xphiles

Pastor Hacking - Keeping Track of Images & Illustration Ideas

Yeah, I'm a geek.

But ministry life requires managing so much information, in so many different modes, you just need to have some good tools to keep on top of things.  The right "geeky stuff" gives me freedom for the essentials of ministry: relationships with God and others.  I'm starting a new blog category, "Pastor Hacks," to share some of the stuff I've found to help make ministry more fruitful & balanced.  Disclaimer: these are "techniques," and as such are profoundly superficial, even if they may be quite helpful and useful.  Faithful ministry isn't about using the right tech or geeking out productively.  But as long as "productivity hacks" or "life hacks" are recognized as tools, not ultimate solutions, there's no reason to flee from them. 

First Pastor Hack is a techie one: a Mac Pastor Hack.  Lots of people have complained about Spotlight, a new feature with Mac OSX "Tiger," being an immature technology.  Sure.  But it's still an incredibly powerful search tool, especially when combined with tagging.  The Mac Finder allows you to add "spotlight comments" to files, tagging them so that they can be easily found with Spotlight's quick search.

Spotlight & tags are becoming huge parts of my sermon preparation.  One of our services, in addition to my twice-monthly confirmation class, make use of PowerPoint/ Keynote slides projected.  Now, I try to keep the slide stuff simple.  I shoot for "elegant," and with practice, I'll get there.  But uncluttered; not a lot of text, and a few, high-quality images.  See here or here for the idea.

Switching to Mac OS

UPDATE:  Welcome, TUAW visitors!  Thanks for stopping by.

As noted before, I've made the transition from M$ Windoze to the Mac world, on a 12-inch PowerBook.

The switch continues to go well.  Today, I began what had been the most intimidating part of the process for me, e-mail transfer.  I've got 6 years' worth of e-mail in Outlook.  And from what I had read, it was going to be an arduous task to get it moved over.

Then, I tried Googling around, and discovered Outlook2Mac.  Ten bucks yields switcher bliss!  Easy to use, and although the web documentation makes it sound like it's glacially slow, I was quite pleased with the speed.  I'm not doing all my folders at once, but what I've done so far has been a cake walk.  I haven't tried its features to transfer calendar or contact info (I'll do that when I set up my Treo 90 to sync with the PowerBook).  I'm using Entourage, which isn't anywhere near as annoying as I thought it would be.  After I use it for a bit, I may end up ditching it for Thunderbird, which I use for personal e-mail.  According to the documentation, Outlook2Mac should work with pretty much any Mac e-mail client.

Firefox is, of course, my browser of choice.  I'm rather underwhelmed by Apple's word processor "Pages," but haven't played with Keynote, its iWork companion, yet.  A 1GB USB flash drive has been indespensible for moving files.  I've read all sorts of stuff about Quicksilver, but I'm not sure I "get" it, nor am I sure one can "get" it without trying it.  I'll give it a whirl eventually. 

Both The Unofficial Mac Weblog and MacOSXHints have been very helpful, so please consider this a "plug" for them and check them out.

Talking sMac from the World of Nerdvana

I guess you can go home.  Even when "home" has a 12-inch screen, a G4 processor, and runs OS X Tiger.

At least, it feels like coming home, or perhaps "home" after a significant upgrade.  My church-provided IBM ThinkPad's hard drive went to be with Jesus a few weeks back.  Thanks to backups and some data recovery, though, it only took about 2 weeks' worth of e-mail with it.  I got pretty much everything else back.

But I had been getting tired of Windoze.  I was a Mac guy for a long time, even did sales, tech support, and publicity for the Campus Computer Store at Connecticut College while I was a student there (back when it serviced about 95% Macintosh systems).  In college, I had an LC, a Quadra, and then I got a Powerbook 1400 for seminary.  When I started at Good Shepherd, I reluctantly switched to Windows 98 (and then 2000, and then XP) for the sake of compatability with the church office, but also for the use of a high-end Bible software package, Logos.   It's an amazing package, and it enables me to use Greek (and to some extent, Hebrew) much more helpfully than I would otherwise be able to.  So I lived with the glitchy OS, the ho-hum interface, the cludgy feel.  I trudged through the unexplained freezes and tried to ignore the feeling that I was constantly eyeing my computer with suspicion, wondering what malevolent forces were lurking just under the surface.

Well, Logos is coming out with a Mac version in late 05/ early 06, I needed a new laptop sooner than the StinkPad was going to be put back in service, and all the reviews of Tiger had me drooling.  So the switch has been made.  The Evers house is now a dual-OS environment, with a Sony desktop running XP, Paige's church laptop (a Dell), and my 12-inch Powerbook. 

