Tuesday: Welcome new Friends + Jesus Rap Video

: Bear happily welcomes Joan and Shellie on board as regular Den visitors. It's great to see your smiling faces, and Bear looks forward to getting to know you both more as time goes on.

Bear decided to post a Rap Video today instead of doing "Tackle it Tuesday" challenge. The video is a short one, less than five minutes, that was shared by a Facebook Friend, and is well worth passing along. It's great fun, to say the least.

Bear's been busily learning more about html coding and style sheets in order to get the Den better organized and spiffied up more. In fact, she has gotten so immersed in it, and spent so much time at it this week already (with a few more things to do still), that she's decided it's very likely she's also going to skip the FaithWriter's Writing Challenge this week, unless she suddenly gets inspired to whip something out at the last minute. She's going to take the week off to continue to catch up on "housework" around the Den, and to generally catch her breath a bit.

For all those that are receiving the Den's postings through various feeds and on Facebook, you MAY see an extra Posting appearing today... Bear's going to try a trick, that will create a Guest Book and General Comment Area for people to use (as an addition to the regular commenting options at the ends of each post in the Den's Living Room -- this will be a place where people can just drop in and say Hi, sign the Guest book, or comment in general about anything concerning the Den.) The trick is, that she's going to make the Guest Book/Commenting Area out of a regular post's template. Which will likely work very well. However, there's no way to do that without causing it to feed into everyone's various feeds, since it's an actual posting template being used.

The good thing about that, is, if you do end up seeing the extra link, you can use it to just drop into the Den and be among the first to sign the Guest book or comment in general, if you'd like.

But for now, here's Tamara Lowe's "Amazing Jesus Rap"...

(NOTE: If you don't see the media player, you aren't on the Den's Homepage and need to click on Bear's Writing Den and look there for it.)


.
_______________
Bear's news and free multi-media Christian resources: Bear's Writing Den

Billy Graham visits + Website Backup + Learning about Facebook

Early Evening
Billy Graham Visits the Den

Bear spent a while last night going through old Billy Graham videos, looking for just the right one to put in The Balcony.  She found videos clear back to 1949 -- he sure looked young back then! But he already spoke incredibly well, and was very on-target right from the start.  The one Bear chose was from 1957, because in it, Billy Graham answers a lot of questions that non-Christians have about Christianity.  And Bear wished she had heard something like it before she became a Christian -- it might have saved her some grief.

Technology is so incredible nowadays.  Bear never thought she would have Billy Graham visiting her Den!  Wonders never cease.  :-)

Website Backup

Today, was mainly spent backing up the Den's files.  Bear got kind of nervous, after pouring a whole week of almost non-stop work into it, thinking that if something catastrophic happened to the site and she lost all the writing she had done, (plus all the formatting, room setups, etc), that she would be one unhappy Bear.

So she cranked up the Den's Worship Favorites player, and spent a couple hours doing a lot of monotonous backup work, copying every post, and every Page, and all the code for all the individual gadgets and widgets into backup files, using notepad.  Glad to have that done!

Now, she just has to remember to update the backup files everytime she makes changes.  Which shouldn't be too bad, using Notepad files -- basically just a quick cut and paste operation, now that all the files are set up.

Learning about Facebook

Learning about Facebook was not so clear-cut and straightforward.  Bear did get signed up for membership without any problem.  But figuring out how "walls" work, and what a newsfeed is, and how to share content and privacy settings, and, and, and . . . Big Bear sigh.  It seems kind of like landing on an alien planet, suddenly being in the midst of all those walls and profiles and friends links and friend of friends links.  Do they have friends of friends of friends of friends, she wonders?

Bear is going to pray on this much, not sure what to set her privacy settings for.  She's thinking about just going fully public, but also thinking about going fully private, with all sorts of options in between to contemplate.  But for now is mainly just "lurking", keeping all her privacy settings on "only me" viewing, and wandering around the site, kind of trying to start to feel less alien.

Part of the problem is that it's a whole new language on Facebook planet.  Bear knows what a "story" means in real life, but how a "news feed" connects to a "story" and what a "story" means on Facebook could be anything.  And where Bear comes from, walls are made out of mud or rock or branches.

However, she did have lots of fun roaming about Facebook planet, and found a few Christian Teen groups.  Even found one fantastic teen video that'll likely be appearing in the Teen Worship section of the Worship Room on the first day it opens.  The group is not professional yet, so are posting their videos available to all, but their singing and faith are surprisingly strong.  And when Bear clicked on their friends, it led to other teens testifying about the Lord in interesting ways, on their "walls".

So Bear's beginning to have some fun at Planet Facebook.  Who knows?  Maybe a Facebook Share button will even appear on the Den wall someday soon.  It's kind of amazing the way you just click a button on someone's wall in Facebook, and make something appear on your own wall -- Bear stumbled onto how that part works already, making the teen worship video appear on her wall, before she even understood what button she had just clicked.

But it's Saturday evening, and time to catch up on some basic life chores that have been "on hold" this week while Bear played in the Den.  Bear wants to have them out of the way, so she can kick back and enjoy Sunday.