Posts from — October 2007

Note: this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Apple’s productivity application called iWork. I have it, I use it, I like it. Someday, you might even see me iRecommend it. But not today.

Last Sunday (10/28), we added a new Sunday morning worship service here at Calvary Bible Church. Pastor Rowe preached from John 13, wrapping up that chapter.

This Sunday, as part of our normal preaching rotation, I will pick up with John 14, adding this new service to my Sunday routine. That means I’ll be here for the new 8 A.M. service, preaching 35 to 45 minutes there.

At 9:30 A.M., I will teach my usual Sunday School class on NT Survey. That will be another 40 to 45 minutes of me talking.

Finally, I’ll preach my message from John 14 again in the later service at 10:30—another 35 to 45 minutes.

In other words, this Sunday (and every Sunday from now until Christmas), I’ll be speaking in public for more than 2 hours during the 4 hour time time frame from 8 A.M. to Noon.

I know this is not exactly heroic. Some guys preach twice on Saturday and two to four times on Sunday. But, for me, this is an exciting change in routine.

On this week’s edition of This Week in Tech, science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle commented that the iPhone might be the device that kills the paperback book industry.

I couldn’t be happier to hear this. It won’t happen until Apple either releases a book reading application for the iPhone or Apple allows third parties to develop applications for the iPhone, but since Apple has announced their intention to do the latter, you can see this future on the horizon. The iPhone can already read pdf files and Word files, but lack of access to the iPhone’s file system plus a way to organize your ebooks limits the iPhone as a book reader, at least in its current form.

Although it is true that paper and ink have higher resolution than any electronic device, the convenience of having a portable book reader right on your iPhone would, I think, overcome the loss of readability.

Portability > Readability, as long as the readability is Good Enough®.

This is better news for readers of fiction than for those of us who read non-fiction. As someone who reads primarily non-fiction works, I want to be able to highlight important passages and select and copy text from the ebook so that I can paste it directly into another document. Then, as I always do, I can footnote the source.

The ability to highlight a passage in an ebook and save that highlighting will probably come soon enough. But the twin fears of plagiarism and illegal re-distribution will probably prevent readers from copying out text and pasting it to other documents (e.g. Microsoft Word documents).

If I’m right about this, it is too bad. eBooks would be a perfect way to speed up the process of research and writing non-fiction, but the copy/paste limitation will probably prevent this for a long time.

The other limitation of ebooks for research and writing is the issue of page numbers. Without pages and page numbers, as we have in real paper books, how do you cite a book (e.g. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, p. 64)? A good book reader will solve this problem by visually representing pages that correspond exactly to their real-life book counterparts. Sony’s Reader already appears to do this. Apple’s iPhone book reader, when it happens, will hopefully do this too. In my opinion, the best way to render ebooks on the iPhone would be to allow the reader to see the whole page and page number in portrait mode just as it appears in print. Then the reader can turn the iPhone on its side to get the largest screen possible from left to right, then use the iPhone’s pinch and expand gesture to enlarge the text to a readable size.

Earlier today I was hurtling down US-23 in the left lane on my way to church. In front of me was a Nissan Xterra driving over the speed limit, but not as far over the speed limit as I wanted to drive.

The law and common courtesy dictate that this driver should have moved over into the right hand lane to let me pass. But whoever was driving this vehicle did not follow these common and legal conventions.

As I was experiencing a mild form of irritation about this (I wasn’t really in any hurry), I noted that the driver had an out of state license plate. I don’t have an iPhone, so I couldn’t take a good enough picture, but the license plate read: I TRST HM.

How wonderful to find another brother or sister in Christ out on the freeway. Praise Jesus!

Now, move over to the right and let me by!

This weekend our family went to the maul mall together to buy some new clothes for the kids. Instead of performing my usual role of Starbucks-drinking and child entertainment, I actually had to hang out in the store for reasons that are both unimportant and uninteresting.

Fortunately, Gymboree has a TV with all the favs running: Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, Fireman Sam, and others, so all I had to do was keep an eye on the kids while they kept their eyes on the tube. And drink my iced mocha. And try not to be too bored.

There were two other kids sitting there watching TV and one of them turned to me and asked, “What’s five plus five?”

