James Hanenkamp's Weblog

IP Banning

I have recently been getting a lot of spam prayer requests from the same web site so I added IP blocking to both it and my guestbook. I also made my guestbook quite a bit better in error reporting. I also made the e-mail and web site verification system much more accurate as well as requiring web sites to fit proper syntax.

I also have plans to add more content to my site soon if I can ever stop being lazy.

Supreme Court

I was working on my Sunday School lession in James and I came upon a verse that made\ me think about what the Supreme Court is doing.

But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. James 4:11b

While in context it does not really apply, the supreme court really have become judges of the law. If they don't like something, they just have to say it is unconstitutional based upon their own personal interpretation of the consitution, not based upon what it really says.

The beginning of the verse says, "Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law." So if a Christian speaks badly about a fellow Christian, he is speaking evil about God's law and judges God's law.

Prayer

This Wednesday night at church we talked about prayer and I thought it was very interesting. Many people assume that God has two (or three) answers to prayer

1) Yes
2) No
3) Maybe / Wait

The Bible tells us of two dynamics that God uses when answering prayer, the petition and the desire. The Petition being what you ask for and the desire is the goal of what you're asking for.

Answer the petition but not the desire

God may very well answer your prayer, just not like you wanted. The Israelites got sick and tired of eating manna when they were wandering in the desert. They asked God for some meat, so God gave them meat! Only, it was way more meat then they wanted.

Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the Lord who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, �Why did we ever come up out of Egypt?� (Numbers 11:18b-20)

So be careful what you ask for, God just might do it—just not the way you want it.

Answers the desire but not the petition

This is shown when Abram asked God to spare Sodom as his nephew Lot was there. God did not spare Sodom, but did spare Lot's family (at least those willing to leave, minus his wife who was turned to salt for disobeying God's command).

God answers both the petition and the request

This is what we want, God to do what we want, they way we want. It is nice when God does this, but it doesn't always happen this way.

God answers neither the petition nor the request

God is never obligated to answer our prayers. There are many reasons we could be denied our request by God. A few of them include:

Carnality / Being Fleshly: If we have the wrong motive in asking God (it is to only honor us, or more honoring to us and our needs) God will likely not answer it.

If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear. (Psalms 66:18)

You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:2-3)

Lack of faith: Many people do not have faith when they ask. If you ask God for something, and when it is not answers you reply, "I knew God wouldn't do it!" You obviously didn't have faith. Faith the size of a mustard seeds (very small seed) can throw mountains into the ocean.

And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive. (Matthew 21:22)

Lack of compassion: It is important to have compassion for others. If you are unwilling to help the poor and needy, why should God help you? The Bible is clear that you reap what you sow (you get back what you do).

Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor Will also cry himself and not be heard. (Proverbs 21:13)

Pride: God cannot be with sin. That is why 1 John 1:9 asks us to ask God for forgiveness. I would extend this as broad as any sin but for the sake of the study I will leave it at Pride. While the verse they used to support this was Elihu telling them that God cannot hear the proud, his counsel is not completely sound.

The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverse mouth I hate. (Proverbs 8:13)

lack of harmony in the home: This shows how important it is to make sure you have a proper relationship with your family, specifically your spouse. You cannot be perfectly in God's will and be at odds with your spouse. Make sure you reconcile your differences to have the right relationship with God.

Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:7)

Not compatible of his will: While we may not understand it, many things we want are not what God wants. Cancer may seem horrible, and we may want a miraculous cure—surely God would too!—but that may not be the case. God may desire a person to have cancer whether it be to strengthen his faith, turn him to God, to strengthen another's faith, or for some other reason we cannot see. We can pray that God cure a person all we want but if it is ultimately God's will, he will do as is best. We cannot see how everything fits together like God and he knows what is best.

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)

The Da Vinci Code

I think it is funny that many people who read the Da Vinci Code believe what it says about Jesus and Christians as a whole. While it may be a fiction book, it calls itself "fact" as that is the first word in the book. I claims that the information in the book are historically accurate, but is it?

Well, if it is so accurate, how come there is lie after lie in the book. Example, In the book there is a monk in the order of Opus Dei. Reality, it is a lay organization which has no monks. Also, he bases a lot of his story on the Priority of Sion, founded by Pierre Plantard, who later admitted under oath that he made up the Priority scheme.

It also contains several unsubstantiated remarks like the people who put the Bible together had over 80 gospels to choose from. What 80? There were never anywhere near that many, only around 16. Where did his number come from? What proof?

He also uses some misleading statements like when a Gnostic gospel calls Mary Magdalene Jesus' companion; true statement. Then it says that in Aramaic that the word companion always refers to a marriage relationship; true statement. The funny thing is, the Gnostic gospels were not written in Aramaic, so how do those two statements have anything to do with each other?

The book also claims that nobody considered the deity of Christ (that Jesus was God) until Constantine. Fact, Jesus called himself God; several apostles called him God; many historical documents (Christian, Jewish, secular) state the early church fathers calling him God. Also, they state that it was decided by a close vote at the Council of Nicea. There was only 1 vote at Nicea to sign the document, and all but 2 people out of around 300 signed it (not very close at all).

It has also been widely accepted by feminists due to the fact that is supports that the church was to be based around Mary Magdalene, a female. The funny thing is Jesus showed more respect toward females during his time that anyone. Also, many of the Gnostic gospels that Dan Brown uses to support his work on are anti-female. The gospel of Thomas even goes as far to say that a woman must become a man in order to be saved—I don't think feminists would approve of that statement.

These are only a few of the discrepancies and manipulations found in the book. Please do not discredit the Bible due to the incredible story The Da Vinci Code. (Note: in-credible means not credible. It does not mean Amazing like so many people use. An incredible tale would be a far fetched story not based on fact.)

Munchkin and variants - Very fun group game

Munchkin is a similar game to Magic the Gathering, Pok�mon, and yugioh. The main difference is there is no deck building (all decks are exactly the same). Even if you are worried because many people consider these games "evil" I do not think Munchkin is wrong in the way it is designed, it pretty much makes fun of everything and does not tie into the evil aspects of those game. the only caution I give it some of the cards can be slightly inappropriate espeically to young childen as it has enemies like "the Flasher" and abilities like "Cleavage Stun" (of coarse you cannot have with the "flatness" ability).

The goal of this game is to get to 10 points (unless changed by another card). Points are gained by killing enemies, Level cards, or by selling items. You have to work together with peers in order to kill enemies too tough for you to handle by yourself. Also you can play cards to try to help yourself or hurt a peer. If you cannot win the "bad stuff" happens which can be losing items to "you die" which you lose most everything.

It is fun to work together or to kill someone or a group of people working together; basically do whatever is in your best interest at that time. It is a very unbalanced way to play with friends or even someone you hate! What other game encourages cheating as every deck has a cheat card? Each variation has its one genera it makes fun of. It is even allowed to mix games to get one crazy game with all sort of mix-ups.

More information at BoardGameGeek.com (Munchkin, Star Munchkin, Super Munchkin, Munchkin Fu)

Settlets of the Catan - Fun group game

The idea of this game is to be the first person to reach 10 points. The way this is obtained is through building settlements which can be upgrated to outposts (1 and 2 points ea). You start off with two settlements and receive resourses based upon the hexagons your places are located. You also receive extra points from other things like longest road, and largest army.

What Makes this game fun is that you have to work together to trade resources with other players to get what you need to build as it is doubtful to get all the resources you need yourself. It is a fun way to interect with peers and try not to make too many enimies. This game also ties in a bandit which can prevent someone from getting valuable resources and other things.

