Previously mentioned RefTagger now supports Movable Type, so if you use that platform, check out Logos’s recent how to.
Good translations require a good understanding of how languages work. This requires more than just knowing a list of words and grammatical structures; it requires an understanding of why an author chooses this structure instead of that one. It requires an understanding of linguistic context, of the rules of discourse, of conventions of speech and genre. The tools and techniques by which exegetes can study these factors is called Discourse Analysis.
For a great introduction to Discourse Analysis, as well as other topics in linguistics and their impact on biblical studies, check out 
Cotterell’s Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation. Young’s Intermediate New Testament Greek also includes a wonderful introduction to Discourse Analysis, and includes several different methods for diagramming.
But the purpose of this post is to point out some software by Logos. First, there is a semantic/discourse diagramming feature bundled into Scholar’s Library (which looks very nice; Bibleworks includes grammatical diagramming, but not discourse diagrams). Check that out here. Additionally, they are now offering a complete discourse analysis of the New Testament. Check out the announcement, complete with screenshots and a video, here.
From their blog:
As the launch of Zotero 1.5 approaches we are excited to announce the availability of specific bibliographic styles for more than 1100 journals. Zotero now supports such diverse publications as French Historical Studies, the American Sociological Review, Accounts of Chemical Research, the Chinese Journal of Clinical Oncology, the British Medical Journal, American Political Science Review, and Oxford German Studies. We also remind Zotero users that most other publications are already supported through our generic styles.
Many of these styles require the Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview release.
You can find additional styles here. To install the Society of Biblical Literature Style go here.
I have had past experience with Mounce’s Flashworks software, a free Windows and Mac program designed to help you learn Greek, but it has gotten a serious upgrade since the last time I checked. Here’s the description on Mounce’s Website:
FlashWorks is a vocabulary drilling program. Each word is tagged for difficulty, type (noun, verb, etc.), chapter, and frequency in the Biblical text. You can then ask for any cross section you wish, such as “all verbs occurring more than 30 times in the New Testament that occur in chapters 16 through 24 in the text and which I have tagged with a difficulty rating of three through five” (five being the most difficult for you). FlashWorks remembers words as you get them right and/or wrong and can automatically set the difficulty rating.
The download is a paltry 6mb, which is a good thing. Databases for the language (i.e., the actual vocab) are downloaded separately (though Greek is included). This, again, is a good thing; it allows the program to be modular, which means the same basic program can be used to learn any language. Databases are currently available for Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and Spanish. And you can always create your own.
You will need to download and install special fonts for Greek and Hebrew (links are available on the site), although it appears that Greek is included in the install. The software uses TekniaGreek and TekniaHebrew, which points up one big disadvantage to FlashWorks and the Teknia fonts: they are not Unicode fonts. If you don’t know what this means, or don’t know why unicode is important, check out my previous introduction to Unicode. The lack of unicode support is why I did not include the Teknia fonts in my list of Great Greek Fonts.
Installers are available for Windows and Mac, and it works beautifully in Wine on Linux (on Ubuntu). And did I mention it is free?
I do have a few qualms. The interface is terribly ugly, and the whole thing could use a usability overhall. Making your own word lists could be easier. I would love to be able to select/tag words in order to create a chapter-specific Machen vocab list, for example, but as it is that would be too time consuming. But it gets the job done, and that’s the important thing with Greek: memorize the vocab, then you can move on to more important matters!
I have posted a series of guides on setting up a Unicode Greek Keyboard, complete with recommended fonts (here, here, and here). But what if you got there too late, and already have a host of documents in non-Unicode fonts? Well, here is a list of converters available, on a font by font basis, that will help you make the switch.
If you run a WordPress Blog you may be interested in Logos Bible Software’s RefTagger. It’s a handy little tool that automatically highlights and hyperlinks any biblical references in your blog. So if, for example, I begin to ramble about Heb. 2:9, the plugin will provide my readers with a popup so they know what I am talking about. Clicking on the link takes you to BibleGateway.com.
RefTagger is free, and has a number of wonderful options. You can select your preferred Bible Version (a global setting; you can’t change it on a case-by-case basis). You can also include links to the Libronix libarary, though I don’t have this software so cannot test it. Options are available for installing on other blogging software, but it is more difficult (copy/paste code in the right location).
Give it a run. It makes posting Bible-related content that much easier.
Its not the most user-friendly piece of software, but if you are interested in making your own flashcard sets, check out this post. It includes Unicode support, so Greek cards should not be a problem, provided you follow my guide to setting up a Unicode Greek Keyboard.
Greek students might also be interested in this post on effective vocabulary memorization, and this one about Greek Flash Card systems.
Backup is important. You never know when your hard drive will give out (and it will, someday), or when some killer virus is going to wipe your data, or when you are going to be a bonehead and accidentally delete that all-important file.
Backup is important, but an online backup offers further advantages. It can be slow, to be sure, but it protects you in ways that other backups can’t (fire, theft, etc.). It’s a good idea to have your vital information, your most valuable pictures, etc. in a safe and secure location. Services like Mozy Home provide a wonderful and feature-rich online backup solution (and its free). But it has its drawbacks (Windows only, slow, does not sync between computers).
Introducing Dropbox
There is a new site, however, that offers something more, and holds great promise for the futre. Check out the folks over at Dropbox. I have been playing around with their services for a while now and have been very impressed, and today marks the release of their services to the public (still beta, but public beta).
