ideas called your blog. Sure, there's some measure of pride and ego involved: as your stats move ever upward your sense of confidence inflates proportionately. So does your sense of importance and pride. We all want at least a little touch of fame.

Problem is, unless you get a lot of comments on your blog, it's difficult to know how many subscribers you have reading your feed, or which posts are getting the most attention, or whether your visitors are first-timers who never return, or old die hards who just can't get enough of your tasty cuts. Yes, traffic analysis is more than just pretty charts, it's a window into

I've blogged on tragedy before:

But since the massacre at Virginia Tech, I've been at a loss for words. I've wanted to try to research this to put it into perspective for myself and perhaps my readers — as if anyone could. But it's still too grisly and horrifying. I

Michele, blogging at Reformed Chicks Blabbing and Life Under the Sun has taken over where the former "Christian Bloggers blogroll" (defunct since October, 2006) has left off. Her mission: Get every orthodox Christian blogger linked up. It's an ambitious task. I'm here to help.

While not as selective nor exclusive as my own PneumaBlogs list, Michele does have requirements. If you want to join the Christian Blogosphere BlogRoll, visit her site.

Click here to view the blogroll right here right now. Then bookmark!

In case you haven't noticed, over the past several days I've been trying to bring my "Pneuma" pages up-to-snuff within the new design and to make them all a bit more usable.

Just now I've added a third page to my collection: PneumaSearch. Yes, that's right, I've gone crazy with the whole "Pneuma" prefix, just like I've irrationally appended "Rodent" to everything else. I guess, in the tradition of Web 2.0 mash-ups, I'm the PneumaRodent. But that may be carrying things too far. (Talk to my editor about it.)

Anyhow here's what's new:

I've finally gotten around to evaluating everybody who's been asking for consideration, and it shows. My paltry list of 70-80 PneumaBloggers has shot up to 130+. That number could change daily, or weekly.

Also, previously, I've used the built-in "BlogRoll" or "Links Manager" function of WordPress to manage my ever-growing

Here are some tips I've learned from nearly two years of blogging and consistently raising my site's traffic from month to month, often doubling it from previous months. Compared to some, I'm a rank newbie and have no business offering you any sort of pseudo-sage advice, but whatever I have to say below has already been said by others smarter than me. Most of it is hard-won insight that has worked for somebody somewhere, sometimes even me.

As I mentioned previously, my workhorse laptop was stolen late December, 2006. Since then I've been using a much older laptop circa 1988. Okay, it's not that old, but it's a Pentium 4 with only 500 MB of RAM ... and it turns out, my Firefox browser occasionally likes to suck up about 3-400 MB of that RAM in one sitting.

Of course, that might have something to do with all 47 of my favorite extensions ("My Firefox on crack: the best extensions I could find").

Every time I install Firefox on a new machine, I wind up tweaking its registry settings to improve its page-load time and network connections to give me a better browsing experience. This time I needed to do the same thing, but also minimize some of the RAM I'm using. While doing the research for my tweaks, I thought I'd share my results with you in case you're interested and brave enough to muddle around in the Firefox about:config settings. Also, I wanted to save my notes on my blog so I won't have to trawl the Net again the next time 'round.

In a completely non-churchy, frivolous post, I had to share this with you. My head is reeling with the story, and I'm amused that a piece of "creative" fiction I wrote doesn't seem as far-fetched as I once thought.

First, the news item, via the BBC.

Last Thursday, a pack of hungry, killer squirrels (yes, that's right — squirrels) descended from from on high to terminate with extreme prejudice a stray dog. The stray was, admittedly, annoying the hungry squirrels: loitering around their tree, barking at them with short-lived temerity. When the black squirrels finally had enough, they swarmed down the tree like ninja rodents, attacked the dog and literally eviscerated him.

When some human-folk came to investigate, they scampered off ... some of them still clamping dog-meat in their jowls. Read about it here:

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

Found yesterday on the AG-NEWS announcement list:

I took the poll.

I listen to a lot of sermons and other spoken word content on my PocketPC. I load it up each week with chocolaty goodness and fill my mind while commuting the two hours I spend driving each day.

Here's to hoping the A/G decides to promote podcasting by the local church. Though, not every church needs to (or should) podcast, it would be good to get some of our better preachers more exposure.

Meanwhile, check out my good friend John Abela's online audio initiative for A/G preachers at:

These are a few of the things I've recently found of interest, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

Just a very quick note to say that I've updated the PneumaBlogs list in recent days to include some stellar new names, including:

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

I keep seeing these posts where memes get passed around, where one person "tags" another as an inducement to answer a list of questions. One is presumably supposed to answer the questions, post the response, and tag a handful of others.

I had been secretly glad that I'd never been tagged. And I also wondered, just how are you supposed to find out you're on the hook?

Well. Never mind. There I was ego-surfing my blog, checking out the incoming referrers, wondering who's linked to me lately, and there I find that Travis Johnson, fellow PneumaBlogger, has done gone and tagged me with the One Book meme.

An enterprising Ben Fernström, with way too much time on his hands, tracked down the beginnings of the One Book meme, wrote an entertaining narrative, and positioned himself as belonging to the 14th generation of this meme's recipients.

Thus, ultimately, we have Benjamin Myers to blame for this post. I'm the 18th generation of this particular meme, but by a different route (see the note at the end).

:: sigh ::

Well, at least I'm one of the cool kids now!

So, here goes:

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

Is mounting teen violence evidence of the effects of violent video games?
CHRISTIANITY TODAY LIBRARY | RICHARD TATUM | JULY 31, 2006

On Tuesday, March 24, 1998, two cousins, aged 13 and 11, soldiered up. Donning camouflage and armed with handguns and rifles, they hid in the trees near Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, while an accomplice set off the school's fire alarm. The ambush came off with military perfection: firing only 27 shots, the juvenile commandos killed 4 middle-school girls, 1 teacher, and wounded 11 others fleeing the building.

While most planned acts of violence in school are probably foiled, many attempts have been successful in recent years, including several well-publicized events. Beyond the immediate tragedy and bloody aftermath, one troubling aspect of these events is the lack of a profile for children prone to violence. Apparently, children "snap" into violence, and there's simply no predicting the fracture.

But something is clearly causing a "tipping point," driving children to violence in increasing numbers. The catalyst, many say, is violent media — specifically, gory video games that desensitize players to violence, train them in deadly shooting skills, and reward killing without consequences.

Because Amy over at GentleWhisper asked nicely, I hereby share with you my fabulous list of FireFox extensions I could not live without. This is my list of plugins at home ... my work plugins differ a bit.

A couple recommended exceptions that I don't list here and which I haven't gotten around to installing yet are Aardvaark (to modify page layout before printing or copying and pasting) and GreaseMonkey — which allows for select javascript to be run on any page, which makes the options infinitely varied. Oh, and RSSPanel (providing a nice floating menu with links to the sites feed entries and links to the feeds themselves) ... which can actually be done away with once you get the

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

Remember the "pitch his tents" sermon by Blake Bergstrom? No, tell me you haven't forgotten about the youth pastor who insisted that Lot pinched his bosom ... several times--and then nearly passed out from embarassment. Well, then refresh your memory over at "When sermons go awry", first, because the followup here is priceless.

Blake still has a job, fortunately, but his employers aren't above never letting him live it down. Recently, the film crew of Prank 3:16 showed up with several hidden cameras and wired the church offices for sound.

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )