Tag: blogging

Where did he get that?!

I’ve found a Word­Press plu­gin that will do what I want with bib­li­ogra­phies: papercite.

For decades, now, I’ve kept my bib­li­ogra­phies in a spe­cial for­mat called bib­TeX. There are many rea­sons why I use bibTeX:

  • it is a plain text (not binary) format
  • there are many con­vert­ers to other for­mats, such as Microsoft Word, html, pdf, rdf, and others
  • it is the stan­dard cita­tion for­mat used in LaTeX (the doc­u­ment type­set­ting soft­ware I use for my aca­d­e­mic work)

Papercite has mul­ti­ple bib­li­og­ra­phy styles to choose from (just like bib­TeX). I can select to show an entire bib­li­og­ra­phy indi­vid­ual item or cite a ref­er­ence in the midst of a para­graph and have a list of ref­er­ences at the end.

You can see an exam­ple of this approach to bib­li­og­ra­phy in the page Bib­li­ogra­phies on the right.

I think I now have all the pieces in place.

Returning to active blogging

It has been next to impos­si­ble to find the time to do think­ing and read­ing this past year. As a way of get­ting my groove back, I’m res­ur­rect­ing this blog as a kind of pub­lic scratch pad, note­book and jour­nal. The idea is that blog­ging (that is, writ­ing) about one’s read­ing and think­ing is the best way to learn, accu­mu­late knowl­edge, and pre­pare for publication.

I’ve gone crazy installing very cool Word­Press plugins:

  • Anthol­o­gize: col­lect selected posts into a “book” and pub­lish in var­i­ous for­mats, e.g., PDF.
  • Grace­ful Pull-​​Notes: pull-​​notes are mag­a­zine style quo­ta­tions from an arti­cle into an in-​​text quo­ta­tion box
  • Post Page Asso­ci­a­tor: put links or the text of blog posts into a page; very use­ful for cre­at­ing summaries
  • Ran­dom Text: a “quote machine” seen on this blog as “Some­thing to Think About”
  • Sim­ple Twit­ter Sta­tus Updates: notify my Twit­ter and Face­book updates when I blog here. Very convenient!
  • WP Social-​​Bookmarking: puts the icons of social web­sites; now you can share my wis­dom on your Face­Book, Twit­ter, et al. pages.

I’m look­ing for a way to share an anno­tated bib­li­og­ra­phy and haven’t found a “best prac­tices” method yet. Stay tuned!

Resurrection

The pre­vi­ous post is more than a year old. There’s a rea­son why. A year ago I became unem­ployed; or, rather, I became an entre­pre­neur. The eco­nom­ics are the same: no salary. Iron­i­cally, the work­load increased, rather than diminished.

A year ago this month we spun off the research unit that I was a part of, J. Alan Groves Cen­ter for Advanced Bib­li­cal Research of West­min­ster The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, as an inde­pen­dent non-​​profit com­pany, the Groves Cen­ter. The change has been enabling, but build­ing the infra­struc­ture has been a challenge.

The foun­da­tions have been laid, I started get­ting paid again in June, and I finally have time to get back to doing sci­ence. Small steps.

I’m going to be using this blog as a kind of pub­lic scratch­pad, very sim­i­lar to what I’ve done in the past. Posts will reflect my read­ing, writ­ing, my web surf­ing and my cur­rent think­ing. Oh, yes, and some rant­ing along the way.