Archaic Christianity

Apologies on being late in finishing up my trip reports. I know some of you have asked for them. Apparently, not sleeping during the night a couple nights (not continuous) before a 20-ish flight and layover sequence back to the states is a recipe for exhaustion. I've been able to make it to work for semi-normal work hours (used up all my vacation so I didn't have much of a choice), but other than that I've been absolutely exhausted. More tired than I've ever been before. So beat that I couldn't hardly think, read, write, watch TV...nothing. I am, however, coming out of it apparently, so I will be resuming my posts (likely) today, and will hopefully finish up the backlog of trip posts tomorrow.

I guess I'm getting old.

Dear reader, if you are a fan of strategy games like Civilization, I have a recommended (and free) game for you. It is called Ikariam. A few coworkers and I are playing the game and are creating an alliance. You should join us. If you are interested, join on the "Ny" server and shoot me an email so we can chat and collaborate.

Hope to see some of you on there.

I thought I was hot, but Grantham said I was pathetic. So now I am sad.

But that's okay. I found something that will help me feel better. I bet it will help you too.

A friend (Edward) sent me to a link that is surely scientifically backed since it perfectly conforms to what I expect. If I were a university professor, I would likely be teaching a language (Greek) or classes in biblical studies. So clearly, as you can see from this link, I am mega-hot.

Go ahead and disagree, Chuck, but science has my back.

I'm on twitter now: http://twitter.com/Mallioch. Anyone else? Does this finally make me hip and cool?

Watch this video. You will have a deeper appreciation of both the usefulness of YouTube and the power of Benny Hinn. Thanks for the link, Edward!

Random thoughts before bed.

I would image the large majority of you really don't care, but just in case you do, here you go. I am now restarting my technical blog again. I even have a new design. There you will see my ramblings on being a developer with a focus on the various tools that I use to do my job. Just in case you didn't know, I do programming between 40 and 60 hours a week as my main source of income (and one of my sources of fun). So I actually spend more of my time thinking about programming than Greek or Early Christian studies.

I hope it totally rocks for both of us.

Last night I watched our recorded "Scream Bloody Murder" by CNN, a show talking about a few genocides in recent history. The only part I watched was the part about Cambodia and it is worth watching (you can see when it is coming on again at that link above). Perhaps the rest is as well, though I must admit that I don't enjoy watching shows about genocide.

By popular demand (two people...which is popular demand in my book) I now bring you pics of my study. I am sorry if I provoke massive amounts of jealousy in your soul. It is definitely the best part of my house.

I am finally back at home. While at SBL I missed my family and my study. While in SE Texas I missed my study. It is so nice to be able to sit in my super-groovy study room in my super-comfy recliner. So nice.

It is also nice to be back from the land of dial-up internet. Having to wait 15 seconds for web pages to come up is just horrible! It's like going back into the stone ages. But since I was not preoccupied with the niceties of the internet I did get some good reading done. More on that soon. Tonight my time will be spent hangin' with the wife and preparing for Sunday School tomorrow.

Just want you all to know that you have one more shopping day till my birthday, Nov 20th (Thursday). So far it looks like it is going to be a good day. I think I'm going to be eating steak for lunch (yum!) and that night I'm going to a local Brazilian Churrascaria where I will eat from a plethora, even a schmorgesborg, of various tasty meats. Yum! Yum!

I can't wait for SBL. I'm flying out Friday morning and will be in Boston around noon. I've been saving up my birthday money. I'm ready to buy some books! Books...books...books...books...

It seems a bit meme-ish for Jim, but he just posted his desktop challenge. It sounded like fun, and it gave me a chance to show off my rockin' 1920x1200 resolution, so why not?

The death march at work is over. I actually got a decent night's sleep last night. I am now actually able to interact with the world. Woohoo! As my first act, I will now share some things I thought funny.

I will make a very brief mention of politics (I generally try to avoid it on the blog). Yesterday was an odd day for me. I have, in my brief time as a voter, always voted Republican. Yesterday I did not.

It's random thought time!