“Ten,” I blurted back at him with confidence.

“No, FIFTY-FIVE!” He responded with indignation reserved only for the dumbest of adults.

Outwardly, I smile at the adorable child.

Inwardly, however, I was thinking, “Look, kid. I have three postgraduate degrees. So you might want to take my word for it.”

Last summer, I was furiously writing a paper for the Evangelical Homiletics Society annual meeting. If you care to read the paper, it is here.

I had already received an extension on the deadline for this paper and I was coming up against a drop dead due date, meaning that if I didn’t submit the finished paper soon, it wouldn’t be posted on the website and I wouldn’t be able to do my session at the EHS meeting.

Then the hard drive on my Mac mini completely croaked. I lost everything—all the pictures of my kids, every sermon I’ve written, a ton of research, every bit of school work I’ve done since 1998 (including my Th.M. and D.Min. theses), and all my music in iTunes (about 15 GBs worth).

SuperDuper saved my bacon.

I had an external firewire hard drive attached to my mini and SuperDuper backed it up every week. And, since SuperDuper makes the backup drive bootable, I was able to plug in my ancient PowerBook, boot up using the external drive, and keep on working. I did lose a couple of days worth of changes on the EHS paper I was writing, but nothing catastrophic. I made the deadline and was able to give my presentation to the EHS crowd. Of course, my children’s photos, my music, schoolwork, sermons, etc. were all safe and sound as well.

If you use a Mac, get yourself an external hard drive that is the same size as the one on your Mac. Then buy a copy of SuperDuper and set it up to automatically back up your files.

Every.
Single.
Day.

Don’t do it weekly like I did. Even a week’s worth of lost work can be a killer. Today I back up my main Mac daily during lunch.

Yes, I’m aware that Leopard will have Time Machine built in. That does look intriguing. But, um, when is Apple going to ship Leopard again? It was supposed to be this month. It is starting to smell like Vista. What if your hard drive crashes between now and Leopard? Whatta you gonna do then?

Huh?

It’s gonna ship next Friday, October 26th. Here’s a huge list of all the new stuff in it. I apologize, Apple, for comparing OS X 10.5 to Vista. Will you forgive me?

Let’s say that you just started a new blog using Wordpress.

[If you really must, you can substitute Movable Type, Blogger, LiveJournal pMachine, Drupal, and several others for Wordpress. But you do this at your own risk. I've used all of the above and others, but iRecommend Wordpress only.]

Let’s also say that you use a Mac.

Let’s say furthermore that you’re doing your blog writing in Microsoft Word and then pasting it into your blog’s post page online.

Blogger, we have a problem here.

If you blog and use a Mac, then you should cut Word out of your bloglife. Instead, you should download, buy, and use MarsEdit.

What is MarsEdit? It is a blogging application that runs on your Mac. Like Microsoft Word, you type words into it, but unlike Microsoft Word, your words are formatted for your blog, not for paper. When you’re ready for the world to read your writing, MarsEdit posts them to your blog for you, perfectly formatted. It also keeps track of your posts and lets you save drafts, edit published and unpublished posts, add photos effortlessly, include hyperlinks easily, put your stuff in categories with a single click, see a preview while you’re writing, and so on. It’s a word processor for Wordpress; an immovable force for Movable Type.I do all my blogging with MarsEdit and have for years. iRecommend it. Highly.

Incidentally, my friend Dr. McCabe inspired this post as he fits most of the if/then conditions above. Go check out his new site: http://oldtestamentstudies.org. The blog section of his site is here.

And, speaking of Macs, take a look at this photo and this one.)Friends, these photos fill my heart with childlike joy.

If you are a preacher, I highly recommend that you subscribe to Preaching Points, the free weekly podcast from the preaching faculty at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. iTunes link here, RSS link here, website archive link here.

In these brief (less than 10 minute) audio files, you can find helpful, encouraging thoughts about preaching from Haddon Robinson, Jeff Arthurs, and Scott Gibson.

Furthermore, this is a brand new podcast; only two episodes have dropped at this writing. So you can get in now and have the satisfaction of being an early adopter, not the 5 millionth person to find it. Like that time you discovered Chocolate Rain, or the Numa Numa dude, or Paul Potts singing opera.