Twelve days of Christmas

1. Bible Gateway – really lightweight Bible website, ideal for sharing in as many translations as you’d like
2. Interlinear Bible – see the Bible with the original Greek, word-by-word translations, and links to…
3. Strong’s concordance – normally in book form, this is just amazing if you want to look into what kaluma really means.
4. Ship of Fools – not sure what to buy for a birthday? Look in the gadget section. And just laugh at the articles :)
5. BBC News – because you don’t want to be disconnected from the world!
6. Google Advanced Image Search – you can select license filters, and thus find lots of images licensed for re-use (generally CC). As an aside, photos which aren’t credited on this blog come either from my personal library (and are therefore under CC-BY-NC) or from public-domain-image.com (and therefore public domain)
7. Last.fm – amazing site to find new music. Sadly, there will be changes meaning radio will only be accessible from the UK, US and Germany; but if you’re there, sign up!

—

Seven useful websites, six popular posts, five blends of tea!

Four posts by others, three Christian jokes, two awesome apps, and a fun fact about the Bible

One year down in this blog. It’s been a great journey – from 200-odd monthly page views to roughly 500 this December*. My posts have evolved – I no longer try to emulate those who inspired me and I have kind of found a voice; and my style has changed.

Looking at statistics makes it easy to see one thing: lists please. 10 is a good number. And the quirkier the list, the better. The best two posts are these:

1. 10 reasons why leading people is like making a pot of tea
2. 10 ways in which the  Queen is like Jesus

These two seem to have boosted numbers of readers quite importantly, so much so that it is difficult to compare like for like with posts published before these two and posts published after these two. It makes no surprise, then, that the rest of the top 6 is relatively recent – even a post which had only slightly over one week to collect views has made it, but it’s fresh enough so there’s no need to remind you about it.

So the top 5 is completed by:

3. Singing lies is OK
4. The piano and the rule
5. Oh Noes! They used Comic Sans!

All of these have over 100 views at the time of writing! (and I’m quite pleased with that!)

The sixth post I will share here is one that was popular even though it was published before the dynamic duo; and you may have missed it. It’s all about identity and faith:

6. Being a Christian – believing in Christ, which was my fourth post ever, coming in at a very nice 77 views!

Did you have a favourite post this year? Which one was it?

—

Six popular posts, five blends of tea!

Four posts by others, three Christian jokes, two awesome apps, and a fun fact about the Bible

—

* This was written before the 12 days series. Now the total is closer to 700, although this is admittedly skewed by a higher number of posts. 500 is closer to “normal” month expectations.

Tea is amazing (except Lapsang Souchong, of course). I have said so before, and will say it again. But just like there are many denominations to Christianity, there are many blends of tea. Here are some of my favourites:

• Yorkshire Gold
• Lady Grey
• Traditional Afternoon
• Christmas Tea
• Blue Lady

Try to find them all, and let me know what you think! And if you know any other tea I should try, do let me know too!

—

Four posts by others, three Christian jokes, two awesome apps, and a fun fact about the Bible

1. Ben Reed‘s blog is always a pleasure to read. It is hard to pick just one of his posts; I’ll go for one of the recent ones: 9 ways to respond to the quiet guy
2. Nick Baines recently blogged about being counter-cultural. The Bishop of Bradford is a very VERY prolific blogger, so count on him to keep you up to date.
3. Dean Roberts, a young Anglican pastor, blogged about sacrificial giving. A very good read.
4. Finally, Dave Bish, from UCCF, recently blogged about trinity and the “hard matters” that we sometimes hide because they look bigger than they are.

—

Most of these I shared on Twitter, so follow me to get them! Also worth pointing out, there are two cool things out there: the first one is Millennial Leader, a community of bloggers; the second one is the brand new and shiny Google+ community “Christian bloggers”. You can find lots of good stuff there!

—

Four posts by others, three Christian jokes, two awesome apps, and a fun fact about the Bible

A pastor, around the time of the peace, found that his microphone was not working. He promptly said “There’s something wrong with this microphone.” To which the congregation, expecting the peace, cheerfully replied “And also with you!”

—

How many Anglicans does it take to change a lightbulb?

Change???!!

—

How many Catholics does it take to change a lightbulb?

Lightbulb???!!

—

Three Christian jokes, two awesome apps, and a fun fact about the Bible