In an attempt to lighten up on Saturdays, I’ll attempt to publish some videos that I have seen that I think are fascinating or fun.  I hope that you enjoy them.

Just when you thought Google had it all sewn up, Microsoft is still attempting to come up with an answer to Google and to try to get in on Google’s millions making search engine.

The problem for Google is that it is ridiculously easy to try a set of keywords in a different site.  The problem for those that try to enter the ring with Google is that they have to convince people not only to give them a chance, but reliably provide as good or better results than Google.

Both of those have proven hard to do.

However, it’s been enough for Google to send out its technicians to check out Bing and see if it can improve its algorithm even more.

It’s also caused some to start looking for problems in Bing as well as ways to get around some of its features.  One problem that’s been seen so far is the default security/privacy rating allows some racy videos to be seen, and to be seen as coming from Bing instead of the servers where it’s hosted.

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft can gain any ground on the giant that is Google, or whether this too will be another “wanna-be”.

We live in an interesting age.  I don’t know how many times friends from my high school want to e-mail or contact me—if only I’ll pay cash to talk to them, or at least that’s what Classmates.com wants me to believe.

We used to be able to move on from place to place, keeping in contact with the people in our lives that really mattered, and letting the acquaintances and others move on with their lives and grow into fond memories.

Not today.  In the rush for the latest status symbol, if someone finds your name on a list of available people they’ll rush to add you to it.  They wear the number of “friends” or “followers” that they have like previous generations would collect beanie babies.

For me, the amusing part is that they let all these people in to look at their lives, and those insights usually provide quite the amusement in themselves.  Once added, twice forgotten, I believe.

Read more…

Time is precious.  As you may have noticed, my new job and the coming spring and summer months along with the inability to find a “groove” and continuing to build the increasingly popular Is This Modest? blog has meant that I haven’t had the time that I would like to write here on politics, current events and the culture.

The weird part is that it feels like I’m writing a lot, but you only see a part of it, and so what good is that?

So, I’m going to try something this week that may or may not work—I’ll gauge your reaction at the end of the test.  I’m still going to try to post on the culture, but along with it, I’m going to include the beginnings of some of the posts I’m writing elsewhere as an opportunity for you to see the other topics I’m writing about and where I’m writing them.

At one point, I wrote everything here—modesty, family, musings, etc.—and maybe some should come back here.  That’s part of what I hope to find out during our experiment.  So, keep up the feedback and let me know.

How this will work is this:

• I will highlight a post I’ve written in the past or currently on one my other blogs by posting the opening paragraph along with a link to read the rest of the content.
• These will be posted in the morning.
• I’ll leave the comments open here, but you are encouraged to comment on the other post.
• I will post any content on culture/politics in the afternoon here when I get a chance.

Sound like a plan?  I’m excited to see what will happen—so I’m going to get started getting some posts “in the bank” for this week’s mornings.  I’ll start with some posts I’ve written elsewhere that I’d like to see if you’re interested in them too…

I believe that God gets a chuckle out of our planning and strategy.

So, I’ve been AWOL from this blog for a week, however, I have not been silent—so to catch you up to date, here’s what happened last week that I wrote around the web (just not here) and I’d love your input on some of it!

Midnight Musings

Last week was MM’s moment to shine.  I actually had a few musings that I was really proud of, but no one wanted to talk about them!

It all started with Easter, and Candy Chocolate Crosses.  I was having a hard time rationalizing making something killed my Savior into something sweet.  I mean, if it were bitter, and went down sweet that’d be something.  From there I mused on how a Christian who believes that the Lord will return should prepare for it in The End Times Paradox.  I wrapped up the four posts with one talking about Future Generation’s Perspective and Why AI?

This week, I’m musing over smoking, and what the Christian believes about it.  If you have something that you’d like to muse on over there—let me know!

Is This Modest

ITM had a big week this week—yesterday we had 100 readers on our RSS feed badge, but that was only one of the big things to happen.

Eliza Magazine contacted me earlier this month and asked if I’d giveaway a couple of subscriptions—naturally I jumped at the chance to advertise a modest magazine, but I didn’t know how crazy the number of entries I’d get.  As of this writing there are 71 comments (though two of them are mine, clarifying rules), and the contest isn’t over until this Wednesday.  If you would like a FREE subscription to Eliza Magazine, go on over to Is This Modest and enter the Eliza Giveaway!

