Blog Readability Test

According to this blog readability test my blog has a readability level of

My wife’s blog has a readability level of

And my daughter’s blog has a readability level of

ht: David Hayward

I always new my girl was a genius.

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Giant New Logo

Sorry for the new enormous logo guys. I rubbed some of this stuff on my blog and it really works!

ht: Alex

Top Posts for October 2007

Most popular posts on billychia.com for October 2007

1. Willow Creek Reveal Frenzy 
2. The Beginings of a Rockstar
3. How to Shower 
4. Find New Popular Worship Songs 
5. Hillsong United Lyrics: True or False? 
6. The Best Evansville Dentist
7. Hacking Your WordPress.com Stats
8. Pre – Worship Confessional | 10.29.07
9. Get Nooma “Name” on Myspace – 48 hours Only
10. Newest Hilarious Chia Pet

Get Nooma “Name” on Myspace – 48 hours Only

The next Nooma, entitled “Name,” will premier on the Nooma Myspace Page this Wednesday, October 31st. The full length video will be available to watch free for 48 hours.

Noomas are a series of short videos that feature Rob Bell, the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan and they rock. Name is the 18th video in the series and it speaks to our struggle with identity.

Here is a preview clip:

You can find more exciting Nooma news, such as updates on the Everything is Spiritual DVD on the Nooma Blog.

ht: Elle Pyke

Update: My wife Sarah wrote an insightful review:
Review: Nooma “Name” by Rob Bell a Disappointing Release

Hillsong United Lyrics: True or False?

I’ll only ever give my all.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this lyric and it just doesn’t work. I’ve been listening to Hillsong United’s Take It All non-stop for the last week. Musically I love this song, but I’ve been having trouble trying to reconcile the lyrics with what I know to be true about God. Until today, I was reading some blogs and I think I’m a little closer.

Warning: Thinking out loud post ahead. I may be wrong and I reserve the right to change my mind.

Sarah, first pointed it out to me by asking,

Are we really never ashamed of Jesus?

The Hillsong United lyrics “We’ll never be ashamed of You” and “I’ll only ever give my all” don’t seem congruent with non-perfect people. If we were prefect it seems we could sing these lines, but I’ve yet to met a Christian who never made mistake and only ever gave Jesus his all. It seems like at some point even the most authentic Christians give Jesus less than their all.

Bob from In the Clearing writes in Whitmanesque Worship

The reason I need a savior is that I have not loved God with my whole heart. If I say that now I do love him with my whole heart, I needn’t any longer speak of Jesus or long for Him, because in fact I no longer need him.

(ht: Shannon Lewis)

Bob’s argument is that we can’t with a good conscience sing, “I love you Jesus with all my heart” (or possibly even “I’ll only ever give my all.”) because it is a lie.

I disagree with this argument. I think we can sing it truthfully. (Just like the 10 verses of scripture that use “all my heart.”)

God calls us to love him with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. Essentially to love God will all that we are, not simply our minds, but also our emotions and our actions as well. Worship works the same way. It’s multidimensional. So I worship God not only with my mind, but at times I worship God emotionally, even if it doesn’t make sense to my brain.

For example:

I love my wife. I mean I really love my wife more that I ever imagined I could ever love any other person. She is 15,000 times cooler than I even ever imagined a woman could ever be and I’m desperately, passionately, head-over-heals, crazy in love with her. This emotion is so powerful I don’t have words to describe it but I would definitely tell Sarah,

I love you with all my heart.

Do I mean it? 110% If we’re speaking emotionally. Now, in my actions do I love her with all my heart? Not even, close. I’m a pretty second-rate husband sometimes and I am way fortunate that my wife is so gracious. The the statement is true or false based on your perspective. Emotionally, it’s more than true, in action it is not.

How much more do I love God?

So can I logically worship God with my mind and sing “I’ll only ever give my all” ?

No, I don’t think so. That would be a flat out lie.

But emotionally would that line be a decent attempt to describe the indescribable way I feel about God?

Yeah.

Would it start to express what I want to say to God from the inner depths of my soul?

Yeah.

I believe in a huge God that wants to be worshiped with all of me. He’s big enough to be worshiped by my mind and my emotions. He’s even big enough to accept that worship even if I’m not using my mind and my emotions at the same time. If you’re like me when it comes to matters of emotion you start to use hyperbole. You exaggerate more and more trying to express what you feel. It’s not a lie. You fully mean every word of it and God knows that.

I’ll only ever give my all.

Jesus we’re living for your name and we’ll never be ashamed of you.

In our praise. In all we are today.

Take it all.

I mean those words. At least as much as David meant Psalm 26.

Don’t you?

Hacking Your WordPress.com Stats

For those who host their blog on worpress.com one of the advantages is the included statistics tracking program. For a free blogging platform it is nice to have a built in stat tracking apparatus that doesn’t require any additional effort to get up and running. Checking the metrics for your site is a great way to evaluate which blog content has been previously popular in order to create similar content in the future and grow your blog.

The downside to wordpress.com is that users are limited to the included stat tracking features by the inability to fully install other web metrics programs. Site Meter is a great web metrics tool however on wordpress.com you are limited to the non-javascript version which, among other shortcomings, fails to record referring sites. Google Analytics is completely unavailable on wordpress.com blogs.

