I’ve created a new page for bad music videos I’ve got *five* different versions of “Maya Hee” there now, and a new one by a Japanese group called *Happatai* singing “Yatta!”. Yesterday, I had posted the Yatta clip here, but I think interpersing this high silliness in the middle of this blog might be disorienting to some visitors.
Category Archives: Site log / Geek
Mystery Solved
I solved some mysteries today–not only the “Legolas search,” but also why my bandwidth usage has been so high. According to my statistics, practically the whole world visits my site every day, but my email says otherwise. The problem turned out to be that some people liked the images I have on some of my movie pages so much, they “hotlinked” to them, instead of just copying them. Linking to an image might feel more ethical than copying it, but it’s much more insidious. While the Web works by people linking to **pages**, linking to images is a very subtle form of theft that drains bandwith without visits. None of those images were mine, anyway, they belong to their respective studios as noted, and can be included in other sites as “fair use” as they were here.
The bandwidth drain wasn’t critical, but it might become so if I choose to publicize my site. I decided to cut all the hotlinks now with a .htaccess file. Hey, you like the pretty picture? Just right-click and take it, OK? (Unless it’s a personal picture, or something I’ve obviously taken pains to customize–then ask, please!)
Legolas? Huh?
I was checking out my site stats, and found one particular statistic that defies explanation. Apparently the search string which has brought the most people to this site so far this month isn’t “mysticism” or “Christian mysticism” or “awakening” or “theosis,” but **”Legolas!”**
Well, it’s true, I *do* have a pic of Legolas on my Lord of the Rings review page. Other than that, I have no idea how entering “Legolas” into a search engine brings folks here. Not that I’m complaining, but it’s probably not what they’re looking for! I actually tried the “Legolas” search myself in Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, MSN, and AOL. I didn’t see *anything* pointing to my site. *How do they get here?*
Apparently, searching for Shannon Sossamon also brings people to the *Wild Things of God.* Hey everyone, welcome!
Sprucing it up
Whew! I’ve made a lot of changes to the site over the last few days, but most of them are subtle. First off, I rebuilt the templates for the monthly archived posts, posts by category, and individual entry. The “look” of any of the archived posts now is basically the same as for the spirituality articles and book reviews.
The book review index page has been fixed, and when I get around to creating index pages for the poetry and spirituality sections, the site will have a nice secondary navigation within each major section. That will help visitors who come with JavaScript turned off (if there are any).
I also fine-tuned the local search engine to filter out redundant results from different blog archives.
Lastly, I expanded the “Intro/About” section–those pages indexed under the left-hand category on the navigation bar at the top. Ever wondered what my domain name, “frimmin” means? I’ve expanded the “About this site” page to include a short history of the site and navigation tips. If you’re interested in Web design, you might find the Colophon page of interest (though you won’t if you aren’t!). My personal intro / bio page hasn’t changed much. I also have a Technorati Profile
Finally, I added a new category for my posts, Geeklog. Can you guess what category this post is in?
Changing Life, Changing Site
Reply
I just rewrote and restored three old pages to the site. Buddha, by Karen Armstrong, also her wonderful and brilliant A History of God, and, now, back by popular demand, my old page The Lotus and the Cross: Common Threads in Buddhist and Christian Spirituality.
See, the old pages **are** being restored! It just takes time; my perspective has changed so much in the last couple of years that almost every page of my site has to be rewritten to some degree. For instance, I’ve been studying Zen now for a year, and that makes a big difference. It may not sound like much if I say that the main change is that I’m shedding conceptual beliefs, but if you’re as wrapped up in them as I was, it’s pretty significant.
As I was developing this site from 1996 until around 2000, I still had the very mistaken notion that mysticism would give “the Answer,” that replacing some beliefs with better beliefs would bring me to God’s truth. That’s like saying the number ten is closer to infinity than the number nine!
Over the last few years, I began to realize that God’s reality is inexpressible, but I couldn’t find the right way to convey the change in my perspective on my site, which had over 140 pages by early 2003. Finally, I took down almost everything, started blogging my current thoughts, and restoring old pages, slowly, in their own time. More are coming, but this is all for today.
That’s Jedi life in the real world.
Back to MT
Well, it’s back to MT. Blogger was convenient, but I want flexibility and power more than convenience. The main thing that drove me crazy about Blogger was the lack of categories. MT’s category support should be very helpful for me in intergrating the blog with my static pages, for example, having posts on spirituality appear in the index for spirituality pages.
