Over this last weekend, the hosting provider for Sixteen Small Stones experienced a major hardware outage. While they were able to get most of the websites they host back up within a couple of hours, one segment of their system remained offline for over 40 hours. Unfortunately my websites are hosted on that segment. If you tried to visit during that time you would have seen a 403 / forbidden error.
In the future, if my blog goes down, you can check my twitter account for updates about what is happening.
While every hosting provider has occasional outages, this is the first time I have been down for such a long time. At least it happened over a weekend when traffic is usually lower anyway. Hopefully things will remain stable now.
I have long resisted running my blog on WordPress because so much of the actual code is messy and because I prefer a more object oriented approach than it employs. I chose Textpattern for many reasons that at the time made it superior and have used it since 2005. Even before that, when we first started the Millennial Star blog, we chose b2Evolution over WordPress because of its superior coding. (I’ve also used Joomla and Drupal)
However, looking at the situation now and the huge community and momentum that WordPress has amassed, it pretty clear that WordPress is easier to use for general blogging than any of these others, despite a number of annoying architectural, geeky complaints that just wont go away. Read more »
This weekend is the semi-annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every Conference I post links to MP3 audio and other Internet resources as they become available.
[Looking for the April 2009 Conference, go here]
[Looking for the October 2009 Conference, go here]
MP3 Audio
These are links to the earliest available audio I can find. I will post them as soon as the become available. They will be replaced by links to the official MP3s at the church website as they are posted.
Saturday Morning Session
Saturday Afternoon Session
Sunday Morning Session
Sunday Afternoon Session
Streaming Video
Live Video, streamed over the Internet, as well as archived recordings of completed sessions is available on demand through BYU and KSL. We have watched the conference through BYU.tv several years in a row now and love it. Read more »
[Looking for October 2008 General Conference? Go here.]
[Looking for April 2009 General Conference, go here.]
[Looking for the October 2009 Conference, go here]
This weekend we are holding the annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every year I try to post links to MP3 audio and other Internet resources as they become available. This conference will include the sustaining of Thomas S. Monson as the President of the High Priesthood and Prophet.
MP3 Audio
These are links to the earliest available audio I can find. They will be replaced by links to the MP3s at the church website as they are posted.
Saturday Morning Session
Entire Session
Saturday Afternoon Session
Presented by Robert W. Cantwell
Presented by F. Michael Watson
Sunday Morning Session
Sunday Afternoon Session
Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander
Streaming Video
Live Video, streamed over the Internet, as well as archived recordings of completed sessions is available on demand through BYU and KSL. We have been watching conference through BYU.tv for several years now and love it. The video player only works on Windows or Mac OS X (Sorry Linux Users!). This year KSL appears to be using the same player as BYU.tv, so they may be actually the same source. Also, the church is officially providing a Video Podcast for the first time this year (see the podcast section below).
I realize that I haven’t posted any new material since the beginning of February, and I apologize. I have a whole list of topics that I have been meaning to write about, but with a new baby, a difficult post-delivery recovery for my wife, the worst cold-season we have had, and increased work load, I think an unexpected hiatus from blogging was appropriate. Family needs have to come first.
I often run across articles, videos, and websites that I would like to blog about but don’t have the time to compose a post around. I hate that I build up an ever expanding collection of links that I intend to blog about but never seem to find as much time to do it as I would like.
Now, thanks to the marvelous Google Reader, I have a solution. I now have a new section near the top of the sidebar of SixteenSmallStones.org labeled “Recommended Links” that will display the five most recent headlines that I have marked to share in my Google Reader. There is also an RSS Feed that you can use to subscribe to my recommended links, as well as a link that will let you subscribe to receive them in a daily email if you prefer.
When Google Reader was first introduced, I tried it out but wasn’t really that impressed. Since then, however, it has really become an awesome way to collect, follow, and now share content from multiple sources.
If you are still keeping up with news, blogs, or other websites by visiting each one to scan for new content, it is time to learn about RSS Readers and to start using the Google Reader. So go and sign up for an account and make the RSS feeds for Sixteen Small Stones and my new Recommended Links among your first subscriptions.
NOTE: Some of the recommended links will take you to digg.com. In those cases, it is the site linked to by that digg.com page I am recommending and not digg itself. Just click on the title of the digg entry to go to the recommended site.
Yesterday was the first anniversary of my first post on Sixteen Small Stones! I have now blogged here longer than any of my previous blogging endeavors. I offer a big “Thank You” to those of you who are kind enough to read, and especially to those of you who have left feedback, whether as comments on the website or as private email to me.
