Dave's Random Thoughts

    MonMondayFebFebruary11th2013 Bible Statistics - The Words Edition
    Posted Monday, February 11 2013 @ 12 PM byDave Tagged Bible Statistics The Bible 2 comments Add comment
    If you're busy, don't bother reading all this tl;dr; junk and skip right to the more interesting bits.

    UPDATE 2/19/2013 - I made a few mistakes in the original version of this article. I had missed a few of the Psalms, so the total number count and the count for Psalms was incorrect. These have been corrected.

    So, I'm a bit of a nerd about Bible Statistics. Looking at the Bible as data has led to a number of big thoughts. For instance, approximately 3/4 of the verses in the Bible are in the Old Testament. Why is it, then, that most of us spend 3/4 of our Bible reading time in the New Testament? (I can probably answer that.)

    But, up until this point, I have only looked at it as Testaments, Groupings, Books, Chapters and Verses. The problem with that approach is that it doesn't compare it to anything else. For a long time I've wanted to figure out a way to count the actual words in the Bible. This is no easy task as people haven't been out there handing out the Bible in digital form and I'm not about to sit down and do a hand count. Plus, we have the problem that there are several translations.

    Well, some time ago there was an interesting change. Some folks put together the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible. The group that put this together included a number of theologians that I greatly respect. They had several goals, but I believe they made a translation that was almost as readable as the NIV and just as accurate to the original languages as the NASB. I'm no Hebrew/Greek scholar, but that's my understanding of the situation. On top of all of that, the ESV folks were also forward-thinking about technology. They made a web service available so that a programmer could pull an HTML-formatted part of the Bible.

    Well long-story short-ened: I used the ESV web service to write a program to count the words in the ESV Bible (just between us, it took several days because they only allow a certain number of requests per day). Since this is the Bible within which I do my daily Bible reading, these are the statistics that matter to me. I would guess, though, that the other English translations are close enough. So, what did I find out?

    There are 756,775 words in the Bible
    Wow! Seems like a lot, huh? I thought so too, but a little Googling told me otherwise. Let's compare that. How many ten-year-olds have read all of the Harry Potter books? Mine has. That's over 1 million words. Most novels we're reading are between 75,000 words and 400,000 words. Just skimming this article, you'll see that The Da Vinci code is 138,000, the Left Behind books were between 77,000 and 110,000 words each (so let's say roughly 600,000 words in total). Most romance novels are around 100,000 words.

    More convicting to me is that:
    There are just 175,606 words in the New Testament
    So, that's less than 2 novels for most of us. For our ten-year-old, I'd note that 3 of the Harry Potter books are longer than the New Testament. But, if I'm being honest, reading the whole New Testament sounds like a huge task. But, I read the Hunger Games books in less than 2 weeks (probably close to 300,000 words). I'm not exaggerating when I say that reading through the book of Romans in one sitting seems like too much. At 9,467 words, that's like 5-10 magazine articles. I've probably read 2,000 words about the iPhone today.

    Those are the broad strokes, here are a few more things that you might find interesting:
    • On the whole, the Old Testaments and the New Testament have about the same number of words per verse on average: 24.6 and 22.1 respectively.
    • That said, the New Testament has an average of 675.4 words per chapter as compared the the Old at 625.59. So, you're packing in more words on average when you read a New Testament chapter.
    • Reading chapters at a time, the way I suspect most of us read through the Bible, will be a pretty different experience depending on the book. 1 Kings has 1065 words per chapter on average where just a few books later, in Psalms you'll get 275 words per chapter (an average heavily weighted upwards by Psalm 119 at 2386 words).
    • The Gospels have a low number of words per verse, but a high number of words per chapter, meaning that the Gospels pack a lot of verses in every chapter.
    • No big surprise that the Gospels and Acts are the top 5 books by length in the New Testament. You could easily guess the shortest.
    • In longest overall, your big winners are Jeremiah, Ezekial, Genesis and Isaiah.
    • By way of comparison, if you read all 18 books between Galatians and Jude, you've read less words than if you read Jeremiah.
    • Here's how the major groupings come out. Notice that reading the Historical Books has you reading more than the entire New Testament.
    Grouping Words
    Pentateuch 149,241
    Historical Books 194,479
    Poetic Books 81,305
    Major Prophets 127,433
    Minor Prophets 28,711
    Gospels 80,502
    Acts 23,475
    Paul's Epistles 50,190
    General Epistles 9,966
    Revelation 11,473

