Howdy folks! Boy that sounds corny. If you're reading this post on radio.weblogs.com/0113822, I am moving this weblog to my own server with a more 'appropriate' domain name-- http://www.xagronaut.com. And I've shortened the name from The xagronaut Chronicle to Xagronaut.

I apologize for any possible mistakes I might make during this process. I have seen at least one article with tips on the process, but I'm afraid I haven't followed all of the advice. I appreciate everyone who reads this weblog, and I hope you will migrate all of your links to my new address.

Thanks.

Still to do:

Redirect RSS feeds

Investigate a conditional redirect from my pages at the Radio UserLand community servers to my new location--should I use some kind of conditional UserTalk script in my template, or maybe some JavaScript based on the window.document.location.domain?

When thinking about the whole "six degrees of separation" and my imagined "evangelistic data conspiracy," I have often wondered what the application space looks like between a local web geek going to a local church and the mission field, both foreign and domestic. I have come to the conclusion that there is no single application that connects everyone from cushy suburbia (please forgive any generalizations about audience here--only wear the shoe if it fits) to Africa, Asia, the 10/40 window, etc., etc. Oh, and let's not forget our own back yard with homeless ministries, helping widows and children, visiting prisoners, helping those with disabilities, etc., etc.

So without being able to come up with a single application (other than your typical contact and appointment manager--yawn) that crosses all these boundaries, it does seem that some patterns exist. These patterns (not at all exhaustively listed here) can be observed, predicted, and leveraged in the march along the evangelistic journey.

Here they are:

People are generally tied to geography.

People in the same geography can still live in isolation.

Portals are web sites organized around a common theme that present many types of information in one place for the purpose at hand.

Every person has his or her own "context" which overlaps and inter-rotates with other contexts.

This inter-rotation can be seen as pivoting.

The focus of the pivoting could be thought of as a "pivot point."

A "pivot portal" (yes, I'm coining a term, here--cue the band) could be thought of as a website that focuses on key points of inter-rotation.

Websites, portals or otherwise, that focus on commonality, either through geography or other theme, can bring otherwise isolated people together, providing opportunities for who knows what? (Hopefully progress, right?).

Are you beginning to see a "pattern?"

Here are a few "pivot points":

You (personal information, how you relate to your world)

Family (2.5 kids, a dog, and an SUV, again generalizing--sorry)

Church (Mean Dean Peters has plenty to say about this on a regular basis)

Trade organization (Not like the WTO, rather a group of people with a common occupation--the Greek word homotechnos, meaning "same trade" in Acts 18:3 might clue you in here.)

Geographic region (Neil Cox in Indianapolis with his neck-of-the-city-reaching-movement knows something about this)

Ministry focus (pastors, children's ministries, etc.)

You see the pattern? Any number of websites could be constructed to facilitate and improve communications in any of these areas.

What are the obstacles?

Fragmentation (We work in isolation on identical goals only varying in result domains (read "places"))

Lack of real personal relationships (We're no longer impressed with just any .com that comes along, so let's start with real people we know and build our tools around the people we know.)

Lack of time (Mean Dean has addressed this as well)

Lack of knowledge (when people work in isolation, they fail to benefit from others' strengths and knowledge)

What's the solution?

Extend real relationships

End isolation by introducing our personal networks to each other (more "inter-rotation")

Look for patterns: application patterns, collaboration patterns.

Think in applications

Provide open reference implentations of pattern applications for adoption and/or imitation

Connect pattern applications at the edges (key phrase here--"open at the edges") by means of web services and data formats (i.e., XML)

Let the connections between the six-points-from-here-to-yonder remain in God's hands

So, Dean is still waiting for my audition. I'm working on that. I'm giving serious thought to the long-term lamenting about my unfulfilled intentions that have been recorded in my weblog for the last year+. Well, with God's help, I am committed to doing something about it. Even to the point of making it a priorty like never before. Ouch!

Sam Ruby's site seems to be picking up on my posts now that I have enabled the trackback feature in Radio. My reference to the Fade To White trick later in the post will surely ping again. The trackback feature seems to work well enough.

I can't say as much for the mail-from-aggregator feature which has stopped working.

I get an email every hour that does not have any links--no body, just a message about "This message contains the latest headlines, courtesy of Radio Userland" (actually not a quote). Well, I tried to tweak it just a tad by adding a couple of extra content substitution tags (or so I thought) I was hoping to have the permalink and site link appear in the email (it doesn't by default).

I've been writing a bookmarklet to parse out hyperlinks, text selections, and stylesheet references from a web page. While it has multiple uses, my primary goal is to create a custom "blog this" tool. I know they exist, but I'm reinventing the wheel. And whoever said that reinventing the wheel was bad, should consider the intellectual property wheel before applying that sentiment universally. Yeah, sometimes I reinvent the wheel, but *it's my wheel*. And I'm starting to get to the point, familiarity-wise, where I might actually be able to pull off the bibliography bookmarklet I wrote about before.