What makes this game truly fun is it is entirely random (well, close enough) every game. The pieces are places differently each game with the values changing each time too. Plus, the resources are controlled by two dice which mean a "good" spot could potentially be barren (it happened to me but I am not too bitter).

More information at BoardGameGeek.

Finally got some doctrine!

I have finally added some doctrine to my Advanced Christianity section which has been overdue to several years. I hope to add a little more at a time until I get it completed. So far it has some basic information about the Trinity and the Bible in addition to my Age of Accountability paper added about a week ago.

I also recently modified my Favicon that shows up when you bookmark a page (IE) or view pages in many Mozilla browsers. Now it is in more than 16 colors and looks better. I hope you like it as I spent way too much time working on it by hand.

Added a little more content

I added a new section to my website, several skits designed for youth groups. I enjoyed these skits and thought they would be a fun and useful addition to my site. I also decided to add my favorite research paper from college to my site. It is on the age of accountability which I used to not believe in. I was surprised about how it was supported indirectly. Ironically, my research paper is formatted best for Internet Explorer even though the rest of my site is formatted best for Mozilla Firefox. I used CSS to make it look like a real research paper but poor Firefox won't support it.

New Website Category

I just added a fourth section to my website, my Christian Resources section. I have for quite some time wanted to add some useful resources and now I am finally getting around to it. The first page I added is my Christian games page. This includes games useful to a bus ministry, youth group, or groups of kids. I have included both indoor and outdoor activities to the kids and teen games. I hope others will be able to find these games useful.

Approved Guestbook entries

I finally updated my guestbook to require me to approve all entries added. I got tried of removing entries of pornagraphic and commercial nature. The only problem with my new system is that it will still add the entry to the count and it will contribute to the 1-10 entries but it will just not appear. I will be able to fix it better as soon as I am done traveling with BYM.

Added Robots Security & Updated Information

I was tired of robots constantly sending me e-mails (and people on my guestbook too). I used the same technique that many sites use (make you type in text of a picture). I made mine fairly simple because my site isn't important enough to make it worthwhile to crack my security technique. I also added it to my guestbook because I had a few entries that kept re-appearing.

I also updated my information on my my Who Am I page and my More About Me page. It now reflects my summer plans, future plans, and graduation. Yea!

A.W. Tozer

This is a quote from A. W. Tozer's book The Root of the Righteous in "Praise God for the Furnace" (pp. 137)

The devil, things, and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.

Bob Kendall

Here is an illustration I have heard more than once from Dr. Kendall.

Life is like jello: the more you squeeze, the more that slips through your fingers

I added my own KJV Bible to my site

I wanted to put a Bible on my site that I can use a perl script to generate any passage I want. This way, I can replace my verses page which was dorky and not really useful. It took me a long time to format the datafile because I had to be picky (had to include italics and the Psalm titles listed which I listed as verse 0). I also added the actual Hebrew characters to Psalm 119.

I gave it support for multiple verses in one chapter and to show an entire chapter. I tried to make it as robust as I could so hopefully it will work well. It also has support for other databases so I can add others later if I feel like it (Those without copyrights that is). Just in case your wondering, you use it like verse.pl?p=rom12v1t2 to produce Romans 12:1-2 (book chapter v verse t last verse) or you can use the original syntax verse.pl?b=rom&c=12&v=1&t=2 to accomplish the same thing. You can specify the Bible verse with the i argument (e.g. i=kjv). If you are interested in my code you can download it from my programs page. It includes my cusomized datafile for the KJV.

I also should say that I customized my blog a bit more and made my reply feature nicer. I still need a lot of work to get it to function similarly to my guestbook.

A Walk to Remember - Definate See

This is definately now one of my favorite movies. I had heard it was a good movie but never got around to watching it until a month ago or so. It is a chick-flic but I still like it.