To celebrate, I have compiled a list of some of my favorite posts from this first year. If you have started reading recently, you may want to check them out:
Neglected Literature: Flatland
The Christmas Tree
Sunset Clauses, Bureacronyms, and the Patriot Act
Garfield Reloaded
La historia peculiar de Orélie Antoine de Tounens
The Great Seal of the United States
A Small Child’s Prayer
The Consistency of the LDS Church’s Position Regarding Legislating Marriage
An LDS Lexicon: Endue, Endow, Endowment
More on Superchastity or Extra-Abstinence
My life never seems to slow down for even a week at a time, and since the week before the election, I have had to take a break from blogging to tend to more substantial concerns. It is tiring, but I like to think that I “can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run” as Rudyard Kipling described it in his poem “If.” Even when it is exhausting, I enjoy every minute.
Fear not, I have plenty of of thoughts, themes, and projects churning that will soon find their way out here.
I have been performing puppetry with my troupe, Maxed Out Puppetry, for about eight years now. We perform fairly frequently at various venues in Utah county, and periodically in the Salt Lake valley. This Friday, September 1st, we will be performing for at the acclaimed Timpanogos Storytelling Festival at 5:30pm for about 45 minutes.
In order to help those interested, I’ve added an embedded Google Calendar to the blog sidebar on the right that displays upcoming events where I will be performing with my troupe.
For those of you who have not yet discovered, or don’t care to discover the wonders of Feeds and Feed Readers, I have added an email subscription service near the top of the sidebar to help you to effortlessly stay aware of new content on Sixteen Small Stones.
I apologize for the recent lack of posts.
The last week of June I was working extra hours (most days until 4:30 in the morning) to get the web-based application we have been writing at work for the last 8 months finished and released by July 3rd. I worked Sunday July 2nd from 2:00 in the afternoon straight through to 7:30 the next morning. It was exhausting, but we did get the beast into production.
I then took vacation from July 3rd through the 7th to decompress and spend time with my family. My parents and all of my siblings were in town for Independence Day (which happens to also be my mother’s birthday). In addition, we had basically three extended family reunions in the course of about 4 days. It was great to see not only my immediate family, but so many of my cousins, uncles, aunts, and even second and third cousins and uncles and aunts once and twice removed whom I had never met before.
We went to the zoo. We performed a puppet show at the local library. My parents bought us a new lawn mower and I finally mowed our long neglected lawn. Now I’m back at work and furiously trying to fix bugs in the web application we released before my vacation.
It has been an incredibly busy few weeks (and I have left a lot out). I’ll post some more very soon. Hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day!
In the mean time, if you are interested in some fascinating posts to read, check out the recent travels of my good friend and former college roommate, David Evans. He recently visited Uganda, where he had some incredible experiences (including having his hotel maid mistake his letters written for his wife for love letters directed to her, and being drugged by a mugger on the public transportation system!). I’m glad he made it back safe and relatively sound.
Today Google announced an exciting new tool for Firefox users called Blogger Web Comments . This fantastic little extension for the firefox browser automatically searches Google’s blog search service for posts that link to whatever page you are currently viewing. Then it displays a notification window in the bottom right hand corner of the browser window that shows the most recent blog posts that link to the page. If you click on any of the listed posts, it opens them in a new browser tab.
If you have no idea what the “Bloggernacle” is then just skip this post.
When I started blogging again, I told the few friends I chose to tell about sixteen small stones that I continue to have no interest in participating in or being even marginally affiliated with the so-called “Bloggernacle.” Well, I have been reviewing my referrer logs and, to my dismay, I have already been both discovered and linked.
Know then that my feelings about the loose association of LDS blogs that calls itself the “Bloggernacle” have not changed in the slightest and I continue to stand by the words of my final post at the Millennial Star.
Seeing as I have so few readers at this point, I am turning comment moderation off for the time being. Your comments will appear immediately. Please share your thoughts.
If the time comes that moderation becomes necessary, I will re-enable it. In the mean time I will be developing a plugin for my blog software that will allow me to toggle moderation on a per post basis. Maybe it will include a few other moderation tools as well that will permit me to properly control the conversation.
Sixteen Small Stones is now integrated with Facebook using Facebook Connect. Now anyone with a Facebook account can leave comments on my articles here without having to create a new account and remember yet another password.
Just click the Facebook button in the comments section of any post and approve Sixteen Small Stones for use with your facebook account, and you will be able to leave a comment on any article whenever you are logged into Facebook.
First time comments will still be subject to moderation, but once your first comment has been approved, you should be able to comment at will.
Let me know what you think and if you have any trouble with it.