Just a quick note to everyone that I haven’t posted more lately. It’s a busy time of the year. I’ve had my hands full keeping up with articles and links to the “Christian Peacemakers”:/quaker/cpt.
I’ve also been doing some freelance sites. One is launched: “Quakersong.org”:www.quakersong.org, the new online home of Annie Patterson and Peter Blood of _Rise Up Singing_ fame. It’s just the start to what should soon be an interesting site.
Geek-wise I’ve been interested in the Web 2.0 stuff (see “this Best Of list of sites”:http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm, link courtesy “C Wess Daniels”:http://gatheringinlight.blogspot.com/). I’ve talked about some of this “back in June”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/i_dont_have_anything_to_say_either.php but it’s getting more exciting. In the Fall I was asked to submit a proposal for redoing the website of a Quaker conference center near Philadelphia and it was all Web 2.0‑centric – maybe too much so as I didn’t get the job! I’ll post an edited version of the proposal soon for the geeks out there. Some of the new tech stuff will undergird a fabulous new “Quakerfinder.org”:www.quakerfinder.org feature that will allow isolated Friends to connect to form new worship groups (to launch soon) and even more is behind the dreams of a new “Quakerbooks.org”:www.quakerbooks.org site.
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to order “On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/1 – 888305-38‑x, the new book by New England Yearly Meeting’s Brian Drayton (it arrived from the printers yesterday). It’s being billed as a modern day version of “A Description of the Qualifications” and if it lives up the hype it should be an important book for the stirrings of deepening faithfulness we’ve been seeing among Quakers lately. While you’re waiting for the book to arrive in your mailbox, check out Brooklyn Rich’s “Testing Leadings”:http://brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2005/12/testing-leadings-part‑1.html post.
“On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry… while waiting for the book…”
Please clarify. Do you mean “waiting for your order to arrive in the mail,” or do you mean, “waiting for the book to become available for sale” ?
Hi Mitch: sorry for the confusion (I’ll tweak the post). It just came in last night and the bookstore’s ready to sell.
And how did I not see AJ Schwanz’s post on “The Emerging Librarian”:http://ajschwanz.com/index.php/2005/12/20/the-emerging-librarian/ the other day. That’ll be my brilliant Web 2.0 link for you!
I’m really excited about then new Quakerfinder! (: Once I finish school (perhaps sooner depending on how my schedule feels this spring) I’d like to start doing Quaker-related web design…
Also, do you have any links on how to well-organize one’s delicious tags? You seem to have a sophisticated system set up.
Hi Zach: Let me know when you’re free to do the work. I’m occassionally asked to do something and when I have to turn it down for one reason or another I’m immediately asked if I know anyone. I’d be happy to give you a plug.
Since I mention Web 2.0 in the post I suppose it’s fine to get a little geeky in the comments:
For most of my Del.icio.us bookmarks I have categories and subcategories split by periods, i.e.:
religion.buddhist
religion.catholic
religion.christian
I do this so I can make use of Firefox’s Foxylicious extension and keep them all orderly: Foxylicious will pull them into Firefox’s Bookmarks folder with cascading menus built around the categories.
As anyone can see by digging into my bookmarks, I run my three Blog Watches (Nonviolence, Quaker, and Christian Peacemaker) off of Del.icio.us. For example, the “Quaker” tag sends something to the Quaker Blog Watch. I’ve recently added subcategories to this. Their tags look like this:
*.20something
*.alienation
*.bestof
(etc)
I give them all an asterisk prefix so that they’ll show up alphabetically at the top of my list.
Since Del.icio.us provides RSS feeds for each tag, I can leverage all this into self-updating pages and automatic daily emails.
It would be a fairly simple job to splice together these feeds so that I could share the Blogwatch compiling with others, which I think will be the inevitable next-step.
First though, I’m staying up late tonight (really late, maybe all night) cranking out a paid freelance gig. Back to work now!
Though not that geeky — your note to Zach was mostly incomprehensible to me and I find del.icio.us mostly confusing to understand — I do look forward to a new and improved Quakerbooks.org. Not that is’t horrible, but it could use some updating around functionality and style.