Happy Bastille Day! Today, we celebrate the French defeat at the hands of...

...the French!

Thanks again to Laura Bartlett and the blogger review program at Tyndale House Publishers, I've been looking at a copy of Psalms, Proverbs (Cornerstone Biblical Commentary) over the past few weeks. This is part of a projected 18 volume series (not all volumes are available yet) covering the entire Bible, using the New Living Translation (NLT) as its basis.

I wish I had this commentary when I was teaching Psalms last year. While teaching the Psalms, one of the difficulties I had was dealing with unifying themes while exploring each individual Psalm. Before going into the commentary on the text, the book provides a 25-page introduction for Psalms as a whole. This is one of the best book introductions I've read. It talks in detail about the authors of the Psalms, the date and occasion of writing, the audience, the use of the Psalms, the literary style, the major themes, and theological concerns. The majority of the attention is focused on the literary style and the theological concerns and I found both sections especially insightful.

Moving into the main portion of the book, I love the way it is laid out. First, a portion of the text is presented. Next, textual notes are presented. Finally, after the notes is the commentary. The commentary is well-written and informative. It is especially helpful for preaching and teaching, but would also be useful for personal self-study. As a simple test of the commentary, I turned to the familiarity of Psalm 23 and read the notes and commentary on it. There are 2 pages of commentary, focusing of the focus of depending on God (as a shepherd) for daily bread and daily guidance.

The section on Proverbs is just as interesting and as the section on Psalms. Again, this is the kind of commentary that I'm particularly grateful for because I am so much less comfortable with poetry than with other forms of biblical literature.

This is the second volume in the Cornerstone series that I've reviewed, the first being the pastoral epistles. The more familiarity I gain with this series, the more I like it. I highly recommend this series to anyone who teaches the Bible.

Logos Bible Software is celebrating the launch of their new online Bible by giving away 72 ultra-premium print Bibles at a rate of 12 per month for six months. The Bible giveaway is being held at Bible.Logos.com and you can get up to five different entries each month! After you enter, be sure to check out Logos and see how it can revolutionize your Bible study.

The Logos online Bible looks pretty cool, but if I've got my computer hand (instead of being at a random computer with a web browser), I always fire up Accordance for my Bible needs -- simply the best Bible software available on any platform.

I've had an ICOM IC-91AD radio for a couple of years and have loved it, but have been disgusted at the lack of support for using a Mac to program the radio. A while ago, I picked up a copy of CrossOver Mac when they were giving it away for free. I tried installing GSAK on it, but that didn't really work. So I haven't really played with CrossOver since.

Today, I wanted to update a lot of settings in my radio, so I really wanted to get the software working on my Mac. Without being able to do it on my Mac, I have to run it on a borrowed Windows computer, which is just not a good solution. I was pleased when the software installed quickly into its own bottle and seemed to start up without any problems.

So, the question is whether or not it will actually talk to the radio.

Of course, I don't have a serial port on my Mac, so I need to use a USB-Serial adapter. I've successfully used this adapter in the past for an older GPSr, so I know that the adapter would work on the computer. However, the RS-91 software didn't want to see it. I suspected the problem might be that CrossOver was not recognizing the USB-Serial adapter as a COM port.

I did a little web searching and found a page at the CrossOver site explaining how to do Serial over USB. Following the instructions on that page worked like a charm, and I was using my programming software with my radio on my Mac without any further problems. I am thrilled!

Specifically, this is the symbolic linking that I did to make it work:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/CrossOver/Bottles/ICOM/dosdevices
ln -s /dev/cu.usbserial-FTCDBTQO com1

If you're trying to get this working, you'll need to replace ICOM with the name of the CrossOver Bottle you installed the RS-91 software in and /dev/cu.usbserial-FTCDBTQO with the value for your USB-Serial adapter. I had two choices (the other being /dev/tty.usbserial-FTCDBTQO) and picked one at random. If it hadn't have worked, I'd have tried the other one (or maybe assigned it to COM2).

If anyone else is trying to do the same thing, I hope my experience is helpful.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Over the past couple of days, I made a Minty Boost from a kit. So now, I can be really cool and charge my USB devices (OK, my iPod) with 2 AA batteries. And the thing fits in a little Altiods chewing gum tin. I'd like to try taking it on an airplane and see if they object. (They shouldn't and probably wouldn't.)

Mostly, my soldering was good on this one. I had one cold joint that sidelobe helped me find. I'm learning how to use my multimeter to test things, and what the readings mean. I really wish I was more inclined to understand and learn electrical theory when I was in college. I'm picking it up now, but there is still a lot that I don't know.

But it's really fun learning.

Congratulations to olga_ukraine and ccohoon on your beautiful wedding yesterday! Here's looking to many wonderful years together!

With a hat tip to captain_phil, I present the last 10 minutes of Bill Kirchen doing "Hot Rod Lincoln":


I love watching people doing the "guess who passed me" bit on this song. I also love watching people play a Telecaster.

Hat Tip to the Internet Monk -- devotionalchristian.com is giving away a bunch of books. If you enter and win, split your winnings with me. ;-)

For the Bible Study I'm taking part in this year, I've been using my NLT Study Bible and have really been enjoying it. Using the NLT is helping me take a fresh look at Scriptures, especially passages that I'm fairly familiar with.

