Like any other area of interest on the iPhone, when it comes to the Bible there are thousands of applications out there but the new kid on the block the ‘ESV Bible‘ is easily the best and here’s why…

Up until now, ‘Bible‘ has been my favourite iPhone Bible reading application. – it is simple to use and has pretty much every version you would want – NIV, CEV, NASB, ESV The Message and so on. The problem however is that it requires an Internet connection to work, and for that reason, it’s also a bit slow to use.

But having just tried out the new ESV Bible application, I have instantly fallen in love with it. Sometimes it takes a really good application to comes along to make you realise what you were missing and this is definitely the case with ESV Bible.

The navigation system is simple to use. You select a book of the Bible, it slickly pens out to give you a list of all the chapters. It’s so smooth it’s actually fun to use. To me that’s what makes the Apple experience and this app is an Apple style bible! Click on a chapter and the Bible opens at that chapter.

Click on any verse and a window slides open with cross-references to other similar verses that you can click on and navigate to, as well as a button to add your own notes to any verse, or post a verse to twitter or send averse to the e-mail app!

Click on the bottom of the screen and you have access to a ‘history’ of all the passages you’ve looked at recently – I’ve already found this very useful – and favourites section where you can add any Bible passage to your ‘ favourites’ and look it up instantly.

Of course there’s the standard ability to search the Bible, but again I like the way it is implemented with ESV Bible. The results are displayed by book of the Bible, giving you the first two results in each book, with a ‘more’ button should you wish to see more results.

You can grab it for free from itunes here: here.

It’s a two step process..

Firstly you rip the file from the DVD player and convert it to a small MP4 movie.

Then you copy the movie into itunes. Here’s how to do it step by step.

1. RIP THE MOVIE FROM THE CD:

Download a free program called handbrake from here.

Then:
1. Put in a DVD in your drive.
2. Run handbrake.
3. Select the DVD.
4. Select then the iPod preset on the right column. (You need to do this as the ipod will only recognise certain formats of movies.)
5. Press the start button.
6. Wait a few hours for it to finish!

( For more detailed instructions on handbrake see here)
There should now be a file on your desktop which is an ipod version of the movie.

2. COPY IT TO ITUNES 

1. Run itunes.
2. From the ‘File’ Menu select ‘Import’.

3. Browse to the file you created in the step above (see the picture below) and ‘Choose’.

It will now import the movie into itunes, and should copy to your ipod automatically next time you sync with your ipod.

These are the settings I use for good quality speech in itunes:

Stereo Bit rate: 80kbbps

Sample rate: 22.050kHz

Channels: Mono

NOTE: This results in a 40kbps file (the mono file ends up at half the stereo bitrate)
A 20 minute talk will be about 6Mb and sound good.

If I am ripping from CD for speech for my ipod, say a story, and size is not so important, I set itunes to:

96kbps,
44.1kHz,
mono.

Which gives an output of 48kbps.The place you put these preferences in is itunes:preferences and click on the advanced icon then importing tab then Setting:Custom you can set the various options according to what you want.

Click here to read how to make the filesize (and quality) lower using LAME.

As soon as you plug your ipod shuffle into your mac for the first time, itunes will automatically open, and you will get a message that itunes has found your ipod, and what name do you want to give your ipod.

If this does not happen make sure you have itunes 7 installed.

This was the home of my ipod exchange program, which I was running because there was no-one repairing ipods in Australia, but I have discovered there is an ipod repairer in Australia, so here is his URL:

http://www.dcoda.com/

Last year I bought 5 non-working ipods from ebay and fixed up 4 of them. It was not to hard, but there was a couple of tricks. I’ve finally found some time to write up the hard bits, just in case anyone is interested, so here goes. This is not for you to try at home, lest you break your ipod!
The hardest part is opening the case.

I found the best tool was part of a stanley knife blade, the type that you break when it gets blunt. You can see the kind of blade I mean in the picture below. Two segments of the blade are carefuly inserted into the side of the ipod, at the angle seen in this picture.

When they are pushed down a little, the metal case opens a little. Then a third can be inserted in the middle. Then add a fourth fifth and sixth in parallel with the first three to force it a little more, the gap opens a little more with each blade inserted, until it finally pops open on one side like this:

Now you insert the blades into the top, above the hold switch and near the headphone jack symbol, careful not to push in too far and damage any wires with the blade. The case then pops open as follows:

The metal back is now separate to the plastic front, but be careful, the headphone jack and hold switch are part of the metal base – have a look at the pictures below.The white square in the red circle is the connector, it needs to be very cafefully prised apart with the knife blade. I used the long knife blade in the first picture above to do this.

Now the plastic case and metal back will separate apart. From the picture below, you can see the hard drive sits on top of the unit. It pivots on the right, but if you pivot it and try to lift it you will porbably break the connector, so you have to carefully insert part of a hacksaw blade (see left photo) in the gap between the HD connector and the main PCB board. Pivot this hacksaw blade down (right picture) and the HD connector will pop open, allowing you to remove it. The third picture (bottom) shows me pressing the connector together as I re-assemble the ipod. The connector is under my pointer finger, it needs to be moved around till it clicks into place, then firmly pressed.

The battery and main board just pull off and there are some small torx screws. There is a little connector that connects to the front that is tricky and needs to be prised apart with a blade, as seen below.

Happy ipod-ing, and I hope you never need to do this!

DIAGNOSTIC MODE:

If you press down the two middle buttons, menu and play, the ipod will reset. When the apple logo appears hold down the other three buttons (forward, back and the botton in the middle of the wheel). When the screen goes blank, release and you will be in diagnostic mode, with this menu:

A. 5 IN 1

B. RESET

C. KEY

etc

They select with right and left, not the scrollwheel. Some handy ones are:
D tests the audio, handy if the HD is not working but you want to check the audio section,

H tests the power circuits,
I tests the scrollwheel,
J tests the screen,
L tests the RAM, and
O tests the Hard Drive.