Category: Life

Categories
Life Technology

iOS Bible Applications

One habit I let go of after college has been reading the Bible, just myself, every day. I had my Bible on the shelf right  next to my bed and would spend about fifteen minutes reading a section of scripture before I would go to sleep.

It helped to ground me and center me.

Sadly, I let that habit fall away and even though we do family devotions every night with our sons, I have let my own personal Bible reading fall by the wayside.

So I’ve been looking at Bible apps on the iOS App Store not because I think it will be some magic bullet to get me to read the Bible more (there is still something wonderful about the tactile nature of a real printed page), but because I thought it would be beneficial t know what is out there and see if it could help in some small way to get a good habit started again.

So I have looked at two different apps and found them both to be pretty good.

Both of them fulfill the requirement of allowing you to have the Bible on your iOS device with or without a network connection. Both are also free. In that sense, you really can’t go wrong with either one.

However, I do find both lacking in some areas.

ESV Bible

ESV Bible App

As the name implies, it is simply the ESV (English Standard Version) translation of the Bible for iOS. I won’t get into translations, but if you are looking to have multiple translations available, you are going to want to look elsewhere.

The reading experience in this app is quite good. Navigation is also simple and straight forward. Overall, a very good app, if someone minimal, and a great choice is the ESV translation alone will suffice.

Bible

Bible App

Bible is another good application. While the reading experience (in my opinion) is not as good (too much chrome for my liking), and navigation can be a little cumbersome (small tap targets on individual drop downs), it has some major benefits over the ESV Bible app.

The most notable is that you have access to a number of translations, including the ESV translation. You can view the translation online or download it to your devices so that you can view it both more smoothly and without a network connection. I currently have the King James Version, English Standard Version, and the Holman Christian Standard Bible downloaded on both my iPhone and iPad and enjoy reading sections in all three to see the language differences.

You can sign up for a YouVersion account in the app to sync notes and activities and also view notes on passages made by others readers.

The big thing for me is that you can subscribe to Plans to help you choose what to read on a given day. I’ve started “The Bible in a Year” plan and I’m hoping to complete it by this time next year and then maybe move onto some more topical plans. It is nice to take away the excuse of not knowing which section of scripture to read in a given night and just tap to the next area and read.

It takes away some of the Old Adam that can get in the way.

Conclusion

As you can guess, I’m using the Bible app as my Bible application for the moment. The benefits of a YouVersion account coupled with plans is enough to overtake the somewhat mixed reading experience of the app itself. Along with multiple translations, it is the one app I would recommend to anyone on almost any platform.

Like I said, this is no magic bullet, but it is something to keep me a little more honest with my Bible reading habits.

Categories
Life Technology

A Year of Podcasting

I probably should have written this up earlier, but I’ll go ahead and toss it up now because … well … I’m lazy.

TOP Logo

Over a year ago my friend, Phil Wels, and I started a podcast called This One Podcast. I just posted Episode 55: Unjump the Shark and it is crazy to think we have 55 episodes out there for the world to listen to.

Frightening because we keep doing it and we still have no idea what we are going.

We’ve added another host, Jonas Leyrer, and have also upped the quality of the program’s audio by having Phil handle the editing. He has a lot more experience than I do and I think he’s done an admirable job handling out audio that we toss at him.

We have also been working with a multiple-Skype setup recently to see if we would be able to centralize the recording at a single station where the mixing can happen instead of each of us recording out own audio and then sending it, via Dropbox, to Phil where he needs to import it into his editing program of choice (I think either Garageband or Pro Tools) where he can edit things for us.

I’m using a Blue Snowball microphone for most of my recording and it has worked very well. I would like to purchase something a little more “high end” in the future, but money is too tight for that right now.

The hardest thing for us has been keeping the topics lively, especially because we need to record in the evening when we have all put in a full day of work. While every show hasn’t been phenomenal, we continue to record because it is fun to get together with your friends and see where things go.

If you are considering trying out your own podcast here are my recommendations:

  • Start with what you have because you can always get something better. If you have a microphone on-hand, just go for it.
  • Amazon S3 has been really nice for hosting the files. I don’t have to worry about transfer speeds  because that is on Amazon and using Transmit, from Panic, to upload the files couldn’t be easier. The only problem is that I haven’t been able to figure out how to let Phil also upload the files.
  • If there is more than one host, just try out having each person record their own audio and then mixing it together in Audacity or Garageband. You don’t need to get too fancy.
  • Download Levelator and use it.
  • Keep at it. Set a schedule and keep to it as best as you can.

