Well, let's forget the calling birds. Today, we have the third blog of Christmas: Kevin's emergentpdx. It has gone through more names than I can probably recall now, but I've been following his blog in some iteration since the summer of 2002. Kevin's blog was the second blog I started reading and the first to really get me connected to the blogosphere (I followed his links to the Cranium Leakage gang, starting with WIT, especially). I've known Kevin a bit longer; I first “met” him on the customer forums of our mutual old web host back in the summer of 2001 — he actually had to put up with me as a customer for awhile, when he took a position at that company and was often the tech that answered my questions and complaints.

At any rate, Kevin has a tendency to make me think. He's usually one step ahead of me on whatever path I might be heading down (such as the conversion to seeing the light amidst the darkness and chaos). Usually, I've found I disagree with him, try to formulate an argument and sooner or later defeat myself and end up agreeing with him. But, contrary to what some people tell me, I'm don't think I'm going to be making my own RomeComing just now. Thanks, Kevin for the always thought provoking posts.

Hmm… so who will be the Fifth Blog of Christmas?

PS: To my first two Blogs of Christmas, I'm sorry your posts were a bit shorter, on the third time I actually remembered to start early enough that I could still write coherently half-intelligible ramblings.

I haven't even had a chance to read the comments on the last entry yet (nor fix some new bugs in SAFARI), but I didn't want to miss the next Blog of Christmas.

We started out with Michael, and now we move to the co-creator of the Cranium Leakage family of sites to which Michael's site is a member: Christopher and What in Tarnation. Christopher is one of two bloggers that really helped me get started in the blogosphere. He always has amusing stories from his adventures as a third grade teacher, among other interesting things. Plus, as of a few days ago, he added a theme to his site that features the beloved logo of yesteryear that I've so often bugged him about. Christopher is the second of three blogging friends from Missouri among my stroll through the blogroll (the first, chronologically). Check out his site — it'll make you say “inside cheke and cimble” in five seconds flat. Thanks for sharing your stories, Christopher.

Sometimes I wish blogging was a bit more like a forum. There's a few posts I might write if I could post them under a pseudonym or anonymously that I won't or can't post under my real name (yes, in case anyone ever suspected otherwise, I really am Tim Butler). I could start up a second blog, but that wouldn't have the same readers and blogging isn't anything, in my estimation, without the community of other bloggers and readers that comment.

When I use to be on some forums, on occasion I would create an alter ego to ask questions I couldn't have tied to my name. (For instance, I use to post on several web hosting forums and when I went to shop for a new web host, I didn't want my old one to know that I was asking about other hosts.)

For now, I'm stockpiling these entries in case I get a good idea what to do with them. Hmm.

It occurs to me that the last week was probably the biggest gap in my blog that has existed in over a year. I'll be back to full speed soon. I have something new to post about tomorrow.

Thanks again to all of you for your prayers and support with regard to my grandmother's passing.

I mentioned Christopher's blog-in-exile (BiE) yesterday; another one of my blogging buddies from Cranium Leakage, Michael Morgan, has also started a BiE, which you can find here. Tell 'im Tim sent ya, so I get my referral fees.

Psssst: Christopher, you said you were paying me $20 per person referred, right?

It seems the Cranium Leakage gang is having a bit of trouble at the moment. I talked to Christopher, and he pointed me to a Spare Change entry he posted, which links to his blog in exile, What the Freak. I'm hoping this gets resolved quickly for them.

I'm pondering if I should dip my toes in the Podcasting waters. Tonight I worked up an entire 20 minute podcast and put it all together in GarageBand — including music — in about an hour. It was rather fun. But I'm not sure if I can commit to regularly taking out the time to do a podcast; unlike a text entry like this, podcasting requires a larger block of uninterrupted time (even if it might not require more time as a whole). When I'm writing a blog entry, I might be interrupted every few minutes, but if I'm recording myself, I cannot be interrupted as easily.

For that matter, I've listened to a few podcasts, and beyond the enjoyment I've gotten at putting voices to the words of the bloggers who are podcasting, I have not found myself becoming a regular listener. It is not a matter of whether the podcast was good, but I've found I simply do not have a lot of periods of time in which listening to a podcast is convenient (unlike text blogging).

Those two reasons make me think perhaps I won't publish my first (and perhaps only) stab at podcasting.

I wrote up a nice post tonight, but I did not get it quite done, so I guess you'll just have to wait until tomorrow for it. Sorry. I'm refunding a portion of your monthly subscription fees in exchange.

Perhaps it was the fact that, despite forgetting to write about it, my blog turned two on March 4. Maybe it was something else. But, I spent a little while tonight browsing the Internet Archive's WayBackMachine looking at some of my favorite blogs back when I first discovered them. In particular, I was looking at the two blogs I've been reading the longest that still exist: Sakamuyo and What in Tarnation!?!?!?.

It was interesting to look back into what Kevin and Christopher were saying in 2002. It was interesting to see what the respective sites looked like at the time. Sakamuyo was still in its green theme with Kevin talking about his new hard disk on which he was going to install two or three GNU/Linux distributions (Kevin has since betrayed the PC world and switched to Mac). On the other hand, I took a look at WIT as of November 2002, when I first started reading it, and Christopher was answering a Friday Five about thanksgiving (incidentally, that post was the first one I commented on at his site).

That's definitely one of the great things about WayBackMachine — it's really neat to get a snapshot of the way things were a few years back. Maybe reminiscing about web sites is a geeky thing to do, but when you've come to think of the people behind the sites as friends, maybe its not. It is sort of like a blending together of a photo album and old news paper clippings. Or something like that. A nice thing to do on a Saturday afternoon when nothing else terribly urgent had to be done.

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This message is for two requests. As I announced a few months ago, FaithTree.com now allows users to place their favorite blogs on their customizable front page, just like you can local and national news, tech news, Bible quotes, local weather etc. You can find the few that I put up right here. I didn't add all of my blogroll, although I am planning to.

1. My first request is to hear from you about some of your favorite blogs that you think might make a good addition to FaithTree.com's listings. Maybe picking your top favorites would be best, but if you can't decide, that's alright. Just let me know what you like.
2. The other request is that, if you like the idea of seeing a customizable Christian home page that can take blogs as feeds, that you might consider mentioning this post on your own blog so that I can gather a good selection of blogs for this project.

The only real catch is that the blog must be Christian and agree with Christian Scripture as interpreted by historic Christian belief (the Apostle's Creed and Nicene Creed are a good base for this judgement). Essentially, anything that would go on Blogs4God can go on FaithTree.com's blog selection. This may change in the future (perhaps some secular blogs will be allowed), but for now that's the safest way to insure that the blogs meet our guidelines for content.

Once a blog is listed, it will be given a unique ID. If the blog owner wants to make it easy for people to add the blog to their FaithTree.com home page, they can follow some simple instructions on how to do so. This all works much like it did on the old “My Netscape” that existed in the days when Netscape was still a force to be reckoned with. If you are interested, please indicate so and I'll post about that.

Thanks for your help with this project!

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