Category: Resources & Reviews

The Goblet of Fire

Paula and I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night.

Loved it. Easily the best of the series so far. In fact, I think it was better than the book upon which it was based (and I NEVER think that about a movie).

Dilbert Dude On ID

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, just wrote a fascinating essay on understanding the Darwinism/Intelligent Design debate. No matter what you expect this essay to say, it’s different. (update: he published parts two, three, and four)

Understanding Today’s Students

Presbyterian college minister Rhett Smith has a pretty lengthy essay about today’s students.

Stanford iTunes

Lots of Stanford audio content is available online for free now. Check out Stanford iTunes for faculty lectures, conferences, guest speakers and more.

Guy Kawasaki

I just heard Guy Kawasaki speak at Straight Talk, a marketplace ministry hosted by Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. He uses humor well. For instance, he was offered a job in Atlanta but “couldn’t take a job where they call sushi bait.”

I really appreciated his intro:

When I was younger I used to go to a lot industry conferences, and I learned that most CEOs suck as speakers. And the only thing worse than listening to a speaker who sucks is not knowing how much longer they’re going to suck. So I’ve adopted a simple rule: all my presentations are in a top-ten format. That way, if you decide I suck you at least know how much longer I’m going to do it.

Unfortunately, I know a few preachers who could use his advice. 🙂

His talk was The Art of the Start, based on his book. It’s a talk he’s given in a lot of different venues. You can find the notes online. He did a pretty good job of customizing it for the context of the meeting (Christian business professionals and their guests).

In honor of his speaking advice, here are ten things I learned about Guy Kawasaki:

  1. He’s a Christian.
  2. He went to Stanford (where he majored in “the easiest major I could find–psychology.”).
  3. He secularized the term evangelism while at Apple. Good for him–the word could really use a facelift.
  4. He loves Apple and disdains Microsoft. “DOS was a moral wrong.”
  5. He finds evidence for the existence of a personal God in the continued survival of Apple. He further concludes that God really likes digital music and wants you to pay for it.
  6. He went to law school and dropped out after ten days, “thereby inheriting 2,000 years of pent-up Asian guilt.”
  7. He loves to play hockey–it sounds like an obsession.
  8. He is a CSI addict and is eagerly awaiting the day that they release CSI: Menlo Park.
  9. He loves first-class in Singapore Airlines. In fact, that’s his working model of heaven.
  10. He thinks iStockPhoto.com rocks–he went out of his way to plug it at the end of his presentation and claimed to do so without any financial incentive (“I’m not an investor or anything, I just love their product.”)

the inimitable Terry Pratchett strikes again

If you’ve never had the pleasure before, you owe it to yourself to read something by Terry Pratchett. He’s a humor fantasy novelist who actually makes me laugh out loud on a fairly regular basis.

I just finished his most recent book and stumbled across these two little snippets that tickled me.

Thud! (Discworld, Book 30)

[Nobby said,] “There’s a lot that goes on that we don’t know about.”

“Like what, exactly?” Colon retorted. “Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about. There–you can’t, can you?” (page 42) 

And later…

“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.
“Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol–well, okay.”
“Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?”
“All right, I’ll grant you that, but–”
“Saving civilization from a horde of–”
“It doesn’t do any good in the long run is what I’m saying, Nobby, if you’d listen for five seconds together, ” said Fred Colon sharply.
“Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?” (page 50) 

Redesigned PreachingToday.com is Sweet

The redesigned PreachingToday.com is really nice. The new media section is especially good (although it’s a bit hard to find the media browsing page–it’s http://preachingtoday.com/media/browse.html–and there are a few glitches they still need to work out).

Overall, I’m quite happy. I’m an annual subscriber and I’ve always gotten far more than my money’s worth. Now it’s doubly true.

PersonalMDiv.com

I’ve been slowly stewing an idea in my brain for a few days now, and I finally decided to act on it. I noticed the creation of personalmba.com with interest, but didn’t think much about it until I saw that Jordon Cooper was inspired to create a comparable M. Div. list (thanks to Andrew Jones for pointing it out).

Anyway, I noticed that there was some criticism of the overall idea and of the specific book choices (some of the criticism was thoughtful, some was knee-jerk). I thought it would be great to create a wiki to let the broader community craft a list of books, articles, and projects that would really make a difference in someone’s ministry.

So I did. I present PersonalMDiv.com.

Have at it.

Media Shout 3.0

I finally got my upgrade copy of MediaShout in the mail yesterday.

Wow.

This release fixes everything I’ve ever disliked about MediaShout and adds tons of new features I’d never considered.

The three best upgrades:
* You can play just a specific, custom clip from a DVD. So you just want to play from 1.54.36 to 1.57.12? Done.
* All songs now have permanent formatting stored in the database. No need to reformat every stinking time you use the song!
* You can edit text cues directly from within the program–no more random RTF files lying about.

Also, it looks like they’re trying to break into the VJ market–the new version includes better support for mixing video feeds on the fly. Still, it just doesn’t compare to Arkaos in that department.

The one thing I really wish they had done was include the Greek & Hebrew Bibles (they include the Latin Vulgate–why not the original text?).

Overall, I’m thrilled.

Absolutely Amazing

I listen to MP3s when I bike to campus. Not music, as I really don’t like music all that much; rather, I soak up lecture/seminar/sermonic stuff. I get a lot of them from Discipleship Library and I’ve recently started downloading some from IT Conversations.

Anyway, I recently listened to Ben Saunders’ amazing story. He made a solo expedition to the North Pole and really knows how to spin the tale. I was agog. Highly recommended.