/karen/

My blogroll rocks! (Part 1)

Sunday, 28 January, 2007

On the night of the Word by Word dinner, several people commented to me that my blogroll is awesome. Which reminded me that I owe you a post about it. So here goes. In Bloglines order. And skipping family because that's fairly obvious.

Ali is an ex-MM employee. I think she got bullied by Guan into coming to Word by Word, and ever since, I've been blown away by the quality of her writing. Particularly the article she wrote for Hippocampus Extensions #10 (which remains incomplete ... *sigh* ... one of my backburner projects ... it's missing a key article). She has also been very proactive in organising literary-type dinners which I have never been able to attend. And unfortunately she has never been able to attend the ones we've held so far either.

I love Ali's blog for all her insights into the books she's reading, and she's normally reading the classics—George Eliot and the like. Very impressive stuff.

I met Panther because she read this blog, worked out I went to church with FEVA and came one night to visit. Turns out she also knew Dave. In weeks subsequent, we would occasionally meet up for coffee at Campos or Kiki's and talk books or whatever. She lent me most of her Robin Hobb collection (which took me a long time to get around to reading). And then she went off to England to lecture in mathematics.

Ben A I know from Toongabbie Anglican Church's Opinionated blog (which now seems to have disappeared). We knew some of the Toongabbie Anglican crowd from REAP (the staff/postgraduate Bible study group at UNSW) and they knew about us because of Hippocampus Extensions. This was back in the days of 2001/2002 when not many Sydney Anglicans were online and had blogs. There were us, Opinionated, Mike from www.gracenotworks.com and Dani (previously of Web Therapy and quite a veteran of blogging). We all got asked to be interviewed at the ARPA (Australasian Religious Press Association) conference in 2002 by people from Anglican Media (before they launched the brilliant SydneyAnglicans.net). I remember Luke conducting our interview—we were all very nervous—and then Simon pulling out his IPAC and showing us what Ben's blog looked like on it (it was mainly dominated by his head—back in the days when he was using his “Amelie” stylesheet ... well, you had to have been there ...) ANYWAY, I digress from the subject of Ben A. He was reading my blog and then branched out from Opinionated to start his own (like Pete). For ages we never met, though we were occasionally in the same room (like at the Ignite film festival in 2004) and some of my friends (like Duncan) met him at various Christian gatherings. Finally, in 2005, I met him (and Lorien) for the first time when we all went to Canberra to visit Deb on the ANZAC Day long weekend. (This is back in the day when Deb was actually talking to me.)

I love Ben's blog for his observations of the world around him. He has some terrific film and book reviews which have made me think about things in a completely different light. I've been encouraging him to write for Salt for a while.

Pakman is a relative newcomer to the blogosphere. I met him when he was a lowly undergraduate at Mid Year Conference in 2001. Not only is he the best drummer in the world, he is also an awesome Sunday school teacher who doesn't have to rely on Colin Buchanan for his music because he composes his own children's songs (among other things) and husband to Stacie, the incredible culinary genius (who told me recently my cooking does not suck, so score one for me!) I had the privilege of singing at their wedding.

Brandon (and Wendy, for that matter) are people I don't actually know in real life. We're separated by the Pacific Ocean so it's not really surprising. I started reading Brandon and Wendy back when they were sharing the same blog. Ben put me onto them (don't know how Ben found them but maybe they were among the “famous” Christians of the blogosphere back then—or they knew famous people of the blogosphere). Anyway, I was interested in how a married couple would go at having a blog together, and certainly Mosaic Life was fun to read. Then Brandon gradually stopped posting and moved over to his own domain where he started to blog more about theological stuff (he took up studying theology) so Wendy had Mosaic Life all to herself. Wendy is a scream. Don't believe the reviews—they don't know what they're talking about. If you haven't read her blog, you certainly should.

I met Bron at Mid Year Conference in 2001 when we hung out with FEVA for the first time. (FEVA have always had the best name tags at Mid Year Conference.) She was doing MTS. I don't know how she found my blog but she did and started reading. At the same time, she found a nice repository for her comics on BlogSpot. I love Bron's comics. They make me happy (e.g. this one).

