My dullest blog in the world appears in the latest issue of The Economist. From Analysing the web: Blog mining:

“I NOTICED that the doormat was at a slightly crooked angle. I reached down and moved the mat back into its correct place.” Thus began a recent entry on The dullest blog in the world. Although this publication is something of a satire on the internet’s inane blogs, scientists are finding—to their surprise—that useful information can actually be mined from the tedium of the blogosphere.

The dullest blog in the world is here, or you can follow it via Facebook or Twitter.

[Cartoon from We Blog Cartoons.]

Posted by Dave at 10:06 am on March 15, 2010 and filed under Blogging, Mundane.

3 Comments

Questions have been raised about my appearance on Simon’s Dark Side of the Moon Chaplaincy blog.

Also has anyone ever actually met Dave Walker, in his photos he looks tall and thin…is he? There is a reason for my asking.

I have been trying to work out what these reasons might be. Either the chaplaincy students are planning to knit me a jumper, or the Diocese of Winchester are seeking information about me for a soon-to-be-released photo fit ‘wanted’ poster after my Church Times Blog posts (1,2,3) about the fact they are ceasing to fund Simon’s post. This will mean that unless other initiatives are taken (which they are being) Southampton University will more or less the only university in the UK to be un-pastorally*-cared-for by the Anglicans. Read the whole saga on Simon’s blog and if you want to support his cause join the Facebook group from where news is being posted.

Back to what I look like: So far responses on Simon’s blog suggest that I am “grey-looking and two-dimensional” or, by the Mad Priest: “Dave Walker looks like a geek from a Hollywood teen movie.”

In order to lay these allegations to rest I submit a recent self portrait that proves I am indeed tall and thin:

Whilst I’m here: Thanks for not giving up on this blog. I haven’t been writing it for several reasons. Partly because I’m currently in a continual state of being behind schedule with my diagrams and I’m convinced that the people to whom I owe the work will be continually scanning the internet to see that I’m not frittering my time away. My time therefore needs to be frittered away in other less public ways. There are other reasons too. But I need to remind myself that i do actually quite enjoy writing here, so I will endeavour to post a bit more, starting, I think, with a calendar giveaway in the next day or two.

*Probably not a valid phrase

Posted by Dave at 3:26 pm on December 2, 2009 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Anglican goings-on, Blogging, Cartoons, Church Times blog.

8 Comments

Top Episcopalian blogger Scott Gunn has noticed that I have not been drawing here much and has declared himself to be in a state of impaired blogmunion with me (See Denouncing Dave Walker), so I thought I’d post a cartoon. It is one I did months ago that has been sitting in a sizable ‘to scan’ pile by the way – it wasn’t inspired by Scott’s post. Please forgive the Shrigley-esque crossing out. Usually everything I do is heavily edited so that you can’t see all of the mistakes, but on this occasion I thought my misspelling of ‘genius’ added something.

Scott is absolutely right though – I’ve not been doing enough cartoons on this blog. There are various reasons for this, but I can’t really explain as these days I can’t really write what I’m actually thinking on the internet as it would probably make me look deeply unprofessional, and no-one wants that.

Anyway, summer is coming, which means that I have to get ahead of myself a bit on the cartoon front. Does anyone have any topics they’d like me to cover in my ‘Guide to the Church’ series over the next month or two? No promises that I’ll actually be able to do them, but I’ll try my best to draw some of the topics suggested.

Posted by Dave at 10:28 am on July 18, 2009 and filed under Blogging, Cartoons.

33 Comments

Just to say (for those who aren’t fed up of me going on about it) that I’ll be blogging from the G20 meeting in London’s Docklands over the next few days. Details here.

Barring technical malfunction (not out of the question by any means) I’ll be blogging in these two places:

1. The Church Times blog
2. On my Twitter page

As I’ve said on my Church Times blog post if you have any questions for world leaders I’d be glad to have them. I may well not get the opportunity to ask them, but you just never know.

Posted by Dave at 9:23 pm on March 31, 2009 and filed under Blogging, Current events.

1 Comment

My ‘Dullest blog in the world‘ has received an unexpectedly large number of visitors today owing to an article that was on the front page of MSN for a while today. ‘The 11 lamest blogs on the Internet‘ originally appeared on a website called ‘PC World’ (not the shop we have in the UK) a week or two ago.

I’ve been busy moderating comments – in fact today was the first time I’ve moderated the comments on the site since I moved it onto its own domain at dullestblog.com, so there were about 1800 to do. [Uninteresting aside: 1800 is too many comments for Wordpress to display all at once, so I had to use cunning means involving searches for spam words to weed out a lot of the spams several hundred at a time. All terribly tricky, I can tell you.]

Anyway, the dullest blog should now accept comments. It is odd that it is getting all of this attention nearly six years on. I am, by the way, thinking about putting a webpage together that will link to all of the various websites that I run in some way or other, as there does seem to be quite a lot of them now and there isn’t a page that links to all of them. I’ve even got a few yet-to-be launched websites milling around in the background in various states of non-completion. I did have a ‘portfolio’ website but it is out of date and doesn’t work, two reasons not to look at it.

Posted by Dave at 8:57 pm on December 2, 2008 and filed under Blogging.

10 Comments

I have written 7 ‘notes’ on Facebook during the last month, which the website owners consider ‘abuse’ as they have blocked me from posting any more. I had been using a facility whereby when you write blog posts they are imported into Facebook as notes, but it is obviously intended only for very occasional users. The help page:

Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that we enforce. Please know, however, that the speed at which you are acting and the sheer number of actions you have made are both taken into account.

It is true that when I was updating this blog daily my notes were at the rate of about one a day. Perhaps I am being disciplined retrospectively.

