Author Archives: mhick255

10 Biblical Figures and their Olympic Sports

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With the London 2012 Summer Olympics in full swing, one’s thoughts naturally turn to certain topics, such as “Would St. Paul have been better at track or fencing?”

To save you the time, I’ve assembled a helpful list of men and women from the Bible and matched them with the appropriate Olympic sport.

Gold Medalists

Let’s start with the people who would have been good at their sports.

  1. David – Hammer Throw. This seems like the most similar to using a sling, right?
  2. Samson – Weight Lifting. Too easy.
  3. Joseph – 100m Sprint. Joseph, of dreamcoat fame, was so fast that he could run out of his own clothes.
  4. Mark – 200m Sprint. Ditto. Seriously, what is up with guys in the Bible running out of their clothes?
  5. Deborah – Judo. You didn’t want to mess with Deborah. 
  6. Peter – Swimming (100m Freestyle). I don’t know how fast a Galilean boat full of fish could move, but Peter’s swimming victory still seems impressive.
  7. Miriam – Steeplechase. Staying close to your baby brother’s Nile-borne basket couldn’t have been easy.

The Runners-Up

But not everyone’s a winner in the Olympics. So here are a few less-than-triumphant competitors.

  1. King Saul – Javelin. He doesn’t seem to have been the most skilled with this weapon, which was good for David.
  2. Jonah – Diving. With everything else Jonah did wrong, the least he could have done is jumped overboard himself.
  3. Absalom – Equestrian (any event). If you can’t even ride a mule without getting your hair caught in a tree, I wouldn’t recommend dressage. Though the hats might have helped.

Do you have any suggestions to add?

The First 3 Apps I Install on a New Mac

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Yesterday, I finished replacing the hard drive in my wife’s Macbook (which I also use at home) and reinstalled Mac OS X Lion. [BTW, if you ever need to do the same, bookmark these two articles on downloading the Lion Installer from the Mac App Store and creating a bootable flash drive.] So, last night, I had a fresh, clean installation of Lion.

I’m 99% sure that I heard Dan Benjamin describe this same set-up on the Back to Work podcast, but I’ll go ahead and say that I was doing it already, which I doubt is true. On a brand new Mac, here are the first programs I install, before I do anything else.

  1. Dropbox: Partly because Dropbox is awesome, partly because Dropbox can store/sync the data for the next two apps, and partly because I can simply save to Dropbox any files I want to transfer from my old computer and — voilà! — they appear on my new computer. (FYI — use this link to sign up for Dropbox and I get some additional storage. Yay!)
  2. 1Password: If you don’t have 1Password, you need to get it. How many passwords do you have to use or remember? What about account logins? Credit card numbers? Software licenses? 1Password stores all of that for me, plus allows me to access it from my browser or my phone, plus generates new passwords for me when I need them. And, because 1Password syncs via Dropbox, all of my passwords show up automatically on my new computer. (App Store link, iPhone app)
  3. TextExpander: If you’re like me, there are things that you type over and over and over again — your name, your phone number, your email signature, the generic response to someone who wants you to do something, and so on. TextExpander lets you create shortcuts so that you don’t have to type all that out. Over the years, the app has also added some great features. I use TextExpander so much that I often find myself trying to use my typing shortcuts while I’m writing longhand. And, just like with 1Password, TextExpander syncs through Dropbox, which means that all of my saved text expansions show up on my new computer. (App Store link, iPhone app)

After that, I have started following Dan Benjamin’s advice and only install applications as I need them. That way, I don’t carry over from my old computer any obsolete programs, apps I used to use for old job functions that I don’t do anymore, or other stuff that’s just been laying around.

Adding Mars Hill Audio to iTunes Match

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If you — like me — are both a loyal subscriber to Mars Hill Audio and a user of iTunes Match, you might have found — as I did this morning — that your MHA tracks (distributed via mp3) are listed “Ineligible” for iCloud. Ineligible tracks won’t be synced with iCloud, which means that you won’t be able to listen to them on your iPhone.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution.

  1. Select the Mars Hill Audio tracks in iTunes.
  2. From the “Advanced” menu, choose “Create AAC Version.”
  3. Then update iTunes Match. (Store -> Update iTunes Match)

Ken Myers’ soothing voice will now be available to you on your iPhone. Enjoy!