However there is a way to hack the built in wordpress.com metrics tools in order to gain more information. This is the due to the use of php strings in the URL.

I’ll show you what I mean.

How to Hack the Summary Page

By default wordpress.com gives you the ability to summarize which posts have received the most hits over the last 30 days.

By editing the php string in the URL you can broaden the range for this data.

The 30 days summary URL for my website looks like this (click to enlarge):

Notice the php string “&numdays” is currently set to “30”. (&numdays=30)

By typing a “9” over top of the “3” in the address bar I can change the string to:

Which returns this page summarizing my last 90 days of statistics:

you can see that in the last 30 days my resume page has been the most popular post however in the last 90 days my rob bell post has been the most popular. I use this method to track which posts have been most popular over the life of my blog to manually update my all time top posts.

How to Hack Other Pages

The php string “&numdays” is editable on any of the wordpress.com metrics pages including:

• Referrers
• Top Posts
• Search Engine Terms
• Clicks

By default these pages show data for the last 7 days. However you can modify the rage to including any number of days you want with the ability to track stats over a much longer period of time. Simply type a new number into your address bar to create a new data set. (ie “&numdays=7” returns the last 7 days and “&numdays=30” returns the last 30 days.)

Note: Choosing a large range of dates will truncate your data. Apparently there’s a limit to how much data can be included on one page. For example if you view your “Search Engine Terms” for the last 7 days it will show you all of the terms used to reach your site even if that term was used only once. If you extend the range to 30 days it will show you only search terms that were used 2 or more times to reach your site.

How to Hack Daily Logs

You can go back to the “snapshot” page for any day in the life of your blog by adding the php string “&day” in the address bar to the end of the URL.

This page displays all the data for that day (including search terms or clicks that only occurred once.)

For example adding “&day=2007-07-23” will take me to the snapshot page for July 23, 2007.

You can edit the “&day” string to go to any day your blog has been in existence. (ie “&day=2007-06-16” goes to June 16, 2007 and “&day=2006-11-05” goes to November 5, 2006.)

Summary

By typing directly into the address bar of your browser you can edit the php string that is part of the page URL in order to access statistical tracking metrics from a broader range of time than is offered by the default wordpress.com statistics program. Both “&day” and “&numdays” are editable strings.

Newest Hilarious Chia Pet

My pal Joel tipped me off to the newest Chia incarnation. I’ve been waiting for them to come out with one of these for years.

The Billy Chia Pet:

ht: CECWorship

And only $49.95!

Mud Puppy on WordPress Hompage

The Original Mud Puppy is currently being featured on the wordpress homepage under video:

Could this be the scheme Joel was talking about to shut down billychia.com?

They have something a brewin’ to push their stats to new levels unattainable by mere mortals such as I.

20k

Alright hit the 20,000 hit mark. (Since 7/07)

Other stat phreaks:

Los

Joel

Russel

I’m on your tail.

Did I miss anyone?

New Stuff at billychia.com

So I’m emerging after a week of no blogging with some shiny new features to tote:

No more Inept as Icing

Yep, I ditched the fancy blog name in favor of plain vanilla “Billy Chia.” I’ve been wrestling with doing this for a while. I think “Inept as Icing” has a catchy ring but I just wasn’t a fan.

I thought about doing like a “Billy Chia’s Blog” or “The Zany Adventures of Billy Chia in Blogland.” In the end simple and streamlined wins again. Although I am open to suggestions.

New Resume

I updated my resume page and put together a brand new resume. After much prayer and talking to some wise people in my church and on the web (Thanks Jon and Fred) I’ve overhauled my resume to more accurately reflect what I’m looking for and what I have to offer. I’m hoping to see some fresh results in the coming weeks and am hoping to be sharing some of the lessons I’ve learned.

New About and Top Posts pages

I tweaked a few things on my about page and redid my top posts page. Some fresh posts made it into the top ten.

Cool Parenting Blog

This one’s for the ladies:

One of the authors for a local magazine Evansville Parent has started an excellent new blog called

Parenting through the Great Unknown

This is a wonderful resource that shares the honest narrative of woman trying to figure out how to be a housewife and mother who glorifies God.

She shares insights and practical tips on subjects ranging from cooking to child rearing to making your marriage the best. She does so with a unique poise, intelligence and humor.

Did I mention this published author is my beautiful wife Sarah?

Yeah I’m crazy proud of the girl.

You can read her article in September Issue of Evanvsille Parent entilted:

Lifelong Learners (Pg. 16)

Top Posts for September 2007

Most popular posts on Inept as Icing for September 2007

1. Lo-Fi Tribe on Church Websites
2. Aldersgate Worship Highlights
3. Our Atrophied Jewish Holydays
4. Changing Worship Lyrics
5. Manly Cup of Coffee
6. Review: Jesus Painter One Way DVD
7. Worship Confessional | 09.02.2007
8. Grandma’s Homebaked Ministry Tips
9. More on Bad Worship Lyrics
10. The Sweet Spot of God’s Will
11. Worship Confessional | 09.30.2007
12. Review: Shane and Shane in Concert