And it was working great until I tried to get Radio to give me just one or two more links in the emails I was getting. You're supposed to credit the source blog right? But the source blog is not consistently in the default mail-from-aggregator template. Is that too much to ask? It's not as though the format of the email wasn't intended to be customized. There's even a dedicated interface for just that. After I tried the web interface unsuccessfully (because of faulty assumptions that this feature would work like the text file interface where #anything can be referred to later).

So I dug into the database, as I'm becoming accustomed to doing lately. I really don't think I changed the code. I might have goofed and accidentally saved something, but I'm almost positive I didn't. I was a little disappointed in digging through the code to find out that the substitutions are hard-coded string replacements. I can't just pick some common substitutions like <%permalink%> on the item or <%link%> or <%url%> on the feed. Guess they just never thought of that.

There was some cool code that I did find, though. I was hoping it would save my butt, but no luck. Well, anyway, the cool part was that there was an "init" procedure that would create the default configuration entries if they were not already defined. Which means that if I wanted to restore the intial default settings, I had only to delete the existing values in Radio's outliner database explorer interface. They even reappeared mysteriously just seconds after I whacked them. For a second, I thought Radio was flaking, or Windows had a repaint problem, or I was trying to delete too many items (yeah, 3) at once.

Nope. Radio magically detects or polls and discovers that the entries are gone and need to be recreated. Just like it does with the cached upstream server stuff. You delete the entries and it instantly detects that they've disappeared and reads them from the disk if they still exist.

Now I'll have to do some research to find out if this is happening to anybody else. [Update: I found another tool called news2mail for Radio Userland that appears to already have the links I need.]

So, I wonder if Dale at Theoblogical will see this post before I leave a comment on his blog. Either way, it sounds like he has a problem similar to the one Sam Ruby solved with the "fade to white" social engineering technique--changing the color of the contents displayed in his deprecated RSS feed. I was puzzled at first when I saw it, but it was definitely effective.

Since he has switched, he is advertising his new feed. I'm a little confused, and a little surprised, too, with the next change going on there. I haven't read enough to get [oh wait, now I did] all the background. Now, maybe this is a second blog, and I can understand that. The cool thing is that he's using dotText, a .NET-based weblog tool. I had a tough time getting back to his Radio links because he's done a pretty effective job of redirecting his Radio weblog version to the Movable Type blog, which ironically still has a link to his Radio version which redirects back to Movable Type. Oh, well. I think it's par for the course when trying to manage all this stuff despite tools that are only partially customizable, reasonable, agreeable, etc.

Man, this blogging thing is really starting to catch on--so much so that I can barely keep up with the host of blogging tools and news aggregators. Yowza! Well, I had better get my publishing act together before it's a given that everyone can publish without thinking or without writing code, and I'll be considered behind the curve. As usual.

Of course, I'm all about customization and integration. That's half the reason that I'm frustrated with Radio, and half the reason I'm impressed by it. It's kind of a love-hate thing. [Note: I would give you a couple more links for the love-hate phrase in the last sentence, but I've already spent 2 and a half hours tweaking this post. Good night.]

I saw a funny bumper sticker today, a variation of the age old "I think, therefore I am" --

I fish, therefore I lie

Sorry if I ruined the punchline by explaining it first, but I was afraid it might not ring a bell for everybody. And while we're referring to things not recognizable by the entire population--it seems like I heard somewhere that the "I think, therefore I am" was some kind of "existentialist" thought. Huh? "Exi-what?" That got me thinking about "existentialism" and the fact that I have never looked up "existentialism" in the dictionary. I'll have to do that now.

Dictionary.com has this definition for existentialism from The American Heritage Dictionary:

A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.

OK, now let's extend it:

I blog, therefore [what?]

Any ideas on what a good completion to that statement would be? Please leave a comment if you have a good one.

OK, I'm in heaven! I just discovered that SourceForge has the ability to serve up RSS feeds on any project in their system. Project-level RSS feeds seem to center around news releases for the project, and you can choose among a few formats (like with or without full news release text). In fact, they have a complete writeup on all the RSS feeds available and explanations/FAQs.

I was also impressed with the way their documents were laid out, being able to jump into any section of the document, like the table of contents or a specific topic like "What is RSS?" I think this is a great idea, and I will try to include this feature in any content management system I eventually build.

Whether Dean is being benevolent or just dutiful, I will call it gracious. He has completed my listing on blogs4God.org (I thought it was .com, but I'm sure all the normal TLD's have been reserved). Yes, he did put me back near the top on the uptime list. Maybe sometimes it's useful to blow off a little steam.

While I'm at it, I must mention something that I really respect about Dean (I'm just being specific here; not that there's only one thing). Dean is a thinking man's man. He turned me on to some helpful books for "thinking Christians." If you hadn't noticed the thinker statues in my current site design, the intellectual life is one that is of great importance to me.

Upon his recommendation, I have purchased Love God With All Your Mind and Fit Bodies Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't Think and What to Do About It. I'm not done with the books yet, but I like what I've read so far. I just realy--pause--Really--pause-REALLY need to take a gander at the two other books he keeps referencing. And just to keep sharing the love, I've used his affiliate links whenever possible for this post.

I also bought Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling after Amazon recommended it in the "also bought" section for Love God With All Your Mind.

