Non-technical Writing
In addition to my technical writing, I sometimes write about things more philosophical or poetic (some of which are posted on Aliens in the Apple, the family blog we wrote when living in New York):
- Review of The Penguin History of New Zealand, Michael King’s excellent tour of our country’s history from the first Māori settlers in the 13th century to today. (Jun 2021)
- Review of Hillbilly Elegy contains some of my thoughts on J. D. Vance’s eye-opening and thought-provoking book. (Jul 2020)
- Hacker Christianity, some thoughts on the intersection between Christianity and hacker culture, as well as a retelling of the Christian story in hacker terms. (Dec 2013)
- Plain English Westminster is a version of the Westminster Confession of Faith for us in the pew. (Nov 2013)
- Quotes and notes on The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. (Dec 2011)
- Book review of The Biblical Mandate for Caring for Creation, a book by Dick Tripp and published by my friend Matthew Bartlett. (Dec 2011)
- Luth3r hacks iChurch describes how the iconoclast hacker Mart1n Luth3r hacked iChurch and proceeded to make the Bible open source. (Aug 2011)
- The One True BDFL: If your favourite programming language has a creator and a Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), why shouldn’t life itself? (Feb 2011)
- A brief history of Hoyt looks at where my family name came from. (Sep 2010)
- Welcome to Sudan, a story I wrote after visiting Franci in Khartoum, Sudan for two weeks. (Dec 2004)
- Preaching and Politics, an article I wrote for the Wairarapa Times Age in response to a local atheist’s written attack on an 11-year-old friend’s letter to the editor. (Sep 2004)
- The New Perspective on Sam is something of a satire I wrote when the “New Perspective on Paul” was a hot topic at church. It was also published in the Feb 2003 issue of Stimulus. (Oct 2002)
- Prince of Peace, a poem I wrote in my last year of high school. (Sep 1999)
Prism Magazine
Prism Magazine was a small-scale print magazine I co-founded and edited back in 2005-2007. I wrote several articles for the magazine:
- Workers unite, farmers fight! gives a brief overview of the 1913 waterfront strikes in Wellington and how they almost turned into civil war in New Zealand. (Jan 2007)
- Francis Hooper, designer is an interview with the chief designer at WORLD, a New Zealand fashion label. (Sep 2006)
- Zen and the art of motorcar maintenance describes how a friend and I replaced the engine of my Nissan Sentra. (Jun 2006)
- Dead Poetesses Society is a review of Mona Lisa Smile, a “female version of Dead Poets Society”. (Aug 2005)
- Rugby vs golf presents very serious rational and theological reasons for the superiority of the less holey sport. (Aug 2003)
Copyright
Unless it says otherwise in the individual document, the works above are © Ben Hoyt under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license, which basically means you can copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to benhoyt.com, don’t make money with them, and don’t alter the content. Enjoy!