Once again, I’m here not so much to post some grand new thing I thought up, but to simplify what it took me a week’s googling, experimenting, and the like to figure out. How the heck do you encode an HD H.264 file so it plays back smoothly on your Transformer and looks good at the same time? (No, not the prime, the old-skool Tegra 2 version)

Step 1: Download Handbrake and install it.
Step 2: Select your source. This can be a decrypted Blu-Ray rip, an EyeTV recording, or just about any video file.
Step 3: Give it a name, and select a MP4 File using H.264 (x264) with a Constant Quality RF setting of 21. You can choose 20 if you like for a higher-quality encode, but that might push you over 4GB on some movies, which will break your files on Android.

Step 4: Make sure your audio file is set to AAC (Core Audio). Setting this to MP3 royally screws up playback, I have no idea why.

Step 5: Copy the advanced settings in the picture below.

Step 6: Click the “Picture Settings” button and use “Custom” to crop your video if necessary (eg. if recorded off TV it may have bars/jagged margins). Crop and resize down to 720P (1280×720). You can leave Detelecine and Decomb on their default settings.

That’s it! Your screen can’t display full HD content, and your hardware won’t handle it anyways, so don’t go any higher than 720p. If you have Honeycomb (3.1 or later) installed on your Transformer, Gallery should play these well. Otherwise, DicePlayer is a great Hardware-accelerated player, which as of now you can’t buy since their checkout account has been suspended (not sure why).

In preparing to talk with some of my teens at church about sexual purity, I was jotting down some notes. Rather than type out all of 1 Corinthians 6:18, I jumped over to Biblegateway and searched for “sins against his own body” so I could copy and paste. No results were returned!

Obviously, the 2011 revision of the NIV has changed the verse I was looking for. Immediately the question popped into my mind: how did they revise the masculine pronoun out of that sentence? Surely they didn’t write “sins against his or her own body,” did they? I searched for 1 Corinthians 6:18, and lo and behold…

“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”

Did they really just do that? In case you missed it, “their” is a plural pronoun, where as “whoever” is a singular one. To be gramatically correct, it should either say “those who sin…sin against their” OR “whoever sins…sins against his or her” OR “whoever…his”. The original greek here doesn’t mix singular and plural, nor should the english.

What’s happened is that we’ve traded grammatical correctness for political correctness. The simplest way to write this sentence would be (as in the 1984 version), “he who sins sexually, sins against his own body.” To get closer to the actual greek would be something along the lines of “the one sinning sexually sins against his own body.” But those options use masculine pronouns only, so it’s not good enough, and instead we must use shoddy grammar. Granted, the 2011 NIV corrected a number of other passages to be closer in meaning to the original text, but in this case it seems they’re moving away from precision in favor of political correctness–a very dangerous road to start down.

Makes me even happier that our church is moving to the ESV next spring!

(How does the ESV render this verse? “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”)

Shameless plug here, but the publisher of Accordance Bible Software is giving away a Macbook Air. I’d love to win it, and if you click on my referring link here, you help me earn chances to win…and also can enter to win yourself.

Speaking of which, Accordance Bible Software is just plain awesome. I love using it for sermon prep and original language work. If you’re looking for some hardcore Bible Study software, I definitely recommend it! Their library is not as fully developed as something like Logos, but the Hebrew and Greek tools with it are worth the price of admission.

…but you came here to win a macbook air!

I had a few people angry at me for dissing on Heaven is for Real, that oh-so-popular book by a kid’s dad where he talks about his trip to Heaven. Why was I dissing it? Because I’d read the first chapter, lost all interest, and decided that the review Tim Challies had posted must be right (he calls it “not a good book.”).

I really needed to read it to assuage the offended individual, to stop being a punk who judges something he hasn’t experienced, and because I happen to be affiliated with a church where I live: in North Platte, Nebraska, where the miraculous visions took place and everyone in town knows about the book.

Again, the first chapter turned me off immediately, because Lisa and I had been reading The Lord of the Rings immediately before this, and the difference in writing quality was like stepping from the classical art of Rembrandt to the slapstick entertainment of Ingrid’s poo adventure…and I’m not saying that the book should be compared to poo. My point is that the poo video is funny, fun to watch–it’s entertaining and people are more likely to get a kick out of it than looking at a Rembrandt. Such it was with Heaven: from the minute you begin reading you realize there’s going to be a lot of flowery language and emotional fluff. It’s “heartwarming.” If you want something deep and challenging to be enriched by, look elsewhere.

I will say though, if you’re going to knock on this book, you’d better read it first. But for those of you who just want to know “should I read it?” or need to hear what a youth pastor thinks about it, here we go:

1) I have problems with his description of Jesus as a guy with blue eyes who wears a purple sash and has holes in the center of his palms. Sounds rather Americanized to me, rather like the Sunday School Jesus we’ve all seen all over the place. (Maybe that’s ‘cuz Jesus has shown himself to so many people that the got it right…or maybe Colton’s memories are suggestible [pdf link]).

