Ted Carnahan

“‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; …O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for me as an advocate for the use of Free(dom) software in the church is explaining the term “Free Software.” What does that mean? Most people, hearing that name, think “freeware” - any software that is free to use without serious limitations. But, of course, that’s only half of the meaning behind the term.

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I decided to upgrade my Wordpress installation on this website tonight. I wanted to take advantage of tags, faster code, and the new administrative backend available in Wordpress 2.6. Everything went fairly smoothly (except that my category names weren’t migrated, but I didn’t care because I was changing to tags) and I was pretty satisfied, but something was still amiss. My search engine rankings had been dropping for several months, but I had shrugged it off.

If your search engine rankings start dropping, something is wrong. Don’t stop looking until you find out what.

I wish I had taken that simple advice months ago. When I went to “View Source” in Firefox, I discovered that someone had hacked my Wordpress installation and changed my template to include thousands of hidden spammy links. Not only did that inflate the page size, but it destroyed my credibility in the eyes of Google, etc.

Here’s hoping that the search engines will once again recognize my brilliance (cough, cough) so that my ranks rise again soon.

Jennifer and I are pleased to announce that we’re expecting our first child in January! Here’s a little picture of the cutey (at 8 weeks, 2 days, so it’s been a few weeks since then.). I don’t know about you, but I think s/he looks just like Jennifer.