Computer Links
Mark has a few hobbies, and computers is one of them.
He enjoys designing basic web pages. Jared has been outstripping him in the area of beautifying these pages. Isaac is also pretty good with graphics designs for Web Pages.
Where one finds music on the pages, you'll find a control at the bottom of the page where you can turn it off, if you like.
Here is a list of some of Mark's favorite computer sites or tools. (What are yours?) Among some of the goodies, you'll find:
- BibleWorks for Windows - my favorite Bible study tool. See some new information about the release of version 5.
- My favorite location for Shareware Downloads.
- A couple of Online News Sites (CNN and USA Today), as well as my two favorite computer industry news sites with downloads.
- For those who would like to keep up on German news and have email (and who doesn't?!?!), try this news list.
- The most popular ZIP utility I know.
- A new addition to the compression crowd with a pretty interface and in some cases better compression ratios than WinZip - RAR!
- HomeSite, the software I used to create these pages.
- Pegasus Mail, my favorite email client.
- Several helpful and interesting Utilities, see especially the addition of SETI at Home.
- And just to show that I'm not prejudiced, I'm throwing this sop to the Mac crowd: a page for Mac Computers.
My Favorite Bible Study Tool
BibleWorks for Windows is an excellent tool for any type of Biblical student or scholar (even if you can't read Latin, Greek and Hebrew), providing tools such as:
- concordance functions in many languages, a couple dozen versions for English alone, as well as German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Catalan, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Norwegian, Albanian, Vietnamese, Indonesian and the Westminster Standards.
- 8 Greek versions with morphologies; and the premier Hebrew text - BHS, with morphology as well. There are also multiple lexicons for both languages.
- sophisticated searches - if you can imagine it, it can be done!
- The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia reference work.
- and as they say, much, much more!
Favorite Download Sites
My favorite download site for Internet related software is Stroud's Internet Site. One may also find virtually every kind of Shareware known to humanity at the CNet Computer News site or the Ziff-Davis Computer News site.
All the News That Fits
Information is power, and there are several excellent news sites on the Internet. Both CNN and USA Today have pretty good regular news sites, as well as the already mentioned computer industry news sites at CNet and Ziff-Davis.
German News
Some have you have asked how to keep updated on happenings in Germany. I receive English language Germany-related news summaries five to six times per week from the list server at GMD. You can subscribe to the list server by sending mail to: LISTSERV@listserv.gmd.de with the contents: "SUB DE-NEWS your name". You may also jump to their web site.
Winzip Zip Utility
WinZip is the most well known ZIP utility on the market. ZIPping is a means of compressing the file sizes of all kinds of files, sometimes by more than half. It's great for archiving information, but a very popular use is for uploading and downloading files. Reduction of file size equals reduction of file transfer times. This is what I used for compressing the homilies.
WinZip is for PCs, but it does handle several Mac and Unix compression standards including TAR, Z, GZ, TAZ, and TGZ files, UUencoded, XXencoded, BinHex, and MIME files; old Microsoft Compress format (also known as LZEXPAND format), Microsoft CAB (short for Cabinet) format, ARC, ARJ, and LZH formats.
There is a similar utility - Macintosh Stuffit Expander - for Macintosh computers and for PCs which need to handle Macintosh compressed files (both DOS and Windows) at http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/index.html.
RAR Compression Utility
RAR is another compression utility with generally higher compression ratios than WinZip. It can neatly handle ZIP files as well as its own RAR format. With the proper auxiliary programs, it can also handle RAR, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, TAR, GZip, and UUE files - as many as WinZip. The advantage over WinZip is that it is multi-platform, functioning under Unix and Linux variants, Mac, Windows, DOS, and BeOS - perhaps other OSes too.
HomeSite
HomeSite is for writing web pages using HTML. HomeSite is what I use to do these pages.
Pegasus Mail
Email at it's best - Pegasus Mail, for free! Very sophisticated. If you're not stuck with AOL's (lack of) email service, and can use any email client you like, this is the best you can get.
Utilities
Utilities are handy little tools for hearth and home. A few of our favorites are:
In conjuction with HomeSite (see above), there is one other tool which we have found indispensable. HTMLib is an outstanding freeware HTML library and reference tool. You can obtain it from the main host site in Norway, as well as from the United Kingdom or the United States. Please note that HTMLib now ships with HomeSite.
- Accuset sets your computer clock, using highly accurate clocks situated around the world via the Internet or by direct dial over your modem. It will keep your computer clock accurate to 1/100 of a second, track the average amount of time your computer gains or loses over a period of time and make corrections based on that calculation. This is why my wristwatch is accurate to within 1 second of the "REAL" time! It has a bunch of neat features, including the time in any of several dozens of cities, and a moving map of the sun's location.
- Convert is a great freeware program for converting all kinds of mathematical units. Converts units of: acceleration, angle, area, density, distance, energy, flow, force, light, mass, power, pressure, speed, temperature, time, volume, torque, computer (bits, bytes, words), and concentration (i.e., moles per liter - if you think that's a dirty furry animal in a jar, you don't need this one). You can even create your own conversions; for example, currency conversions.
Try SETI At Home, and do something productive with your screensaver. As you probably know, SETI stands for "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence", and is a project which processes radio wave data from the stars in the hope of finding radio waves which could only originate from an intelligent source (repetitive or artificially modulated in some way). It has pretty graphs for a screensaver and it's an interesting idea - distributed computing on a world-wide scale.
- I also include here some well-known search engines; including - Yahoo, Excite, InfoSeek, and HotBot. Many of these search engines have links to other search engines. For those with foreign language interests, many of these search engines also have German, French, British, etc. based pages.
Last Updated on June 8th 2002 by Mark Rudolph
