Category: Internet

I’m afraid that I’m having to take my home computer in for repair work, which means that my Internet access for he next week or so will be spotty. I’ll still have some access, but not as much as usual.

Fortunately, I knew this was coming, so I’ve been able to prepare blog posts for next week.

My co-bloggers may also be able to chip in, particularly toward the end of next week and the beginning of the next, depending on when my regular access is restored.

The most notable change in operations is that I won’t be able to effectively respond to e-mail in the interim. I’ve got an auto-reply set up for my account explaining this, but if you’re written me recently and haven’t gotten a response, it may be a while before I can respond.

I can’t respond to all e-mails, but I try to make sure to respond to those who have the most pressing issues.

I’ll try to respond once I get back, but if you need an urgent answer to your query, please try forums.catholic.com. There are a lot of well informed people there who may be able to help.

Thanks for understanding!

I’m going to be taking a break from blogging over Triduum (which technically doesn’t start until the Mass of the Lord’s Supper tonight, but I’m counting the of Holy Thursday as part of my break).

Regular blogging service will resume Easter Monday.

In the meantime, I’d invite you to get more out of this smallest of liturgical seasons by reading

POPE BENEDICT’S ADDRESS FROM YESTERDAY EXPLAINING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TRIDUUM

and

PASCHALE SOLEMNITATIS, THE VATICAN DOCUMENT DEVOTED TO THIS SEASON AND EASTER

Also, have fun with the archives!

MM of Theology of the Body has tagged me as part of a meme on Bibles, so here goes:

1. How many Bibles are in your home?

Hmmm. I’m not sure. Depending on what you count as a "Bible" (e.g., both OT and NT with deuteros, OT and NT without deuteros, just OT, just NT, just Torah) between thirty and fifty probably.

2. What rooms are they in?

Well, most of them are in the kind of large, living area where I have most of my bookshelves. I’ve also got some (espeically original language ones) in my bedroom, where I keep most of my biblical languages books, and there’s probably some in the unused second bedroom, too.

Except for the original language ones, though, I tend not to use paper Bibles that much. Instead, I use electronic ones online. They’re much more convenient for the kind of stuff I’m looking up or when I’m writing.

3. What translations do you have?

Gak! There’s no way I can answer that.

Suffice it to say that I have all of the major Catholic and Protestant translations, as well as a bunch of specialty ones.

4. Do you have a preference?

When writing I normally use the RSV (esp. the RSV:CE) since it’s the standard one that the publishers I work with use (as well as being a good one itself).

If I’m needing to get a feel for other translations, I generally go to the NASB and the NKJV for more literal ones and the NIV for a dynamic one.

If I need to really nail something down I go to the original language versions.

5. Nominate an interesting verse:

Hmmm. I nominate all the verses in Ecclesiastes, because that book is so hard to interpret, which makes it interesting.

MEME REPLICATION: I hereby tag any other bloggers out there who wish to be tagged with this meme. Commenters who also wish to be memed are hereby tagged as well.

A reader writes:

I wrote was in response to a comment you made on Catholic Answer about realplayer.  You made a comment that you thought they were evil (like in dante evil).  I was trying to find out what you meant by that comment.  Working for Sun, (M$FT Sworn enemy 😉 ) kind of rules out using Windows media player, and not being a  great fan of iTunes, I had defaulted to realplayer. Is there something really intrinsically evil about real that I should try to avoid?

Yes, RealPlayer is one of the most evilest software applications ever created in the pits of hell.

RealPlayer has been one of the most consistently evil applications over a long stretch of time. As users have complained about one set of evil behaviors on the part of RealPlayer and they get "fixed" by the company, the company just goes and introduces new evil behaviors. Among those the evil behaviors that RealPlayer has been discovered going over various versions are these:

1) It will try to take over your system and become the default player for every type of audio and video file that exists.

2) It will make it very difficult for you to stop it from doing this. You will have to manually uncheck almost a hundred boxes in order to limit RealPlayer to being the default player for only Real’s proprietary formats.

3) It will constantly nag you to register until you finally give in and tell it a phony e-mail address.

4) It will constantly nag you to upgrade to the paid version.

5) It will constantly nag you to upgrade to the latest paid version (for which you will have to pay again).

6) It will try to push content at you that you don’t want.

7) It will push advertisements at you, making it a form of adware.

8) It will stick in your system tray when you turn it off, and you will have to go to extra efforts to get it out of your system tray.

9) It will modify your system registry so that it will put itself BACK in your system tray on startup and you’ll have to get it out again.

10) It will install parallel programs that you don’t want, like AIM and RealJukebox.

11) It will send individually identifying user strings back to the network so that Real can track what music you as an individual (not as an unidentifiable part of a group) are listening to.

12) After you turn off the advertising options so that you won’t get hit with advertising, it will TURN SOME OF THEM BACK ON AUTOMATICALLY so you get hit with ads anyway.

13) It will constantly bombard you with e-mails from Real (unless you gave them a fake address).

14) It will crash your system.

15) It will sacrifice babies to Moloch.

I am NOT kidding about that last one.

After the above, it comes as no surprise to discover that RealPlayer was designed by the Easter Bunny as part of his never-ending war against humanity and should be avoided at all costs!

MORE HERE.

I need one of my rare blog days off, folks!

Sorry for the inconvenience,  but have fun with the current posts and the archives!

