Welcome back.

A few more things will happen here in the next month.  Because of protests (mostly from our wives), the blog is going to get a make-over to eliminate the purple-and-green theme in order to dispell the rumor that I am color blind, and also to make the temple a little less adolescent.  The point is made that we look more like a comic book blog than a a somewhat-serious devotional blog, so we'll be updating the template to look more like the kind of blog we are really trying to be.

Also, while we have been relatively-disciplined to follow the catechism over the last 2-ish years, we're going to try to mix it up a little with other devotional topics related to the catechism as we think about it.   The hope there is that variety is good for the writers as well as the readers, and we want all of us to be happy so that more gets written in order that more will also be read.

Last, as real posts start tomorrow, sometime during the hiatus the page views rolled over 100,000 -- which was utterly caused by readers, not writers, so in polite company we say, "Thank You" to those of you who were, and still are, faithful readers.

Labels: Programming Notes

All --

The real pleasure of blogging is having faithful reders who come back and savor the old posts as well as look forward to the new posts.  The real pain of blogging is having to make the new posts as good or better than the old posts.  And keeping one's full-time gig.

The team here at Calvinist Gadfly have been regrouping since Christmas, and loading up the queue for posts so that we can try to sustain a weekly volume of 3-5 posts per week.  I know that doesn't sound like much really, but we try to make these posts a labor of love and not a tossed-off "read the whole thing" link to someone else who has done the heavy lifting.

The queue is getting ripe, and I think we'll re-launch next Monday, 6 Feb 2012.  We'll continue through the Larger catechism and try to plan better for the key weeks of the year such as the week before Easter and Christmas as well at a few topical items.

From all of us, our thanks for coming back even when we're not twice-daily content pumps.  We hope the quality make up for the lack of quantity, and we look forward to serving up the buzz in 2012.

Labels: Programming Notes

To our loyal readers:

I wish that I was well-organized enough to say that today marks the "X" milestone of this little blog, but really I just had a moment to reflect on the last 4 months and the contributions of my friends here to the spillway of internet content which you could choose from. I just wanted to give a general state of the blog for everyone.


First of all, I'm proud of the guys who volunteered to be my support and content drivers for this site for three reasons: first, the content has been consistently stellar -- weighty without being egg-headed, serious without being maudlin, and human without being too far fallen. Hat's off to the guys for coming to the table with a decent dish to pass around every time.

Second, I'm grateful that they are sticking it out. Their time is valuable and their contributions are voluntary, so they have far outpaced my expectations.

Third, we are reaching places that blogs I have contributed to have rarely reached well. We have a consistent readership in Asia (both India & China), and a surprisingly-strong readership Brazil. In fact, the blog is now receiving over 5,000 readers per month, which is genuinely a strong start for a blog which is not trolling the universe with cross-posts and gratuitous link-mongering. (with due respect to the link-mongers who, let's face it, are seen as the big dogs)

So that said, this would be a good time for you, our loyal readers, to tell your friends about this blog if you're enjoying it. We're not going to run banner ads, and the only link to sell stuff is for the Calvin poster you see in the sidebar. We're not going to run a blog roll, and we're not going to ask to be linked by you unless we write something you can't find anyplace else -- like David's paraphrase of Genesis 1, or Brad's categorically-brilliant post about God's providence.

So that said, thanks for finding us, thanks for reading us, and thanks for making us feel like this work isn't entirely vain.

Labels: Programming Notes