I just noticed that the NETS project has uploaded some new stuff, notably:

• Introduction to the Reader
• 1 Maccabees (their spelling is "1 Makkabees")
• 4 Maccabees (their spelling is "4 Makkabees")
• Jeremiah

I've no idea how long these have been posted, but there's a lot of stuff there. If you use the LXX at all in your studies (and if not, why not?) then you want to grab these while they're available.

Today was a very good day, but a busy one. After church, Amy and I went to Oak Harbor. My Dad has been salmon fishing for the past week and had some luck, so he invited us down. On the way there, heading onto Whidbey Island through Deception Pass State Park, here's what Amy and I saw:

Pretty cool, huh? This is taken from the Fidalgo Island side. I stopped and took a few pictures. It was pretty bright, so I couldn't really see how things came out until I got home. Digital cameras are cool.

But that's not all. We took off from Oak Harbor around 3:30 and drove back to Bellingham the long way -- Chuckanut Drive. A few months back, I took some photos of some railroad tracks running along the coast. I'd thought since then that it would be really cool to have a photo of a train on those tracks.

Today, as we were driving up Chuckanut, Amy and I heard a train whistle. I immediately thought we might have a chance to catch the train on the coastline tracks. Amy saw the train and said it was heading north, so we just had to beat it to the photo spot.

And we did. More good timing!

That's the back end of the train. I have some other pictures too; this was the last one I took. Thankfully, the train was long and I was able to take a minute or so and get the telephoto lense on the camera for the final few pictures.

Oh, and by the way -- the salmon was excellent, and it's just the beginning of the sport fishing season for pink salmon. I'm looking forward to more!

After that, it was to Amy's house for evening dinner with her family, which was fun too. A nice, relaxing end to a runabout day.

Just came across this story: Kraft's Maxwell House Cuts Coffee Price.

Now, I could care less about Maxwell House coffee. Their old slogan used to be "good to the last drop" and on behalf of coffee snobs everywhere (such as myself), I think it's too bad that they haven't reached that "last drop" yet.

But cheap coffee seems to be in the business news. Here's another story about the "Mountain Grown" alternative: P&G Cuts Folgers Coffee Price as Beans Get Cheaper.

I can see the next headline already: "Yuban Prices Spike, Spokesman Says They Can Actually Afford Beans Now!"

Prices were apparently high in March, but they're lower now. The article on the mountain-grown mud that rhymes with "bolgers" notes:

Since peaking at $1.4425 per lb on March 11, NYBOT's benchmark arabica contract for September delivery fell to an 8-month low of 96.15 cents per lb on July 19. The contract is now trading around $1.0180 a lb.

This means that beans are about 30% cheaper now than they were. I wonder if this carries over to premium purveyors of caffienated goodness? I wonder if the local coffee shops will notice the difference?

Side note: I live in the Pacific Northwest (Bellingham, WA). It takes me anywhere from 5-10 minutes to drive from my house to the office, depending on the traffic lights. On my route, I pass at least seven (yes seven, just counted 'em in my head) coffee shops. That doesn't count gas stations or fast-food establishments. And there are far more just off that beaten path. Offhand, I'd guess there are at least 5 coffee shops within easy walking distance from the office. In short: coffee is huge here. Lower-priced premium coffee would be awesome. Hopefully the decrease in commodity price sticks and the competition (which is pretty tight here) drives the price down a bit.

I like to keep the biblioblogger blogroll on this site lean and mean, reflecting the biblioblogs that I read regularly.

I've rearranged a little. First, I've added Jim West's blog Biblical Theology. Jim is a posting machine -- I've no idea how he does it. But the posts are typically short (well ... shorter than my marathon blather sessions) and more often than not are quite informative. And Jim is a big fan of Zwingli, which immediately means he's gotta be a good guy. I mean ... Zwingli died on the field of battle, in armor, fighting for the reformation!

You may also note that I've removed the Better Bibles Blog. This was tough to do, but I was simply not reading it because there was too much stuff going on. I just couldn't keep track of it all and fell out of the habit of reading it. Because I only want to list the blogs I actually read on a regular basis (otherwise the list would be well out of hand) I thought it best to remove the link. Wayne, keep it up -- I just can't keep up with your posting prowess right now.

You'll also notice I've added the Logos Bible Software Blog to my "other blogs" blogroll. Hey, it's my employer, and I write articles for the blog. I've got to link to it, right?

This song is on an Pakaderm Records (remember the Elefante brothers?) sampler from 1991 called "Portrait of a spirit". Good luck finding it. The song is based on Rev 15.3-4:

And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,

“Great and amazing are your deeds,
O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
O King of the nations!

Who will not fear, O Lord,
and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

Here are the words to the song, as composed by Scott Sellen ((c) 1992 Always an Adventure Music ASCAP):

[Verses 1, 2, 4]
Oh God, Your works are marvelous
Your ways are just and true
Oh King of saints, who'll not fear you?
And glorify, come glorify
Jesus, glorify in you.

[Verses 3, 5]
You are the only Holy One
Nations come and worship You ...
You are the only Holy One
Nations come and worship You

The line "Oh King of saints, who'll not fear you?" has been playing in my head for the past few days. It's a good lyric.

Now, I understand you can't get the full sense without listening to the music. The tune is simple. Instrumentation is sparse with just an acoustic guitar, accordion and harmonica (played by Darrell Mansfield). The primary instrument is Furay's voice. And every time I hear it, I think, "whoa ... "

Hi folks.

I've recently posted an article on the Logos Bible Software Blog about using the Graphical Query Editor. If you have ever wondered, "Now what in the world would I ever use that for?" then maybe you should check it out.

If that article butters your bread, you might also be interested in this post: Thinking through 1Ti 3.7.

Until I figure out exactly what the relationship is between the new Logos blog and ricoblog, I'll probably post notes like this here when I post longer articles over on the Logos blog.

Hi folks.

I woke up this morning to find 243 trackbacks magically appear, all linking to the same place. In other words, trackback spam.

One the one hand, it's nice to know that I've reached a threshold where I'm an attractive trackback spam target. On the other hand, it's spam.

So I've disabled trackbacks. Again. Trackbacks are such a cool idea, I hate to do it — but I also hate to schlep diet pills.

In other news: Ricoblog passed the mark of 20,000 visitors sometime on Tuesday. Woo Hoo!

Hi folks.

Most of you know that I work for Logos Bible Software. Internally we've thrown around the idea of having a corporate blog for a few months now. We finally decided to give it a shot.

So head on over to the Logos Bible Software Blog and check it out. Put it on your aggregators. Post links on your blogs — tell the world! Not much is there now (and there will likely be introductory posts for a bit to introduce the "Logos Bloggers") but we hope that it will be a place where we can let our users know what's going on in an informal way.

As a result, I'll probably start to post the more Logos-oriented items over there instead of here at ricoblog. And if you have any suggestions for stuff that we should explore on the Logos Bible Software Blog, send me an email (email link is on sidebar).

Update (2005-08-02): Finally, we're out of the default template. I'm sure more will be changing, but the Logos Bible Software Blog looks significantly better. Phew.