    I can't really say how exactly one ought to use this data. I do think that it should have some bearing on how we attack reading through the Bible. I also think that at very least the length of different sections should give us pause to think about where we spend our time (of course, I agree that this is not the only concern). Either way, as a student of God's Word, I just think it is all interesting to just know.
    ThuThursdayDecDecember20th2012 New Years' Resolutions
    Posted Thursday, December 20 2012 @ 4 PM byDave Tagged No tags 1 comments Add comment
    This year I made a handful of resolutions. I made mine in February. I have a few guidelines I follow when I make mine:
    1. Make sure they are realistic. Nothing defeats more than setting goals you know you won't reach.
    2. Make sure they are something you really want. So often I find myself making resolutions that seem like something I should want rather than what I actually want. In the end, I just won't work for something I don't actually want.
    3. They're resolutions, man, make them at least a bit of a stretch.
    4. Don't share them broadly. Why? Because I don't like to. Most years, if you ask me if I've made any resolutions. I will say yes and share that I plan to "look better this year" but I'll make sure that you know that I have no intentions of doing anything to make that a reality. I just plan to "look better, you know, by being better looking". Generally, that halts the conversation appropriately.
    That said, I will share the resolution from last year that has me thinking. Don't judge me for my resolution. I know there are a lot of you who read a ton. I don't read nearly as much as I should. I would like to read more. That's not true. Truly, I would like to have the information from more books given to me without having spent all that time reading. I don't find the great pleasure in reading that others find (much like I find little of the same delight others get in exercise). Worse yet, I buy a good number of books that I fully intend to read. I begin most of them, but finish very, very few. In fact, in 2011, I'm not sure I finished a single book.

    That said, I made a simple resolution in 2012: "finish 6 books". I went through my library and found 8 contenders. I wrote them down in Evernote. I decided to try to read one a month.

    By July, I had completed 8 books. Now, I've completed 14 books. Some of them were ambitious including Tim Keller's Bonhoeffer (a huge, but excellent book).

    These results lead me to ask 2 important questions about New Years Resolutions:

    1. If I decide to set a new resolution to read books, should I base it on last year's resolution or last year's results? Should I resolve to read 8 books (an increase on the 6 I decided to read last year) or should I resolve to read more than last year at 15? Should I instead split the difference and resolve to read 12?
    2. I don't like to fail. In fact I like to win. I'd prefer not to compete than to enter into a competition I know I'll lose. With that in mind, I find myself trying to game the system. I have already set aside about 12 books that I'd like to complete next year. Is it cheating if I start to read them in 2012 and count them toward my 2013 resolutions?
    ThuThursdayAprApril26th2012 Software for the New Business
    Posted Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 9 AM byDave Tagged Entrepreneurship Technology 1 comments Add comment
    If you're starting a new business, you will need some software for yourself and your staff to use. Frankly, I'm a bootstrapper at heart, so most of these are either free or "freemium" and should scale to your budget and needs.

    Software, Services and Tools for All Businesses

    Accounting: Quickbooks Online

    There are probably a lot of other choices for this. Certainly Quickbooks is the pre-eminent small business accounting software. We didn't want to have all of our books on one computer, so we were an early adopter of QBO. I'm glad we use it. It makes a lot of the accounting easy.

    Project Management: Basecamp

    Even if you just have a single project, you want to have tracked messages, todos and files in one place. You should use something like Basecamp. There are lots of competitors out there, but Basecamp is practically a de facto standard.

    Organization/Ideas: Evernote

    You need to keep all of your notes somewhere. We choose Evernote, because it is in the cloud and I can keep everything I want to remember in one place, but on several devices.

    File Sharing: Dropbox

    If you have other people you're working with on your business, you're going to have to share documents, presentations and other files. Many of these will go into your project management system, but if you just need to throw something out there, Dropbox or one of its competitors (like box.net or Google Drive) is an essential. My company keeps a shared folder out there all the time and are always adding things to which others might need access.