The other article I wrote was a long one, talking about 7 Things You Don’t Want in a Modest Formal—complete with illustrations.  It kinda wraps up the whole modesty thing in one post as far as what is and is not modest.

This Week

Hopefully I’ll get into a good routine this week—I’m off to a good start today (lots of posts written by me go live today so watch the little MInTheGap Network widget!), and hopefully we’ll find a regular time and get some consistency back up.  Thanks for bearing with me, and back to the culture and political wars soon!

As some of you know, I’m starting a redesign for my daughter blog, Is This Modest.  One of the interesting things during this process is realizing that that blog may eventually become bigger than this one, and starting to think through whether the current hosting situation I have will be able to expand as my “empire” does, or whether I’ll be able to stay where I am.

The nice thing is that there are many sites now out there that will give you a look at the different web hosting choices that can be found, and they not only show you prices, but they also tell you the policies and give you more information about hosting.  Because we all know that it’s not just the price, but the support you get.

Seriously, I haven’t been AWOL, I’ve just been a little busy, but I figure I owe a little explanation and update.

The Job

I have a new job.  I’m still a web developer, but I now work for a different company.  My job duties are more well rounded, it’s better for my career, and there are great people to work with.  I’ve even been able to work from home twice.

The job is also one hour and fifteen minutes from my house.  It will move to one hour from my house on January 12.  I’m also carpooling, which I thought would give me the opportunity to blog on the way, but I’m also feeling a little guilty not making conversation with the guy that is so willingly letting me ride in his car.

The House

Many of you know that we’ve been looking for a house for over two years.  Between the crime, the space, and other factors, we’d wanted out of our house and we’ve been looking in our area for what seemed like eternity.  This move of a job has allowed us to look in a different location, and just last week I signed the papers to apply for a mortgage on a new house.

Perhaps I’ll write some posts sometime on what I learned through the four offers we made, but suffice it to say that we look forward to moving to a new location at the middle to end of this month if not the beginning of next month.

Our current house is on the market, and we’re praying for a speedy sale.

The Blogs

All of this traveling, holidays and paper signing has made it difficult to be writing.  I’ve tried to fit it in occasionally, but it’s funny (for me) how I was doing four posts a day around the election and then I seemed to “drop off the face of the Earth.”

I plan to resume regular blogging after the move and as we get settled.  Until then, we’ll be cleaning for showings, packing, moving, painting, unpacking, etc.  Until then, the top priorities for blogging are this blog and Is This Modest—for which I have great contributors and it is moving along quite well.  Any extra time will go into Weekend Kindness, and look to VeggieTales Review for any status updates on the house, since my alter ego will post what’s going on in the family as well as VeggieTales news.

Sound like a plan?

I covet your prayers as we find a new church, new friends, old friends, our way around a new location, etc.  It’ll be a change, and though it’s not far from where we are, it’s far enough to feel more detached from family and things we know than I’ve ever been.

Oh, and by the way, commenting is working for me in Firefox 3.0.5, and it’s a free download.

It’s that time again.  Time to look back at 2008 and see how the Lord blessed:

November 14th is my last day of work.  In preparation for this, I’ve started to look at the options for what I can do to make money and put food on the table.  Along with job hunting, I’ve been researching freelancing opportunities, and one of the things that I’ve found is that there are some great opportunities for those who know how to make WordPress templates and set up blog hosting!

The neat part is, with some of these jobs you can offer to be the webhost, and you can make money past the time of completion.

In any case, this leads us back to the question of how to find the best web hosting and what it entails.

Over the past year or so I’ve shown you multiple different sites that you can go to in your quest to find a good site.  Today I want to introduce you to another one—Web Hosting Report.  This site helps people find the hosting provider they need by providing a good interface and ratings.  This site ranks highest by price, but also has other ratings to help you make a comparison.

So, whether you’re looking to move your blog off of the shared sites to your own site, or looking to start a business, you’ll want to check these rating sites to make sure you’re getting the best deal, service, and space.  Otherwise you may be missing out!