I don’t have any affiliate links or anything because this is mostly a brain dump. I’m hoping, though, that within the year I’ll be posting about Episode 100 and the delicious cake my wife is going to bake for us.

Categories
Life

Your Idiotic Past Self

My close friend Phil Wels posted A Bit of an Idiot yesterday and I implore you to go ahead read it completely. It is not very long, but it is poignant.

I’m not a person who ever thinks about the past as “the best years”, and in what Phil writes it makes sense why my mind doesn’t jump to that conclusion right away. I was an idiot back then. Here’s a picture to prove it!

Idiot Bob

Five years from now I will be again.

I hope that I can always look into the past and see an Idiot Bob. I hope we can all do that. If we are not working to learn more and be better than we were even ten minutes ago, then we are going to atrophy and it is all over.

Just. Keep. Swimming.

Categories
Business Life

Service Counts

I’ve recently been working through the interview process for a customer service position with a company that I greatly respect. One of the cool benefits of going through the process is the questions I get asked during an interview and how my mind works over those questions during the next couple of weeks.

I work in the “customer service” business every day. Working IT in a higher education setting puts me in contact with staff, faculty, students, parents, and visitors from all different walks of life. While I don’t ascribe to the saying “the customer is always right”, one thing that I have learned is that service counts.

It counts a lot.

Bayshore Apple StoreI worked here for only four months, but I learned so much about customer service in those four months that it made the four-moves-in-six-months worth it.

The big takeaway for me was that excellent products can bring a person in and can even get them to buy something. Products can always be shiny enough, or “new” enough, or “fast” enough to get a person to purchase them. You can always market your way into purchases.

Loyalty, true customer loyalty and satisfaction, only happens with excellent service. Don’t underestimate what excellent, timely, and available customer service can do for your bottom line. Customers who feel like they are being taken care of are going to speak more highly of your product and your company than they would have if they don’t get that service … obviously, right?

This all seems elementary on the base level, but how many companies have outsourced or claimed to “help their bottom line” by gutting their service department? What a terrible fate for the company because that will rot the company from the inside, not just from the outside. Not taking service seriously means not taking the company as a whole seriously because you are saying that it is the sale that matters only, not the experience that someone has with whatever you are selling.

Just think about that? How terrible.

This goes to even how easy it is to GET service. Don’t bury service and support on the bottom of your pages, requiring people to set up another account just to talk with you. The Apple Stores are important for Apple not just because they sell a lot of stuff there, but because it is a place for people to gather and get their questions answered. That builds relationships and loyalty that Microsoft and Samsung are trying to replicate by having their own stores instead of relying on the Verizons, Best Buys, and independent PC resellers of the world.

Customer service is vitally important to the health of a company. That is one place where investment is necessary and will pay off in the long run.

Categories
Life

Star Trek Vanguard

vanguard

A few years back I started reading the Star Trek Vanguard series. Sadly, I did not keep up with the series and so I had three books left …

… luckily, Amazon sells used books. Amazon sells them so I feel an odd obligation to buy them.

After I have the books in my possession, then it is a race against the clock to finish them as quickly as possible. Sadly, that means some late night as I try to plow through as much of the book as I can before my eyes glaze over and I fall asleep in the chair I am sitting in.

However, after reading the entire series, I can say that this is the best original Star Trek fiction I have read … maybe ever.

Here are the books from Amazon:

I really do recommend the entire series, and do read it in order. Somehow, the authors crafted a self-contained story within the confines of The Original Series which is both grounded within TOS (by bringing in Kirk and the Enterprise at the right moments) while still giving itself enough room to create excellent characters with excellent relationships.

One of the unique things about the Vanguard series is the role civilians have in the story. They don’t seemed tacked-on and play a vital role within the story. Not just comedic relief, but actually pushing ahead the story and relationships among the characters.

Overall, it is a fantastic story based on a station and the attached ships. I can easily recommend it to anyone who enjoys Star Trek: The Original Series and would like some light reading.