I know things have been sort of dead around here lately. Things have gotten quite hectic with a couple of issues hitting all at once. I apologize for the lack of blogging and commenting. However, the good news (hopefully good anyways) is that I have finished the first part of my Philemon translation. I have translated the entire book very woodenly, so I can get a feel for what Paul is saying and following his argument. The next step is to take my English translation, and turn it into an actual English translation- adjusting for grammar and so forth. Hopefully, I will have it up soon!

I just installed a plug-in that some of you may be interested in, called “Nofollow Free.” This plugin removes the “nofollow” tags that wordpress automatically adds to any links that are in your comments. The purpose of the nofollow tag is to discourage spam in comments- so why would we want to remove that tag? When people post comments with a link in them it boosts their pagerank in search engines such as google, which, in turn, boosts their visibility in searches. This encourages spammers to post comments with lots of links, so that each one of the spammer’s sites will get the boosts in pagerank. The nofollow tag disables the links from effecting this pagerank. The unfortunate side effect is that comments with legit urls (such as your blog’s url) are also punished. The Nofollow Free tag removes this tag from every url (including the one your name links to if you include your site’s url), allowing your post to positively benefit your pagerank, which gives you a better listing in search engines.

Wouldn’t that just encourage more spam? You won’t have to worry about that, because wordpress.org blogs already come with akismet (their spam blocker) installed. Just make sure you have that plug-in activated, and it won’t be an issue. With akismet running, and the Nofollow Free plug-in installed, we can help each other’s pagerank as we interact via comments on one another’s blogs!

When I write on this blog, I have two main objectives: 1) be educational, and 2) be accessible.  While a lot of my readers are either knowledgable about languages and technical theology terms, not all are.  I don’t want those who feel like they don’t have a grasp on the topics covered on this blog to feel left out of the conversation that is being held here.  With this in mind, I have a couple of points that I want to enter into a covenant with my readers, so that I can be held accountable for accessibility.  Here are two points that I have thought of. Feel free to suggest more.
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Welcome to the introductory post for ΚΑΤΑΓΡΑΦΑΙΣ, formerly thisblogchoseyou.wordpress.com. Things are still a bit rusty here, but all the links above should work. Of the main pages, nothing much has changed, except that I reworked the “About” page somewhat, so if you haven’t looked at it in awhile, or if you’ve never looked at it, I invite you to.  It digs into the purpose of this site a little bit-

“This blog will be a place where I share ideas, thoughts, and reflections on issues dealing with Christianity, Biblical studies, culture, etc. It is my hope that everything I do is grounded in the Christian worldview, and in order to be so properly grounded, all things must be anchored in the ancient Scriptures which God has revealed to us through the inspired writings. As such, this blog will be a record of the things I am learning (and sometimes relearning!) through Scripture, discussions on the culture we find ourselves living in, and a place to provide links, information, and resources on the reformed faith and cultural commentary.”

Some changes will take awhile to implement. For example, though the blog is now live, I will be backlogging a bunch of posts from the old blog. Also, sometime down the road, I’ll probably be putting a custom header image at the top- but those of you who read the old blog will know that’s nothing new. It’s hard for me to keep one design for very long.
I also want to take the time to thank all of you all that have followed me from the other blog. I know it’s a pain to update blog feeds, links, and so forth- and I appreciate that you have taken the time to do so.

It is my hope that God would use the posts that will appear on this site to bless you all.