(Ir)religiosity

You may or may not be aware that my site was down most of the day yesterday.  Steve Knight first gave me the heads up and I made some quick changes on the way out the door to the grocery store that I thought would solve the problem.  And they did — temporarily.

When I got home all I got was the white screen of death.  No pages.  No posts.  No WordPress dashboard.  Nothing.  So I did what I usually do.  I started stripping things away.  Themes, plugins, etc.  That didn’t work either.  I did some Googling around.  Some people had the same problem and were able to fix it pretty easily by tweaking some memory limits.  That didn’t work.  I tweeted about it and go some good suggestions (thanks Gideon) and some not so good.  None of them really worked.

I wiped WordPress off my server I don’t know how many times and uploaded fresh installs.  Nothing.  I started to panic.  And for most of the night (and some of this morning) I thought I might lose all my posts and comments.

It turns out my sql database was somehow corrupted.  So corrupted that I couldn’t use my main backup and had to export and import reach table manually.  I’m still not done.  A lot of meta-data still needs to be dealt with and I know that some links are dead.

But the good news is I didn’t lose anything.  If you stopped by here yesterday and got nothing but a white screen I apologize.  Hopefully over the next few days I can get thinks back up to normal.

So much for starting off the week with a Moltmann post.  Those will come soon.  I promise.

I agree with N.T. Wright:

“It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean an unjust things behind a pseudonym – well if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin. But the cyberspace equivalents of road rage don’t happen by accident. People who type vicious, angry, slanderous and inaccurate accusations do so because they feel their worldview to be under attack.” (ht)

I couldn’t agree more.  Blogging is at the same time both great and dangerous.  It brings out the best and the worst in us.  I am grateful for the many friends that I have made through this platform but I get really put out with the slander and hateful words that are put forth under the auspices of speaking the truth or defending the faith, or whatever else.  As Christians we have a great opportunity to have rich and robust conversation and to model what charitable dialogue and respectful disagreement might look like.  At our best we do that well, but sometimes we blow it.

I’m here because I want to do that well.  I blow it sometimes too, but I hope to create space for kind discussion and participate generous conversation with others.

The last sentence of the above quote is spot on I think.  People tend to really lash out when they perceive their particular worldview to be under attack (which is all the more interesting when you consider that Christianity does not offer a single worldview).  And the detached, abstract nature of commenting on blog without the dynamics of a face to face encounter are enough to make some people brave enough to type something they otherwise probably wouldn’t say directly to another’s face.

Maybe that’s a good way of approaching it — in the same way you would a face to face conversation.  Either way, I think there is always room for improvement.  We’ve got to be better at treating one another like children of God in our blogging and especially in our commenting.

Inspired by some others, I decieded to revamp my “About” page last night.  It was pretty generic and didn’t really give much insight into my rationale for blogging (partly, because I’m still figuring that out.)  And that got me to thinking about the direction and purpose of this blog.

When I started this thing a year and a half ago it was just an experiment, an outlet for my thoughts, and a repository for, well…whatever.  It will still function in that manner.  I enjoy my work and I enjoy seminary, but I have to have some sort of creative outlet.

So my blog will continue to be that outlet, but hopefully it will be a bit more focused.  Check out the about page to see what I’m talking about and let me know what you think (the comment for pages are closed so you can comment here).

We’ll see how this works out.  See if I can do the whole “focused” thing. (Says to self, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”)

I’m loving Google more and more everday.  I use Gmail, GoogleReader, GoogleDocs…I could go on.  This past week they added a new blog feature called FriendConnect, a web2.0-type outlet that can network all your blog readers/followers together to create a sort of meta-community.  Pretty cool.  Other bloggers have been adding this feature, and I’ve been working on mine over the last day or so.  I’m now ready to launch.

You will notice over in the second sidebar I’ve added a couple of FriendConnect gadgets where you can join the BlakeHuggins.com community and participate in the conversation.  Also, now when you click a post permalink to comment you will have the opportunity to rate the post and, if you want, post a FriendConnect comment.

So, come one, come all and join the FriendConnect community!  It’s super easy.  You can sign in with your Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID account(s).

And, if you’re interested, you can follow me in other places.  Just take a look at the LifeStreaming widget in the sidebar!

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I’m planning to run a live blog on election night beginning at 7:00 PM EST.  I wanted to let everyone know in advance because the last few times people have had problems joining after it has started.  I can take 10 names and add them to the list before we actually go live.  That will secure you a spot.  So if you can’t be there at 7, or just want to make sure you’re in, leave a comment with your email address and I will add you to the list.

John McCain will have to manhandle Barack Obama — or in his own words “whip his you-know-what” — if he wants to stand a chance of winning the election.  I’m not sure what the chances of that are, but they’re not good that’s for sure.

Check back here for live updates at 9:00 PM EST.

Come one, come all, and join the awesomeness that is running debate commentary!

FYI, C-SPAN will have some really cool video features– like a timeline that makes it easy to find specific answers to questions and the ability to splice together video–once the debate gets going.

This was a lot of fun last week and I was fortunate enough to have several people participate in the commentary.  So — I thought we could have at it again.  There should definitely be more to talk this time around.

Check back here for live updates beginning at 9 PM EST.

As long as my notebook continues to hold up, I’m planning to liveblog the presidential debate starting in about an hour (9PM EST). Check back here for live updates. [Ht. to Matt Scott for the cool Cover it Live platform]

I just removed the Daily Kos from my feeder reader.  And at the moment I’m close to doing the same with some other political blogs, namely Street Prophets and Andrew Sullivan.

Why?  It’s simple: I’m sick of the polemics and the personal attacks.  They’re just not helpful.  It is blogging at it’s absolute worst.

I’ll be as clear as possible — I profoundly disagree with Sarah Palin’s politics, I think she was a horrible choice for McCain’s VP and as a result, he may have already lost the election.  I understand the move, to woo Clinton supporters who are understandably upset about the still very much intact glass ceiling.  I wasn’t planning on voting for McCain in the first place, but now I have all the more reason not to do so. Read the rest of this entry »