The movie is about a guy who hangs out with the cool crowd and he has to act all big and bad around his friends. He evantually gets in trouble and must tutor kids and act in the school play as a result. In doing so he ends up spending a lot of time with a nerdy girl of whom he has always made fun. Of coarse he gets his act together and changes (wait, the popular guy changes instead of bringing the popular girl down? Is this a moral movie?!?!).

I liked this movie a lot. It has good morals and a Christian theme throughout the movie. It even plays Christian music (Jars of Clay, Switchfoot, etc.). It does have a tragic ending. It is one of a few movies that I have actually walked away feeling good that I watched. I would classify it as a romance/drama (I can't remember if it was a comedy or not).

The Village - highly recommended

I saw the movie The Village today and I was very surprised. I actually liked it a lot. It isn't what I expected at all. I knew it was a type of suspense movie so I didn't think I'd like it. Also, it was produced by the same author of Signs which I didn't really like either.

The movie takes place in a village of people back in a Little House on the Prairie era or so. There are beasts called "those we do not talk about" of whom these people are terrified. They spend their whole life in their compound in safety of these beasts as long as they offer sacrifices to them, stay out of the woods outside their compound, and do not show "the bad color."

I jumped a few times but I also scare easy (probably why I do not like suspense movies). It has a very cool and unexpected ending. It is weird like Signs but this time in a good way. Also, it is very clean and supports good morals (based on the Christian philosophy of the time). It is a suspense/comedy/romance I guess.

Charles Shafer

I found a funny quote from Charles Shafer (English professor) on a forum about Trinity Baptist College.

Dr. Shafer's resonse to a student's question if the word "French" was a verb

"Of course not! Have you ever 'frenched' anything!?... uhm... Don't answer that."

I have a blog now

I just added this blog to my site (a.k.a. weblog). I saw my brothers and I thought it might be a neat addition. I like blosxom because it lets me use my newly learned perl CGI skills and I can customize it however I want to.

I also added custome 403 (Forbidden) and 500 (Internal Server Error) messages. Hopefully you will never see the 500 error but I added it because I hated getting a 404 error along with every 500 error. I also added Perl code to both my search engine and my blog page so its format mimics my php code and will update with it automatically. I also removed my updates page from my about site page (Ironically called updates.php) and converted them to blog format here.

I got a search engine!

I figured out how to add custom errors and found out that it does work with php-cgi too! I added a 404 page and a 403 page. I also added many .htaccess files in different areas for different purposes. Most importantly, I added my very own search engine! It took a while to figure it out and to customize it for my site but I did it! The only bad thing is it is not compatible with my php (since it is perl scipt) so I had to fake my page design on it. It is designed by Fluid Dynamics Software Corporation. It is actually really cool. It comes with its own spider to index my site.

Some cool extras

I started playing around with my site trying out new features. I added a password protected part of my site but that is only for me. I also found out the Website statistics built into dreamhost are pretty awesome. I was able to fix 8 link errors on my site because robots were getting 404 errors in these areas. I also found out that my old chemistry page was receiving more hits than my new one. As a result I have modified my old one and included a link to the new one. I also switched both over to a php file so I can add a counter on those pages as well. I failed to add custom 404 errors for some reason.

I updated... well, everything

I did a massive update to my guestbook, prayer requests, email, and counter. I also added a robots.txt file to prevent Google from caching some of my pages. (it is annoying to see it has 100 entries for my guestbook and e-mail page.) I have also made slight modifications to my copyright and privacy policy. I added a site map. I converted my pSQL databases from my old server into mySQL and updated the code to correspond. I added movies from my family reunion at Smackover, Arkansas. I added pictures to my college pictures collection. I fixed errors on my side bar code. And just about every other page I changed something. I even changed my styles a bit. I also made massive changes to things the public will never see *sigh*. I added QuickTime streaming which is accessible through my movies page. But other than that everything is pretty much the same. I also forgot to mention that I changed my random verses from the King James Version to the New King James Version.