And boy oh boy, am I a happy camper!  W00t!

Went with the Combo drive, 768 MB RAM.  I installed Office (since I do need to work with Word and Excel files at church), Firefox, and iWork.  I haven't tried e-mail transferring yet, which is the part that has me a bit worried (almost 6 years worth of Outlook e-mails!).  Nor have I set up syncing with my Treo 90.  But so far, it is Nerdvana.

Too Cool - Brain Boost

This is a great use of web search technology: Brain Boost.

Ask it a question, it scours for answers online.  I was impressed by the test questions I fed it.

Give it a whirl!

Get Firefox!

I know, I know...  This isn't a tech blog.  I'm no IT genius.  But I'm telling you: if you're using Internet Explorer, you're asking for trouble. 

Do you hate ending up with 17 browser windows open at once?  Do you get spyware?  Pop-ups galore?  Do you want a faster, smoother web browsing experience?

Get Firefox.  Do it now!

This isn't just anti-Microsoft ideology.  It's about the fact that a far more secure, stable, and useful product is out there, for free.  It will import all your cookie settings, saved passwords, favorites, etc. from IE.  You'll never look back!

Again: Get Firefox!  You'll be glad you did.

Too Sweet - i(Pod)Ncarnation

This is just great:

Thanks to Cult of Mac blog.   Side note: first use of an image in a blog post for me.

Firefox

Made the switch to Firefox 1.0.  I can't recommend it enough.

Do you browse the web?  Do you want to do it more quickly?  More conveniently?  More securely?  Are you worried about spyware and adware getting dumped onto your computer?  Would you be all that shocked if it turned out that Bill Gates really is the antichrist?  (I'm not saying he is; I'm just asking: would you be all that shocked?)

Then dump Internet Explorer, and get Firefox.  You won't regret it!

I'm also tentatively embracing Thunderbird for e-mail.  I'm having a few bugs, though, so I'm not sold on it.  I use Outlook for my church e-mail, but don't like it.  I was using Netscape 7.1 for personal e-mail and web browsing, but it was getting too buggy for me.

Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer.

G is for Geek

Well, I got my grubby little paws on a Gmail invite...  Not sure how I'll use the account.  I already have two personal, one throw-away, one work, and one SMS cell phone e-mail address.  But it's just a cool thing to have.  For now, I'll use it for blog mail.  The mail to links on this blog have been modified accordingly.

Technical Difficulties: Non-Blogging, Non-Writing

Ahh, the joys of travel. I’m writing this off-line, because despite the fact that Panera Bread’s website told me that the restaurant I’m in has free Wi-Fi, and the fact that they have all the necessary equipment, they don’t have the connection yet. So I’ll have to cut-and-paste it into the blog later. But, it fits in with the spirit of the trip. Forgot the digital camera USB cable, so I can’t e-mail pictures home, like I wanted to. Brought the wrong ink cartridge, so I can’t use my favorite fountain pen (the aforementioned Sailor Magellan fine nib). (I take the converter or cartridge out of any fountain pen I take on a plane, because of the risk of ink explosion due to pressure changes. The Magellan had a converter in, so I took that out and grabbed a cartridge. Wrong size, though.)

And then, partway through one of the conference talks, my trusty Rotring 600 tri-pen runs out of blue ink! Ah well, if these are the worst travel problems I’m having, life is pretty dang fantastic. Of course, I haven’t driven from Aurora to O’Hare yet, nor have I flown back to BWI and driven home. So the potential for actual travel snafu’s still remains. I shall pray.

UPDATE: Couldn't connect to Wi-Fi at O'Hare. No idea why. My card told me I was connected, the Linksys instant wireless config panel told me I was connected. But Netscape, Outlook, and IE all disagreed. Grr. I bet if I had been using a Mac, rather than a Stinkpad, that wouldn't have happened. Ah well, it's the church's ThinkPad, not mine. Pastors can't always be choosers!

But wouldn't you know, of all the places I attempted to access the net (my Embassy Suites Hotel, Willow Creek, a Panera Bread, and O'Hare), only Willow's connection worked flawlessly and for free. I paid for a day's wired access at the hotel, and it was buggy.

Post-Vacation Tech Reflections

Well, we've been back from WA & OR for a while, but I'm only now getting the chance to sit down and blog a bit. I came back, alas, to one of my members near death at a hospice care center, and presided at his memorial service earlier this week. Forty-two years old, two kids. Lord, have mercy.

Anyway, on a much lighter topic -- this was easily the most "teched-out" vacation I've taken. And I must say that I was quite pleased with it all.