A Bit of News

Pesharim - A Bit of News

I've been invited to enter into a cooperative writing/blogging arrangement with Stingray (Michael McCullough's blog), which I intend to accept.
Actually I applied to an online invitation and was graciously accepted. Therefore I intend to make this my public declaration of acceptance. I am grateful to Michael for the invitation and appreciate the new opportunity. I feel that we have much in common personally and as he says we share an interest in mystical matters as well, so I'm looking forward to this relationship.

I've been visiting Stingray since I discovered it, enjoy it, and will gladly contribute articles and even act as a guest writer there on occasion if and when Michael needs me to do so. I am also adding Stingray to my list of Endorsements, to my Blogroll and it will be my featured Recommendation for this month.

So on Wednesdays when I normally blog on Religious matters I will be cross linking some of my Original and Personal Writings to Stingray, maybe some of my Wednesday Religious Assessment Research (I'll have to discuss that with him first), and maybe a few other related posts.

In addition I plan on Wednesdays to cross-link some of Michael's Posts on Stingray to the Missal.

I have also joined Christian Bloggers on a similar invitation and will be posting some of my articles there on Wednesdays as well as cross-linking interesting articles from that site here on the Missal.

I will continue to blog on my other subject matters of interest on the appropriate days, unless something particularly important takes precedence. I also intend to eventually accept initiations from other blog writers and blogsites (I've received a couple already) to contribute to Defense and Military and Law Enforcement blogs, and possibly to occasionally contribute to Political and Science/Technology blogs and sites as well, in addition to my normal freelance writing schedule, time and work permitting of course.

Now that I have about four to five months experience as a blogger I am coming more and more to understand the process and how best to work as a blogger. In addition as I learn more about the process of successful blogging I am making changes to my site to make it a better experience for my readers and hopefully far more useful to them as a location they might like to visit. I am also learning how to adjust my normal freelance writing style to better fit formats that are easier and more convenient for the blog reader to use and digest.

I still expect a steep learning curve over the next year or so, and I still have a lot of research to do on all aspects of blogging, but I expect to continue to improve with experience.

If any of my readers have any suggestions as to how to improve the site then of course I'll be happy to entertain your suggestions. Leave the suggestions here on site or email me as many of you normally do.


Now for something completely different. Moving into the Christmas season this is the time of year I normally rearrange things like my Goals and Objectives for the upcoming year, make resolutions, and change my prayer targets for the New Year as well. Last Sunday afternoon I had a little spare time so I went ahead and completed my Prayer Target list for 2007.

As some of you know my last grandmother died a few months back and the she is off my normal list and has instead been added to my Prayer List for Souls of the Dead, though I suspect given her life she needs my prayers for her about as much as she needs a suntan right now. Truth is, it's the other way around that would have the most beneficial effect. Still, it is my duty to her and she was my grandmother and a great woman. She doesn't need them but I owe her.

I've also added the following individuals to my personal prayer list: Michael, Drew, Bradley Stalker, Steve, Kevin (actually he's been on it awhile), Captain Thompson, Major Egland, Craig, Abby, and Cheri and her family. And Pope Benedict.

I'll also be praying for the following nations and peoples:

For the full liberty of, and for an end to oppression, war, and murder in: Iraq, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, India, China, Eastern Europe, and Russia.

For these nations to proper and be secure: Colombia (I have a foster son there), England, Italy, Germany, Canada, Kenya, and Australia.

For the United States to prosper and to be a beacon of Liberty, Virtue, Greatness, Heroism, Sacrifice, Success, Honor, Justice and Brotherhood to the rest of the world.

For my own state to proper, and for my city to continue to enjoy success and to be free of crime, corruption, and violence.


That's it for now,

Jack.

The Grapharium

Pesharim - The Grapharium

I've finally mustered an opportunity to post some of my Work Samples and Clips to my new On-Line Writing Portfolio.

It's still far from completed, but if I get a clip or sample up every day then in 20 to thirty days I can have every category filled.