Finally an update

Hanenkamp.com changed servers. I had to copy everything over but I can no longer use pSQL. As a result I must redo all my databases. I also added my pictures from my missions trip to Japan as well as many funny videos from my Japan trip. This is my first update in almost a year.

Back from Neighborhood Bible Time

I just got back from the summer at Neighborhood Bible Time and I started updating my site. I did some basic corrections first before I added the concept of works to my Faith Page. I later reorganized my Links page, removed my link to my Bible Facts Page (It was not very accurate and I have no intentions of adding/updating it). I also added a Who am I? section to my site and renamed my About page to More About Me. I wanted a quick description of me for people to see if my site is credible.

I also decided my programs page was ugly and in long need of update. I made its emphasis now on my own program code instead of my programming experience. I rewrote almost the whole page in hopes of making it better. I also made a minor change to my guestbook which took quite a bit of work. I made it so you must enter a first name and a last name for an entry. The main reason is so my alphabetical order page can sort by last names instead of by first names

Removed information on my various friends

It has been a while since I last worked on it so I did a few minor things. I modified my Christian Basics page a little, mostly in the Eternal Security area (keeping salvation). I also worked on my Advanced Christianity page adding an outline to what I would like to work on. It still is virtually contentless (is that a word?).

On another side of things, I removed a sizable chunk of information on my website. I took out my section in my about page on my friends because I figured it was for the best considering 1) I did not have their permission and 2) What does it really matter? The site is about me right?

Much more Christian content

I did a major update to my Christian Basics page. In fact, I renamed it from my About Christianity page, and also added an Advanced Christianity page.

The other part of my website I worked on is my pictures page. I turned my pictures page from one long list of pictures to a series of categories of pictures. In addition to this, I added more Trojan Night pictures.

Guestbook now hides e-mail addresses

I Updated my Guestbook so that the e-mail address is no longer shown but allows the viewer to e-mail them without ever seeing the e-mail address. This look a major update to all the guestbook and e-mail pages. I also added an alphabetical index a few days ago to my guestbook.

Many updates including Random verses!

I got back from my summer break and now that SSH2 has been fixed, I did many needed updates. First of all, I updated a little bit of the content of my pages and updated the information. Second, I fixed my counter which has not worked correctly for a long time, I also reset it since the numbers were totally off as well. Also, I added the ability to count the hits to any page on my site by just assigning it a number (not that it matters to the viewer).

On a more exciting note, I added something I have wanted to for some time: a random bible verse (from which I have selected) at the bottom of every screen.

One last change: I fixed my prayer request page, guestbook, e-mail page, and any other pages that somehow stopped working over this summer. I think when I switched servers, they stopped working and I failed to notice it somehow.

Fixed custom colors

I have fixed my customize color settings on my customize page so it now works properly. I have also changed the setup of many of my pages so I now have greater control over tables, but it now requires more work to make some of my pages.

New guestbook format

I have spent a long time transferring my guestbook over to its new format. My new guestbook will enable you to choose from a variety of different options for your guestbook entry. Right now I only have 5 options but I'll add others when I think of them or as people give me ideas. The reason it took a lot of work is because I had to make a new database and manually copy each of the entries over, which is time consuming. I hope you enjoy my new guestbook.

Major format change

I decided to make a major change to the format of my webpage, and I finally got most the bugs worked out today. My webpage no longer contains frames, but instead it uses a table on every page to give it the same appearance, except the sidebar scrolls with the page. The reason I did this was so I did not have to worry about the details and problems caused by frames (having to the "_top" to prevent framing other people's web pages, people linking to the frame instead of the page with the frames, and too much information on the side bar and not being able to access all the links) and it is really more convenient in many ways. The way I did this was to make every webpage on my site a PHP page and to use the require() feature to add that section of code. I have also redone my customize page so it works with tables, fixed many links, and spend much time uploading these pages (Since I have to do with SSH since I cannot get FTP to work though proxy anymore). I also lost my main.php page since it is now index.php (my old frames page).