I am so very pleased that I finally got a new laptop! It is a Dell Studio 17" and I've got Vista Ultimate running on it. We'll see how much I like the new OS (my first Vista machine). The new laptop is great and I'm looking forward to doing my tinkering around in it. Unfortunately, my tinkering tonight is going to keep my editing of the next podcast until tomorrow...doh!

I am very pleased to announce something that I have been wanting to do for a long time, which is start a podcast. Last night we recorded our first podcast and today went live. Woohoo!

A friend of mine is an avid fan of The Teaching Company and recently sent me a link to one of their current free lectures: The Search for What Killed The Dinosaurs. Thanks Edward!

It has been a little quiet around here lately, but it's not been because of inactivity. I've been working on several projects lately, and one of them I was hoping to finish in time to end this month with a bang, but work, sunday school prep and an almost complete inability to keep myself focused on one thing has gotten in the way. So instead of something profound or academic, I offer you something humorous. But don't worry, it is old humor, so it at least fits the theme of the blog a bit.

I've spent the last few days in hurricane-ravished Southeast Texas. I visited family and friends in the Beaumont area to help out. I ended up helping my Dad and Granny out with fallen trees and limbs, which is always fun (okay...not really). I also visited a friend whose house was hit by storm surge. Right outside of Bridge City everything looked fine, but once you got in every yard you looked at had a large pile of sheet-rock, insulation, furniture and various belongings in the front yard. My friend's house had water in it at least four foot high. With the exception of the top four inches, his truck was completely submerged. What a mess.

Jim West is distraught over the possibility of the Large Hadron Collider destroying us all. Well, I hope that doesn't happen either! But here is some good news. To keep up with whether or not the LHC has created a black hole that would almost instantly destroy us, a website has been made to keep us updated. It is appropriately entitled "Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the Earth Yet?" Just stay tuned to that web page tomorrow and keep refreshing your browser and you will stay informed :)

FYI, I will occasionally be blogging over on the Spurgeon's Cigar blog and I just posted my first post there. The funny thing is, I don't even really know most of the people blogging there yet, so you never know if I'll agree with what the others are posting. So far the posts have been interesting at least...

FYI, I will occasionally be blogging over on the Spurgeon's Cigar blog and I just posted my first post there. The funny thing is, I don't even really know most of the people blogging there yet, so you never know if I'll agree with what the others are posting. So far the posts have been interesting at least...

Here are some various tidbits, links to things worth looking at new and old.

Random interesting stuff for the day:

Here are some things I found interesting in the last few weeks. Some of it is as old as last month, but that doesn't make it outdated! I am actually having quite a problem keeping up with things these days. So many interesting things to do! I have a number of other things I need to show some link love to, but for now I need to go to bed. I do have to work tomorrow, you know...

I have been spending all day it seems working on some of the design aspects of the site. I am finished for the day, and likely for several. There are still a number of things I want to do, but I must move on! What do you think? Do you like it?

Today I read an interesting article from the latest issue of Themelios (which can be found here in PDF). Not only does it use a nice serif font for the article text (I wonder what it is) but the article itself is interesting. If you are interested in the early church's thinking on Christianity and violence, it is certainly worth your read.

So says Fox New.

...apparently. Anybody want to volunteer to be a bodyguard?

A friend just invited me on Facebook to be a part of the NT Wright Appreciation Society. Since I know Jim West is a big fan, I sent him an invitation to join. I'm sure he will :)

Perhaps this is sad, but I'm so busy that I've decided that I have to schedule myself and make task lists to make sure I don't forget things and leave things off the calendar that should be on there. In a way it is sad.

Random stuff post ahead!

As I am sure most of you who read this blog already know, codex Sinaiticus will be going online this week here: http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/. Thanks to Wieland for pointing out the link.

If you care, Michael from Pisteuomen interviewed me last night and posted it on his blog. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here or there.

I have a couple of other comments I need to make here on the site, but I have to leave to go see The Dark Knight on the local IMAX! Woohoo!

