A Totally Gay Podcast

I was recently interviewed by Nine Moons founder Rusty Clifton about my being gay and active in the church — and about California's Proposition 8. If you've got 45 minutes, give it a listen…

Listen to the podcast…

NB: This post is cross-posted from Nine Moons: A Totally Gay Podcast, please join us over there to comment!

Blog Aggregators & the Dynamic Gospel

The brouhaha ( I, II, III, IV ) over J. Max Wilson's recent expulsion from the Mormon Archipelago — and Wilson's decision to start an aggregator of his own (which, presumably, won't send him packing) got me to thinking…

What kind of role do these Mormon blog aggregators play in the dynamic gospel?

Oh… you've never heard of the dynamic gospel? My apologies. It's a personal theory that I've yet to fully flesh-out. But, in broad strokes, it posits a couple of things:

1. The first is that just as individuals may grow closer to God in both understanding and comportment, His church does as well. This shouldn't be a ground-breaking idea. We've all thrown out the phrase "line upon line, precept upon precept". Now whether we actually believe the church progresses from vaguaries and innacuracies towards clarity and Truth™ is an entirely different matter… but surely you've used the phrase. Were we to graph this progression, we'd see a line that moved like the graph of a stock exchange… and were we to zoom in, closely, we'd see that the line was comprised of myriad lines — each with their own paths. Unlike a stock exchange, however, the moving averages are always positive — we are, inexoribly, working our way towards God. And this, I believe, is the truth behind Wilford Woodruff's sentiment found in Official Declaration 1, that "[t]he Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray".


2. The second is that in deciding what they do or do not believe, members of the Church must contend with a number of factors: the canon of the Church; the words of the prophets; the whisperings of the Spirit; and Church policy… and each of these must be weighed against both a personal and corporate ( I can't think of a better term for the Body of Christ ) understanding of what they each mean. Each of these factors acts as a dampening agent against both true inspiration and counterfeit — slowing and enabling the progress of the Church, simultaneously.


3. The third is that this slow and deliberate process brings notions to the surface quietly, most times. Bubbling, as they do, to the surface of the group's consciousness… ideas of little value disappear over time, while Truth™ (or a semblance of it) remains.

So what does this have to do with aggregators? At its root, this process of percolation is about memory… what remains, after time, survives to join the Gospel. It's mainstreamed through the nurturing and care of the members of the Body of Christ. Like sleepwalking stewards, we slowly (slowly!) clean the Lord's vineyard. And memory is very much determined by writing… the Canon is entirely written — it is scripture; the words of the prophets are also entirely written; if we follow the words of the prophets and keep jounals, then the whisperings of the Spirit are also written; and, finally, Church policy is almost entirely written.

Unlike personal or even organizational libraries, digital libraries are "easy" to search and diseminate… as such, their reach is both broader and deeper. Never before has so much been so easily accessible. Aggregators — especially those that purport to speak for the Bloggernacle or Mainstream Mormonism play a role in dictating what people read… and, in turn, what people remember. This will, undoubtedly, have an affect upon the process described above. But to what extent, I do not know.

This conversation is part of a larger one, I think. One about Correlation, one about the Church's online tools, one about the PR efforts of the Church… each facet playing into the larger process of memory and acceptance… and our eventual arrival at a true understanding of the mind and heart of God.

So there you go… I've set the stage for a discussion… here's my question again: what kind of role do Mormon blog aggregators play in the dynamic gospel?

NB: This post is cross-posted from Nine Moons: Blog Aggregators & the Dynamic Gospel, please join us over there to comment!

2007: My Year in Blogging

I've got some time to spare before football really gets going, so I thought I'd look through my Google Analytics reports for the blog. And what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't then share what I found?

How People Found Me

• About 45% came to me via a search engine.
• About 40% via a link on some web site or other.
• About 15% came directly — probably from typing in my address or clicking on a saved bookmark.

On the search engine front, there were a couple prevailing themes (in no particular order):

• filler text
• fonts (especially the Stephanie Marie Font)
• worries about a child being gay
• sermons on prayer
• poems about grandpas
• the consultant joke

And though it didn't rank very high, about 20 of you came here looking for information about "mormon wedding night". I'm not entirely sure what to think of this, and I'm not sure I want to.