Whenever I read out loud in our meetings, at least one of the other participants comments on how much they enjoy hearing the NLT and comparing it with their version (usually an NKJV or NIV). A few weeks ago one of the other participants said that she was going to go look for an NLT for herself, based on hearing the passages I've read in our group meetings. After our meeting was over, I let her thumb through my Bible a bit and compare it to her NKJV. I pointed out that the study notes in my study Bible were somewhat similar to the study notes she had in her study Bible and suggested that she consider looking for Life Application Study Bible NLT in order to get a different set of notes. I used to love the notes in my Life App Bible, but in recent years, I've gravitated towards Bibles with more "scholarly" notes. But I still enjoy recommending the Life App Bible to people who are looking for a Bible with notes that can be used in devotional reading settings, and can help challenge them directly to find a way to apply the Bible's teaching to their daily lives.

Last week, she showed up for our meeting with a new Life App NLT. She had it again tonight and I asked her how she was liking it. She was very exited about it -- it's like the Word is opening up to her fresh and new, just by being exposed to a new translation.

This is exactly why I like having multiple translations available: any translation will be necessarily imperfect, and having multiple choices to compare with each other helps bring a fuller understanding of the Scripture. The same is true for the multitude of kinds of notes available: some are suitable for some kinds of study, some for others, and I think it's good to be familiar with the various kinds of study notes that are available.

I don't write as much in my LJ as I'd like, or in as much depth as I'd like. I just don't have time. But I wanted to at least mention that I went to the Greensboro, NC Tea Party (coverage from the local paper) during my lunch break today. It was fun, there were lots of people there (estimates indicate over 1,000), and everyone was well-behaved. I enjoyed reading the signs, most of which were non-partisan. There were a few angry partisan signs, but for the most part the sentiment was anti-government, not anti-[insert political party here].

The real question is how many of the people who were downtown today are going to do anything about it tomorrow. Or the next day. Or....

I took about a hundred pictures. I haven't cropped, sorted, or labeled them, and I probably will never get around to it. Enjoy.

I spent about two hours with my guitar this evening. I updated the tones on my POD X3 Live, adjusted the volume so there shouldn't be dramatic leaps when I switch tones, and picked out what I'll probably use for Hosannah on Sunday.

I wish I could spend this much time practicing more often.

I was in Target today and fell for an impulse buy: Prince's newest album, LotusFlow3r. I had never heard of it, didn't know Prince was recording a new album, and didn't know anything about it other than the endcap display they had and the video clip that was playing on a nearby TV with some cuts from the album. Actually, from the 3-disc set. It was $12 for 3 discs, 2 of which were Prince, with the third being someone I've never heard of -- Bria Valente. I figured that was a great deal for 3 discs if they were good. And hey, it's Prince -- I'm sure he's got some good stuff on it.

Yeah, I know that's a dangerous gamble. Especially with Prince.

So far, I'm loving it. I've listened to about 2/3 of one of the Prince CDs (Lotusflow3r), and none of either of the other ones. It's jazzy and bluesy. I dug the cover of Crimson and Clover / Wild Thing. The opening jazzy instrumental was nice.

I've looked at a few of the reviews on amazon.com now and a lot of them indicate that I'm listening to the best of the three CDs right now. The Bria Valente CD seems to be universally panned. And MPLSound seems to be getting mixed reviews. I'll see what I think about the rest of it as I get a chance to listen over the next few days.

The most recent issue of Tabletalk Magazine has a great article: Escaping Anonymity.

Here's a teaser:

In days past, anonymity was both rare and difficult. People tended to live in close-knit communities where every face was familiar and every action visible to the community. Travel was rare and the majority of people lived a whole lifetime in the same small geographic area. Os Guinness remarks that in the past “those who did right and those who did not do wrong often acted as they did because they knew they were seen by others. Their morality was accountability through visibility.” While anonymity is certainly not a new phenomenon, the degree of anonymity we can and often do enjoy in our society is unparalleled in history.

Read more....

I agree: we need accountability.

Over the past few days, I've allowed myself to fall behind on my daily devotional time with my Treasury of Daily Prayer. I don't know why I let myself do this -- it's not hard to find the time each day to keep up, and it's so incredibly rewarding.

This morning, I made a point of getting up early enough to "catch up" on the readings I've missed since last Wednesday. This is a better start to my day than I've had in a long time. I'm trying to make this a habit, so it's simply part of what I do every day, not something that I have to remember to do every day.

Especially since the majority of my "community" worship (Sunday morning) is focused on a "modern" worship style, it is very fulfilling to focus my "personal" worship with more traditional readings, psalms, hymns, and writings.

Today was my last day teaching the Sunday School class I've taught for seven and a half years. We finished our study of Isaiah.

When class was over, I almost cried when I thanked everyone for making my teaching experience so rewarding. I was especially touched that a few people specifically came today because they knew it was my last day -- people, e.g., who are generally too frail to be out much. Since I knew it was going to be emotional, I left them a letter expressing my thanks instead of trying to stammer through saying something. When I left, everyone clapped, and several stood up to clap. It really was very touching.

If I'm not in Chicago next weekend, it's going to be weird going to church and not teaching a class.

Today's Lenten Service featured a homily that focused on Judas as the trusted apostle, as opposed to Judas as the traitor. It was more scholarly than contemplative, and I was looking for contemplative. Once I got used to the delivery, I found it to be enriching. It's not giving me as much to think about as last week's service did, but I'm still thinking about it.