Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Odd Search Engine Results for ScriptureIndex.com
I was surprised by the search engine results after ScriptureIndex.com has been up (for approx. two months). Odd, or surprising? Here are the results of the search engine analysis I talked about yesterday.
The sample query was: "romans 8:7" scripture index. The result was considered good if we can be found by the search engine, no matter what rank. If we can't be found at all by the search engine, the result is obviously considered bad.
So why is google ignoring these thousands of pages at ScriptureIndex.com ?? I have a few theories about this that I will be researching in coming weeks.
The sample query was: "romans 8:7" scripture index. The result was considered good if we can be found by the search engine, no matter what rank. If we can't be found at all by the search engine, the result is obviously considered bad.
| Search Engine | Good result | Rank (if any) |
| accoona.com | yes | |
| alltheweb.com | yes | #1 |
| altavista.com | yes | #4 |
| beta.search.msn.com | yes | |
| clusty.com | yes | #1 |
| dogpile.com | yes | #4 |
| google.com | no | |
| gigablast.com | no | |
| search.lycos.com | yes | #1 |
| search.msn.com | yes | #1 |
| search.yahoo.com | yes | #1 |
| teoma.com | no | |
| wisenut.com/search | no |
So why is google ignoring these thousands of pages at ScriptureIndex.com ?? I have a few theories about this that I will be researching in coming weeks.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Scripture Index Update
Back in November I began work on a large, multi-year project working with all the scriptures referenced on the world wide web. You can see the beginnings of the project over at ScriptureIndex.com
So far we have indexed the book of Romans, and done a few special studies with key words and phrases (like in Romans 8:7 where we are told that the sinful mind is hostile to God, hates God, is in rebellion to God, etc.)
There are several large problems that I must figure out and obstacles that I must overcome before going forward with indexing the rest of the Bible. For instance, using the current methods I would run out of disk space prior to completing the scripture index, since my webserver will run out of gigabytes. Some will say that disk space is cheap, but I am looking at using gzip compression, since most new browsers will handle gzip http compression, which will save me both diskspace and bandwidth, and might even have the side benefit of making the pages load faster.
Another issue is how the search engines will react to pages found at scriptureindex.com. I'm blogging the results of my search engine analysis, and I will re-visit this topic every 2 or 3 months -- to see how the search engines are ranking the pages at scriptureindex.com.
The test query is a bit strange, but we have to start somewhere...
The test query is: "romans 8:7" scripture index
So far we have indexed the book of Romans, and done a few special studies with key words and phrases (like in Romans 8:7 where we are told that the sinful mind is hostile to God, hates God, is in rebellion to God, etc.)
There are several large problems that I must figure out and obstacles that I must overcome before going forward with indexing the rest of the Bible. For instance, using the current methods I would run out of disk space prior to completing the scripture index, since my webserver will run out of gigabytes. Some will say that disk space is cheap, but I am looking at using gzip compression, since most new browsers will handle gzip http compression, which will save me both diskspace and bandwidth, and might even have the side benefit of making the pages load faster.
Another issue is how the search engines will react to pages found at scriptureindex.com. I'm blogging the results of my search engine analysis, and I will re-visit this topic every 2 or 3 months -- to see how the search engines are ranking the pages at scriptureindex.com.
The test query is a bit strange, but we have to start somewhere...
The test query is: "romans 8:7" scripture index
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Blogging with Opera
I am still not able to blog with Firefox, and Mozilla 1.7 was giving me troubles also, so I un-installed Mozilla 1.7 and installed Opera. This looks like is OK, but many of the edit features are missing. Back on Dec. 9, 2004 (about a month ago) I was able to get back into blogger, but could only use with Mozilla 1.7 since the Firefox browser gets all jammed up with the blogger password. If anyone else has had similar problems, please add your comments. The nice blogger people say sometimes the best way to fix this is to use another computer or another browser, so I have been expirmenting a little to try to get this resolved.
So now I have Firefox 1.0, Opera (version x), and IE version 6
OK, so it looks like I will be forced to use IE just for blogging, until such time as I re-install everything, since Firefox can't get past the password screen, and Opera doesn't allow full-feature access to blogger.
However, if I use my other computer ( a totally different PC, then I can use Firefox 1.0).
So now I have Firefox 1.0, Opera (version x), and IE version 6
OK, so it looks like I will be forced to use IE just for blogging, until such time as I re-install everything, since Firefox can't get past the password screen, and Opera doesn't allow full-feature access to blogger.
However, if I use my other computer ( a totally different PC, then I can use Firefox 1.0).
Sunday, January 02, 2005
TooNomos Tsunami
BBC is now reporting 145,000 have died as a result of the Tsunami floods.
The loss of life is horrible, tragic, unbelievable, gut-wrenching, deplorable grief and sadness. The tragedy of 9/11/2001 is comparitively small. The 2996 victims of the 9/11 terrorist tragedy are listed here.
But the tsunami tragedy of 2004 is of a different scope. The number of tsunami victims is hard to comprehend. One man lost 72 of his family members. Can you imagine losing your parents, sisters, brothers, cousins, grandparents, all at one time? Most of us suffer horrible pain and grief -- attending one funeral at a time, spaced over several decades, so it is hard to imagine losing all those family members at one time...
...and the closer it hits to home, the more real it is. We typically harden ourselves to far off news, and sometimes we try to harden ourselves to news that hits closer to home. My neighbor Paul -- across the street -- just lost his wife -- 2 days after Christmas. She was only 39 years old, the mother of 4 small children. She died of some form of meningitis -- very suddenly -- in less than 24 hours.
