Whatever

Shucks, I don’t even know how AviSynth works, or what a frameserver is, but I do know that in combination with Virtualdub, it allows me to do some pretty cool things with videos.

What can you do with it? Well, you can create slow-motion effects. You can use it to join videos together. AviSynth feeds the video to the editing program rather than letting the program actually open the video. Because of this, you can use it to open massive files not typically supported by your video editing program. Or, you can open up video files of different types because your program thinks it’s just opening up a standard AVI. There’s lots more AviSynth can do, but to be honest, I don’t know what. It’s a program for much geekier types than myself, but if you have a little bit of patience, you’ll find it can do amazing things when you’re post-processing your videos.

Actually, I just wrote about it to make myself look really technical.

Download AviSynth here.

Jesus said, in Matthew 12:40, that as Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of a whale, so He would spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. If He was crucified on a Friday and raised the following Sunday, how do you explain the this statement?

Read what we think about this topic here.

The book of Jonah is the best account in the Old Testament, perhaps in Scripture, about how the will of God and the will of man interact.

Jonah (a prophet of God) whined a lot. He ran from God. He came up with excuses. Yet God used him powerfully. Wow. I guess He might be able to use me too.

Read the outline of Jonah here.

We know almost nothing about the man Obadiah. But he made a significant prophecy of destruction against the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, which came to pass around 500 B.C.

Read the overview and outline of Obadiah here.

The best free desktop search is . . . well, I’ll tell you later (really - it’s at the end of this entry if you just want to scroll down). I want to tell you about the Windows Indexing Service first.

Windows Indexing Service eats up valuable system resources (it’s true). Turn that garbage off. It’s easy, really (these instructions are for XP users). Click start, click run, type in “services.msc” then hit enter. Scroll down to indexing service, double-click it, click the stop button if it’s running, set the “startup type” dropdown to disabled, click apply then OK. Phew! We got that out of the way. Your computer is thanking you.

Oh, you should also right-click the start button, then left click Explore, right click C:, then left click properties then untick the checkbox that says “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching” then click OK and wait a few minutes. Click “ignore all” if Windows gives some garbage about not being able to apply an attribute or something like that. You can still search; you’ve just given your computer a performance boost.

If you have Vista, well, read this article, because I’m tired of typing and really, this post is about the best free desktop search tool!

Thanks for stopping by.

Oh, wait. You want to hear about the best desktop search? You want an alternative to the indexing service you just turned off? OK. It’s called Agent Ransack, and it’s free, of course. It doesn’t chew up valuable resources, it’s blazing fast, and you can even use regular expressions (whatever that means)! I’ve been using it for the past couple years. It blows away other desktop search alternatives (Google Desktop, Copernic), because it doesn’t surreptitiously invade your computer.

Download Agent Ransack here.
Get help for Agent Ransack here.

Amos was a seemingly insignificant sheepherder from a small town called Tekoa. After reading Amos, however, I think you’ll agree with me that nobody is insignificant! God uses the weak things of the world to bring down the powerful.

He prophesied to the mightiest nation in the Mediterranean, a nation at the peak of its power - Israel. People mocked him. Yet history proves his prophecies true, as Israel fell to the Assyrians less than 40 years later, in 722 B.C.

Read the outline of Amos here.

Choosing a web host poses challenges. Advertisers hammer on two things consistently:

1. bandwidth
2. disk space

Don’t believe the hype. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of hosts promising unlimited bandwidth and huge amounts of space. I will say it now (listen carefully);

bandwidth and disk space are not the most important things to consider when choosing a web host.

Too often people choose the wrong host for the wrong reasons. Then they wonder why their site disappears randomly, why customer service seems nonexistent, why they can’t get a refund, why they’ve been charged for excessive usage, and why (gasp!) their host suddenly vanishes into thin air.

Consider the following when choosing a web host.

• Long-term Business Plan
  Many (if not most) hosts have a very short shelf life. They come and go in a moment. Research their longevity. Discover if they have a long-term commitment to staying around. Check out their community forums. Find out about the owner. If they’re a fly-by-night company, you won’t find much information. If that’s the case, be afraid. Be very afraid.
• Security
  Does the company have a deep and abiding interest in security? You need your site up and running for a long time (like non-stop, forever), without glitches. If you agree with that, then you should be very interested in security. Top-quality security means less spam and fewer headaches for you. If the web host doesn’t have an up-to-date, cutting-edge security solution, you might want to search elsewhere.
• Speed & Stability
  Many things seem simple, like, “Company A gives me 500GB of bandwidth per month, while company B gives me 30GB. I’ll go with A because my site is very popular.” Again, you’re buying the lie that bandwidth outweighs other aspects of web hosting. Wrong! Most websites will never come even close to 5GB per month. Most personal websites won’t come close to 1GB per month. It’s overkill. Pay attention to the equipment the company uses, not the amount of bandwidth they offer. Do they use servers like the desktop you’re on now? Or do they invest in high quality machines (like a $20,000 drive array with SCSI drives with serious redundancy) and a high quality peering network built for speed? If you don’t know, and you can’t find out, avoid the company like the plague. Many companies use cheap IDE drives from the Dollar Store (OK, maybe Target) with little or no redundancy. Crappy equipment equals crappy performance and little security or stability for your important site.
• No Fine Print
  Everything should be clear and out in the open. Check for fine print. If you find it, get out immediately! Fine print usually means something nasty. E.g., unlimited bandwidth typically means something else. If your web host offers a terabyte of space and endless bandwidth (and you run a high-bandwidth site), don’t be surprised to get a ridiculous bill for excessive use. It really happens. Do they offer a money-back guarantee? Can you cancel if you’ve pre-paid for three years and you change your mind? Will your information be kept private? Will it be sold? Do secret fees lurk in the shadows? Is there a price lock guarantee? If you can’t find the answers to these questions, find a different web host - the one you’re looking at sucks.
• Features Included
  What features does the web host include? If you need PHP or ASP, find out if it’s supported. Do they offer dedicated application pools, databases, web statistics, secure folders, custom error pages, the ability to customize plans, etc.? Now, finally, how much bandwidth do they offer? How much disk space? You should ask these questions, but only after you’ve researched the far more important aspects.