2) The whole deal with people fighting with Jesus against Satan is a bit questionable. (Page 136) Revelation chapters 19-20 describe Jesus with an army, but all who are killed are killed by the sword coming out of the rider’s mouth or consumed by fire from heaven. Nowhere do we get the picture that this is even close to the type of hand-to-hand combat Colton speaks of. Let’s face it, while our fight here and now might be against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm (Ephesians 6), God is supremely sovereign, Christ has already won, and Satan doesn’t even really have a chance.

3) Perhaps my biggest gripe: Todd talks about people needing to be saved to go to heaven, and how that’s Colton’s greatest concern for those dying. But in this book there is no clear, straightforward explanation of the gospel. There’s no primer on sin, atonement, repentance, and salvation by Grace alone through faith. Heck, there’s not even the shallow “just repeat these words to be saved” prayer in the back. All you find is Colton yelling “he had to have Jesus in his heart!” (Chapter 11) To a non-Christian reading this, what does that even mean, anyways? There are blurbs in the back to explain the timeline and to tell you more about the Burpos…but nothing about knowing God.

4) Read the review by Tim Challies that I already linked to above. He says a lot more that I don’t feel the need to repeat.

Bottom line: do I think Colton is a despicable liar? No. Do I have a good way of explaining everything in this book in a completely rational way (eg. miscarried sister and “Pop”)? No. Do I think that much of what Colton experienced could have been suggestible or distorted memories? Likely. Is it good to read this book and ask yourself where you’ll end up after you die? Yes. Does that mean I think you should read this book? No.

If you want to know about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, heaven, and eternity, read your Bible or ask a Pastor, elder in your church, or someone who knows the Bible better than you do.

Of course Heaven is for Real. We’ve known that for 2 Millenia. How much of Colton’s story is for real? I guess you’ll just have to ask God someday–assuming of course, that you know Him. You don’t? You need to hear the Gospel. (Read the Romans Road if you’re not feeling the other link or need more info!)

After her nap this afternoon, Ingy was a bit out of sorts, and wasn’t using her left arm. Since she always uses both together to pick stuff up, we figured something must be wrong. Bending her left arm would result in her crying.

Our Doctor’s nurse never picks up when we call, so after leaving a message we just googled it.

Turns out that a very common injury in infants and kids younger than 5 called “nursemaid’s elbow” was probably the issue. It’s a minor dislocation of the elbow, and a ligament gets jammed in the wrong place–easily happens if one arm is pulled to strongly, such as catching a falling kid or picking them up by their hands.

The best part is the fix–it’s super easy, and seems to me to be harmless if the problem isn’t nursemaid’s elbow. NOTE: I am NOT a doctor and this should NOT be understood to be qualified medical advice.

All we did was this: I bent Ingy’s elbow to a 90 degree angle, holding the elbow lightly in one hand. Then, I rotated her hand until her palm faced upward. VIOLA! The effects were almost instantaneous! Within a minute she was bending her left arm again, and using it to pick things up, and had stopped crying.

Thank you, Google. Thank you, KidsGrowth.com.

So Mr. MG Seigler over at TechCrunch thinks he’s avant-garde for deciding to quit emailing for a month. His reasoning has something to do with it being a waste of time. And the idea came from…wait for it…some Tweeting. Yes, Twitter, that endless fount of useless information.

I’m not here to rail on Mr. Seigler though, other than to point out that Facebook and Twitter will either a) destroy our society, or b) die, just like MySpace. Why’s this? Because both Facebook and Twitter are founded on the premise that you can easily make your thoughts, opinions, and (private?) pictures instantly available to a whole host of people who don’t really care about you.

I tried Twitter, and it was a complete waste of time, and endless roll of pointless drivel (“enjoying some jameson on the couch, sit up unable to follow along with my own timeline”) and links to articles I don’t care to read (and don’t have time to read). Mr. Seigler is annoyed at the time spent sifting through and reading endless emails, and yet he’s thrilled at the usefulness of Twitter because the President used it once? Sanity, please. (The link tries to make a point about how you, too, can be heard, by mentioning that the Pres answered a handful out of 169,395 Tweeted questions?)

Let me break it down for you: life is not about spewing your opinions to the unwashed masses (yet, how hypocritical it is for me to blog this…). It’s about relationships–with God and mankind. You don’t maintain any sort of real relationship facebook stalking someone. You don’t know others and be known by them in 140 characters or less. All you do is waste time, wishing you lived someone else’s life or trying to re-write yours by hooking up with old flames. In the process, you work less, live less, and get fatter sitting in front of your computer.

To be fair, we could say the same thing about many other popular things such as Netflix instant streaming, except Netflix lacks the narcissism of Twitter and Facebook. If you’re constantly updating your status, let me just tell it to you straight: NOBODY CARES. If they DO care at all, it’s because of how well they already know you offline, in the real world, or because your dietary habits are really the most important thing in their life (which is either really sad or really scary). Log off and pick up the phone (txting doesn’t count). Better yet, go grab a coffee with someone. Even better yet, have them over for dinner.

So here’s your choices, America: become so self-involved that society self-destructs, or realize what’s important in life and go build yourself into a self-strengthening community.

Quit wasting your life and start sharing it. Spend some time with God. Spend some time with the people He’s put in your life.

Thankfully, many of you already figured this out.