February 24, 2006

Hide Distractions While Working at Your Computer

Productivity guru Merlin has suggested ways to use
5 applications to reduce the screen clutter and the distractions they represent as you work. Finding a "Full Screen" mode to work with can go a long way to eliminating screen clutter. Turn off email notifications... close that Instant Messenger client and get back to work.

February 22, 2006

"Two-Source" vs. "Two-Document" Hypothesis

So, let's see:

A GoogleFight comes out 15,100 to 815...

a Google Book Search finds 402 pages to 230...

and an ATLA search on EBSCO Host Research Database found 39 hits for "Two-Source Hypothesis" in any major field to 20 for "Two-Document Hypothesis".

I suppose that settles it.

February 18, 2006

How much does Feldman get?

Amazon just sent me an email, suggesting based upon my previous purchases, that I might want to jump on Louis Feldman's Judaism And Hellenism Reconsidered (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism) now that it's available for preorder.
Of course I'd love to have it, but in what world am I supposed to be buying a personal copy of a $269 text for my personal library? What a tasty special pre-order price.
Hey, wait a minute... it'll ship with super saver free shipping. Now that just may make the difference!

February 16, 2006

Historical Criteria

I enjoy discussions of historical criteria, in Text Criticism, Synoptic Problem Studies, and in Historical Jesus Studies. I'm good at grasping and applying the critera. Mark Goodacre posted Historical Jesus Forgotten Criteria I: Accidental Information, and I'm anxiously awaiting the implied "II".
The accidental criterion has never been forgotten by me, at least, though I've never heard it called that. I recall it as named "Indirect Information," which are tidbits that come when one considers the assumptions an author makes. It is extremely valuable to comb through a gospel narrative and pull out all the information that fits "What is the author presumptively implying as he makes another point?" However, using the criterion of "Accidental Information" is dangerous. What, for instance, of the segues we find in gospel pericopae? Often we get temporal and geographical information that would qualify as quite accidental, but also arguably quite historically inaccurate.

February 10, 2006

Masking Your Email Address on Your Web Page

You may have noticed, the email address on my blog page is an image file. This is to prevent spammers from harvesting my email address to add to the their list-o-bagillion-emails. I found this stupendous tutorial on the dozens of different ways to put your email address on your web page in a way that masks it from spammers. Find which option is best for you:
Hiding email addresses by Sarven Capadisli.

Using Your Public Library For Research

If you're like me, displaced from your academic library where you have primary access and/or doing scholarship out of a church context, don't neglect the resource that your local library represents. My little library near my home, is fantastically connected, and has access to journals and inter-library loan across the midwest.
Here's a fantastic summary on Lifehacker regarding how to
Get the most of your local library.

February 02, 2006

Announcing: The Accordance Blog

Fantastic news to share. The makers of Accordance Bible Software now have a blog!

Accordance Blog

News, How-tos, and assorted Views on Accordance Bible Software.

Catchy, no?
David Lang in the inaugural post alludes to being late-comers to the blogging machine. They just last year moved their user forums from a list-serv to web bulletin board forum software. It really is difficult to discern which modes (email, forums, blogs, traditional web pages) fit such situations. I think it's the right move to have both the user forum and the blog, and that everything that makes its way into the "Official Announcements" category of the forums also find their way onto the blog. I would suggest a little more design work done on the blog so that it fits more seamlessly into the color scheme of the web pages in general. However, also keeping a "News" section on the web page adds to techno-option-overflow; it is now superfluous. Archive the remaining news announcements on the old news page and then redo the web page to point not to a "News" section but to the blog. (And don't be hard about not blogging before; frankly, the News section of the web page is exactly what a blog is, just more strict on content and without using convenient blog software that encourages frequent posting.)

David today had this to say about his answer to the oft-asked question of why develop only for the Mac:

The answer is simple: We aren't out to take over the world, we just want to create Bible software which is "insanely great." And where except on the Mac can you create insanely great software?
For the less cheeky response, you could have a look at their web support page, as well.
If you use Accordance, I can't imagine why you wouldn't add the page to your daily RSS/Atom feed (except for the fact that they don't yet have the link available from their web page). If you want it, here it is:
http://www.accordancebible.com/blog/atom.xml

Gentium Unicode Font -- Open Source and Looking Great

With Unicode fonts becoming more and more the standard as we plug away at our little Greek and Hebrew (and proto-Coptic!) projects, it becomes more and more important to encourage the development of good fonts that meet the needs of our specific niche fields.

Newsforge has a great write-up regarding the Gentium font and its exciting presence on the open source market now. Gentium Font SampleVictor Gaultney created the font on his Mac using FontLab as part of his Master's thesis project. It includes a good range of Unicode Extended Greek, and will now get superbly better with the contributions of more folks now that it is open source.

Thanks to Tom Elliot at the Stoa Consortium.