Husband. Dad to 5. Student Ministry Pastor. Follower of Jesus. Yatta yatta.

NEVER KNEW THAT

I’m in a class for seminary tonight. It’s on the history of the church.

I’m sure there’s lots of times when I’ll say, “I never knew that” in this course as it covers the first 1500 years of the Christian Church. Like just now the prof said that Martin Luther was controversial and inspiring to many in his day because of his status as a “married monk”. Never knew that.

Anyway- on a significantly less profound note… here’s three recent finds I have discovered in the land of all things computerish… I’m pretty sure they are not new to many- but they were new to me. I’m kinda late to the party I assume. But here they are in case you’re later than I am.

  • SPELL CHECK SHORTCUT. If I right click (or control click on my mac) on a misspelled word, it offers me some immediate suggestions without me having to use the dictionary tool. It works in lots of applications. Even blogger does this.
  • GOOGLE CALCULATOR. If you do a google search with a series of numbers and addition signs between them, google automatically turns into a calculator and offers the sum. I rarely pull out a calculator these days.
  • WORD NOTEBOOK VIEW. The newest version of MS word has a tool called the “notebook view” in which you can create pages with tabs like in a binder. I’ve traditionally taken notes in class and saved each class as a separate word doc. This time, I’m using notebook view and creating tabs for each class period so it’s all enclosed in one doc. I also used this to take notes during the Leadership Summit. Hopefully it will help me keep a single useful resource.

Comments

  1. k.schlichter says:

    Google also does conversions. For instance, type: 5 liters to gallons or 2 pesos to dollars.

    Another useful google trick is the site search. Type: site:briancberry.blogspot.com God into google and you’ll get hits for every mention of ‘God’ on your blog.

    But maybe you already knew that…

  2. Brian, I’ve been using a program called “Evernote” to take notes. It’s pretty awesome. It syncs your notes to the program (I have it installed on my desktop and laptop) and to the website, so you can access your notes wherever you have web access. You can clip website stuff and add it to a notebook. You can search through your notebooks, so if you remember a random word or phrase you’re looking for you can type it in and Evernote will find where it is in your notes.

    You can also scan stuff you’ve written down, and it will index your handwriting, and you can search through stuff you’ve written down.

    It’s at http://www.evernote.com

    It may or may not work for you, but it’s been working great for me as I work through my credential program. I wish I’d known about it when I was in Seminary.

  3. I remember how hilarious your staff bio on the Bridges website was about your challenges in spelling — so that’s so cool how you found the spelling tool! 🙂

  4. um… I don’t recall my bio being about spelling… that seems kinda random. I’m guessing it was supposed to be a joke if I did. I might not be that funny though. But it’s a cool trick when I get stuck regardless.

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