Coffee Klatch

There’s a cool utility that I found a while ago and use as needed. I just searched the blog and couldn’t find any reference to it. It’s hard to believe that I’ve gone this long without recommending it here.

It’s called Xenu (presumably named after Xenu, the alien ruler of the “Galactic Confederacy” of Scientology doctrine) and it’s basically a link checker.

Use Xenu’s Link Sleuth to check for broken links on any webpage. You can even configure how deep you want it to go (how many connected links) and if you want it to check external links also. The interface is really easy to use and you can get quite a variety of reports generated by the program.

Other features include:

* Simple, no-frills user-interface
* Can re-check broken links (useful for temporary network errors)
* Simple report format, can also be e-mailed
* Executable file smaller than 1MB
* Supports SSL websites (”https:// “)
* Partial testing of ftp and gopher sites
* Detects and reports redirected URLs
* Site Map

[tags]utilities, Internet, webpages, links[/tags]

I am currently reading a book called Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead. It’s my second or third time through the book, even though it’s 872 pages long!

Oddly enough, I got this book from a friend as a white elephant gift at Christmas a few years ago. He only gave it as a gift because somehow he’d gotten two copies of the book. And as of that time, he still hadn’t read EITHER copy.
It’s a very interesting book. Lawhead has primarily written fantasy-style books from a Christian perspective and I think this is his first foray into what could be called historical fiction. I’ve read many of his trilogies and must say that some are better than others. Part of it is probably that they’re geared toward different ages, but some of it is certainly the writing style. His Pendragon Cycle was pretty good and I LOVED the Song of Albion trilogy. Byzantium is a single book that’s as long as a trilogy and is probably one of Lawhead’s best works.

Amazon provides the following review from Publisher’s Weekly:

The bestselling author of the Pendragon Cycle now tells the story of Aidan, a 10th-century Irish monk sent to take the Book of Kells to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. Separated from his fellow pilgrims, Aidan undergoes various exotic adventures, including capture by and life with Vikings, political intrigue in the Byzantine court, enslavement in a caliph’s mine and loss of his all-important faith in God. Lawhead is a Christian writer, and here the Christian themes are integral and well developed; he also shows a keen and sympathetic eye for the values and cultures of non-Christians. Marketed as fantasy, the novel contains little overt supernatural content, although prayer is vital and dreams can be seen as omens. Still, the narrative has the excitement of a good fantasy novel, a vivid historical setting and a lengthy, credible and satisfying plot–just the elements, in fact, that have made Lawhead a commercial success time and again.

It’s a long book, but it stays interesting. There are enough plot changes and setting changes and new characters throughout that you don’t think of yourself reading hundreds of pages of the same thing. It’s a very interesting read. Especially for Christians who may find themselves relating to Aidan’s questions about his faith as he goes through life’s trials and adventures.

[tags]lawhead, fantasy, historical fiction, byzantium, dark ages[/tags]