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Saturday Miscellania

It has been a busy weekend…and it’s only Saturday afternoon. Yesterday evening I took my son and one of our young neighbors to a hobby show where an old friend was working. We had fun watching the planes, trains and automobiles on display. We got home late and then spent the morning preparing for my daughter’s birthday party. We’ve just returned from building a craft and celebrating her birthday at a nearby store. Now the kids are playing with new toys, the baby is napping, and I’m catching up on email and blogging.

Early this morning I made some mostly-unnoticeable but important changes to this site. I finally went ahead and upgraded the site’s hosting, so it’s now on a faster and better server. I’ve said goodbye to budget hosting forever, I hope. I also upgraded to the latest version of the Movabletype software that runs this site. It was quite a smooth move, but there are bound to be bugs here and there. So I apologize in advance if you run into any strange problems when using the site.

Fonts and Browsers

I also took the opportunity this morning to change a few of the fonts so that those of you who happen to have Calibri installed will now see that as the primary font (and if not it will default to Georgia–the font it has been for the past few months). If you don’t have that particular font (i.e. if you don’t have Windows Vista or Office 2007) you can download it and a few others by clicking here to get the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. Calibri is Microsoft’s replacement for the somewhat tired Times New Roman font that has been the default Windows font for a long, long time now. It’s a great font.

As I was making a few changes to the site I did some testing in Internet Explorer 6 and have concluded that if you use Internet Explorer 6, it’s time to upgrade to either Firefox or Internet Explorer 7. Both are free and both are worlds better than the older version of the browser. Do yourself a favor and upgrade. You’ll be surprised at how much better things look!

Reformation Day Symposium Winners

Last week’s Reformation Day Symposium was a great success (I thought). When it came right down to it, it was difficult to choose winners. In the end I really chose somewhat randomly as I really didn’t feel there were three posts that stood head and shoulders above the rest. There were plenty of good contributions. Having said that, here are three that I thought merited a bit of recognition. Each of these three people will receive a free print from Reformation Art.

Musings of the Dings – The strategy here worked–brownie points were awarded for including a five-year old in the symposium.

Wiser Time was one of a few people to focus on John Huss. This brief biography of Huss was one of my favorite posts.

Allen Mickle wrote a good post asking and answering “Are Baptists Part of the Protestant Reformation? His brief history of the baptist involvement in the Reformation made a unique contribution.

So congratulations to the three of you. Drop me an email and I’ll get the prizes on their way to you.


  • Weekend A La Carte (November 7)

    The Hutterites’ guide to technology / Searching for jobs, Gen Z feels like it’s staring into ‘the void’ / The gospel according to Peter (Thiel) / Scientism and the allure of control / Can science explain sparkling rivers? / What led to Christianity Today’s crisis?

  • I Regret to Inform You That Heaven Tourism Is Back

    I Regret to Inform You That Heaven Tourism Is Back

    I regret to inform you, dear reader, that heaven tourism is back. The genre possibly never went away entirely, but it did at least disappear from the bestseller lists for several years. Sadly, it has returned in Gabe Poirot’s 18 Days in Heaven.

  • A La Carte (November 6)

    Don’t despise the red flags / Your thoughts are shaping your life / Can’t you just love everyone? / Selfies are not the self: forming embodied youth in a disembodied age / Effective altruists and the spreadsheet gospel / 4 Applications for the order of love—from the home to the ends of the earth /…

  • A La Carte (November 5)

    When you feel guilty about your giving / The missing piece in John Mark Comer’s quiet time / A manifesto for phone-free church / The pull of Rome / 4 Misconceptions about spiritual warfare / Slouching toward Narnia / Kindle deals, and more

  • A Daring Suggestion for Netflix

    A Daring Suggestion for Netflix

    Netflix appears to have fallen on hard times and I have some suggestions that I’d like to think would help it: cut the sex, nudity, and profanity, and gain back the viewers it’s long been alienating.

  • A La Carte (November 4)

    Can I love my enemies while addressing wrongs and protecting myself? / Is missions too costly for kids? / Don’t stock the pantry with temptation / Churches face a shortage of worship leaders / AI brought a mathematician to Ecclesiastes / Discerning between godly and worldly grief / Harvest in fearful times / and more.