Phil Gons

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Logos vs. BibleWorks: A Brief Comparison

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Someone recently asked me for my opinion about Logos vs. BibleWorks. I posted this at the Bible.org Forum in response to a discussion there. I’m reproducing it here (with some very minor changes) in case there are others who are trying to decide what Bible software to buy and use. This is by no means exhaustive, probably oversimplifies some of the issues, and certainly expresses my opinions and preferences, but it may be of help to some. I offer this not as a polished review, but as some off-the-cuff thoughts from one who uses and recommends both.

BibleWorks 7BibleWorks

I’ve been using BibleWorks since version 4. I currently have and use version 7. It’s a great program that I plan to continue to own, upgrade, and use indefinitely. Here are its strengths and weaknesses:

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Tip for Safer Surfing

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I’m getting downright tired of the junk on the web. I’ve been frequenting hundreds of blogs and news sites each week at work to find helpful material for our new PastorBlog. I’ve been disgusted with all the stuff you see on major news sites—obscene immodesty and sometimes even complete nudity (apparently the standard of what’s acceptable is lower in the UK). Amazingly, even some Christian news sites and blogs have this kind of σκύβαλον. That really burns me up, but I digress.

Well, I’ve found another good use for the Web Developer extension for Firefox. I hit five key strokes, and all the images on the page disappear: alt-t-w-i-n. Alt takes you to the toolbar menu. T takes you to the tools category. W takes you to the web developer tools. I takes you to images. N makes all images invisible. It even conveniently spells a word so it’s easy to remember and type! (Alt-t-w-i-m and alt-t-w-i-r both work as well, and the latter might be most useful in that it replaces the image with its description, but twin is the easiest to remember and type. Take your pick.) You can undo it with the same keystrokes, and it will be applied only to the current page. The one downside is that it doesn’t disable flash. Anyone know a way to do that?

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One Night with the King

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One Night with the KingMichael O. Sajbel, dir. One Night with the King. 20th Century Fox, 2006. 124 min. PG

[rate 1.5]

Shanna and I watched One Night with the King last night and were incredibly (!) disappointed. We had just finished reading Esther in our Bible reading, so the story was fresh on our minds. We were expecting the movie to tell faithfully the story of Esther. Not so. Probably only 25% of the movie corresponds to the biblical account. I’m not talking about just filling in the details. I’m talking about totally scrapping the biblical story, picking up a handful of those scraps, and then putting them back together in such a way that they are virtually unrecognizable. Well, maybe that’s a little overstatement, but you get my point. Over and over throughout the movie, we’d stop and say, “What?! That’s not how that happened! Why did they change that?” Not quite The Gospel of John! (More like The Ten Commandments.) It wasn’t until the end that we learned that the movie wasn’t supposed to be retelling the biblical story of Esther but the fictional story of the novel Hadassah: One Night with the King. (I vaguely remember reading that, but had forgotten.) Knowing that up front would probably have helped significantly.

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$1 Guitar CD!

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WaitingIn preparation for the upcoming release of his second CD, fingerstyle guitarist Dave Wike, a coworker and friend of mine, is offering his first CD, “Waiting,” for a phenomenal price of just $1 (free shipping in the US). You can choose between the physical CD or downloading the MP3 files. Check out these four, two-minute samples to see if you like it. I enjoy listening to it as background music while I read or study. The play count in my iTunes is in triple digits! Read the reviews at CD Baby to see what others think. If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, email me at philgons-at-gmail.com. You can pay with PayPal or a personal check. Contact me for more details.

Update: I don’t have any more of these available. Visit DaveWike.com for details on how to contact Dave directly or order his CDs.

See also: Dave Wike’s New CD: “Still Waters”

The Beauty of Holiness | Michael P. V. Barrett

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The Beauty of HolinessMichael Barrett’s fourth book, The Beauty of Holiness, has just recently been released. He seeks to provide the foundation of a solid, biblical theology of worship that is missing in so much of the debate about music. As anyone who has read a Barrett book would expect, it looks like it’ll be a good read. I’ve posted an excerpt that gives an overview.

Google Analytics

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I just set up our company websites to use Google Analytics. It’s a free service (of course, it’s Google!) that will track traffic on your website and give you some downright amazing statistics to help you improve your site. Granted, the service is intended for businesses that are trying to get more page views and make more sales. But bloggers can use it as well. It’s kind of fun to know that someone from Singapore visited your blog! :) Just paste a snippet of code on every page of your website (or into your template), and you’re good to go. If you use Blogger, it’s fairly simple. You can go to your layout, add a new HTML page element as a footer, and paste in the code they give you. Enjoy!

RapidShare

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Have you ever wanted to email a file to someone but couldn’t because your email server restricts the size of emails that you can send (e.g., Gmail’s max is 10 MB)? I recently came across RapidShare—a free site that will let you upload files (up to 100 MB each) to their server and give you a link that you can share with others. Here’s an example of a file I uploaded and the link that I received: http://rapidshare.com/files/5587830/02_Plantinga.mp3.html. Here’s some additional info that may interest you. I’m sure there are other sites like it, but if you’ve ever found yourself needing something like this, you might want to bookmark it for future reference.