Now all I have to do is get my On-Line Resume properly formatted and on-site and post the last of my recent samples and clips from previously published works.

I've been so busy lately with work, various projects, case files, internet writings, setting up my blogs and websites, church activities, and personal affairs that it has taken me much longer to complete my On-Line Writing Portfolio than I had originally anticipated. Still, it is coming together, little by little. I know the wife will be glad to see it finished.

Let me know what you think of it.
The appearance of the blog is starting to grow on me.

The Grapharium

Jack

Humours of Idleness - Grael of Black Waters Photographs

Humours of Idleness - Grael of Black Water Photographs


Here are a couple of recent photographs that I altered using an idea I got from Matt Bamberg. I recommend his book. I have read it and found the suggestions very helpful. His blog is here.


http://digitalartphotographyfordummies.blogspot.com/


My friends in the military who are avid photographers would I think find this book especially useful.


I will be attaching these photographs to a short story I am writing concerning Halloween.

Pesharim - Four Finished

Pesharim - Four Finished


The following sites have been fully converted to Beta and for the most part completed as to arrangement and format:


Omniworks: http://omniworksgen.blogspot.com/

The Grapharium: http://grapharium.blogspot.com/

Dante's Ninth: http://dantesninth.blogspot.com/

The Missal: http://themissal.blogspot.com/


It is slow work reconstructing them from their previous format and code system including adding site meters, counters, HTML code of various kinds, customizing the outlay, reposting links, providing advertisement, etc.

But in the end I suspect it will be well worth it.
All of these sites are now much better arranged and formatted, are easier to navigate, can now fully draw information from Google and other search engines, are now set to crawl without interference, are posted with directories, and simply look much better.

That now leaves two sites remaining to fully convert to Beta as well as three more to construct.

Then it will simply be a matter of finalizing all of my sites and finishing content on my portfolios, etc.
I don't know why I say only, because in reality those things will be the most difficult parts of these jobs.


Jack.

The Exchange - Side Links and Other Sites

The Exchange - Side Links and Other Sites

I'm going to be extremely busy with my other websites, my newsletters, and my portfolios (especially my portfolios) for the next few weeks. As a result I won't be able to make updated and current posts here as often as I'd like (I'll be instead working on the sites listed in the Links in the sidebar), but I will still try to post here. What I've decided to do in the interval is to post things I've written in the past, sometimes for the amusement of friends, but have never posted to this blog (or any blog for that matter). I'm also gonna be posting some pictures I have been taking lately, and scenes from my various Vadding and Rudding expeditions. I thought that for some of my buddies currently still stationed overseas these photos and pics and retellings of old Vadding expeditions might remind them a bit of home.

I'm also gonna be converting my gaming sites to either Wiki websites or blogs and removing them from their third party positions. But that could take some time as well.


In other news today I was notified that my Writing Portfolio is now up on a writing site. My own writing portfolio, the Grapharium (which I'm gonna have to be updating with writing samples from both previously published works and with new works) has already been redesigned and is already up (though incomplete) but this is the first time I have ever posted my portfolio to a third party site. However this site was recommended to me as a site clients frequent in order to secure Freelance Journalistic and Writing talent for contracted assignment. Therefore I'm trying it as a marketing tool, to see how effective, or ineffective it might be, and whether such sites are really capable of delivering new and interesting clients and assignments. Only time will tell and I'll let you know as the experiment proceeds.

The other thing I should mention is that I had a bit of a computing and application disaster the other day. For several days every I connected to the internet my and stayed on awhile my computer would shut down and then reboot, meaning all data for that session and all running files were lost. More inconveniently and perhaps disastrously I was left with a large collection of lost clusters and chains every this happened. My immediate suspicion was that it was my OS since it was a Microsoft product. (And who running Microsoft does not immediately suspect Microsoft when their computer software malfunctions? Truth be told I would be running some version of Linux were it not for incompatibility issues with so many of my clients. Though truth also be told I don't really like any current OS and think them all extremely primitive, inefficient, lacking in capabilities, and just plain useless compared to what should exist as an OS in this time and era. But that's a story for another day.) After about the fifth reboot in a week I got really worried and employed system Restore to a restore point at which I knew the problem was not appearing. But that had no effect. So finally I let Microsoft report the problem and they actually suggested a solution. (I couldn't believe it; they suggested a solution not created another problem.) Anyhwo I was running System Mechanic Pro 5 as a utility suite and it was causing the problem so I downloaded the fix and that took care of the errant rebooting. But the next time I went to open my RSS Reader all of my carefully collected RSS links, and their folders were... gone, gone, gone!!!