Three Changes

I worked on three different things for my webpage. The first thing I did was to add my Bible Facts webpage. Currently it is just has two bizarre Bible facts, but I will probably find more stuff to add later. Second, I added a privacy statement to my webpage on this page. I added this so that people would not fear how I use the information that people give me from the few pages that you can. The final thing I added was a copyright and the date I last updated every webpage I have. This is to show I care about the information contained within and so you can tell how old a page is.

Did some touch-up work

Today I mainly went thought and did touch up work to many pages. I fixed old content on my main (now index) and about page, I put CoolGame and War programs as downloadable from my programs page, I modified my side.html page (the list of web pages on the side of the screen), took some off my web pager feature off my messenger page (I no longer receive those), added my verses page (now replaced by verse.pl), added a lot to my Christian Faith page, and some other small things.

Redid my faith page

I decided that my faith page was useless since I had all that information in my About Me page so I changed it into my Christianity page. It has basic information about Christianity and how to be saved. Also, later on I will add a lot more information to it. This also, starts my "Christian Content" idea into progress.

Also, I modified my main.php (now index.php) page and changed my counters so that they use a PSQL database instead of five different files to store my counter information, etc.

Worked on customizing web pages

I have not updated my web page since October 5th so I made a lot of content changes, I added much information about Trinity and updated my About Me category.

Also, I finally fixed my Customize page so that it now works with IE 5.5. I guess IE 5.5 wants you to format the date differently than IE 5.0 so the cookies were being deleted as soon as they were set.

Finally, I modified my side.html so that it uses a session cookie to store the last page you clicked on from the side menu so if you refresh it will show the same page again (something that annoyed me)

Added Pictures

I finally got the pictures that I asked for my parents (since I am at college it is hard for me to get them) and added them to my pictures page.

Updated Information

Since I just moved in to my dorm room, I figured it would be a good idea to update all my entries from going to go to Trinity to actually attending it. I also added more information about my christian walk.

Small Updates

I don't have any major updates but I did do a lot of little stuff like I added to my About Page, Programs Page, and I fixed a bug that made all names illegal on my Prayer Request Page and Guestbook. I also added some additional features to my Guestbook and Prayer Request Page like I gave the ability to only allow me to see entries and I made if so if you add information in my Customize Page, it will shop up as the default text.

Fixed my chemistry page

I finally got around to fixing most of the HTML for my chemistry page and changed it a little bit to make it look better. It had a lot of poorly done tags and a lot of useless ones too. I make it like 5k smaller by just redoing the code. I have the original page available if you care to see the difference.

Also, since Ricky and other people like him have been making entries with names like God, I decided to add a name filter to my guestbook and prayer request page. Right now it is pretty dumb and has very few words but I will add to it later and make it better if I need to.

New e-mail page

I decided it was not the best idea to include my e-mail address on about every page of my web site so I added the E-Mail page of my web page so that you could still e-mail me suggestions and ideas, but none of those nasty e-mail crawlers or other people looking for people's address can get mine. If you would like to know my e-mail address, you can use my e-mail page to ask me for it. Also, I would like to note my James.T.H@usa.net e-mail address will officially become no longer free August 1st. (So it is lucky I switched when I did so I will not loose any e-mail)

I also redid my guestbook again so that it uses a database to store the information so it will now work a little better and be easier to maintain. I also made it e-mail the entry to me so that I can tell quickly when anyone adds an entry (mainly helps when people add unwanted entries).

A few new features

This page has been greatly modified before this but today I would say it is finally starting to look good. I added PHP to the main page (now index) and added a little bit of useful information on it. Also, I added 3 different counters to the page: visitor, day, and person. The person counter doesn't reset itself yet but other than that it works correct (as long as they use cookies).

I also added a simple guestbook to my page that I stole from my brother. It is basically the same except you enter a bible verse instead of a quote. I plan to add more to this later.