What a week of sorrow, sadness -- and mercy. In judgement, God always remembers mercy. See for instance this testimony of God's mercy, reflecting on tsunamis, 9/11, Habbakkuk 3 and Romans 8. Or consider what this modern day Isaac Newton is saying about tsunamis and mercy.
The loss of life is horrible, tragic, unbelievable, gut-wrenching, deplorable grief and sadness. The tragedy of 9/11/2001 is comparitively small. The 2996 victims of the 9/11 terrorist tragedy are listed here.
But the tsunami tragedy of 2004 is of a different scope. The number of tsunami victims is hard to comprehend. One man lost 72 of his family members. Can you imagine losing your parents, sisters, brothers, cousins, grandparents, all at one time? Most of us suffer horrible pain and grief -- attending one funeral at a time, spaced over several decades, so it is hard to imagine losing all those family members at one time...
...and the closer it hits to home, the more real it is. We typically harden ourselves to far off news, and sometimes we try to harden ourselves to news that hits closer to home. My neighbor Paul -- across the street -- just lost his wife -- 2 days after Christmas. She was only 39 years old, the mother of 4 small children. She died of some form of meningitis -- very suddenly -- in less than 24 hours.
What a week of sorrow, sadness -- and mercy. In judgement, God always remembers mercy. See for instance this testimony of God's mercy, reflecting on tsunamis, 9/11, Habbakkuk 3 and Romans 8. Or consider what this modern day Isaac Newton is saying about tsunamis and mercy.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
The Sinful Mind is Hostile to God
After studying Romans 8 for while this year, I figured out that a goodly number of Christian writers agree on one of the basic human problems: "The sinful mind hates God" (is hostile to God, ignores God, and is in rebellion to God ) -- and so man overlooks the Wisdom of God, and continually stumbles about in the stupor of sin.
The reason this needs to be stated so plainly is that is not as obvious as you might think.
Man's reasoning power is corrupted by sin.
Man's thinking power is dulled by sin.
What's plain is not so clear, but is hid from our eyes.
The wisdom of God is obscured by our hostility to the idea that SOMEONE is wiser than us.
So, the sinful mind claims to love God and listen to God, even while the opposite is happening.
Man is even in rebellion to the IDEA that he is in rebellion to God.
Men hate the IDEA that they hate God, so while they say "I love God", they continue to despise God in their hearts.
This is one of the basic human problems. What do you think?
The reason this needs to be stated so plainly is that is not as obvious as you might think.
Man's reasoning power is corrupted by sin.
Man's thinking power is dulled by sin.
What's plain is not so clear, but is hid from our eyes.
The wisdom of God is obscured by our hostility to the idea that SOMEONE is wiser than us.
So, the sinful mind claims to love God and listen to God, even while the opposite is happening.
Man is even in rebellion to the IDEA that he is in rebellion to God.
Men hate the IDEA that they hate God, so while they say "I love God", they continue to despise God in their hearts.
This is one of the basic human problems. What do you think?
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Romans study continued...
Back in February 2004 I began a series of studies on the Book of Romans. Since I was away from Blogger, I began another, rather larger project indexing many of (most of) the references to Romans on the Internet.
Finally back in blogger...
My blogger account had been broken since May of 2004, when the good Blogger people began a series of software upgrades. My account access was lost for a while during the Blogger upgrades and then I was too busy on other projects at home... then I upgraded to Firefox... then a zillion other things happened....
I am using Mozilla 1.7.1 for this since I still can't get Firefox working with Blogger. The odd part is, Firefox works for everything else and Firefox is recommended by the Blogger people, and Firefox works great from another comptuer I have, but Firefox, Blogger, and my particular computer is a "bad combination". It's a really long technical story.... so anyway... it's good to be back, with a repaired password and using good ol Mozilla.
I am using Mozilla 1.7.1 for this since I still can't get Firefox working with Blogger. The odd part is, Firefox works for everything else and Firefox is recommended by the Blogger people, and Firefox works great from another comptuer I have, but Firefox, Blogger, and my particular computer is a "bad combination". It's a really long technical story.... so anyway... it's good to be back, with a repaired password and using good ol Mozilla.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
What is Faith?
One of the ads on my off-blogger, blog archive was for a book about faith.
Jay Snell (the author) says faith is a noun, but belief is a verb.
This book is another one of those faith-healing, "word-of-faith" genre, but it starts with an interesting word study, so let's consider these thoughts for a moment...
Quoting from the book...
Faith is information that you receive from God for you to act upon. This information enables you to know in advance what God is going to do in the future concerning a given issue or course of action. This information also enables you to know what you are to do in this course of action concerning this given issue.
Faith is a noun. It is information. It is something you have. Believe is a verb. It is something you do. You get a set of instructions or information from God which becomes your faith and then you act upon that information. Your acting is your believing. You do not believe in the Biblical sense without acting on your faith.
Jay Snell (the author) says faith is a noun, but belief is a verb.
This book is another one of those faith-healing, "word-of-faith" genre, but it starts with an interesting word study, so let's consider these thoughts for a moment...
Quoting from the book...
Faith is information that you receive from God for you to act upon. This information enables you to know in advance what God is going to do in the future concerning a given issue or course of action. This information also enables you to know what you are to do in this course of action concerning this given issue.
Faith is a noun. It is information. It is something you have. Believe is a verb. It is something you do. You get a set of instructions or information from God which becomes your faith and then you act upon that information. Your acting is your believing. You do not believe in the Biblical sense without acting on your faith.
