Tommy

 

Ecclesia Reformada

It is my privilege to announce a new journal: Ecclesia Reformada. Anybody with an interest in cutting-edge Reformed scholarship and its relvance to pastoral ministry should consider a subscription. From their site:

Ecclesia Reformanda is a new journal for pastors, theological students, and scholars, that seeks to serve the Church in its ongoing reformation according to God’s Word. The editorial board believes that historic Reformed theology offers the best expression of the theology of Scripture, and so the journal is confessionally Reformed. However, a genuinely Reformed theology is always looking for God to shed new light on his Church from his Word. It is therefore always reforming.

Ecclesia Reformanda is distinctively Reformed, with a contemporary cutting edge. It presents some of the best in British Reformed thinking and writing to serve the Church, her teachers, and her Lord.

The articles in the first edition look both interesting and timely:

The journal covers all of the theological subdisciplines, and early issues will include articles on intertextuality in Romans 2, poetry in James, the place of children in the new covenant according to Jeremiah 32, Jim Jordan’s hermeneutics, Herman Bavinck’s theological method, and John Owen’s doctrine of justification. Future editions will contain articles on ethics, public theology, and pastoral counselling.

I was particularly encouraged by the editorial, which emphasizes that the purpose of the journal is to serve God’s church—a welcome focus in the current scholarly climate:

All true theology is Church theology, conducted by the community of God’s people, to serve the community of God’s people, in the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God in Christ. This is not to despise academic theology, but simply to locate it properly in the service of the Church. Ecclesia Reformanda therefore exists to serve the Church, primarily by serving pastors, theological students, and those who train them. Although the journal will seek to advance theological knowledge, and so contribute to academic theology, the primary goal is to equip pastors and teachers in the Church to discharge their ministries more fruitfully and faithfully. Our intention is thus unashamedly pastoral.

My friend and colleague Ros Clarke is on the board of editors. Her work is extraordinary, and so I expect the journal will follow suite. You can check out her blog here or her site dedicated to academic work here.

 

There are good reasons for eventually upgrading to Windows 7, but don’t let eye candy be one of them. Avoid the pull of marketing by retrofitting Windows XP. There is a guide for that here.

Or maybe you’re an under-the-hood kinda guy or gal. There are many applications that allow you to get the features provided by Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 up-and-running in XP. A Guide for that can be found here.

 

Google has implemented cell-phone syncing of your contacts. From their blog:

Once you set up Sync, changes you make to your calendar or contacts are reflected on your device within minutes since the connection is over-the-air and always on. And it’s two way, so your calendar and contacts are always up-to-date, no matter whether you make changes on your phone or from your browser. Also, since your information is automatically backed up to your Google account, it’s securely stored even if you accidentally drop your phone in the pool. Getting your address book and calendar to a new phone is as easy as setting up Sync again.

Google sync currently works on the iPhone and on Windows Mobile phone (for contacts and calendar). The contacts-only version works with a number of mobile devices.

 

Digitalization is the way of the future, and with the recent deal between authors and Google books, that future may in fact be bright for all parties.

In the course of my dissertation work I often have to track down primary sources, and when those sources are particularly rare it becomes difficult. Or it used to be difficult. Now I Google it.

Exhibit A: This morning I needed to track down some homilies of Hebrews by Chrysostom. Being a dedicated Greek Geek, I wanted the “original,” which means I need Patrologia Graeca volume 63. Where am I going to get it? Google Books of course–they have the entire series digitalized and downloadable for your convenience. This is what sites like Google Books and archive.org are made for—primary sources in the open domain.

Image view of v63 of Patrologia Graeca

Image view of v63 of Patrologia Graeca

Here are some screenshots for you. The first is the standard scan, downloadable as a pdf. The second is Google’s attempt at a little OCR, which obviously is struggling with both the Greek and the Latin. This is to be expected. I did a little natural language processing way-back-when; a lot of OCR software will “guess” the letters based not only on shape, but on the software’s (limited) understanding of the language, which for Greek and Hebrews is probably NULL. Still, I was impressed, and this is a harbinger of great things to come.

OCR view of v63 of Patrologia Graeca

OCR view of v63 of Patrologia Graeca

So what primary sources have you been trying to track down? How do you use research tools like these? Post in the comments!

 

valentineWhat’s the greatest gift you can give your true love this Valentine’s Day? The gift of Firefox of course! Your significant other will swoon when s/he realizes how interested you are in network security, browser extensibility, and open-source goodness.

Need more details?

There is a new geeky way to say how much you love that special one while spreading the word about Firefox with this totally anti-romantic but funny e-card developed by Mozilla Community Marketing team and Brinkhurst Design. However, if you are in a relationship and your significant other doesn’t know you’re into Firefox, I think it’s time of some serious talk. Have fun!