    Helpdesk: Zendesk

    If you need to support your customers, either by email, web or phone, you need some way to manage all of the communications. We tried others and settled on Zendesk. We find it the right combination of easy-to-manage and full-featured. If you're going to be huge, you might consider one of the bigger service CRMs, but Zendesk is great for small-to-medium businesses and can even scale if you don't need everything one of the bigger vendors might give you.

    Email: Google Apps for Business

    Ok, so you have a lot of options for email. You can get a account to host POP, IMAP or even Exchange email for $20-60/year just about anywhere. That's great, but Gmail is easy and free for a small group. It will certainly scale and fights spam better than just about anyone. I've met lots of people that didn't know that Google would host their domain's email (e.g., me@mydomain.com). It will.

    Phone Conferencing: Uberconference freeconferencecalling.com

    Okay, so I recognize that this isn't software, but you will need a conference calling bridge from time-to-time and I don't see why you'd pay for it unless you need way better features than this service offers (and I never have).

    Toll Free Number: Kall8

    Another non-software, but there's software that goes with it. Kall8 gives your business a toll-free number that rings through to other number for a small fee every month. You can even set it to ring to different numbers depending on the time of day and other settings. Use this in conjunction with Google Voice or Tellfi and you might even be able to do even more.

    Web Conferencing: Uberconference join.me

    If you're like most businesses, you will occasionally want to share your desktop or do a web presentation. From all that I've see, webex is the most robust solution for web conferencing, but it is also a premium price. For the bootstrapper, uberconference either join.me or meetingburner.com is the best choice I've come across. Uberconference wraps free conference calls and web conferencing together.

    Faxing: Hellofax

    If you want to send an occasional fax, there's no need to go to Kinko's or own a fax machine. Hellofax can get the job done at a good, low price.

    Specialized Software, Services and Tools

    Here are some other, more specialized software you might want to know about:

    Source Control: Beanstalk

    Beanstalk offers source control as a service. Don't develop software without source control.

    Website Analytics: Google Analytics

    Google gives you web site statistics for free and it is super-easy to implement. Don't host any website without it.

    Password Management: LastPass Keepass

    This manages passwords for different services. It is meant to be used by a single person to keep all your passwords safe. For a small business where you might have several different shared accounts, you can keep your password database in Dropbox (or similar). Make sure you have high security on this database, like using a password and a file (that isn't in Dropbox). It is a lot better than keeping a text file on anyone's hard drive or always having to call or IM each other for access.

    I used to recommend using Keepass, but so much of this list is about choosing options that will scale with your business. In this case, I think LastPass is a better option. LastPass can allow each person to keep his own passwords, but also share some across the team. They have the ability to use several different 2-factor authentication methods including Yubikey. This is, I believe a better choice for business expecting to grow.

    Screenshots: Jing

    Jing is made by the same people who brought us Camtasia and Snagit. It takes videos or screenshots of your desktop and puts them in the cloud for others to view. If you develop software, it makes it a lot easier to show each other a bug. Rather than a detailed email that says "I did this and this and then it did this", you just send a link to the video.
    TueTuesdayAprApril24th2012 How Do I Organize My Evernote?
    Posted Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 9 AM byDave Tagged Productivity 1 comments Add comment
    To go along with my previous few posts on productivity. I thought I would give a glimpse into exactly what I'm doing.

    To recap, I read and tried implement Getting Things Done. My tools: Outlook Calendar and Evernote. Then I read about The Secret Weapon and set about to change the way I used Evernote to incorporate it. Over the last couple of weeks I've been learning what works for me and what doesn't. I've made changes to suit the way I work. Perhaps they'll work for you.

    Zero Inbox

    I have implemented a zero inbox policy. I have 4 inboxes: 1 for my day job, 1 for my side business and 2 personal email accounts. Why 2 personal? It's a long story. Regardless, I keep all of them empty using GTD principles: do it, delegate it, defer it. I don't delegate much, so mostly I either do it right away or use the Outlook Evernote add-in to put it into Evernote either for future reference or to go into my "Active" to-do list.

