North Dallas .NET User Group Meeting Wed Night

If you're going to be there, let me know.

Oxyrhynchus Mini-Lexicon...I Wish

You know what the world needs? More love? Yes. Peace? Yes. It also needs a mini-lexicon for the Oxyrhynchus papyri. There is a lot of text there and I think it could be very useful. Just taking the first bit of POxy 58 as an example, you've got στρατηγοις and ἐπιστρατηγιας. Those are districts in Egypt. Great. A little more info (that really would be inappropriate to LSJ) might be nice. Or how about ἑπτα νομων. Sure, you can see the translations in the published volume and in the Loeb translation (yes, I happened along some that even Loeb had) that the words should be understood as referring to a region named something like "Heptanomis", but a little explanation would be useful.

I really think this would be cool. Expanding it to other papyri might be a good idea too.

I've got too much on my plate at the moment. Anybody want to do that for me? :)

Purchasing Oxyrhynchus

The other night I went and spent some time in the DTS library. It was like old times...except that I didn't have anything that was due. I spent a good bit of time looking for published papyri, mostly for kicks, but also for use in the class (though, yes, I know, some can be found online). Of course, the best stuff would be papyri that were published long enough ago that copyright would have expired so I could put them online with notes, vocabulary, and translations. At least that's the plan. Getting permission from publishers would be fine to, but I have no idea how hard that is to pull off. If anybody has any comments about this, let me know.

One set that I spent a good bit of time in was the published volumes of the Oxyrhynchus papyri. Some of them were recently published, though the publication of the series began with volume 1 in 1898. I was a little surprised on how useful these volumes were. I'm not sure what I expected, but I didn't expect them to be so useful...user friendly...something. Part of it is that I didn't really expect translations and discussions of the text (though the discussions and such are brief and sparse).

Of course, the volumes can be very expensive. However, I was very surprised to find that some go for sale for $10. They must have printed too many. Anyway, if you're interested, here's the website:

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/trade.cfm/Publisher/Egypt%20Exploration%20Society//Location/DBBC

Great Blond Joke

This is a really funny blond joke.

Pantodapos - New Blog

Yes, I realize it has been two and a half weeks since I've blogged. It has mostly been because I've been updating www.christonomy.com. Go check it out.

On that note, I have a new blog, called Pantodapos, there at Christonomy. Most of my biblical studies type stuff will go there, though some will be seen here. Greek stuff will be in both. Tech stuff will almost entirely be here, as well as random thoughts and personal notes.

Of course, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "He has two blogs now, so he'll probably blog half as much on both." Well...you're wrong! This just gives me twice the places to blog, which means you'll get twice as much stuff :)

Another Excellent Book...Boethius

I went to a birthday party for an friend of college today. The drive was pretty long, but we had good food. By the Joe's Crab Shack there was a Half Price Books and we stopped by for a few minutes. Of course, we got the obligatory (these days, anyway) Thomas the train engine book. I also got a book that is really nice, and for a good price.

Ever heard of the Folio Society? If not, and you're a book lover, you should take a look. Here's a link to the book I bought. As you can see from the picture that cover is very colorful and ornate. The book has color images of pictures from illuminated manuscripts of the work, which is nice, and it comes in a nice red sleeve. Sweet!

The book itself is Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a 6th century work. Unforunately, it's not a diglot or just Latin, but it's useful to have an English copy, especially since my Latin is really rusty. The latin text is easy enough to get, however. Project Guttenberg has it.

Original price? $39.95. I got it for $12.95 :)

Tech News - Jan 7 2006

Okay, some of this isn't really new. But this is the first time I've heard of it and/or checked it out.

First, anybody find the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe interesting? I'm actually glad to see it. Hopefully this will make them a stronger competitor to Microsoft. Of course, if you know me, you know that I like Microsoft's developer tools immensely. However, I am a strong believer in the existence of competition, and Microsoft needs stronger competition than it has in general. Of course, in the areas that Adobe and Macromedia cover, Microsoft does not have a really strong offering. They do have some products coming out that intend to take some of the space of Photoshop (Adobe), Dreamweaver (Macromedia), and Flash (Macromedia). So, I guess, in this case it's good that Adobe/Macromedia are actually getting some competition.

Second, anybody else notice the Google Reader? I took a look at it and, unlike a lot of Google's offerings, I'm not real impressed. Usability is not that great, and it is definitely not a replacement for my desktop rss feed reader.

Third, speaking of RSS feed readers, I'm about tired of RSS Bandit. I'm either going to switch back to Sharpreader or go with the new reader that's going to be in Community Server 2.0. RSS Bandit is a little buggy and incredibly slow compared to Sharpreader. The only benefit of RSS Bandit is that it is open source (and in C#), so I can fix it if I want to. However, fixing my issues would probably just take way too much time. And, I just don't have that much time.

Fourth, back to Community Server 2.0. I'm playing with beta 2 now, changing the theme for use as a replacement for the christonomy site. No, I'm not putting a link because it hasn't been updated in over a year. Embarrasing. Anyway, on to another topic, it has a feed reader in this version. Only one feature is lacking, and I could probably add that in a few hours. They are planning on releasing it officially on Feb 17th. I'm very much looking forward to this. I will at that point be doing some blogging at the Christonomy site. I haven't decided what will the the difference between this one at blogger and that one exactly, but I'm sure I'll figure it out in the next few weeks and let you, my faithful readers, know.

Fifth, for all you hard-working programmers out there who have bosses that expect to much and may outsource your position in the near future, this is a song for you.

Terror Alert Level Addition

I added the Homeland Security terror alert level indicator on my blog, but with a twist. Otherwise, it would be boring! Check it out...

Sick, But Back in Action

Well, my trip to SE Texas got me sick, which is no surprise. But today I'm back at work, and in general, more functional than I've been in days. I owe a few people some emails and some comment responses on the blog. I'll get to it as soon as I can!