Last week I made the decision to switch Linux distributions for my primary and secondary notebooks.
My primary notebook had been running Devuan since October 2023, and my secondary notebook had been running Debian stable since July 2024.
What prompted my decision was something I’d read the week before that Debian had decided to cease posting on X because X doesn’t reflect Debian’s ‘shared values’.
Pardon me, but I would think that a community or project (as they describe themselves) responsible for developing, maintaining and promoting an operating system would want to promulgate their ideas and communiqués on as broad a range of platforms as possible and to garner input from an equally broad base of developers and users.
As we came into the new year I gave some thought to changing the CMS behind this site from Hugo (its current static website generator) to something else. I’ve been on Hugo continuously now for 4 1/2 years. The alternatives I considered were WordPress, Joomla and Grav.
I migrated the site (sans photos) to each of those three platforms and tried my hand at changing themes and managing general site behaviour.
My total pages read for January was 301. It included continuing my Christmas presents: The World of Croquet by John McCullogh and Stephen Mulliner; and David Saxton’s God’s Battle Plan for the Mind.
I also started another book in early January, Break Through which led me to pause my reading of the first two mentioned above. Once I finish reading Break Through (probably in early Feb), I’ll resume the others.
My total for December was pretty low, but better than November! December was 320 pages.
Firstly, I finished volume 1 of Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939.
I started a couple of other books but have put them aside for an undetermined period of time. The first is Sophie Hannah’s Closed Casket and the second is Tim Muldoon’s Ignatian Workout that I mentioned here.
I also started reading two books that were Christmas presents: The World of Croquet by John McCullogh and Stephen Mulliner; and David Saxton’s God’s Battle Plan for the Mind.
I’m currently reading Tim Muldoon’s Ignatian Workout which seems to be a modern interpretation or application of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. The centrepiece seems to be a practice called ’examen'
I don’t have a good grasp in the concepts, purposes or practice of examen; but it strikes me that there are similarities between it (focussing on prayer) and lectio divina (focussing on Bible reading).
The connection and interrelationship is something that I’d like to consider (albeit briefly) in the near future.
It’s five years today since my Mum died. In the same way as with Dad, sometimes it seems like only a few years. On other occasions it feels like decades.
Our house has a few things that were Mum’s - some cutlery, crockery or glassware; paintings that Mum and Dad bought over the years. But some of these paintings can be seen in our children’s places. Having a few of these types of items around is OK, but you (well, I) don’t want to be burdened by it.
My total for November was a paltry 274.
I finished Spiritual Warfare for the End Times and have been reading ten-or-so pages each day from volume 1 of Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939.
My total pages read for October were 822.
My completions for October were Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness.
I commenced Derek Prince’s Spiritual Warfare for the End Times and volume 1 of Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939.
I also read the first dozen-or-so pages of Hans-Johann Glock’s What is Analytic Philosophy.
My total for September was 835.
I finished The Monogram Murders which is a Hercule Poirot mystery in the style of Agatha Christie. I also finished the first book in The Complete Works of E.M. Bounds on Prayer
I started rereading R.Kent Hughes Disciplines of a Godly Man but put it away after a few chapters. I may come back to it in the new year.
I also commenced rereading Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness.
Back in mid-January I wrote about my intentions for Bible reading in 2024.
The basic plan was to read three chapters of the Old Testament a day and one chapter from the New Testament. At that pace I would finish the OT in mid-October and the New Testament in latish September. Furthermore, the plan was to read the Bible in a different order to how it appears in modern western Bibles. Lastly, I was going to read from the Revised Standard Version.