 

I can’t believe it either, but it appears to be true: Microsoft is giving stuff away for free. Here’s the scoop.

 
wifi tshirt

In today’s troubled times, it’s a wonder that so many strange ideas can survive. Today’s Strangelet: a T-shirt that notifies you of adjacent Wi-Fi networks. From DigitalInspiration:

The wi-fi shirt, made of pure cotton, can detect wireless networks in your vicinity and displays the signal strength as animated glowing bars as shown in the picture.

It requires three AAA batteries, so this shirt is not for jogging.

Want proof? Doubt the usefulness of such a Tee Shirt? Watch the video!


Nicole Lapin Shows Off Her Wifi T-ShirtClick here for another funny movie.

 

Phil Gons has a short little guide on how to import your Logos Libronix Library into Zotero’s database.

 
Updated version of Oregon Trail coming to the iPhoneIt’s been awhile since the last Strangelet, the Nerdlets.org repository of all wacky, weird, or unexpected news. But today marks a strange blast from the past. Those familiar terms like “CGA” and “Cobal” will be glad to learn that their nostalga for outdated games will soon be satisfied, curtosy of the iPhone.

That’s right: the Oregon Trail, the ultimate in ambiguously educational gaming will soon be available for the iPhone. Now you can get sick with Malaria in the comfort of the passenger seat of your minivan.

 

Gmail

In honor of my 200th post here at Nerdlets, I am introducing a couple of new segments. The first, Multitasking Mondays, will feature posts designed to help you use technology to get things done. The second, Security Saturdays, will feature posts that help protect and secure your data. You will have to wait a couple of days for the latter, of course, but today marks the first Multitasking Monday here at Nerdlets, and I thought we would spend some time talking about Gmail.

If your not familiar with Gmail, read the next section, otherwise, skip to the New Multitasking features below.

Use Gmail

Gmail is bar-none the best email solution out there. Now I know what you’re thinking—”I already have an email address (or two/three/etc), I don’t need another!” Well that’s one great feature about gmail. You can forward mail from your regular addresses straight to Gmail, or if your service provider does not allow forwarding (shame on them), you can set Gmail to download your messages via POP. You can even set up Gmail to send mail via your other email addresses. No one ever has to know your Gmail address if you don’t want them to—Gmail can just be your email “Hub” where you can manage multiple online identities. Or you can take the full plunge, there are many easy tools that can help you migrate to Gmail.

There are a whole host of reasons for taking the time to set all this up. (1) Gmail gives you a huge amount of storage, so you never have to delete an email again. (2) Gmail allows you to archive and easily search for old emails. Never loose an email, even if you received it 5 years ago! (3) Gmail has the best spam filters around. (4) Gmail allows you to use IMAP instead of POP to get your mail, which means your Gmail account is always in-sync no matter how you access your email (for an intro to IMAP, go here; once you set it up, you won’t know how you went without it!). (5) Gmail is always accessible from the web and works with almost any device (6) Gmail will easily interface with your existing Email software, like Thunderbird, Outlook, or whatever you Mac people use. (7) And that’s just the beginning.

A full explanation and guide to Gmail is in the works (subscribe today!), but the real point of this post is to notify you of three wonderful productivity features that have recently been added to Gmail.

Three Important New Features

Google has been hard at work providing excellent new features to Gmail. Three are worthy of notice for those wanting to use Gmail to multitask and get things done.

(1) Gmail Offline. It used to be that you needed Internet access to interact with Gmail. This meant that if you wanted/had to work offline you needed a Desktop applications (like Thunderbird or Outlook) to read/write/file your emails, which would sync with Gmail once you were back online. No longer! All of this is now possible in Gmail itself through Google Gears. This was announced on the Gmail Blog, and you can find a guide to setting things up here.

(2) Gmail labels/folders. It is now easier to label and file your email. For details, check out this post. As an addendum I will mention this: the folks at Gmail recommend archiving or filing your old email, rather than deleting them. Archiving email removes the email from your Inbox but leaves it in a special Archive folder just in case. The email will never be deleted. In addition, if you labeled the archived email (say, for example, with the label “Travel”), those labels will not be removed, so you can always view archived email by label at a later time. None of this is true if you “Delete” the email. It will be eradicated from the system in 30 days.

(3) Multiple Inboxes. A new Labs feature allows you to have multiple Inboxes on your Gmail homepage. Read about that here. Some background: Gmail allows you to filter incoming emails into specialized folders/labels. You can, for example, create a filter with the email addresses of all your family members and tell Gmail to send all incoming mail from those addresses to the “Family” folder. The new labs feature allows you to view this label on your homepage. You can also set this up for multiple Gmail accounts.

Other Features

There a number of other handy features available to Gmail users. Check out this helpful list.

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