Technology

I've discovered a relatively new, and absolutely brilliant website for anyone involved in picking hymns for congregational use.

Visit http://www.hymnary.org

It is an online database containing an index of texts and tunes of all the hymns found in most of the major hymnals, developed by the same people behind Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Where MIDI files of tunes are available online, there is a link (so you can hear the tune). You'll get the hymn number in all the major hymnals too. You can search for tunes by name, composer or meter; you can search for hymn texts by title, by a full-text search, or by Scripture reference. Really, really useful stuff.

(It also happens to be a wonderful example of the CMS Drupal in action. There is no direct credit to Drupal on the site. I can tell that it's a Drupal site, but the fact is well-hidden by the good theming and the many custom features.)

There's no day like New Year's Eve to release a new version of software that will draw up a Bible Reading Plan.

The changes from the previous version aren't massive (it's a minor release), but I think it makes it more usable.

This follows on from 5 posts I did back in April on net etiquette:

1. Click HERE
2. Blank Subject Lines
3. Use the BCC Field
4. ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
5. Fwd: >>Forwarding e-mails

Here's number 6.

Sorry for the extended downtime over the weekend everyone - all the maintenance is now complete. Thanks for your patience.

CAPTCHA has become a standard device to trap and block spam on sites like this one.

The idea is that if someone writes a computer program to drop spam comments on this blog, the computer program will be asked to solve a problem first. That problem (like “what letters are below in this squiggly image?” or “what’s 4+12?”) is not Turing-computible. So only a human being will solve it.

At long last, I’m please to present a new piece of software, Bible Reading Plan Generator.

There is a page dedicated to it on this site: http://www.oakleys.org.uk/software/bibleplan.

Visit the software’s homepage for more information.

In essence, though, it’s free software that takes a list of Biblical books, and devises a reading plan for you over any number of days you want.

My final post (for now) on internet etiquette – which (you will remember from the first one) is about helping those who wish to be courteous online to avoid unwitting discourtesy.

Time to talk about forwarding e-mails / attachments on to other people.

Continuing a mini (cathartic?) series on internet etiquette:

Just so we’re clear, the convention on capitalisation is that capitalising a phrase / sentence / paragraph is intended to convey shouting. One of the downsides of e-mail, and forum posting, is that it is hard to convey emotion, a twinkle in the eye, a gentle tone of voice and so on. It is easy for people to misunderstand the nature of something you say.

You’ll find the introduction to this series of posts at the top of my first post on net etiquette.

Here’s number 3.

You’ll find the introduction to this series of posts at the top of my first post on net etiquette.

Here is my second plea. Please type a subject when you send an e-mail.