Blog Update

I have been pleased to add a couple more links to my blog lately. My professor at Briercrest has started a blog called Theommentary, which promises to be worth a regular visit. I have also added some sites from a couple photographers that I've met and really appreciate: See Nathan Davies, and forrestasaurus.

In the music category, if you check out the Matthew Wilkinson music link, again you will find your way to a new EP he has released, which is entirely free for download on myspace. It is well worth a listen. Anyone in the Calgary area should check out The Young Wire Wicks page as well. They are performing live there with Nathan Carroll on Monday night. My inside sources tell me there will be a whole lot of glockenspiel.

I have also added a couple songs to The Seminarists myspace page, which were written and recorded by a couple friends of mine at seminary. We had always talked about making a few of our songs available for each other, and about encapsulating some of the memories from our times together as a chapel community as seminary, and so that's what that space is all about. My lament is there as well. Take it for what its worth.

I have also updated my film reviews. I was finding the 5 stars to be too limiting. Too many 3s should have been 3-and-a-halfs, and so on. So it is now a rating out of 10, and hopefully I never have to bump it up to 100! We don't need to be that specific. In light of some of the stuff I was thinking about in that last post, I've also put an asterisk, a disclaimer, and a website to check in regards to movie ratings. Some movies will be more appropriate in some contexts than others, and I don't want my score out of 10 to be taken as an unequivocal recommendation for all people and all contexts. Fair enough?

Anyway, thanks for reading. I have noticed that other blogs pay attention to their visit-statistics more closely than I do. I have not looked at my stats on google analytics for about a year or so (maybe because I was afraid to find out that no one was reading), but I just looked and it appears I get about 30-50 hits a day, and had over 800 visits in August. I don't know what that means. Far as I know half of those hits could be me checking my own blog for comments. Those 800 visits could easily be the half-dozen people who regularly comment here.

Regardless, I continue to blog for three main reasons:
1) Interaction with people who I no longer live near, but am glad to continue talking to about this or that. I love hearing from you regulars, and occasional commenters. It is awesome. Thanks for the good times, the challenges, the encouragements, the insights, and the feedback. I love it.
2) Practice writing and expressing and articulating my views on culture. A big part of this depends on the feedback and readership, but part of it I would still want to do to some degree even if I had no readers. Sometimes I slack off in this regard and don't bother being very grammatical, or spell-checking, and so on. Some posts are more important to me as written pieces than others. Some are just conversational.
3) Its fun. I like editing and layouts and writing. I also like having a convenient "home page" from which to access the other, better, blogs and websites out there that have caught my attention.

In regard to number 2 above, I have been inspired lately to be a better writer by a magazine that you might not expect to provide such inspiration. My subscription to Sports Illustrated runs out pretty soon, and this caused me to reflect on the one thing I will miss most about it: The writing. I love that they are able to combine two things I love: Sports and intelligent writing. The articles, even about sports I have no time for, are always well written, enlightening, and even inspiring. Good job, SI.

Anyway, as another blogger said recently, this narcissism is getting to me. Enough about the blog. Just trying to keep it fresh. But I don't blame you if you haven't read this far!