Who These Folks Are

Over the last year, I had visitors from 108 countries (inasmuch as it's possible to discern):

• United States, 76.66%
• United Kingdom, 4.90%
• Canada, 4.41%
• Australia, 1.79%
• China, 1.14%
• Germany, 0.95%
• India, 0.85%
• Ireland, 0.80%
• France, 0.65%
• Netherlands, 0.65%

Put another way:

• Americas, 81.95%
• Europe, 11.51%
• Asia, 4.16%
• Oceania, 1.98%
• Africa, 0.31%
• Unknown, 0.08%

And, finally, language:

• English, 94.19%
• Mandarin, 1.12%
• German, 1.07%
• French, 0.69%
• Spanish, 0.61%

Link Love

It shouldn't surprise you that most of the incoming links I get are from other blogs or blog aggregators. Here are my top 10:

• Blogger (Not Including Individual Blogs)
• Ardent Mormon
• Northern Lights
• Adam & Andi
• Mormon Enigma
• Web Graphics
• Nine Moons
• LDSelect
• Steve & Callie
• Gary & Bridgette

This blog wouldn't be the same without the incoming links and the traffic they bring… so thank you, everyone, for linking!

What They Found When They Got Here

So let's first look at a few trends…

A full 42% of the traffic on my site is to my home page. Which makes sense — it's the home page. It's what people bookmark. And for regular readers who don't subscribe to my feed, it's the easiest way to see what's new.

Once here, a lot of you click on the topics links. In fact 17% of my site traffic is concentrated among the topics pages. The most popular topics, by far, were "gay", "mormon", "friends", "fonts", "steampunk", and "food".

A whole 1% of you use the built-in search at the top of the page to look around the site.

One surprising trend was how popular all of my content is — not just my newer posts. So (not counting posts which showed-up as part of a topics search or the posts which are read when they're on the home page) 46% of the individual posts viewed were from this year, 22% from 2006, and 32% were from 2005.

What were my most popular posts this year?

• Web Tools: Filler Text
• Meme: Desert Island Fonts
• Poem: Grandpa's Garden
• I Think My Son May Be Gay

A couple others come in near the top:

• The Joy of Sudoku
  
• A Joke about Consultants
  
• Sermon | On Prayer

What I Wish They Had Found

Of all the content on my site, there are a few that I consider special — either because I thought it was a particularly good piece of writing, or because I thought the subject was somehow noteworthy.

Here are my favorites from this year:

• I Think My Son May Be Gay
• Lost in Milk Wood
• An Affirmation of Faith
• The Frail Light of Life

And my favorites from years past:

• Meme: My Last Day
• Mormon Rhythms Series (I, II, III)

So there you go… a little bit about my year in blogging.

Happy New Year!

Portrait of the Artist as a Pseudonym

I've posted online under the "Silus Grok" pseudonym for years and years — and will likely continue to do so indefinitely. But a couple months ago, I started to think about getting a "self portrait" done, in order to flesh-out (so to speak) my online brand. And that's when I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a talented illustrator by the name of Jesse Ewing.

He and I have had fun over the last month going back and forth as the project progressed (see how it all came together in a Flickr set I've created for the portrait). And the final was just what I had hoped for!

And for the record: No. It doesn't look like the flesh-and-blood me — what use would a pseudonym be if I slapped it on a picture of me? Besides, I've always loved playing dress-up… and this is almost as fun.

On to Weightier Matters

I'm a little disgusted with myself.

You see, when I started this blog, I had a mind to use it as a place for me to opine on some of the larger issues our society faces... and, if all went well, I hoped that my posts might foster some dialog. But I've only tackled a couple of larger issues ( being gay and Mormon, gay marriage ) in any depth — and off-site, no less! And the couple of times that I've discussed issues of import here ( Israel's opportunistic attacks on Lebanon, and America's lack of moral authority on the matter ), it's only been in passing.

I want to change that. So here goes: I'm going to raise a couple issues here that I'll address in the weeks to come — hoping that having this post out there will prod me to overcome my inertia.

• National Security: This will likely be a several-part series... as it's a topic I've thought about for some time.
• Gay & Mormon: This is the essay I promised several months back that would revisit and fine-tune the ideas I put forward during my first guest blogging stint over at Nine Moons.
• Re-engaging the Electorate: This is an issue that's dear to my heart, and I'd like to chat about it, at length.
• The Power Matrix: I have a pet theory about how nation's operate that I've been noodling for nearly 15 years... I think it's time to let it see the light of day.