Hopefully you understand by now; bandwidth and disk space offerings should not drive your decision on which web host to choose.

You should look for a company passionate about serving and protecting customers, unafraid to invest in the highest quality equipment, willing to be completely open and honest about all policies, and that commits to staying in business for the long haul.

Do you know any web hosts that can meet all these expectations? I do. They’re called Parcom and I’ve been with them for nearly ten years. My main website (truthsaves.org) has reached 40,000 hits per month and has been on the $3.99 plan (cheaper because I pre-paid for three years). I’ve recently upgraded to the $9.99 plan to handle the traffic.

Dave, Parcom’s owner, welcomes all customers in the Renton area to stop by and visit. He might even take you up to his super-secure datacenter. I stopped in a couple years ago and that’s exactly what he did. He’s available in the Parcom forums on a regular basis. Sign up and see for yourself. Ask questions. Push the envelope. He’ll talk to you and lay it all out on the table.

Security, speed, stability, and service - Parcom has it all.

And no, I get nothing for this. It’s appreciation for long-term, top-notch service.

About Dave
About Parcom
Parcom Intrusion Detection System and Firewall Solution
Parcom’s Datacenter Layout
More About Parcom
Hosts that Give Too Much Space
Customer Testimonials
Another Article on How to Choose a Good Host

My site (truthsaves.org) was down a couple days ago . . . I was migrating my site from one server to another. My host, Parcom, was quite patient with me as I struggled through the process (Parcom is the best web host out there; I’ll explain why in another post). Thank goodness they were, because I was truly the customer from hell; I’m very obsessive about getting things done in a timely fashion.

Anyway, everything is back up and running. I successfully upgraded my database from MySQL 4.0 to MySQL 5.0, and really, it wasn’t that hard. I simply referenced the following article and I used the phpMyAdmin solution.

Backing Up Your Database - WordPress.org

Everything went very smoothly with the database backup and subsequent import, for which I am eternally grateful. Not that anyone reads my blog, but still . . . the articles mean something to me, and there is some good information.

The rest of the site update was a breeze, although I was impatient and didn’t wait long enough to start my move, and I paid for that with a few hours of downtime. It was something about TTL and DNS servers - all stuff that’s a bit over my head, frankly.

So, I’m now on a newer, more powerful server that’s much speedier and more secure. Hopefully we won’t be seeing any downtime in the near future.

Not only is KeePass free, it’s also open source.

What does it do? Simply put, it remembers passwords for you. I use the Internet a lot, and I have a lot of passwords, and for years I’ve tried to keep it all straight (and done a pretty good job, if I say so myself). But finally I broke down and started looking for a password manager.

KeePass fit the bill perfectly. It costs relatively little (free), it uses the most secure encryption algorithms known to mankind (well, OK, I don’t know if that’s really true but the KeePass site says the databases are encrypted “using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).” So, I believe them.

Anyway, if you’re having a hard time remembering all your passwords, and you want to make a list of them (stored very securely on your computer) then get KeePass.

Get KeePass here.

An overview and outline of Joel. As Hosea develops the relationship of a husband and wife to portray the LORD’s interaction with Israel, thus Joel develops an invasion of locusts into a view of God’s impending destruction. Joel develops an invasion of locusts into a view of God’s impending destruction.

Read the outline here.

OK. I’ll admit it. I don’t have Irfanview on my computer. I have a different image viewer. However, I did have Irfanview on my computer for years and I still say it’s the best free image viewer out there (we all need change at some point). It began the slew of freeware image viewers and most others have cloned or copied its features at some point or another.

If you want the ability to batch edit graphics, view slideshows, view EXIF information, losslessly rotate photos, or just view files (most any type of file), Irfanview will do it all. It IS the original and still the best free image viewer.

Irfanview has served me well over the years and I think it’s time to re-install it.

Get your free copy right here.

I looked back over my posts on free software, and I realized I hadn’t given e-sword its own post. I’ve mentioned it in my top five free software picks of all time, but really, e-sword should have its own entry.

This program deserves my award for the best free program of all time. Sure, many other programs are useful (Firefox, for instance), and many other programs do more (Open Office, for example), but none (except e-sword) provide life-giving truth.

E-sword easily compares to commercial offerings. No, you can’t get all the “premium” modules for free (like the NKJV) but who needs ‘em? The ESV (English Standard Version) is a very literal translation that I find very similar to the NASB. Download multiple versions, bucketloads of commentaries and dictionaries, devotions, maps . . . get going!

Some people say the interface appears antiquated, but I disagree. To me, it looks snazzy and modern (O.K., well, it’s free) and it even provides useful tips on opening (if you want them).

Some cool things that I like are:

• the ability to create your own parallel Bible with up to four versions,
• the simple to use tabs that show you which commentaries, dictionaries, etc. have information pertinent to the passage you’re reading,
• the fast search tool (you can search dictionaries, commentaries, etc. as well,
• the tooltips which appear when you hover over certain things (like Scripture references in the commentaries and dictionaries),
• and all the little extras, like the Bible reading plan, daily devotions, and the cool Scripture memory tool.

Visit the site to check out the many features of e-sword. Check out the many downloads available. If you want access to the best free program of all time, then quit just checking out all the benefits e-sword has to offer - get the program!

Download e-sword here.