    Evernote Folders

    The Secret Weapon uses tags in Evernote pretty much exclusively. I found that this didn't work perfectly for me. I wanted to be able to easily get to everything I wanted to get done. I thought that a folder was easier than tags for my active items. I'm not sure why exactly, but it just makes more sense to me. So, as you can see below, I have 4 important folders: Active, Waiting, Read/Review and Someday. I also have one important folder group: Reference. If you've familiarized yourself with GTD, I'd expect you recognize these folders. Underneath Reference, I have a bunch of folders to organize my reference items. You'll notice a few other folders and groups. I have one group, Employees, that has a folder for each of my employees. In there I keep notes about their conversations, any kudos or complaints that are emailed or told to me and other little tidbits about them. I also like to have a Templates folder to keep note "stubs" to keep different kinds of notes, like notes from a one-on-one meeting with an employee. In the Someday folder I keep a few "context" notes like my "Next Time You're At Home Depot" list (don't forget pea gravel). Read/Review is great to have here because now I have things to read anywhere I go and can access it on a variety of devices.


    As you can see by just looking at it, I have 6 active items. That's where I'll start tomorrow.

    Evernote Tags

    Also, from the above, you should be able to see my Evernote tags. This is where The Secret Weapon really helped. Frankly, though, I don't use all of them. In most cases, I use just the Where and the When tags. I only use them for Active and Waiting items. The Where tags allow me to separate my personal life, from my day job, from my side business. If it is the evening or the weekend, I can click the "@iMinistries" tag and see everything that's on the list. I might even filter by the "2 - Next" tag to see what needs to be done next. Frankly, I don't use the "1 - Now" tag. Why? Because I have another location for what I'm going to do now--my notecard.

    My Notecard and My Notebook

    Okay, so I tried to stop using my notecard for my every day todo list. I can't stop. For a long time I've had a simple system to organize today's todo list. I use a single 4 X 6 lined notecard. I simply write down all the items that come up for me during the day. I love the notecard for 2 reasons:
    1. I can only do 10-15 things every day. I've often told people "if I run out of room on the notecard, then I stop adding things, because I can only do 1 notecard's worth of things every day."
    2. I love to cross things off. Checking a box or setting the formatting to strikethrough isn't enough. I like the act of striking through something. I also love the act of crossing off the last item and dropping the notecard in the recyling bin.
    I also have a little notebook that I don't always carry, but I do bring to meetings for meeting notes. I find typing, on the phone, tablet or laptop is too distracting for a meeting, so the notebook offers a way to capture quick notes. My notebook of choice is the Molskine square journal for no good reason except that it is very small and disposable enough that I don't care how stupid the things I write in it will look in 10 years.

    The one awkward piece is the stuff on the notecard that isn't crossed off at the end of the day. More often than not a notecard ends up being a 2 day todo list and I carry it into the next day.

    To build my notecard every day I visit a handful of locations:
    • All of my email accounts
    • My "Active" folder in Evernote
    • A todo list in Basecamp, shared within my business
    Also, at the beginning of the week, I spend a little time thinking on anything else to add to the Active notes or the notecard. I also look in Waiting and Someday and see if anything should become active.

    Not sure how helpful this is to anyone, but this is my personal system of organizing over the last 6 weeks and it appears to be working well. Hopefully the principles or practices might be usable for someone else.

    Here's hoping that you'll also get more done.
    MonMondayAprApril16th2012 Scott Hanselman on Productivity
    Posted Monday, April 16 2012 @ 9 AM byDave Tagged Productivity 0 comments Add comment
    I respect Scott and how much he gets done. As you can tell from my blog, I'm on a little bit of a productivity kick these days and Scott was nice enough to share his thoughts in this 43 minute presentation. "43 minutes?!? I don't have time for that." Yeah, that was my first reaction too, but I'm confident you'll get some return on that investment quickly. Frankly, this is just one more synthesis of varied techniques, but it is good and sprinkled with enough geek humor to make it more than a little worthwhile.

    I will have more thoughts to share soon about what is working and what isn't working in my personal search for more productivity in the coming days, but this should be a good next step.
    Dave's Random Thoughtsby This is a collection of whatever I think needs to be blogged about at the time. Normally, the things I'm interested in are: Jesus, the web, politics, gadgets, poker, family, emerging technology, entrepreneurship, pop culture and music. Broad enough?