A reader writes:

Greetings from Bombay, India. I have been reading your posts on your awesome Blog Spot for quite some time.

I am a great, great Fan of Father Altier’s Homilies from India.

I am a Cradle Catholic and my family has been Catholic for a little over 4 Centuries. My Ancestors were converted to Catholicism from Hinduism by zealous Portuguese Jesuit and Franciscan Missionaries in the 16th Century when Goa was a Portuguese Colony.

In Goa, we have the incorrupt body of Saint Francis Xavier which is kept in a casket at the Cathedral of the Bom Jesus — which in Portuguese means the Good Jesus.

I have been reading the awesome Homilies of Father Robert Altier from March 2001 when I was living in the United States and I continued reading them when I returned to India in early 2002 and till the last day when they were available on "A Voice in the Desert" that is Ash Wednesday 2006.

I am very sad and depressed that the current Homilies are no longer available nor are the Archives available anymore. I feel also sad that I did not download any of the Homilies when they were available neither the current ones nor any from the Archives.

My Spiritual Life will indeed be disrupted if it isn’t already as a result of the unfortunate ban or censorship on the Homilies of Father Altier. They were life giving to me in more ways than one and I was specially looking forward to them during this Holy Season of Lent as well as during the forthcoming Holy Season of Easter.

Therefore, I would be most grateful if you could tell me if there are any Web Sites that are hosting Father Altier’s Homilies since "A Voice in the Desert"  has been shut down.

Finally, I would be most grateful if you could mail me the "URL’S" of Web Sites that are hosting Father Altier’s Homilies.

I don’t know of any sites that have all of them (perhaps some readers do), but I can point you toward a site that has many of them.

If you use The Wayback Machine at Internet Archive, you’ll find that it has many homilies archived from 2001-2005.

HERE, FOR EXAMPLE, IS THE 2005 ARCHIVE.

HERE’S THE GENERAL ARCHIVE FOR ALL YEARS.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, if you’re looking for good online homilies, I’d recommend those of online scalawag, Fr. Stephanos Pedrano.

He didn’t tell me that

HE HAS A BLOG!

He’s using it to archive his homilies, so if you want some good homily action, be sure to check it out! (Maybe in time he’ll share some of the rest of his wisdom with us, also.)

As for you, Father, please say one Our Father and one Hail Mary for not letting me know about your blog sooner!

WHOA!

I don’t check my stats that often, but I happened to do so today and noticed that in the last week we’ve motored right past the 2,000,000 hits mark.

Congratulations, folks! Thanks for making it happen!

(NOTE: As usual, the average hits per day number is misleadingly small since it’s a daily average including figures from when the blog was very small in its early days. The real current average would be Last 7 days divided by 7, or 6,441 hits per day.)

(OTHER NOTE: Please note that these hits are page views, so every view of a combox counts as a hit. We don’t yet have 6,441 folks visiting each day. The actual number is only a part of that. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that would be since I don’t have a feel for how many people keep up with the comboxes regularly vs. how many just read the main section and glance at the comboxes occasionally. Unfortunately, polling via the comboxes to find out the answer wouldn’t necessarily work due to the nature of the question.)

Are you a member of The B-Team?

What is The B-Team, you ask?

St. Blog’s Junior Varsity Squad, those Catholic bloggers without "name recognition" as apologists, writers, speakers, or other Professional Catholics, are banding together to conquer the blogosphere.

"This is the home of the Amateur Catholic® bloggers — or as we like to refer to ourselves, the B-team. We don’t write books or do speaking tours. In fact, we barely do our jobs. That’s not to say we’re unambitious though… You see, this coalition is just the second phase our blogoshpere conquest. We suppose you could think of us as amateur crusaders too.

"Membership will not bring you any money, perks, notoriety, or prestige — but you will get the privilege of proudly displaying the B-team badge on your blog! Lucky you, huh?"

VISIT THE SITE.

SIGN UP FOR THE B-TEAM.

(Nod to the Curt Jester for the links.)

Question:  Do priest and nun bloggers count as Professional Catholics on St. Blog’s Varsity Squad, or do they get to join The B-Team if their names aren’t instantly recognizable?

Hmmm….

I’m back in town now and just wanted to say a special thanks to all who supported JimmyAkin.Org in this year’s Catholic Blog Awards. The results are now official,

AND HERE THEY ARE.

JimmyAkin.Org won the following categories:

• Most Informative Blog
• Best Blog By A Man
• Best Apologetics Blog

Wow! I was very surprised to win the first two of those categories, and it is a real honor. I know there were difficulties this year, ones which I’m sure can be fixed in the future, and I just wanted to say a special thanks, both those those who supported JA.O and to those who didn’t (your votes also made the awards meaningful, as giving a sense of the opinion of the Catholic blogosphere!) and to those who hosted the awards.

I also posted a comment responding to some particular posters in the combox and wanted to call attention to it. IT’S HERE.

Congratulations also to all the other winners and nominees! (And be sure to check out SecretAgentMan’s exultation in his own performance this time around.)

So thanks once again, and I hope next year’s awards will be an even bigger success, with even more new bloggers in St. Blog’s and deserving recognition for their efforts.

(NOTE: I’ll post my blog award banners as soon as I get them and can integrate them into my templates. Maybe this weekend if I get them soon enough.)