Calvin Complains about Ruffians and Swallows at Church

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We have many references to people misbehaving at sermon, and this is the least of them, but typical enough and fun as well. It’s also not the only time I’ve seen complaints about birds in church, but here we have both. On June 27, 1552 (R.C. 46, f. 229v–230), Calvin came before the city council […]

WAMP Server Debugging Tips

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My brother was having trouble getting WAMP Server running on his machine. This is the process I took him through to get it running. These tips apply equally to XAMPP or any other install of an Apache server on Windows. If you don’t know, WAMP and XAMPP are installers that let you set up a […]

Mega Menus: SEO Concerns and Usability Pros and Cons (Intro)

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This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Mega Menus Usability and SEO

After a much-mentioned article by Jakob Nielsen, “mega menus” became all the rage, but there are some serious issues to consider before diving in. The can create serious usability issues and negatively impact your site information architecture and, ultimately how you are found, ranked and categorized by the search engines.

Mega Menus and SEO Concerns and Solutions (Mega Menus Part 2)

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This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Mega Menus Usability and SEO

Search engines have made a lot of progress in terms of figuring out what your page is about, but large numbers of navigation links muddy the signal you send to the search engines, both about your page and about the rest of your site. There are lots of possible solutions, but the real solution is getting the information architecture right.

The Reset Button.What’s Yours?

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the reset button. Most computer problems can be solved by rebooting. Our heater was malfunctioning and until the repairman could get there, I could keep it going by hitting the reset button. I started thinking about forest fires. We used to think fire was bad, but now that […]

Garmin Forerunner 210 Review: Great Toy After Replacing Lemon

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I was excited by the features the Garmin 210 offered, but myu initial faulty unit was a HUGE disappointment. Between terrible signal acquisition and a heartrate monitor that broke almost immediately. Fortunately, the replacement unit has been a lot better.

Farmers and Miners

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You’ve all seen the bumper sticker: “If it ain’t grown, it’s mined.” I realized some years ago that this is a powerful metaphor for many things in life and I started to divide people into farmers and miners. I came to this realization when I watched how our neighbor, who owns 23 vacation rentals, maintained […]

Spectator “sport” in Reformation Geneva

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Of course we know that there were only two really good spectator activities in sixteenth-century Geneva: sermons and executions. Good a preacher as Pierre Viret may have been (he had the reputation of being the most eloquent preacher), it could not compare with the drama of a good execution. We know executions were popular because […]