After a decade, it’s time to rework the blog and my approach to it.
When I picked the name “haligweorc” it seemed like a good choice—I was hip-deep in my dissertation, working with a lot of Old English, and was writing it semi-anonymously. The name worked perfectly well. Fast-forward ten years, and it’s better known as the blog that nobody can pronounce… So—while I still like haligweorc, I’ve opted for something a little easier to spell and to say!
Welcome to the new St. Bede Blog. Obviously, there’s a clear reference here to the St. Bede’s Breviary, my online Daily Office site. In many ways, that initiative represents one large and important strand of my ministry: presenting digital tools to introduce the contemporary Church to classic Christian liturgical spirituality. Others have appreciated the work of the breviary, and I have built several related web apps using the core code; St. Bede Productions serves as an umbrella for this code-work and for some other projects currently under development.
As I complete the shift to a new domain and build out the site, the St. Bede Productions projects will get more visibility including the top two, the Anglican Breviary Online and the Anglican Gradual & Sacramentary. The Anglican Breviary Online is still very much in progress and there is work going on behind the scenes as the transcription work moves forward. Too, I am hosting the Anglican Gradual & Sacramentary files and have plans to migrate much of this content to a databased/xml format for ease of use down the road. Several mobile app adaptations are also in the works, some in conjunction with Forward Movement.
If programming digital tools is one facet of my ministry, the other is teaching as represented by my writing. The blog will remain a central venue for that. Links to my more formal writing and publications appear on the Publications page.
The format of the site is new; if it looks like others you may have seen that might not entirely be accidental… I have to thank Fr. Scott Gunn for the recommendation of the Hueman theme for WordPress. I’m still playing with the widgets and such. The blogroll is a complete restart and I’ve left off a whole lot of people and will be continue to add to that in the weeks to come; if you’re a regular conversant and I haven’t gotten you on yet, drop me a note to be sure that I do.
I’ll post full links to the expanded site as the domain shifts settle down.
Test Comment…
I’m a stick-in-the-mud traditionalist, I guess (except when I’m a radical), but I preferred the name Haligweorc even if I didn’t know how to pronounce it. The new text font is deplorable Whatever graphic designer first sold the idea that sans-serif type is easier to read did a great disservice to readers. It’s harder to read. And the first pass at an overall presentation, I regret to say, is just plain ugly. But I’m sticking around, Derek. I like your mind. I just hope that among other things you turn it ASAP to rethinking the design of this mess. On the other hand, three cheers for dates on the posts. I really appreciate knowing exactly when x thought y.
Gee, tell me how you *really* feel… :-)
I think some of the complaints about the font color are due to the font itself. I’ll play with some of the other options…
This site is looking sharp now, though I can’t say how many revisions of the fonts and color schemes you went through to get it so.
I’m intrigued by the Anglican Gradual & Sacramentary material, and hope that the plan is eventually to get it to a similar place to the breviary: all the relevant material for a given day on one page. I imagine more development is waiting for the resolution of the issues you mention on that page, as well as the final approval and release of The Great Cloud of Witnesses.
Finally, links to to the breviary and sacramentary pages from the main page of this whole site would be welcome (or, if they are there, I cannot find them).
I cannot read your new blog on the iPhone with Safari. Also, I seem to remember that you had a database of saints lives or biographies or something. Do you know how to get at that?