The only disadvantage is that I haven’t been able to import the Haloscan comments from my blog. I’ve tried using Zack’s solution, but apparently it doesn’t work for MT 2.6+. At any rate, that’s not a major loss—I didn’t have hundreds of comments, and I can cut and paste the ones I want to keep, although the time will be messed up.
Jon, updated
I’ve made a few changes to the site this last week. I’ve jazzed up a couple of the stylesheets, revised and reposted the pages on Biblical Panentheism and Universal Salvation. Also I completely rewrote the review of Waking Life. Its vision of life as a lucid dream was something which I could not get when it first came out. Now, it’s screamingly obvious. When I’m more aware, I see that my existence is very much like a lucid dream. Ordinary life, without awareness, is like a sleep. One who’s begun to realize his true nature, begins to see it as a lucid dream, aware that he is dreaming. It’s an incredible metaphor, actually much better as metaphor than The Matrix.
I also came back to two texts with much greater understanding. The Tao Te Ching was the first Eastern religious text I had ever read. I’ve read it several times, but not in the last five years since I began meditating and exploring the nature of things. In the past, my "mysticism" was philosophical, now it’s much deeper. There’s so much in there that no one can understand deeply until they begin practicing it deeply, and then it opens up.
Also, I revisited The Gospel of Thomas again. I read that more recently, but going back again, since my practice has deepened as a quest to know my being in the Ground of Being, I understand so much more there than I ever did before. The scholars write commentary after commentary, but cannot "get" it, since it’s beyond everyone who’s not practicing.
Come to know what is in front of you, and that which is hidden from you will become clear to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not become manifest. —Thomas 5
That brings me to what really "updated" me tonight. In my last post I was quite discouraged and in a state of "spiritual indigestion." But taking Mark’s advice regarding SI was helpful— very, very helpful. As he suggested, I sat down quietly and renounced knowledge and desire from my heart. (I know nothing, I need nothing, I want absolutely nothing.) Tonight, after sitting in the quiet of that no-thing-ness for a little, something just "popped," and I realized, this is it. This is really it!
Soto Zen calls just-sitting meditation "the first enlightenment." The thing is that simply being in that awareness of Being is what enlightenment is. The abbot of The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counsel pretty much says the same thing, that this is the contemplative work of eternity. It’s so easy to get caught up in seeking the big, explosive, once-and-for-all "capital E" Enlightenment, which is nothing more than neurotic, clinging, desire. My teacher told me to give up wanting enlightenment, and now I think I have. I can see its here.
As Jesus said: Come to know what is in front of you, and that which is hidden from you will become clear to you.
It’s so easy. My heart overflows with gratitude. Thank You, Father.
I’m getting to like blogging.
I’m getting to like blogging. I’ve decided to make the new version of the site blog-driven. It will give me a chance to post thoughts much more quickly and easily. For instance, I can share quick thoughts about a movie, without having to spend a hour or two crafting and publishing a review, unless it’s really calling me to.
I’m going to move my thoughts on Web design into a separate blog; I’ll probably keep movie stuff in this blog, but you never know. And I’m thinking about a third blog on this site, to be announced.
It looks like Blogger is
It looks like Blogger is going to be my new blog solution. Their tags are easier for me to use and manipulate than Movable Type’s» were, and Blosxom» didn’t even have a built-in bloggy interface to simplify FTP-ing. That’s the whole point, guys! To be fair, there were a couple of poorly maintained, atrociously documented “plug-ins.”» I tried both Sxtem and Blog Post, and over several nights, couldn’t get either to work. Sxtem had the unexpected effect of requiring another blogging tool, w.bloggar», to actually do the work, and THAT one somehow connected me with a long-lost, forgotten, one-day blog I had created eight months ago at Blogger.»
Serendipity at work? I gave it a shot. I had a problem getting Blogger’s commenting to work for a while, until I discovered it was my error. (I had tried specifying detailed root server paths from the real root, but Blogger was only expecting addresses from the web-accessible part of my site.) Once fixed, Blogger worked like a charm, and it fits nicely into the layout of my new homepage. Blogger is not only free with unlimited blogs, but it makes emailing posts a snap, and if that weren’t enough there’s BlogThis!, a neat tool that fits on your browser and opens up a post with the address of a page and any text you’ve highlighted on it already populated. Great idea.