I tried searching for deleted files, scanning the registry, used every tracking tool I had but to no avail. I lost over three hundred syndications of websites and blogs that I reread once a week or so through my reader. Gawl dangit I was upset. Now I've had to wipe out my RSS Reader (Sharpreader) altogether because although I in no way blame Sharpreader for the problem, and I'm sure it was a result of the SM5 bug and malfunction, I just can't take the chance of it occurring again and losing all of that data and links. The really frustrating thing is that this weekend I had already planned to do an entire system backup of data including those files but lost them right before that could occur. I have some older backups of many of the links but all of the links I had stored for the past three months or so are now gone along with the new category folders. Wiped out due to a buggy app. Very disgusting. See what I mean about modern computing? Imagine a biological mind where neural networked connections of image or thought clusters could be wiped out merely by another cluster of thoughts malfunctioning, or let's say imagine every scientific idea you had being wiped out or altered every time you tired to have a thought about literature. That kind of thing, where one app endangers or alters or disrupts another unrelated app is simply ridiculous, both from an end-user utilitarian point of view and from a design/engineering point of view. And since most programs function without the need to access anything other than a few simple shared files and by occasionally accessing the OS shell it is even more ridiculous because important data could be protected simply by secreting access from other apps, including utilities (short of anti-viral and spyware utilities of course). You could blanket, shield, or enwrap alterable and important data with internal program data-walls (as I like to call them) and protect them from malfunctions in other apps. By devising such data walls you could also greatly limit spyware intrusions, repress viral infection and vectoring routes, and achieve a whole host of other worthwhile security capabilities. It would be an internal program method of data firewalling and access encryption that would protect run over from the OS, from other apps, and from intruders. And that's hardly the only solution an engineer could devise. But don't get me started on modern OSs, software, and computing, cause the whole structure is as primitive as a kid's walkie-talkie set and I want to put my fist through my monitor whenever I stop to think about the damned situation.

Anyway now I'm using Snarfer and RSS Bandit, both of which I like alot (but RSS Bandit the better) and will be creating duplicate files for each program of all syndication links. In that way if I lose one program and even my back-up files then I'll still have a redundant program as secured back-up. You'd think though that by 2006 this kinda totally stupid and unnecessary computing problem could be avoided by OS makers and by app and utility engineers. But no.

The Exchange - My Wiki Wunderkind

The Exchange - My Wiki Wunderkind


I've been working on creating some new websites to replace my old ones. While doing that I researched some Web 2.0 articles and sites on Wiki websites.

After doing the research and experimenting around I discovered that Wiki sites are far superior to normal, static HTML and related sites.


Construction is far easier. It's as easy as a matter of fact as using a standard Word Processing/Office program. And just as fast. All you really have to do to create the site you want is create whatever content you want in any other program and then cut and paste to your website.

Coding is nothing, it's all done for you. Links are created just as simply. In many ways it reminds me of when I was a kid and computers were punch cards or entirely codes and complicated languages (standard websites) and now when the program does all of the coding for you (Wiki), all you have to do is be able to type. It's like the difference between 1960 television sets and modern big screens where all you have to do is point and shoot with the remote. Functionality is incredibly more versatile.


Anyway I just started last night and this morning building my new writing website, the Center and Circumference. I haven't put much content on it yet, but have just been experimenting, building menus and tables of content, and site contents, stuff like that. It's incredibly easy to do and I've gotten 1000 mb to play around with plus additional storage capacity for other things. Far more than I'll need.

