Over the last week I have been working with Lingq.com to improve my Spanish. Much of the reading I do at their site is transcripts from podcast episodes. You can also play the audio while reading the text. Several of the texts I have read and or listened to were originally podcast episodes.

I have heard a few times at that site something that sounded funny to me. Since then I have also noticed a couple of podcasts I listen to make, what seems to me, the same mistake. They talk about “the podcast” when referring to the individual episode. For example one that I heard today was talking about the particular episode (not the series) and said “here we are at the end of an eclectic podcast.”

To my thinking the podcast is the complete package. You wouldn’t refer to one episode of a TV show as the “series”; it would simply be an episode of that series. It sounds odd to call an individual episode a podcast.

What do you think?

Categories: Podcasting, Unrelated News
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I can’t believe that I have been an avid Evernote user for over a year and have never mentioned it here. Evernote is a note taking application that is web based. You can use the web client to log into your notes and do any manipulation on them that you need. But there are also desktop/phone clients that are native applications that you can use on your computer or phone and have all the info upload to the web storage.

My interest in Evernote started when I was looking for a good way to keep notes and tasks organized on my iPhone. The built in application for taking notes on the phone was awful. The fact that (at the time) the notes taken on the phone did not sync to the computer and therefore were not backed up in any way made it a useless app to me. Especially since I was having such a hard time keeping my phone running.

Evernote allowed me to keep notes on my phone and access them from the web, or from my computer. The notes are immediately sent to the mother ship and are available on my other platforms for viewing or manipulation.

I don’t use Evernote as much as I originally anticipated. Even when I had my beloved Palm based devices, may they rest in peace, I still relied on paper quite a bit to keep my tasks and notes for the day. However, I use Evernote on bigger projects. When I was doing research for a set of lectures I was doing concerning technology and mission work I kept all my notes and research in Evernote. Preparation for any large task where I know there will be a lot of information is a perfect task for Evernote. I also like to snap pictures of articles, not necessarily to read, but to be reminders of something that I want to look up and do further reading on.

The features of Evernote that I use most are tagging and text recognition.

I can take a note (which can be a photo, a sound recording, a saved web page, or a text note) and tag that note with key words that will help me find the note again. While I always have separate notebooks for certain projects, I can also use tags so that when I search for a keyword the notes from several notebooks will come up if they are relevant. I am not limited to just what is in one notebook (folder).

The text recognition that Evernote does is very clever. [This turns very geeky for a moment] If I take a picture that has text in it, then Evernote will search that text too when I do a search for a keyword. They don’t do formal OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the text. They do intelligent guessing. Instead of trying to figure out exactly what the text is, which is very inaccurate, they make several guesses on each word and store their guesses. Then when you search for a term they pull up all the words that they think might fit. Doing it this way is more likely to return a word that you were looking for instead of ignoring anything that might have been one letter off. It is also possible that they would return results that are not what you were looking for, but almost guarantees that they will not miss a valid hit. [Mortals can start reading again] I can take pictures of pages of text and then do a search on something that I know was on that page and it will return that in the results. For a recent paper I submitted for a class I used this to keep track of all my research books and certain pages that I knew I would be referencing several times throughout my paper. It also works on hand-written notes; assuming your writing is readable by normal people.

I don’t use it for all my daily information tasks (partly because they don’t have a native Linux client) but I do rely heavily on it for larger projects. Recently I read a list of 100 ways you can use Evernote. Maybe you can get some ideas from this list as well. One of my favorite items on the list is #60 “Make a list of all of your girlfriends family members names. Use this list to study them before your next big visit.” My question is, is that supposed to be girlfriend’s, or girlfriends’? Since there is no apostrophe (and clearly should be) I have to imagine that the reason you need a tool like Evernote to keep track is you have too many girlfriends to keep the lists straight in your own head.

I don’t know if Evernote will fit your needs, but it certainly has been a help in research and larger projects for me. Otherwise, I just stick to my paper lists.

Categories: Unrelated News, Websites
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Here are the cookies from yesterday. These came from the same place that we got the “Oops… Wrong cookie” from last month. We don’t put much faith in the writers of such clever sayings, but these recent ones have been interesting food for thought.

My fortune: What are you waiting for? Start moving now.

I have been somewhat discouraged by my laziness in exercising and staying in shape. While I am doing much better than most, I definitely know I am not where I should be, nor where I want to be. My fortune yesterday was appropriate in that it gave me a little kick in the pants to get motivated and moving. The last 5 years I have harped on the fact that if you will simply get up and move a little bit more today than you did yesterday, you are taking a step in the right direction to get in shape and be healthier. While I still believe that, I have had trouble motivating myself to stay aggressive in my movement. Maybe this is just what I needed.

My wife’s fortune: Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

As an interpreter (of many things), I am constantly involved in the struggle of making sure something in one language (concept, culture, story) is completely understood in the other language with the same intent and feeling as it had originally. While I don’t know that it takes a genius to transmit information from one medium to another, it certainly is taxing on the mental capacities. When you can take something that is not understood by one person or group and interpret it in such a way that they “get it” then you are displaying an ability that many others do not have.

Categories: Deaf, Traveling, Unrelated News
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This is something I was thinking about a few months ago. This has to do with missionaries raising money for needs other than immediate ministry needs. The example I use is a retirement account.

As a missionary, if you feel guilty about putting money into an account for retirement then you are showing you are dependent on the donor and not on God. As a donor, if you are angered by missionaries putting money into savings, then you are demonstrating that you are giving to the missionary and not to God.

Our giving and receiving should be vertical; from me to God, or from God to me. Giving should not be horizontal; from giver to receiver. As soon as the donor thinks that he is giving to the missionary as opposed to giving to God then he starts to feel like he should control how the money is used. When a missionary begins to think that the money he has comes from individuals and not from God, then he becomes dependent on people and not on God.

Keep your giving and receiving vertical and not horizontal. By doing this then you don’t allow bad attitudes to creep in.

I understand that, as a donor, I want to know that my money is properly used, but if I feel God wants me to give it, I should give. Then whatever happens to the money is no longer in my control. It is up to God to take care of His money. As a receiver I should be very careful of how I use the money given, but not because I am concerned about what people think of how I use the money. I should be careful to be accountable to God for how I use His money.

Categories: Bible, Traveling, Unrelated News
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Today we went to eat at a small Chinese place that we first visited about a year ago. We have only been there maybe 4 times, but it has always been good.

My wife always teases that fortune cookies these days don’t have any fortune in them. They don’t tell you that you will be hit by a bus at 2:00 on Tuesday afternoon. That would be a helpful telling of fortune. But, alas, we get stuck with trite little sayings.

Today mine said: “You will be called upon to help a friend in trouble. Answer the call.” Isn’t that what I do all the time? I have always tried to be helpful when people need it. Now my cookie is telling me I need to step it up a notch. Well, I taught that cookie a lesson. I ate it. I guess that wasn’t too helpful.

My wife’s cookie was just downright funny. It said: “Oops… Wrong cookie.”

Categories: Unrelated News
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