Phil Gons

Bible & Tech

Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 for $55

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Logitech Webcam Pro 9000Living thousands of miles away from where we grew up (Ohio and Minnesota), we’ve been incredibly thankful for modern technology that allows us to have face-to-face conversations with our families. We almost exclusively use Skype now instead of our mobile phones to communicate with our parents and siblings. A really cool new feature coming in Skype 5 (currently in beta) is the ability to have video conversations between three and five computers at the same time. It looks really cool, but unfortunately it sounds like it may not be free.1

Along with Skype, we use the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 (formerly called the Quickcam Pro 9000) and love it. It’s an HD webcam that outputs video at 720p, so you get a really nice quality picture. If you’re wondering whether it’s worth the extra money, I can assure you that it is if you plan on using it regularly. Your family will thank you, especially when you have a little one come along like we did six-and-a-half months ago.

The Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 usually runs somewhere between $75–100, but Amazon currently has it on sale for only $55 with free shipping. That’s a really good deal for this webcam. If you’re in the market for one or want to get one for someone in your family as a gift, I’d strongly encourage you to pick this one up while it’s on sale.

  1. The Skype 5 page says, “This beta version comes with a free trial of group video calling.” [↩]

Save $60 a Year on Your Internet

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Linksys Cable ModemIf your internet service provides a cable modem for you to use to get your internet from the wall to your computer, they’re probably also charging you $5 a month for the modem rental (like Comcast has been doing to us for the last two-and-a-half years). Save yourself the $60 a year by buying this Linksys Cable Modem. It’s on sale today only for $19.99 with free shipping. It’ll pay for itself in four months. I picked one up a month or two ago, and it’s worked perfectly. Getting Comcast to switch us over to the new modem took only 5–10 minutes. If you’re looking for ways to save a few bucks a month, I encourage you to take advantage of this offer.

Free Episode of Planet Earth in HD

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Planet EarthIf you’ve never gotten around to watching BBC’s Planet Earth yet, now’s your chance to check it out for free—and in HD—and find out what you’ve been missing. Amazon Video On Demand currently has Planet Earth: Season 1, Episode 1: “From Pole to Pole” (49:16) available as a free download—both the standard and HD versions. And it’s the good one, the one narrated by David Attenborough (not the one narrated by Sigourney Weaver).

I’d encourage you to watch it. It contains some amazing footage that will often lead you to worship our great and glorious Creator God, whose “eternal power and divine nature” are clearly seen “in the things that have been made” (Ro 1:20; cf. Ps 19:1–6).

For more on Planet Earth, see Andy Naselli’s two posts: “Planet Earth: A Theological Documentary” and “Piper on Planet Earth.”

Also, be on the lookout for Life, a forthcoming BBC production, also narrated by David Attenborough.

Greg Bahnsen Lectures and Debates on YouTube

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Greg BahnsenOn Saturday night I discovered the Greg Bahnsen channel on YouTube, which has five video lectures (in 32 parts) and two audio debates (in 20 parts). Greg Bahnsen delivered the video lectures in 19911 as a five-part series, Basic Training for Defending the Faith (Amazon | Monergism), to soon-to-be college students. I spent a little while listening to bits and pieces of them, and they look terrific. The audio debates are the classic against Gordon Stein and the lesser-known against George Smith. I’ve heard them both before—the former more than half-a-dozen times. If you haven’t yet listened to them, I’d encourage you to do so, especially the one against Stein.

Here’s the complete list of everything that’s available:

Video Lectures: Basic Training for Defending the Faith (Five Parts | 4:49:29)

Part One—The Myth of Neutrality (5 Parts | 48:52)

  1. Greg Bahnsen—The Myth of Neutrality (Part 1 of 5) | 9:40
  2. Greg Bahnsen—The Myth of Neutrality (Part 2 of 5) | 9:55
  3. Greg Bahnsen—The Myth of Neutrality (Part 3 of 5) | 9:51
  4. Greg Bahnsen—The Myth of Neutrality (Part 4 of 5) | 9:59
  5. Greg Bahnsen—The Myth of Neutrality (Part 5 of 5) | 9:27

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  1. I’m inferring this number from his reference to Terminator 2 coming out “this summer.” [↩]

How to Use Greek and Hebrew in Blog Posts

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Greek Manuscript

If you use Greek and Hebrew in your blog posts, here’s a tip that will help you make it look good and give you the ability to make changes across your entire site in just a few seconds. There are two main things you need to do.

Step 1: Add Styles to Your Style Sheet

The first thing you need to do is find your style sheet. Your style sheet is the global control for how your site looks—text, colors, images, and more. If you’re familiar with creating styles in a word processing program like Microsoft Word, then you already understand the concept. You create and define a style, apply it to various units of text, and then when you edit that style in your style sheet, all of the text tagged with the style is instantly updated.

Find Your Style Sheet

If you use the self-hosted version of WordPress, you can find your style sheet in the admin panel by going to Appearance > Editor. Your style sheet is most likely named style.css. Click on it to load it, and then scroll to the bottom to add your new styles.1 You can access your style sheet via FTP2 by going to /public_html/wp-content/themes/{your-theme-name}/style.css. I typically use Dreamweaver to open and edit my style sheet. Other blogging platforms should be pretty similar.

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  1. Some themes provide you with a secondary style sheet for adding your custom styles so you don’t lose them when you upgrade your theme. In these cases, you might be looking for a custom.css file instead. [↩]
  2. FileZilla is a good free FTP client for Windows. [↩]

The Fall Explains Homosexual Animals

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Scientists and advocates of same-sex sexual and marital relationships are making much of recently observed homosexual behavior in animals, and some are suggesting that it proves that homosexuality is genetically rooted and natural (or at least not unnatural) for both animals and human beings. As Al Mohler explains,

The political implications of the issue are clear—those pushing for the normalization of homosexuality want to be able to point to research that would prove the normality of homosexuality in nature.

To draw this conclusion, however, would be a mistake. For it fails to evaluate this homosexual behavior in light of a biblical hamartiology. As Mohler reminds us, we can’t derive what’s natural—or more importantly, what God requires of us—from nature, for the simple reason that the effects of Adam’s sin extend beyond the human race.

The world we know is a world that shows all the effects of human sin and the curse of God’s judgment on that sin. Though the glory of God shines through even its fallen state, nature now imperfectly displays the glory of God. Because of the curse, the world around us now reveals and contains innumerable elements that are “natural,” but not normative. Illnesses and earthquakes are natural, but not normative.

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The Story of Zac Smith

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I encourage you to invest four-and-a-half minutes of your day watching this powerful and moving video about Zac Smith’s cancer, faith, and God.

The Story of Zac Smith from NewSpring Media on Vimeo.

Here are his concluding comments: “This I do know. If God chooses to heal me, then God is God, and God is good. If God chooses not to heal me and allows me to die, God is still God, and God is still good. To God be the glory.”

Peter Hitchens: The Rage Against God

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The Rage Against GodPeter Hitchens (blog), brother of the well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens (website), talks about his faith and his forthcoming book The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (to be published by Zondervan and due out on May 1) in these two videos.

They’re an interesting watch. The first is only 2:08. If you don’t have 8:38 to spare for the second, I’d recommend starting at 4:10.

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