So there you go. Wish me luck.

Crowing over Technorati

Just after I attended the Utah Bloggers Conference — where I heard so much about the service — I decided to join Technorati ( here's my Technorati profile) — a blog-centric networking and search site. It was simple ( and free, of course ), but I really didn't make too much use of it until this weekend.

This weekend, I decided to tag/categorize my posts, so that technorati's search engine could parse my site more readily. It's been a pretty big undertaking, and I'm still not done ( it would have been much easier if Blogger — my current blogging system — supported categorization out of the box... but they don't ). But I'll be done soon... and I wanted to take a break for a moment to encourage each of you to consider signing-up for a Technorati account.

Why?

Well, simple, really: each of you probably have a blog... and except for the few of you who keep it a secret, you each want to be read by folks. Technorati can help you with that: their search engine is used by 100s of thousands of bloggers to comb the blogosphere, and their results are recognized and valued by Google. Let's put it another way: Technorati can help you get readers directly ( through their search engine ), and indirectly ( through improving your Google ranking ).

So what's stopping you?

:)

( And no: tagging your posts like I do isn't necessary... I just do it because I'm sick sick sick. )

Where on Earth?!

So, it's time I come out of the closet: I'm a map geek.

It's true... I love maps: making them, collecting them, reading them, appreciating their beauty — I even use them once in a while.

That's why I recently gave-in, and created a Platial profile of my very own. Now I can tell stories in a new and wonderful way: using maps (like one showing all the towns I've lived in, or another that I'm building now that will show all the LDS Temples)... and that's also why I've started to geotag the photos in my Flickr account. I started because I came across a wonderful geotagging bookmarklet from Flickr user Aemkei that is as easy as point-and-shoot photography ( bookmarklet found via this discussion thread ).

Very fun!

Oh the Places You'll Go!

So.

I recently discovered a wonderful service (in beta) that allows me to describe my life — not in words ( per se ), or in photos, or in music — in terms of places I've been... the service is called Platial. Yes, there are a couple of other ones out there, but none of them seem as polished as Platial... so I decided to sign-up.

I've got a Platial profile, of course, which you can now find in my sidebar. My first map is "places I've lived".

A Brush with Fame

So I had a wonderful afternoon... lots of work got done, and I ran into Ethan of SLCspin fame.

We hadn't met before, but I heard his blog mentioned in passing, and inquired further...

"Did someone mention SLCspin?"

"Yeah... do you blog?"

"Yes, I do... I'm Silus Grok."

"You write The Crow's Nest?!"

* stunned silence *

"Yeah!"

I don't remember the rest — except that he found me through Forma Line — I was just so happy to meet someone who reads my blog... you know, besides one of my stake presidents.

: )

( So good to meet you, Ethan... we'll have to sit down and chat some time! )

Don't Forget: Tonight is the Utah Bloggers Conference!

Just a friendly reminder that the first annual Utah Bloggers Conference is tonight from 6:30 to 9ish at the Larry H Miller Innovation Center, in Sandy.

Update: The conference was great. Ryan should be proud... met some great people for the first time, and met Pete Ashdown again... man, I hope he wins.

Utah Bloggers Conference

Ryan Money will be hosting the first annual Utah Bloggers Conference next Tuesday — June 13th, 2006 — from 6ish to 9ish at the Larry H Miller Innovation Center.

I'll be there! Don't know what I look like? Hm... well, IM me and we can work-out a way to meet.

: )

Here's the Utah Bloggers Conference ad from Connect Magazine.
Hat-tip to the Mid Market Maven (even without the requisite hyphen).

I can't believe it's starting this way.

I've been online since, well, the beginning of the web, and I've always planned to get a little personal site of my own — you know: some time... I always pictured starting out with a hand-rolled beauty of a blog, something I could be proud of. Of course, I never really had the time. Work and play and work always got in the way. It's hard to set aside time for grandeur. Mediocrity... well, we've always got time for that.

So here I am... starting a blog. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And why? So I could post a response (not even a very good one) to a post over at Matt Garn's blog.

Now don't get me wrong... it's about damn time that I get a blog of my own. I just didn't expect it to start this way.

Hey! I almost forgot: welcome to my blog!