Oh, and one more *very important* thing I have to thank Dean for: a good laugh. During my due diligence research for this post, I had a long overdue return visit to one of all-time favorite websites: Strong Bad E-mail at HomestarRunner.com. I watched these clips.

The aggregator mailer feature in Radio has been changing the way I get my RSS blog news. Now, when I'm at work, I get a message *every hour, mind you*, containing around 10 headlines from one or more weblogs. In some ways, I find a single email more managable then the news reader page with *gobs* of items.

It's got my posting juices flowing again. I don't feel quite so out of the habit.

I don't know how Radio decides what to package up to send to me. There's some relationship between the aggregator's polling period and the frequency of email.

A couple of things bug me though:

- The sites and/or feeds that the links come from do not appear as links themselves. This is bogus. I need to know what the link is to the site so I can cite the source. Bloggers who use a link as the opening to a post do one of two things: link to the post itself (like a permalink) or link to the topic referenced. Well, either way, there's not a convenient way to generally reference the source (i.e. their blog). I can always slice the URL down to the domain, but what if they tuck their blog in some sub part of their site. Anyway...

- Every hour is a bit much. Especially since I'm at work for *less than every hour of the day*. When I get to work, I see a message at 12:57 AM, 1:57 AM, 2:57 AM, 3:57 AM, etc. I don't know if my network adminstrator pays much attention, but...

- It's impractical to read *every* headline email. So I typically start the day by first deleting every unread headline email from prior days. Only today's news.

But, it has indeed increased my news consumption. My personal laptop was hosed a while back, and I've not fully recovered from certain applications (Radio included) being tied to my desktop PC at home. This makes a difference.

In regards to the way the email presents information (or lack thereof in the case of the blog link), it seems I remember there being a pretty detailed template that you can configure in the preferences section. I think I'll go see what I can tweak there now.

Well, here it is. I deleted my listing from the techblogs category at blogs4God. Now, that's not to say that somehow, I'm unsatisfied with b4g or anything. I'm not storming off in a huff as some bloggers there have done when engaging in heated debates about touchy issues.

No.

I deleted my listing because I am moving my weblog. A couple of considerations here:

1.) New site, slightly different name. 2.) An excuse to relist instead of edit my existing entry, which by default, would make my weblog (new and improved) appear near second on the list. Dean sorts the list by uptime as the default. Now, his Heal Your Church Website weblog (very excellent by the way) is always listed first in the tech blogs category regardless of sort criteria selected. I know that's Dean's brand of shameless self-promotion. He's always been much better at it than I have. My brand of self-promotion is always bashful and hesitant--never gets the results you would hope for, believe me!

Now, I'm sure Dean has a decent memory. He's invited me to guest blog a TechnoCache at b4g if I so desire. He's even responded to one of my challenging posts about his blogosphere status. I fear, however, that I have annoyed him with my pedantics, and generally cried wolf one too many times. And then I did the worst thing possible. I had a dry posting spell. Yep, we're talking about slim pickin's for months at a time.

I'm sure Dean should understand. After he's the first person I "heard" (read) say, "Life always trumps blogging." He even enlightened me about my idealistic call for collaboration by pointing out the 80/20 principle at work in the church world. Or is it 20/80 in this case? Whatever. Still, it is wise to consider those thoughts.

Well, real life has trumped my blogging for a while, but now I am making strides. No, that's not the same as making promises, so don't (foolishly) think that I am.

I'm just a little puzzled. Does Dean realize that I've deleted myself and re-added myself. Does he believe this is some kind of ploy not worth acknowledging or responding to, even if just to add my link back into the game. Heck, I thought he might have even gotten a little annoyed and bothered with putting my weblog back in it's original position just for spite. But then again, he's got real life to deal with. I'm kidding myself.

I've checked the techblogs category for some time now, a week or more even. Still nothing. Did I mess up the submission process? Hmmm... Well, no bother. I'll continue to make strides. I'm beginning to attempt to care less than I used to about what people think of this weblog. I figure if I want people to visit, then I should post more frequently, have something interesting to say (to the right audience), and spread my copious links to more famous bloggers until I run out of "celebrities" to annoy.

I do have a new resolve. And that is to re-acquaint myself with the folks in techblogs. There are plenty of newcomers and recent additions. Maybe there are some folks much more worthy of an honorable mention (well, not exactly) in the Bloggie awards than I could ever hope to be. And those folks do indeed need to be recognized. I say, if you have a gift, use it. I also say, if someone else has a gift, help them use their gift too. Credit where credit is due, right?

God is working all things together for my good, and I love Him. And I know that he will be faithful to complete the work that he has started in me.

If you don't have access to your weblog editing interface, Radio Userland lets you post via a special email address. This is great, but if you make a mistake in your use of HTML tags in the email post, you have no way to recall it and repair. So if anyone wondered why just about my entire post from yesterday was underlined, that's what happens when you use an opening tag to close an already open tag. (<u>Something<u> doesn't have quite the same effect as <u>something</u>)

Oops. But I couldn't correct it until I got home from work. And Radio Userland was crapping out on the remote web server side yesterday :-( Had to restart it (Radio, not Windows) this morning.