I have been busy developing three other sites in recent weeks, thus the scarcity of information here. I have still been adding to the Dogeared Pages from the Web in the sidebar, but most of my energy has been directed at these three projects:

• Cub Scout Pack 918 — Louisville Christian Homeschoolers — We recently joined Pack 918, and I volunteered my services to develop a site for them. It has not officially launched either, and so does not have some vital information, but the basics of who and where are up and running. It has a great “cub scout” feel to it and will hopefully be a helpful place for all things cub scouts. I’ve had a bear of a time getting it to render properly in IE, but I think it is finally working. Live in the Louisville area? Homeschool? Come visit! Coming soon: tips on making the boat for next month’s Raingutter Regatta and photos from last week’s campout!
• Grace Fellowship Church of Louisville — I was upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 and overwrote the entire database for my church’s weblog. So, I created a new one and have enlisted the help of a couple of church members to contribute content such as sermon summaries and photos. The elders will be looking for engaging ways to use the site in the coming months. Maybe a discussion forum?
• Boyce Library Online Guide (B.L.O.G.) to Reference Works — a site which shall be public by next week. It is intended to be a one-stop-shop for information on theological reference works. Keyword searchable. I will link to this once we launch it publicly.

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The United States Geological Survey has confirmed that what woke me up this morning at 5:39am was a magnitude 5.4 5.2 [updated] earthquake with an epicenter in SE Illinois — 154 miles from Louisville, KY. The above image is a “Shake Map” from the USGS which shows the intensity of the quake in the surrounding area. Here is the live footage from WAVE3 during their morning television broadcast.

The USGS also lists three earthquakes of sizable magnitude around the world in recent days. They are:

• Magnitude 5.2 ILLINOIS April 18, 2008
• Magnitude 6.6 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA April 16, 2008
• Magnitude 7.1 MACQUARIE ISLAND REGION April 12, 2008

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I have lacked a motivation to write anything lately — especially since I’m gearing up for vacation in a couple of weeks and am feverishly trying to accomplish some milestones in a few of my ongoing projects.

You’ll notice that I do not have anything lined up to read next, so I’m soliciting your suggestions. Something fun. Something quirky. Something like a cross between Petroski’s The Book on the Bookshelf and Cussler’s Treasure of Khan. Odd, I know. So please leave your suggestions in the comments.

For those of you who are fellow aspiring geeks, I’ve been studying Ruby on Rails. I hope to kill two birds with one stone by learning Rails: to once again become somewhat literate in the tech world by emerging from my 20th Century cave, and to provide a web-based framework from which to build a comprehensive bibliographic index of literature on certain aspects of ecclesiology. More details about this are soon to come.

Since the research wiki never really caught on, I’m converting it to a more attractive series of CSS-styled pages. Here is a screenshot. I’ll provide a link and solicit comments once a bit more work is done.

And finally, I’ve been trying to get together a series of podcasts to launch over the course of the Fall semester on various aspects of research such as using the Archives and Special Collections. Again, I’ll provide a link once a bit more work is done.

So there. I’ve not fallen off the planet — I’ve just been busy.

Your thoughts?

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