I'm gonna improve the graphics a little bit as time goes along, but as far as construction, it takes minutes instead of hours now, and you really don't have to worry about coding anything other than the most elementary commands that a three year old could follow. For instance I created page links by just putting brackets [ ] around the names of the pages I had already created. You can create tables of contents automatically just by typing in plus exclamation marks !

And navigation is so intuitive and easy that it's just a matter of point and click, for me and the user.

All of my websites, business, writing, etc. will now be built using this method.

Unless more normal programs of website creation and hosting vastly, vastly improve then I'll never be going back to the old ways. Web 2.0 for my own sites from now on, that is until the next better thing comes along. But for now Wiki is my wunderkind.

http://centerandcircumference.pbwiki.com/

Links to Interesting Sites

LINKS TO INTERESTING SITES

Business/Finance/Investment

http://www.startupjournal.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/business/markets/index.html
http://www.vfinance.com/
http://business.updates.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/default.stm
http://www.foxnews.com/business/economy/index.html
http://www.freshpatents.com/


Religious and Christian Service

http://pantheon.org/
http://www.koinonia.org.il/site/index.php
http://www.vatican.va/
http://www.gfa.org/gfa/
http://www.prisoneralert.com/
http://www.missionfinder.org/resources.html
http://www.koinonia.org.il/site/index.php
http://www.children.org/
http://christianity.rinf.com/
http://www.missionary-blogs.com/
http://www.conciliarpress.com/
http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/
http://www.hillsidesbc.com/


Esoteric

http://www.meru.org/index.html
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html


Governmental/Agency

http://www.cert.org/nav/index_main.html
http://www.usdoj.gov/
http://www.fbi.gov/
http://www.interpol.int/
http://www.atf.gov/
http://www.cbp.gov/
http://www.dea.gov/
http://www.secretservice.gov/
http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/index.html


Military/Intelligence

http://www.military.com/
http://www.cryptography.com/index.html
http://www.cofc.edu/~williamj/pcmission.html
http://www.cicentre.com/
http://ctstudies.com/
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/
http://www.stratfor.com/
http://www.janes.com/
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/
http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel.html
http://www.cdi.org/
http://www.cfr.org/index.html
http://www.d-n-i.net/index.html
http://www.csis.org/
http://www.isis-online.org/


News

http://www.articledestination.com/


Law Enforcement

http://www.crimeandclues.com/
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/criminal-home.html
http://www.usmarshals.gov/
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/nypd/home.html
http://www.lasd.org/divisions/detective/
http://www.necrosearch.com/
http://www.academy-group.com/
http://police.sas.ab.ca/prl/for.html


Educational/Literary

http://omacl.org/
http://home-school-usa.com/
http://www.news.harvard.edu/
http://web.mit.edu/


Entertainment

http://www.realmofinfamy.com/forum/


Art and Music

http://inventmusic.org/


Consumer

http://www.bbb.org/
http://www.ftc.gov/


Science

http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/default.stm
http://www.bnl.gov/world/
http://www.foxnews.com/science/index.html
http://www.foxnews.com/technology/index.html
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/science.html
http://www.gyre.org/
http://www.999today.com/science/
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html
http://www.newscientist.com/
http://www.physorg.com/
http://radio.weblogs.com/0149361/

Vadding/Exploration/Hobbies

http://www.jinxmagazine.com/ http://www.thespoon.com/trainhop/ http://hostingworks.com/support/dict.phtmlfoldoc=vadding http://www.infiltration.org/infilspk.htm http://www.souterrains.org/ http://www.urbanadventure.org/ http://www.infiltration.org/ http://www.urbanexplorers.net/
http://www.opacity.us/ http://www.undercity.org/ http://homepage.mac.com/peint/zone-tour/index.htm http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/ http://www.uer.ca/ http://www.deathrock.net/ariadne/ruins.html http://www.opuszczone.com/index.php http://www.drainfreaks.net/ http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/ http://negativespaces.net/