Cade! Good grief, I'd forgotten about Cade. I met Cade in my first year at UNSW (2000). I had signed up with Campus Bible Study to join a faculty group (in a new environment I always try to meet the Christians. It helps me get to know people there). They told me, “We're meeting on such-and-such a day at such-and-such a time near the coffee cart”. I rocked up and then had no idea who I was actually meeting. So I stood around and studied everyone and thought, “Does that person look like a Christian? Does that person?” Eventually I overheard someone (who later turned out to be Andrew) saying that they would head in and find a room. I thought, “Oh, that must be them!” and followed. I think they were a tad surprised to find this person who they had never met following them in to do Bible Study. Anyway, that's where I met Cade. And Haydn too. But Cade's RSS feed must be broken because I never get his posts and so I forget to read them.

Craig I didn't meet for ages, despite singing a number of his songs in church at Gymea Anglican for several years. He was one of the early bloggers (around the time of Dani, Opinionated and us) but then he went through a rather messy divorce (which was heartbreaking to read about) and then quit blogging for a while. Fortunately for us, he resurfaced, though his blogging style has changed quite dramatically. He now links to all manner of stuff out there on the weird and wonderful web, while occasionally voicing his opinion about stuff like gender relations, pentecostalism and where Sydney Anglicanism gets it wrong. It's refreshing to read what he says because he is coming from a different viewpoint, even if I don't always agree with him. I met Craig for the first time at the seminar Ben did on depression for Christians in the Media.

Dave is a bit of an enigma because I still don't understand how he found us (though I suppose it wasn't hard) and why he's kept reading. Dave has been blogging for yonks—yes, back in the days of Dani, Opinionated and so on—but I wasn't always reading him (sorry, Dave!) I think I met him for the first time at the Inaugural Sydney Christian Web Dinner Thang at Sailor's Thai in 2002 (which then turned out to be ridiculously expensive but in our defense, we'd never organised anything like this before). That dinner was also how I found myself subscribed to Catalyst, the Australian Christian Web Designers Network (where I always felt like a total fraud but I joined because Ben said “they needed more girls” and ever since, they've had to put up with my emails saying things like, “Why isn't this working??? What am I doing wrong???”). But back to Dave. Dave can usually be relied upon to email me links of all the weird and wonderful things from around the web. (He's a long-time blog reader so he knows what I like.) He is also an invaluable font of information, and even if he doesn't know, he has ways of finding out. Oh yes, he has ways!

Now that we live closer to him and Kellie, he and Ben have going to the movies together. In fact, we have a date to go see Pan's Labyrinth next week. Even though I am not into coffee, Dave's blog is useful for knowing which cafés are worth visiting and which are to be avoided. When we walk around our neighbourhood, occasionally I'll see a place and think, “Hey, Dave was there! Wonder what he said about it.” He always posts brief reviews of the books he's read and movies he's seen, and he has interesting links to all manner of things.

Denise went to primary school with my brother. According to my old emails (yes, I've kept them all!), she was the first person to read H/E #03 because she was browsing out site around midnight, then refreshed the screen and bam! there was a whole new issue. I must have found out not long after that she has a blog because I started reading (though it took her a while to install RSS). I love her writing—she tells stories so well (the stories of when she worked at Coles were fantastic, though I don't think any of those are on her blog). Plus she takes lovely photographs.

Duncan has to be my oldest friend on this blogroll. I met him outside the chaplaincy in 1996 when I accompanied a friend there to pay for Mid Year Conference. Wow, this means I've known him for more than 10 years! I turned 18 during that Mid Year Conference (which was my first and which wasn't the one with the other Unis because for some reason the holidays didn't match up). I celebrated it with Duncan who stayed up all night with me, talking and listening to me talk—which meant a lot because I was at a rather low point at the time and just needed someone to listen to me. The friendship continued right through Uni and beyond. It was a little weird for me when he moved to the eastern suburbs because all of a sudden, he started making friends with my UNSW friends, but I suppose that's appropriate because they're all cool. When he married Fiona late last year, I had the privilege of singing at their wedding.

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