We are tempted to stay mired in our failures, to limit our lives to what we can imagine, to the security of what we are comfortable with. Left to ourselves, we strike a bargain with our faults and failings, believing them to be our destiny. But there is within our limitations, our faults and failures a divinely conceived creature waiting to be released, waiting to break through to a level of life only God can conceive.

attributed to St. Teresa of Avila

I have been working for the past couple weeks on some nifty third-party things for Weewar. To collect them together into one spot, I have started up Weewar Labs.

First I developed the Weewar Rankings page which polls the live Weewar server regularly and collects historical data for active players, including rating and wins. It then ranks players using a basic classification system based roughly on those used in some chess associations. You can also click on players in the listing to see graphs of the data over time.

Recently, I announced the Weewar Players Association. Quoted from the home page:

What is the WWPA?

The Weewar Players Association is a community of like-minded Weewar players.

What is the purpose of the WWPA?

The purpose of the WWPA is to serve as a useful social resource for Weewar players. It was created in response to the need of the Weewar player base to regulate itself in terms of fair play and good sportsmanship.

What can the WWPA do for me?

The WWPA maintains and publicizes a list of players who adhere to some modest guidelines on fair and honourable play. You can use this list to help you find opponents who won’t spoil your fun.

What does it cost?

Just like Weewar, WWPA membership is absolutely free. Registration is quick and easy, and you don’t even need to provide an e-mail address. Join now!

My next endeavour will be Weewar notification via instant messenger. Stay tuned!

(crossposted from simplyexplained.com)

Is it fair to say that the Catholic religion is the “oldest christian religion”?

Catholic apologists and scholars always contend that the Catholic Church is the church founded by Christ himself. They claim that the chain of popes is more or less unbroken from today’s pope back to St. Peter, who was granted supremacy among the apostles and shepherdship over the entire flock of believers, as per the canonical gospels. You can’t go back further than Christ himself when it comes to Christianity (unless you want to start dealing with the Jewish people being the prefigurement of the new Church, etc.), and so if you believe that Christ founded his church on Peter (as per Matthew 16:18), then you must necessarily believe that the Catholic Church is the oldest Christian religion.

Anne Bradstreet

After not a little bit of effort and hoop jumping, the CRE finally made it to wordpress.org:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-catholic-reference-extension-for-wordpress/

(crossposted from simplyexplained.com)

Catholics are generally permitted to make use of any Bible, even Protestant ones. The key is that they are still bound to respect the authority of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals. Towards this end, you will find Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat in essentially all Catholic bibles (as well as some other Catholic publications). These help Catholics judge whether a given publication is in line with Church teaching or not.

Version 0.8.7 of the Catholic Reference Extension for WordPress is now available.

A link will be added to the New Jerusalem Bible, where possible. I say “where possible” because, for some reason, this online version excludes the deuterocanonical books, and even 1 and 2 Thessalonians (!). Indeed, good quality online Catholic Bibles are hard to find.

Administrators now have the option of selecting which Bible links are shown in their popups. Use the checkboxes available in the Catholic Reference section of the Options page of the WordPress administration panel.

Report any bugs as a comment on this post.

Read more about my piano recording series here.

Schumann - Traumerei, Op. 15, No. 7 [ 2:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

His Prayer for Absolution

Robert Herrick