I signed up for Facebook a while back, but I've finally decided to make it one of my online homes. I think this link will get you to my profile. If you're a reader of the blog, add me as a friend and send a note like "Hey I read your blog because you are totally stellar" or "Hey I read your blog because I enjoy reading what idiots have to say" or just "Hey, I read your blog".

If they want to get up to speed technologically when it comes to annual meetings, they should definitely organize their meetings like this group. The only downside would be the lack of centralized book displays and bargains...

The whole thing is worth reading, but at least read the beginning and end. Quite entertaining.

John Hobbins is winning, both in rhetoric and argument. I'm interested to see where this goes.

Ben Byerly pointed out an interesting resource. It is the Moule Memorial Lecture given just the other day by Wright about the interaction of scholarship and Christian discipleship. Here is the full transcript. It is most definitely worth your time.

I've been out of town on vacation for the last few days, but I'm back again. I got a lot of reading done in my biography of Erasmus, so that should be finished soon. I got a good deal of sleep, so that was nice. I feel almost recharged.

Work has been beating me down of late. I have had some time to read and such, but, I must admin, when I am strapped by time and the options are blog or study, study must be my focus. You don't want me posting thoughtless posts, do you?

I am lazy try to be efficient with my time. So, I created a dictionary to use on the site. This way I can define what I mean once so I don't have to be redundant, be pleonastic, or repeat myself. If you see a term that you think I should define that I haven't yet, please leave me a note. Hope you guys find it useful.

I am home now. Yay. The first thing I did was to take a shower. The hot water in our camper ran out after about two minutes, so I never felt like I got truly clean. The thing I missed the most, though, was the study. There wasn't a good place to setup there and I didn't get much of a chance to study. I spent a little time in 1 Clement, a little in Pseudo-Apollodorus, and a little with Grant's biography of Constantine. I bet I was the only one at the lake with a hard-copy of LSJ.

It doesn't get much fresher than this folks. I just got in from seeing Iron Man. First off, it was a whole lot better than Hancock, which was mediocre. The only annoying thing about the experience were the idiots who were sitting behind me that wouldn't shut up.

I've been meaning to post about this for over a month now, but I forgot. Now that announcements, questions of awesomeness and whatnot for Hancock are coming out, I figured I should get around to doing this. I'm also going to see Iron Man tonight, so I figured I should blog about this one first since I saw it first.

For earth day, I made carbon dioxide. Plants need it to survive, so I did the earth a favor.

I think we should consider the environment. I think it is smart generally and shows wisdom. However, I must admit that I find this green fad very annoying. Actually, in general I don't like fads. Unless the fad involved subscribing to my blog, that is. So feel free to start that one.

Over at his blog Mike posted a note about knowing a language fluently versus knowing a language linguistically. This was in response to my post yesterday about "knowing" a language. He's right, there is a difference. It's a good post, so go read it.

So now feedburner is irking me. I try to view my feed and it says I have three question marks appended to the beginning before the xml declaration. Well, I don't. I even checked the feed I have them: http://www.archaicchristianity.com/Feeds/rssforfeedburner.xml. It's fine. Both FF and IE parses it correctly, yet when I view the Feedburner feed I see those question marks. If this doesn't quit, I'm going to have to drop Feedburner.

I'm now going to follow the trend of everyone else in the world; I'm now going to host my feed through feedburner. The url to the fancy new feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArchaicChristianity. Kindly redirect your feed readers.

At some point I'll either start issuing a 301 or do some url redirection on my end.

Update

So I've been working a lot lately. 10-14 hours day have been the norm. But, it looks like that is coming to an end. Yay! I can think, read, and post more.

Desktop Tower Defense

In other very important news, as a break from work I took a stab at Desktop Tower Defense again on the random configuration and got my highest score ever. See. Big score.

I couldn't think of a good one myself, so I figured I would just steal an April Fool's gag from NASA. I admit it. I'm lame. But it's funny, isn't it? Yeah...you're glad I did it.

I couldn't think of a good one myself, so I figured I would just steal an April Fool's gag from NASA. I admit it. I'm lame. But it's funny, isn't it? Yeah...you're glad I did it.

