Hiatus

As you can see, friends, I’ve been on a brief hiatus from my blog. I don’t get paid much for doing this, so every once in a while, I give myself some time off.

I plan on finally posting my review of O. Palmer Robertson’s book The Christ of the Covenants next week. I won’t promise I will return to the KJV Only Debate series until mid-May, as we will be going on a week and a half-long trip starting next Sunday.

Sorry for the news, I know you all hang on my every word…. Not likely!! If you’re starved for reading material, however, feel free to follow what I’ve been reading in the blog-o-sphere by keeping close attention to the “My Blog Finds” section on the left near the top of my sidebar. You can also go to this link, to see more of the blog-posts I’ve enjoyed lately.

Blessings from the Cross of Jesus be on all of you.

Bob

Gone for the Weekend

Hi! Thanks for reading my blog, even when I am slow to post. I went fishing today, and will leave for a wedding this weekend. I won’t get back to posting in earnest until Tuesday, probably.

Until then, you might want to check out this site that I’ve been meaning to promote for some time now. IFBReformation.Org. Check out his Origins of Independent Fundamental Baptists. It is quite interesting. Spend some time on his site, and check back here Tuesday.

Blessings because of Jesus’ Cross,

Bob Hayton

Google Magic & My Blog Finds

My Blog Finds

In my continuing effort to improve my blog and make it a source of valuable and helpful resources, I am excited to announce another new feature. If you already looked left, you noticed my new “Blogging Around” section which contains site news and other interesting stuff. Now if you look below that section, you will see yet another new section: “My Blog Finds”.

I’m sure you might think, “What’s the big deal? You already did the same thing with your “Blogging Around” section, didn’t you?” Let me explain. The “Blogging Around” section has to be manually edited by my editor and personal assistant (yours truly). This other section is automatically updated by my new editing team (Google Reader with the help of WordPress.Com).

A Little Google Magic

Before I continue my post here, let me stop and talk about Google Reader. For a while now I have been meaning to try using a feed reader. I enjoy hopping around to other blogs, and reading the great stuff that’s out there. But it can take a lot of time. And there are always blogs you don’t get too.

Feed readers, like Google Reader and Bloglines, promise to help. You simply add feeds from the blogs you want to track, and these sites will bring everything into one place. I have experimented with Bloglines, but just wasn’t happy with it. So I didn’t have great hopes for Google Reader, either.

Try Google ReaderI was pleasantly surprised, though, when I finally tried out Google Reader. “Magic” is the word that comes to mind. It is simple to add feeds (it will recognize them automatically, just copy the web address or URL from the blogs you want to add), and it is great to read them in the program. Almost all the pictures show up and the reading experience is great.

The features it offers make blogging easy. You can add a “yellow star” to any post to remember to go back and read it or blog about it later. Also, by clicking one time you can have the blog post you’re reading open up in a new window, in case you want to comment or something. You can also click “share” (at the bottom of the post) to add that post to your shared items page. And this feature is what makes it so easy to make your own “blog finds” feature.

Add Your Own “Blog Finds” Feature

I like the feature so much, I want to help you other bloggers add it as well. First, sign up for a free Google account and join Google Reader (its also free). Then, simply add subscriptions to your Google Reader, and click “share” on the posts you want to share. Then in the top left of your Google Reader home page, you will see a link to “Shared Items”. Click on that link and you will see all the posts you’ve shared, recently. But that’s not all. You will also see a fixed URL which will link to that page, as well as a link which says “feed”. The feed is for your shared list. As your shared list updates (by you selecting new posts to share), those posts are sent to your feed.

Then for those using Blogger, there is a button you can press which makes it easy to add a “Blog Finds” box to your blog, which contains your latest shared posts. And for you WordPress guys (the smart ones!!), just copy the link to your feed (located on your shared items page), and use an RSS Feed widget (in your presentation / side-bar widgets section from your dashboard). It’s that simple.

Thanks, Google Reader for sharing some blog magic. I hope you all appreciate my blog finds and start sharing yours. And I know you will find that Google Reader will make your blogging and blog-reading much easier, faster, and better!

For more help with this, check out Google Reader’s excellent help section.

Look Left

Yes, look left. You will see a new feature to my blog. Similar to Phil Johnson‘s (do I get all my good blogging ideas from him?) “Where I Am Right Now”, my “Blogging Around” section will give you the latest on what I’m reading and where  I’ve been  on the web. It will also  provide updates and programming notes for this blog. I’ll probably still do Bobspotted Blogrolls, but I am excited about what this new feature can offer this blog.

Now, as for the immediate future, I am painfully aware that my next Bible & the KJVO Debate post is not ready yet. So I hope to have it out Monday, Lord willing. But as you can see (if you look left), I have been busy blogging, just not here, and this post gives my good reason!

I’ve got nothing more to say. So, either check out the links on the left, or check back on Monday!

Disaster Averted!

The Titanic almost went down this week. Monday afternoon I accidentally deleted my blog! With the recent design changes, I had created a few testing blogs. And yes, I thought I was deleting a testing blog. But I  ended up deleting this blog!

But the WordPress guys came through to save the day! They were able to resurrect my blog. So I only spent about an hour and a half in a completely frantic state! I was busily saving webpages to my hard drive, from Google’s cache files, trying to keep everything I could for producing my replacement blog.

But God blessed and the blog remains. But there was some confusion with figuring out where they had “restored” my dashboard too. So for this whole week I have been unable to post anything.   As you can see, though, it is all squared away now.

The extra time off the blog has been spent on some interesting threads at Sharper Iron. And I’ve also been busy around the house, and finishing up a book. In case you’re interested, the threads I’m talking about are one on alcohol, and one on Curtis “Voice” Allen (the thread deals more with racist issues). I know, that these are controversial topics, but the discussion has been fairly level headed and beneficial there.

Anyways, just wanted to let you all know where I’ve been, and what’s up with the blog. No iceburgs in sight, steady ahead!