Backup
What is Dropbox? At the minimum it is an automatic online backup of your important data. Dropbox creates a folder on your hard drive. Whatever you put in this folder is automatically synced with your account online. In short, anything you put in the dropbox on your computer is automatically mirrored to a secure, private, and encrypted location online, accessible to you for anywhere in the world.
Sync
The beauty of dropbox is that it offers more than this.
In the first place, you can link multiple computers to the same account. So, for example, let’s say I have both my home and office computers linked to the same online Dropbox. If I add or change a file in the Dropbox on my home computer, it will be automatically uploaded to the online Dropbox, and in turn automatically downloaded by my work computer. All my data is in sync between multiple computers.
Furthermore, Dropbox knows when I modify files and acts accordingly. Let’s say a have an article that I am writing in my dropbox. Whenever I make even the slightest modification to the file on my home computer, that modification is immediately uploaded to the web. This is what is called “real-time” backup. The Dropbox software can sense anytime a file has changed, and mirrors that change online.
And here is the real cool bit: it also keeps a record of the modification in case you do something stupid. Say you accidentally deleted a couple of important paragraphs of your article and could not recover the original? Well, those changes will be reflected in your online dropbox, but the original will be there too, so in just a couple of clicks you can recover you old data. The Dropbox FAQ puts it well:
All your files are not only backed up but all prior versions are preserved. So if you delete something or even just save a bad change you can restore a file in a few clicks via the web interface.
The web interface (which looks a lot like Facebook) gives you a running commentary of all the changes that have been made, and is both good-looking and intuitive.
You can also mark certain folders as shared, allowing you to distribute files, as well as back them up. This could be particularly useful for photos, for example. Just mark your photo folder as shared, distribute the web address to your friends and family, and suddenly you have a private Flickr alternative.
More Advantages
Another important feature of Dropbox is that it only uploads the data that has changed, not entire files. Here, again, is the description provided by the FAQ:
Does Dropbox always upload/download the entire file any time a change is made? Nope, Dropbox tries its best to be smart about how much gets uploaded to our servers for the best possible performance. Before transfer, we compare the new file to the previous version and only send the (binary) diff.
What does this mean? It means that if you only changed one letter of that article, Dropbox only uploads that one letter to your online Dropbox. That saves an enormous amount of bandwidth, which means that once your original upload is complete, you can expect Dropbox to use minimal system resources. It won’t slow down your computer, and it won’t tie down you internet. Still worried? The Dropbox preferences dialog allows you to cap the speed at which it uploads data, allowing you to have it running at all times, even if you’re streaming movies from the internet or downloading email.
Security is also not an issue. All your data is password-protected and encrypted on Amazon’s excellent S3 storage servers.
Linux Users
There are a couple of added advantages available to you if you run a Linux-based operating system. These advantages are available because of the way Linux handles links. In short: Dropbox follows all sym-links. Don’t know what that means? Well, in Linux you can link to a file and the Operating System treats that link as if it was the file itself. Clicking on a link to a folder is as good as clicking on the folder itself. Long story short, you can place links to folders into your Desktop Dropbox and they will be backed-up and synced just like regular files. IThe rub is that if you run Linux you don’t have to change how your files are organized in order to use Dropbox, and that makes things a lot easier. Just drag links to your important folders and they will be automatically synced just like a regular folder.
How I Roll
I have two dropbox accounts, one is tied to my Laptop, on which I do all my work for school, write articles, prepare lessons for class, and, of course, hack at my dissertation. I now sleep peacefully at night knowing that all this, and especially my dissertation, is automatically backed-up in a secure location. If our house catches fire, I no longer have to run back for my laptop after heroically saving my wife, child, and dog. If my laptop gets stolen, drowned, shot at, etc. I still have access to all my data, and without any trouble whatsoever. As a cherry on top, I have my work desktop linked to this account, so I can access my files at school even without my laptop, and know everything will get synced up in the end.
I also have Dropbox installed on our home Desktop. I don’t really need syncing or anything here; really I just want our important files backuped-up online. So I have my backup software (Cobian 9) run a separate backup into my Dropbox folder. It filters out any large files (pictures, mp3s, etc) and sends the rest to the Dropbox, which is then in turn backed-up online—two simultaneous backups, one local, the other remote. Very nice.
Conclusions
Dropbox is really great Software/Webware. They provide clients for Windows, Linux, and Mac, and all are interoperable with the others (i.e. you can sync between different systems). There is currently a 2GB limit, but the storage and service is perfectly free. The company has promised that they will always offer this free storage, and that they will additionally allow you to upgrade to more storage (for a fee) in the future.
If you want more information, check out their FAQ here. For the latest news, their blog is here. You can also take a tour. And if you’re ready to download, go here.
Services like Mozy Home offer a free online backup solution for Windows and Mac users. But what about Linux? As usual, no Love for Linux.
Enter Dropbox. While still in closed Beta (for Windows and Mac), Dropbox has enormous promise. It will offer 2gb of online storage space, syncs in the background, and according to this article by Lifehacker, now offers clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Give the Linux client a try here.
Sep 102008
Mozilla, the good people behind Firefox, have recently introduced an experimental Firefox extension called Ubiquity, designed to help users interact with web data in a social world. Justin Taylor points out a new plugin from Crossway that takes advantage of this technology to make looking up (and interacting with) Bible verses easily. This is great news for bloggers, or other active Web 2.0 folks. Read about it here.
There is a more extensive description of Ubiquity here. Or you can try it out with these 15 commands for Ubiquity.