As punishment for the sheer number of my sins my Facebook notemaking powers have been removed and the red ‘you’ve been naughty’ sign above pops up to remind me of my guilt whenever I try to look as notes that anyone else has written. As an additional reprimand notes from others do not show up in my feed at all.

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to everyone for the misery that my excessive notemaking has obviously caused. I will, in order to spare everyone further unhappiness, refrain from posting any more notes from this day onwards. Assuming i can work out how to turn them off of course.

Posted by Dave at 5:23 pm on October 9, 2008 and filed under Blogging, Technical.

30 Comments

Today I will be writing blog posts ‘live’ from the CRE in Esher, Surrey. You can follow my progress on the Church Times Blog.

Posted by Dave at 7:17 am on May 13, 2008 and filed under Blogging, Church Times blog, Religion.

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I’m at the Spring Harvest evangelical holiday camp for much of the coming week, and will be keeping a diary on my Church Times blog.

In the meantime please forgive the lack of posts and delays in comment moderation on this site.

Update:

• Spring Harvest: Day 2
• Spring Harvest: Day 3
• Spring Harvest: Day 4

Posted by Dave at 10:14 am on April 5, 2008 and filed under Blogging, Festivals and Exhibitions, Religion.

6 Comments

The BBC has issued a set of guidelines for its employees on blogging. The general message seems to be ‘talk to your line manager’. This guidance is part of a wider set of guidelines covering social networking and the internet and things like that.

There are also editorial guidelines on the subject of religion, which say, among other things:

Comedy and satire always have the potential for offence.

Indeed. I should probably issue a blanket apology every now and then just to be on the safe side.

Sorry everyone.

Posted by Dave at 12:04 am on March 21, 2008 and filed under Blogging, Religion.

7 Comments

I’ve posted a cartoon about Bishop Gene Robinson’s non-invitation to the Lambeth Conference on the Church Times blog. Also a brief observation on the fact that Wesley Owen are to be the official bookshop of the conference.

Don’t worry – I’m not going to write something here every time I make a Church Times post. But I might sometimes say something here when I’ve drawn a new cartoon, especially during these first few weeks whilst there are people wandering aimlessly up and down the corridors trying to work out where my cartoons are and which room they are supposed to be after the coffee break.

Posted by Dave at 11:54 am on March 11, 2008 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Blogging, Cartooning, Religion.

3 Comments

At long last I am ready to make an announcement that has been waiting in my ‘pending announcements’ box (usually a very empty box it must be said) for some months. I am now blogging on a new blog, the Church Times blog, of which this is a sample screen shot:

The new blog will be about the same sorts of subjects that you’ll find in the Church Times newspaper – religious news with an emphasis on Anglican goings-on. There will be plenty of cartoons, both new ones and some unearthed from my filing ’system’. The aim is to bring some more variety to the Church Times site and hopefully reach a wider audience.

I know that the starting of a new blog will raise some questions, so I will attempt to preempt them. First of all, this Cartoon blog and the CartoonChurch website will continue as will my cartoons in the Church Times newspaper.

So, how will the ‘two blog’ scenario will work? Well, the Church Times blog will contain:

• My blog posts on religious topics
• My cartoons on religious topics

This blog will contain everything else. In other words:

• CartoonChurch.com cartoons and updates
• My cartoons on non-religious topics, including ‘We blog cartoons’ updates
• Blog posts about things like my books, talks, personal and inconsequential matters, things I’ve seen out of the window etc
• Posts about the former SPCK bookshops situation

Whilst the Cartoon blog will continue I will no longer advertise it as my daily internet column. CartoonChurch.com will contine and I will keep on adding new cartoons to the ‘content’ pages.

The Church Times blog site is new and it has only been live since Friday. I didn’t mention it here at the weekend as I’ve been away and wanted to be able to moderate any comments that might be posted and respond to any questions that might be asked. Please excuse any technical glitches that we haven’t yet ironed out.

You may well be wondering how I will find the time to post on yet another website. Well, I will be posting a bit less here, but I’m also going to be cutting down the amount of freelance work that I do as that is the part of my work I sometimes struggle with. Although I still have a lot to do in the next couple of weeks after that time I am going to (politely) say ‘no’ to a lot of projects for the sake of my sanity. I’m also hoping to find some people to be a bit more involved in the running of the Wibsite, the community website that I supposedly run but have, to my shame, rather neglected recently. Chris has had to do more than he should, which hasn’t been right.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new blog – I for one am very excited to be doing it. I’m also looking forward to working more with the people from the Church Times – the plan is for me to go into their offices in the City of London for one day a week as well as doing cartooning and blogging at home as I usually do.

There is a feed that you can subscribe to if you enjoy what I do. You can read the blog through a site like Bloglines, Google reader, My Yahoo etc, or you can get it delivered by e-mail as I know some people do with this site. The feed page should have the full information about that sort of thing.

Hope to see you there – and here.

Posted by Dave at 6:35 pm on March 3, 2008 and filed under Blogging, CartoonChurch progress, CartoonChurch.com newsletter, Religion.

9 Comments

Blogger Maggi Dawn will be interviewing the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in Cambridge this week and is asking for questions from bloggers (and, I’m sure, blog commenters). It looks as if lots of the events are ones you can attend too if you are in the area.

See also:

• Website for the event, ‘A world to believe in’
• maggi dawn: A World to Believe In
• maggi dawn: The Archbishop of York and Jeremiah’s underpants

Update:

• The Archbishop of Canterbury – Archbishops to visit Cambridge

Posted by Dave at 3:23 pm on February 18, 2008 and filed under Anglican bloggers, Blogging, Current events, Religion.

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