I’m taking a Greek class next semester that includes memorizing nearly all the vocab in the New Testament.  My goal is to use my iPod Touch for my vocab flash cards.  I’ve looked at a few apps that do vocab cards, but none specially set for all NT Greek vocab (yep, it’s not the most common college course).

What I’d like to know is…

1. have you found a good app that already has most of the NT Greek vocab (sorted alphabetically) available for it,
2. have you used any iPod Touch flash card apps (which, and what do you think) or
3. do you have or know where I could find an electronic list of all NT Greek vocab (spreadsheet, csv, Access DB, etc.)?

If you’ve got helpful info, drop a comment below.  If you’ve got access to a file, I’ll reply to your comment via email.

Thanks much!

UPDATE: Thanks to some comments, tweets and research, I’ve got the list of all vocab words & glosses in a CSV file.  When I get access to a macro-capable copy of MS Office (i.e., not ’08 for Mac!), I’ll run the BibleWorks Greek to Unicode font, then start experimenting with an iPod Touch app to see what works best.  I’ll report what happens as I go…

Several months ago, I started using RefTagger from Logos on this site.  That free code snippet automatically adds hyperlinks to any Scripture reference I type in a post here.  That link will take you to the passage (online) and display a pop-up box with the verse(s) in it when you hover your mouse over the link.

That’s fine for my blog, but what about the dozens of other blogs I read (many of which don’t use RefTagger)?  Refalizer adds a very similar feature to Firefox so that you can have a hyperlink for every reference displayed in your browser.  (Well, almost every.  I typically use a period between the chapter & verse numbers and Refalizer quits at the period and only links to the book/chapter.  Perhaps that’s an update coming soon?)  Still, it’s quite an improvement over opening another tab to look it up “the long way.”  And as a Firefox extension, it’s a cinch to install.  It access a half-dozen or so different online Bible sites and offers quite a number of translations.  You can pick your personal favorite in the preferences (open “Addons” and click “Preferences” on the Refalizer extension box).

You can download the Refalizer extension here.

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.

Paradigmatic is a free biblical languages software for Mac.  It’s got quizzes, verb paradigms and all sorts of helpful noun/pronoun/etc charts.  So far the Hebrew quizzes aren’t that helpful for me, but it is an amazingly quick way to view verb paradigms on the fly!

HT: Con Campbell

Every semester, I get an electronic syllabus for each class.  A Word table contains all the assignments for the course.  A few years ago, I could just copy that into Excel and import the spreadsheet into Outlook’s to-do list.

Excel and iCal, however, weren’t made in the same factory and I’m not aware of an easy cut-and-paste way to get an Excel sheet into iCal.  I did some research and came across an AppleScript that claimed to make that conversion for me.  Unfortunately, it was custom-built for a soccer schedule and needed some fixing.  So I adjusted the script, optimized it for my assignment schedule, worked through several bugs with Excel’s time/date format and bundled up an easy little application.

In a nutshell, the app will read the first three columns of your open Excel worksheet: column 1 as date, column 2 as start time and column 3 as event title.  It will then open iCal, allow you to choose the calendar and import all the assignments to that calendar.

You can download the app, script and instructions here.

The ESV Bible website has an amazing resource for 2009 Bible reading plans!  The page offers ten different schedules, each available in several wonderfully convenient formats.  You can get to the daily reading online, via RSS or email, in an iCal format, with a mobile phone browser or with a good old-fashioned printable copy.

The url is: http://www.esv.org/biblereadingplans

I’m currently debating whether to use the M’Cheyne plan or the new ESVSB plan this coming year – but I’ll decide by midnight tomorrow!

HT: Between Two Worlds

You can.  Right here.  Pretty amazing, if you ask me.  Even more amazing when you think about the fact that the 1189 chapters of the people were written over a spread of 1500 years by 40 different people, most of whom never met each other.  It seems to me that there’s something humanly impossible about unity like the Bible’s coming out of such diversity!

HT: Chris Fann

As more than just an expensive picture frame, that is.  And that’s all most people do with their desktop image – find a pretty picture (landscape, loved one or just some fancy design) and use it to fill the background.  I decided to do something more functional than that, however…

My useful desktop image

Now with the push of a single button (F11 on my MacBook), I can see my homework schedule for the semester – no other files or applications to open, just peek at the desktop for quick reference!  Any of my readers have useful desktop background tips?

I opened an email account with Gmail in January of 2007.  In the past 19 months, not counting spam, I accumulated over 3200 emails (let’s see, that would be over 170 emails a month, 6-7 a day).  I know, I know, that’s a very modest number.  I know some people who deal with as many emails in a day as I see in a month.

But I succumbed to the Google mindset.  I told myself, “Self, your inbox has a terrific search feature, and no folders.  Don’t organize your email.”  In addition to that, for several months I used a desktop client to access mail from this account.  Hence, I lost all hope of ever seeing the final page of my inbox (at 50 per page, I’ll never get to 3257!).  Till today…

I used those fancy search features of Gmail (from:name in:inbox etc) to find and label mail, then I archived it as I labelled it.  Oh, and I deleted a lot too.  So now, my inbox of 3257 or so became an inbox of 1.  Supposedly that will increase my productivity.

I feel faster already.

I just stumbled across an amazing website – BibleMap.org!

Google Maps and Google Earth are pretty amazing; I’ll grant that.  I’ve taken coordinates from BibleWorks maps and ran them through Google Earth to get a better picture of locations and distances in Bible narratives.  That works.  But I’m reading Amos and there are over 20 cities/countries in the first chapter!  I need something faster.  Enter BibleMap.org.

Screenshot from BibleMap.org - Amos 1

Just go to BibleMap.org, choose your passage and voila!  The locations in that chapter are all tagged with little Google Map pointers and if you click the pointer, you get an encyclopedia article about the location.  Or, even easier, you can just click the colored name in the Scripture text and it’ll open the right map location tag for you!

Definitely a bookmarked site for me – thanks to the folks at HeLives.com for a great tool!