After a hacking incident I’ve finally gotten around to restoring the weblog from a backup. Not sure exactly what happened, but I know that I used to have a relatively unsecure webdav configuration in place for the web root of this site – it’s gone now. No other security issues found on the machine, and apache logs indicate that the culprit just went wild writing files to the kerner.net site.
I was going to take this as an opportunity to redesign the site both in layout and purpose. I thought I’d make that a bit more of a public process though.
The overall theme of the site won’t change much. Currently the tag for the site is: "thoughts on food, technology and ministry, but mostly food." I’m leaning towards keeping it the way it is, but I’m really drawn to using something from scripture.
My scripture of choice is from Ecclesiastes 2:24-25: "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?" I especially like the way these verses are paraphrased in the Message, "The best you can do with your life is have a good time and get by the best you can. The way I see it, that’s it—divine fate. Whether we feast or fast, it’s up to God." John Wesley says that we should "thankfully take, and freely and chearfully [sic] enjoy the comforts which God gives him" as these comforts are a singular gift of God.
I love that scripture tells us life is to be enjoyed. I think there is some risk in this scripture being perceived as defeatist, but I don’t think it is – everything we have is from God, but that shouldn’t stop us from working to improve. Mark Batterson reconciles this conflict very well with his statement that we should "work like it depends on us, and pray like it depends on God."
So what are your thoughts? Keep the traditional tag or go with the scripture? I’m going to be migrating from MovableType to WordPress soon so that seems like a good time to update the layout. Does anybody actually visit the site or is everybody in an aggregator these days?