I have commented once or twice on the Reclaiming the Mind blogs. I have never signed up for a mailing list with them. Yet, in one day, last week I received nine emails about supporting their ministry, or some newsletter, or blah blah blah.

As many in the biblioblogosphere are aware, Jim West's blog was deleted maliciously a little while back. I found some software that Jim should install so this doesn't happen again.

Since Jim hates cats so much, I bet you the cause of this was a cat. I bet one broke into his house, logged on to his computer, and deleted the blog. What Jim needed to prevent this was PawSense.

It is an interesting story, but the title of it is really quite wrong. This hit a few of the blogs recently and just got posted to the biblicalist, in both places debunked. "The Independent" last month put out an article entitled "Found at Last: The World's Oldest Missing Page." The article is interesting, so give it a read.

There's a few things that have popped up this month that I thought were particularly cool/interesting/thought provoking:

Yesterday I had lunch with Bryan Cox, a new blogger over at Thoughts on Antiquity, though he's not new to blogging, as the post explains. Anyway, enjoyed the lunch Bryan. Thank you for joining me. Looking forward to seeing your posts!

Wright recently made it onto Nightline to chat about the resurrection of the dead and heaven. It was interesting though nothing unexpected (from him) was said. Thanks for the heads up, Kris.

So my ex-coworker and friend David is coming over tonight. My son has met him before, and so I was trying to tell him that David was coming over. Here's how that conversation went. I was a little surprised.

So I just updated the site. This site is run on custom code that I wrote in ASP.NET, C#, and Sql Server 2005. That way, if I want a feature, then I can add it and don't have to wait on someone else. This time comes one major feature.

So I was tagged for this meme several days ago. I'm just now getting around to doing it.

For Michael's sake over at Pisteuomen, I am deleting the text of this post. It was fun while it lasted :)

If you are not my brother Kirk (and for most of you I am sure this is true), you may safely skip this post.

Some people see me as a programmer. Some people see me as a student of Scripture and Greek. But you will never really know the real Eric until to watch this video:

This snippet from Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address strikes me as smart. I have never read any Solzhenitsyn. This is probably because my education was sub-standard. I guess I need to add something by him to my reading list...

I am sorry, but I have to set Jim straight. If he needs proof that I have read some Zwingli, I'll give it to him. Of course, these pictures were in no way staged. My wife likes to randomly take pictures of me in my natural habitat (my study). I am, after all, very studly. And look, I have different shirts on when I read Wright and Zwingli. I'll even prove I have read some Wright. Clearly this is indisputable proof that these pictures were taking at two distinct periods! Here's me reading the latter...

Over at his blog Chris Tilling asked for people to point out their blogs so he could add them to his feed reader if he found the blog interesting. So Chris, here is why you should read my blog religiously:

There are a number of things one must do to become a great Christian thinker. One must study, be godly, and be able to communicate. But those criteria are easy to come up with, despite being hard to fulfill. Another criterion, much less appreciated, is the ability to insult the idiots those of inferior thinking that you may be dealing with at the moment.

I updated the site and added a few things. First, I'm starting now to put collations of ancient texts up here on the site. You can find them on my collations page. I have a number of other chapters collated but I have not yet converted them to the proper format. Some were from the class projects I mentioned before, though I can't include any of the collations of the newly discovered manuscripts themselves...which I still can't talk about. When that info is released to the public I will certainly let you know, faithful readers. Since I am collating new stuff as well you can't use the existence of these collations as proof for what kind of manuscripts we were looking at...so haha! Feel free to guess, though I will neither confirm nor deny anything you have to say. I will give you a hint, however: they were not the autographs :)

Because two just isn't enough, we had our third child yesterday. Samuel is our second man-child. So far he's been the most quiet of the kiddos. Hopefully this means he will be the contemplative type!

Welcome to the blog. I have decided, once again, to split my blogging of tech and biblical studies. I did this briefly for a while but did not like the split. I am, after all, one person. Shouldn't I just have one blog?