Category: Internet

Just a note to let folks know why blogging has been so slow this week. Basically, I’ve been getting ready for the Catholic Answers pilgrimage/cruise that will be happening during the next two weeks. This involves not only preparation for the trip itself but also getting work and other stuff done that can’t wait till I get back. I’ve been so swamped the last few days that I haven’t had time to blog.

I’m starting to get over the hump of preparations, though, and so I hope to get at least some pre-blogging done to cover the period during the trip.

Our YouTube friend Mike in Michgan has an update and a prayer request concerning his journey to the Church . . .

A reader writes:

I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but your blog has been put up for
Best Religious Blog on the bloggers choice awards.

http://bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/3333

However, through some sick and twisted joke of fate, fans of Wesley
Crusher (why Wesley Crusher, he was the most annoying character during
the most annoying years of STNG?) have for some odd reason voted Wil
Wheaton’s blog to the top of the category.

As an SF fan, you surely can understand the horror that this must stir
in any Catholic, and any SF fan.  It would be one thing if Bhuddists
or Episcopalians or devotees of the Giant Spagetti Monster were
winning.  But Wesley Crusher?

No.  It cannot be.

Please let your readers know that you’ve been nominated so we can get
a Catholic blog back up on top instead of WESLEY CRUSHER.

MAKE IT SO.

This weekend I got a piece of e-mail that I thought was going to be an attempt at phishing, and I opened it expecting to quickly hit the "Report Phishing" doo-dad in Gmail.

But it didn’t contain a phishing appeal in the text of the e-mail itself. (You know, all those Nigeria/wherever variants on The Spanish Prisoner). Instead, it contained a link to a blog on Blogspot.

Ostensibly, the e-mail was from the pastor of a church in another country who had set up a blog and was inviting me to read it, but the e-mail still threw off phishing vibes to me even though there was no appeal for money in the e-mail itself.

So I clicked on the link and took a look at the blog.

I found what appeared to be the blog of a pastor in another country. Yet the way the thing was written and the way it re-used photographs kept my spider sense tingling and, sure enough, sandwiched in to various blog posts were appeals for financial support, and something in my brain said: "Two-step phishing routine; phishers may start sending out innocent-seeming e-mails as bait to get people to sites where traditional phishing is carried out."

Now, I don’t know for sure that this wasn’t legit. It may be that this really as the blog of a pastor in another country, who is innocently asking for donations.

Which is why I’m not naming the site. I don’t want to falsely accuse someone who is legitimate.

But just coincidentally, later that day, I happened to run into

THIS STORY ABOUT BLOGSPOT BEING INFECTED WITH PHISHING AND MALWARE-SPREADING BLOGS.

Be careful out there, folks.

Reflections for the first Sunday (Week) of Lent, from Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia . . .

You may notice some subtle changes on JA.O today. Last night I finally bit the bullet and started monkeying with the templates that Typepad uses to frame the site’s content. This is not as easy as one might imagine, which is why I do it so infrequently, but it was time. In fact, at one point I had to circumvent Typepad’s proprietary code and just use a brute force HTML technique, but now it’s done.

Here’s the changes:

1) NEW AWARDS! I’ve added the Catholic Blog Awards I won in 2007 and 2006 to the site. This year I won Smartest Catholic Blog (a new category) and Best Apologetics Blog. Last year I won Most Informative and Best Blog by a Man (categories that weren’t awarded this year) and Best Apologetics.

The awards are now in the right hand sidebar (scroll down). The reason that the 2006es hadn’t been added before now is long and complex, and I won’t try your patience with it (though it has to do in part with the difficulty of revising the templates).

I want to say a big THANK YOU and CHT! to all who nominated JA.O and voted for it! I really appreciate it, and it means a lot to me that people would find the work I do here valuable enough to vote for it. That kind of support from readers really helps me keep going.

2) Correspondingly, I’ve removed the 2005 award from the banner at the top of the page. It’s now down with the other awards in the sidebar.

3) I’ve fixed the search feature that’s at the top of the right-hand sidebar. I used to use a search service that never was really spiffy and that for some time hasn’t worked at all (it seems). It had gotten to the point that I had given up using the search feature altogether and was just using Google when I needed to search my archives. So now that I was fixing the templates, I decided to chuck the old search feature and replace it with Google (customized so that it searches JA.O)! This should make it a lot easier on everyone (me included) wanting to search old entries!

4) I flipped the order of the "Recent Posts"and "Recent Comments" elements in the sidebar as well. Experience showed me that I spent more time looking down at the Recent Comments than I did looking up at the Recent Posts, since comments change more often than posts do, so I put Recent Comments on top. This should also avoid people with certain screen resolutions from having to scroll down to see the comments, again making it easier on all.

So those are the changes. Hope you like them, and thanks again!

Enjoy!

P.S. Apologies if blogging is slow today due to monkeying with the templates.

Many readers ask what the CHT abbreviation that I use on the blog means.

Other blogs sometimes use HT for "hat tip" to readers or to other blogs that point things out.

I wear cowboy hats so . . . CHT.

NOTE: This will now be a permapost to try to help people find the answer quicker.

The 2007 Catholic Blog Awards are now voting, and it seems I’ve been nominated in a number of categories.

Thanks for all who nominated me and who have already voted for JA.O.

May the best blogs win.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE.

Just a note to let folks know that I’m currently having to devote a significant amount of time to a writing project (the Mormonism booklet for the publisher outside the U.S.), and blogging may be light this week.

I’ll do my best to at least throw up some interesting links, though.

A reader writes:

Hey, Jimmy – you’re a Googlewhack!

I don’t know if you’re aware of the Googlewhacking phenomenon, but your blog is the only page on the Internet to feature both words ‘ediacaran gerrymandered’.  You’re a one in three billion chance!

I can’t claim credit for finding this out myself; some friends
and I on h2g2 were trying to find some and yours was the first to be
found.

Congratulations, and have a great day!

Thanks much! I had no idea!

MORE ON GOOGLEWHACKING.