War against Islamism discussion

Via LGF, a transcript of what so far is an interesting discussion between Lou Dobbs, Daniel Pipes, and some others about the "war on Islamism" terminology.

DOBBS: As we stated last week, we believe that the "war on terror" expression does little to define the enemy of this country in this battle, And we have asserted the language the "war against radical Islamists" instead. We believe it is clear. We believe it defines our enemies. Most of you-and by far the most of you-agree, but significant numbers do not.

HTML Character Entities

Found this a few weeks ago, didn't remember where. Neglected to blog it, but thanks to the magic that is Google (you only need to remember a few words for it to work - it's the third link), here is a good HTML character entity chart from evolt.org.

Christian Resources

From Heal Your Church, a whole bunch of Christian resources I should look through. Very cool.

CSS Panic Guide

Via Heal Your Church, the CSS Panic Guide.

This is not a complete resource, this is a fast resource. These are the sites that I refer to first, and that I tell people to read. When you want more, just about all of them have their own links to good sites.

And who knew that the W3C has a link checker? Later... Wow, it's been running on my programming page for like 15 minutes! Ok, it finished. Time to fix some links

Man, what a lucky kid

Boy Wins Role in Harry Potter Film.

The 11-year-old won a walk-on role in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" as the grand-prize winner of the "Owl Prowl" game.

"I was just trying to win a DVD," Joel said Wednesday. "I had no idea I would actually win a trip."

He doesn't know what part he'll play, but he's hoping they'll "sort him into a house."

Wow, and check out The Harry Potter Lexicon.

The Heidelberg Catechism - day one

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own,^[1]
but belong--
body and soul,
in life and in death--^[2]
to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.^[3]

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,^[4]
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.^[5]
He also watches over me in such a way^[6]
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven:^[7]
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.^[8]

Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life^[9]
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.^[10]

?footnotes

Footnotes:
[1]: 1 Cor. 6:19-20
[2]: Rom. 14:7-9
[3]: 1 Cor. 3:23; Titus 2:14
[4]: 1 Pet. 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7-9; 2:2
[5]: John 8:34-36; Heb. 2:14-15; 1 John 3:1-11
[6]: John 6:39-40; 10:27-30; 2 Thess. 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:5
[7]: Matt. 10:29-31; Luke 21:16-18
[8]: Rom. 8:28
[9]: Rom. 8:15-16; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14
[10]: Rom. 8:1-17

Q. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. Three things:
first, how great my sin and misery are;^[11]
second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;^[12]
third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.^[13]

?footnotes

Footnotes:
[11]: Rom. 3:9-10; 1 John 1:10
[12]: John 17:3; Acts 4:12; 10:43
[13]: Matt. 5:16; Rom. 6:13; Eph. 5:8-10; 2 Tim. 2:15; 1 Pet. 2:9-10

---

Also see Heidelberg Catechism Preaching: Our Reformed Heritage from the Protestant Reformed Churches in America.

http://www.keithdevens.com/Christianity/#heidelberg

It's the format that makes it a Weblog

Via More Like This, a link to a great post by Dorothea responding to some recent controversy I hadn't known existed regarding the Megnut article at O'Reilly (also see my post on it).

My comments can mostly be summed up by responding to this by "stavrosthewonderchicken" from EmptyBottle.org:

I'll fight to the ... death arguing that the defining aspects of my writing here ... are not Time Stamps or Permalinks. Lead, damn it, or get out of the way.

Sure, those aren't the defining aspects of your writing. However, they're (some of) what define your site as what we like to call a "weblog".

Regrets

As you go through life you store up more and more regret. How do you deal with it?

Christian persecution - in Wisconsin

This is an awful story. Via the Relapsed Catholic, WorldNetDaily: 'Spiritual warfare' grips Univ. of Wisconsin.

We're taught tolerance. But you're only tolerated if you're a part of a special interest group. The last people tolerated are Christians.

Backlinks

I'm about to implement a very experimental version of backlinking on my website. I've gotten code that I think will be accurate enough. I haven't been happy with any previous implementation. All other implementations I've seen would do one or more of the following:

• "Let in" root links. In other words, if "root" links are let in, rather than having http://www.keithdevens.com/weblog/?id2215 be the backlink, just http://www.keithdevens.com/ or http://www.keithdevens.com/weblog/ might be the backlink, depending on where the referrer came from. This isn't helpful at all long term, because links typically scroll off the main page of a weblog, for instance.
• Backlinks "expire". Mark Pilgrim's backlinks expire, Chris Langreiter's expire, etc. I don't like this either. Backlinks should be more permanent than transient. They should only be as transient as pages on the web are, and because pages on the web sometimes are transient, you will need to make a backlink expire occasionally if either the page moves or a link to you isn't on that page anymore for whatever reason.
• Take only a limited number of backlinks. Disenchanted.com does this. Backlinks should let everyone in on the discussion. Not only the most recent X number or the most popular X number of backlinks.
• Have to be manually approved. No way I'm manually approving backlinks, they should be automatic.

I think I've been able to get around all of these problems. Once the code is implemented on my site I'll explain more and expand on the commentary here.

Also, there are two other options to consider. Should backlinks show up in the order in which they hit your site, or should backlinks show up in order of popularity (those that sent the most hits to your site show up first)? And how the heck did Xanadu implement backlinking?

Yikes, my whole scheme pretty much got shot to hell when I realized that some blogs have their permalinks above the post instead of below. Phooey on me.

You know what? You just wait. My goal isn't 100% accuracy, it's 90-95%. I'll get it yet, I have some ideas. Basically, I have to put a lot of intelligence into this thing, but it'll work, you'll see. I have in the back of my mind a few cases where there's no way to make it work in the general case, but hopefully that only makes up the 5 percent or so.