Hello, It's me, Jim.

Well it looks like Michael has done all the talking here so far. I guess it's about time that I introduce myself.

My name is Jim Darlack. I'm a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where I also serve as the reference librarian. I'm also active in my local church, where I've served as an elder and as a Sunday school teacher. So, I get to use BibleWorks as a student, as a teacher and as an instructor - helping Gordon-Conwell students get to know the program. In addition to tinkering with the program to prepare for lessons, etc. I've also been interested in crunching public domain texts found on the web and making them into BibleWorks databases/resources. Michael Hanel has been doing this quite a bit as well, and we both saw a need to have a place where we could easily collaborate on posting files for others to download. It dawned on me that we should start a BibleWorks blog. This enables Michael to post files to my webdomain through Blogger. It's primitive, but it works. A blog also provides a vehicle for communicating with other BibleWorks users. The BibleWorks forums are fantastic, but sometimes its very hard to follow a particular thread with so many posts, etc. This blog will allow us to showcase different features, tutorials, etc., and will also allow us to post new databases and updates relatively easily.

A few notes about the blog:

• The more I tinker with putting together web pages and blogging, I have begun to realize all of the work that goes into not only coding a program, but also making the user interface pleasing to the eyes. I would have never thought that the high contrast of white letters on a black background would be hard on some folks, but it is. So, I've tweaked the code. (It's really just another blogger template modified for the BibleWorks blog.) Let us know if you have a hard time with this as well. I may figure out a way for users to toggle the "look" of the website according to their own tastes and needs, but that will have to come when I have time.
• On the "files page" there are multiple links labeled with a "BW Help" button (). These links are actually direct links to the BibleWorks help files. To use these links, you must use Microsoft Internet Explorer and have BibleWorks 7.0 installed on your computer. (I know that this is a pain, I'm an avid user of Firefox, myself, but them's the breaks. Firefox won't allow the ActiveX stuff to run from a web page).
• Comments to this blog are moderated, so when you post a comment it won't display until someone approves it. I may change this in the future, but it hopefully will cut down on spam comments.
• What's up with the "oldinthenew.org" domain? Well, that's the domain that I bought a few years ago, and I don't feel like shelling out the dough or the trouble to migrate to a different domain, so any blogs or pages that I maintain will be linked to oldinthenew.org. When my thesis is done, I hope to set up a resource page dedicated to studying the New Testament's use of the Old.
  

And now for some shameless self promotion. In addition to playing with the BibleWorks blog, I'm also running "James the Just" - a blog dedicated to the study of the Epistle of James and the historical "James the Just." I've also posted my files for PalmBible+ users on another blog, titled "PalmSunday."