Friar Talk

If you wish to blog but do not know how, try blogging first at our “Make My Day” blogging community. Once you’ve learned how to operate a blogging application, then perhaps you can start your own blog here.

My blogs on Apollo Quibology are drawing the ire of some of the members of His Kingdom. The posts of one member in particular (perhaps the same one who calls himself Keji or Kingdom Youth) have become so offensive that I had to ban him from my TypePad blogs. The thing is, I have even set up a forum for them to post their thoughts about their beloved pastor, but they would not even register at the address I gave them. Certainly, I wouldn’t like to be drawn into a debate with someone who posts just to insult. What does he think a blog or a forum is? But see these comments on my blog…

For those who are wondering about how the Social Teachings of the Church can be made to bear on a money-driven economy such as ours, read this blog. Louis Even’s “Social Credit” may as well prove to be the a Christian alternative to capitalism. The Churches in the UK are lauching a debate centered on a wealth-driven economy, just as Louis Even has proposed it. It is worth a look.

WordPress 1.5 is out and looks good too. But I don’t know whether I would want to upgrade my current blogs. Bible Notes is WP 1.2. To upgrade it to 1.5 can be tricky. The same goes with Glitches In Time.

I haven’t done much really in the way of updating the contents of AgustinongPinoy. After it became visible on the web again, all I’ve done is to post somethings about my forty-third birthday celebration. The most recent post is about last Saturday evening’s birthday celebration at the parish.. Bible Notes Simply Blogs and the Mystical Geek have been quite dynamic. I have been posting almost everyday on those blogs. Those of the Mystical Geek are recycled posts from an exclusive blogging network where I write on Spirituality and Web Technology. My WordPress tutorials at Blogsome is picking up a readership. You may also want to check it out.

Simply Blogs is currently out of commission. It has the same problems as AgustinongPinoy: legacy server. Don’t look for it in the coming days. I’ll just announce it here when it is again available. Here are some interesting blogs about the Santo Niño:

• "To The Beat of Drums" is about the secularization of the Sinulog festivities.
• Here is a Picture Blog about the MGC Parish Santo Nino celebrations.
• The above chronologically follows another one on the difficulty of disassociating the veneration of images (Catholic) and the “paganism” of popular religiosity.
• And finally, one on the history of the devotion to the Holy Child.

Did you know how Tim Berners-Lee described the World Wide Web for the first time? Google has released its twenty year timeline of UseNet Discussion Groups, the first internet discussion forum. I saw it for the first time this afternoon and describe it here.. Be sure to follow the links in this post.
As the feast of Sto. Niño is drawing near, I began to look for articles about the Holy Child of Cebu and devotion to Him. I found an article, however, that told me something I didn’t know about the Cebuanos love for the Sto. Niño, a love shrouded in myth and legend. I blog about it here and here.

Some new things at Blogs.AgustinongPinoy and at the Mystical Geek. Read about Starbucks and John Paul II’s new book.

My one year exposure in a paid blogging site has been quite fruitful. I’ve earned more than the amount I’ve paid since the beginning of my stay there. In fact, the amount I have received from the network was just enough for me to get a cheap hosting service for AgustinongPinoy. Inspite of this I am not going to add more time to my stay at Blogit. Here are the reasons why:

1. I opened an account there as a reader. Except for one or two bloggers however, I didn’t find many of the blogs informative, inspiring or even stimulating. Blogit is — as one disgusted member earlier wrote — a wasteland of “crap.”
2. I started blogging to see how people would react to a friar (oh yes, I did present myself to them as a religious) writing tutorials on HTML, Scriptures and spirituality in general. Only my HTML tutorials and sports blogs were read. Those blogs which were real expressions of who I am were ignored. But why not? They knew me as a Catholic and a priest!
3. I was doing well from February to July. I was constantly updating my blogs and it was quite a challenge competing for rankings. From August onwards, however, I began to slow down. With the new AgustinongPinoy, I concentrated more on making website enhancements and testing scripts to use. With me slowing down on content, my blogs have been relegated to the unupdated, thereby losing the readership I have fought for at the beginning of my stay there.

I will still be blogging until February 25, 2005 though. As of this writing, I have earned a total of USD 70. I will try for another USD 10 before I “retire” from Blogit. But really, I’ll be spending a lot more time retrieving my better blogs and posting them somewhere else. As for the rest, I’ll try to maintain just one good blog site (Bible Notes perhaps or The Mystical Geek) and try to work on my Blogger status from there.