Under The Sun

What is the point of Snap Preview? I thought we’d all agreed that uninvited pop-ups are intrusive, distracting, annoying and downright rude. Supposedly it gives the user the opportunity to decide whether the link is worth following, but since the Snap thumbnails are generally too small to read any of the text, all you can really preview is the colour scheme:  “I’m not going there– not with that shade of green…”.

When the little blighters started popping up on web sites all I wanted to do was GET THEM OFF MY BROWSER, not to actually look at them, so it was some time before I discovered that every Snap Preview contains a link to turn all previews off:

• click the “Options” link in the top right of the preview window
• in the options dialog, click “Disable Snap Preview Anywhere for ALL sites”

Relief — at least until you clear your cookies. You can also disable Snap Preview here.

With rising tension in Iraq and Iran, the IPCC report on climate change and, for us in Britain, bird flu in a Norfolk turkey farm, Michael Spencer has a timely post on Christian anxiety about the “End of the World”

Christians should be a community who looks at any apocalypse with hope. Not just hope that there is a resurrection beyond, but hope that Christ gives us victory over fear in the here and now. The likelihood of a nuclear detonation, viral epidemic or environmental catastrophe may be real, but Christians have always been able to minister, serve and love in the midst of the worst of times precisely because they believed all these events were under the control of the Lord of history and could not, ultimately, take anything of real value away from us.

I recently mentioned a near-namesake of this blog, Nothing New Under the Sun. A few days ago Byron revealed that he has begun chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment for a tumour. Reading such news puts my own trivial concerns into perspective, and his faith and cheerfulness are a testimony to the victory over suffering and death that Christ has won for his people.

Windows Live Writer is a WSIWYG (and rather wizzy) desktop blog editor. It works with most popular blog backend software, including WordPress. You just point it at your home page and it automatically detects the backend in use. I used it to post this entry, so it must work! (hat tip to Jordan Cooper).

Happy New Year!

What are the greatest enemies of the Gospel in the United Kingdom? Islam, the government, Richard Dawkins, evolution, feminism, post-modernism, the European Union?

When The Times invited eminent authors to write an essay on the theme “What is Wrong with the World?”, G. K. Chesterton’s contribution was:

Dear Sirs,

I am.

I’m sure the greatest inhibitors of the spread of the Gospel in Britain are those entrusted with its proclamation.

And that includes me.

I pray that I and all Christians in this country will, by God’s grace, will:

• Have a proper understanding of sin, its offence to God and its consequences for us,
• Have a true compassion for those who are living and dying without Christ,
• Strive for holiness,
• Be prayerful,
• Be grounded and nurtured in God’s Word,
• Stand firm for the truth of the Gospel with gentleness and humility,
• Replace individualism with a love for the community of God’s people,
• Replace consumerism with a zeal for Christ’s kingdom,
• Have more concern for our neighbour’s souls than with winning a culture war,
• Have more concern for Christ’s Name than for our own reputations,
• Reflect Christ’s love in our lives and relationships.

May we

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. [1 Peter 2:12]

but someone else has a blog with “Under the Sun” in the title — a much better blog than this one ever was, even when I was actually posting to it. The owner even has the same surname as me! So if your’e looking for Nothing New Under the Sun you’re in the wrong place!

Web zooms past 100 million sites from Guardian Unlimited: Technology
\”The 100 million site milestone caps an extraordinary year in which the Internet has already added 27.4 million sites, easily topping the previous full-year growth record of 17 million from 2005. The Internet has doubled in size since May 2004, when the survey hit 50 million.\”

There is a draft post in my admin area called “Thankyou and Goodnight”, which has been there for about six months now. I just can’t bring myself to post it, despite the lack of motivation to post anything else recently.

And then one of my old posts gets a pingback from William Dembski of all people, and revisiting my other posts from around that time is kind of interesting — to me, anyway — so maybe I should stick with it.

I really must do up the styling though…