Diary, To Do's

The mainstay of my work is my diary, for which I use BusyCal. Synced with my iPhone this means I can always know where I am meant to be. A simple paper diary will not do for me as I run a number of diaries, personal, work, and church events which I need to keep hold of which don't involve me. For instance A church may have booked a guest preacher, but I am preaching elsewhere.

BusyCal also synchronises my calendars with Sylvia's Mac, so she knows what I am doing and where I am when she plans her own diary. It also syncs with Google Calendar which means I can share a diaries with colleagues where we both need to have input

The second mainstay of my day is Omnifocus, which I use to plan things I have to do, projects, services and meetings. I am a very poor practitioner of David Allen's "Getting Things Done."

Writing & Bible Study

I spend a lot of time writing. Mostly I use Apple Pages because I need compatibility with Microsoft Word for shared documents, and I need the page layout features. Combined with a Brother HL5250DN Printer I can easily produce double sided A5 leaflets for liturgies. I use Apple's Keynote as a better alternative to Powerpoint which I use extensively with a video projector in worship and in giving talks.

I use Accordance for Bible study as it has all the major versions and some decent commentaries. Choosing hymns and songs for worship usually sends me to the web, but I also have the full text of Hymns and Psalms in a searchable database, plus Songs of Fellowship vols 1 to 4 in a PDF file which Preview lets me easily search. When I need to use plain text, and when I need to clean text up, I use BBedit, which is also great for hand crafting HTML for the web, although my main tool for creatign web pages, including this site, is Rapidweaver with a few plugins.

Admin

Apart from my diary, todo's and mail I need to keep database records. I use Filemaker Pro to store my expenses, mileage, accounts, church membership details, wedding, baptism and funeral bookings.

Contact

I am a big user of email, although I keep this to information only. Mail is my email client. I have learnt from experience that discussion and debate belong to the phone. I use Ovolab Phlink as an Mac based answering machine which enables me to store and filter calls, although recently I have moved to using the iPhone. I also use iChat and Skype, especially for video chats with the family. All my contacts are stored in Address Book.

Audio and Podcasting

I record my sermons and other audio using a Zoom H2 portable stereo recorder which also acts as a USB mic attached to the Mac. I recordings are processed in Wiretap Studio, The Levelator and iTunes. The RSS feed is handled by Feeder whilst the blog is written in Marsedit and published to a Wordpress blog.

Photography

I do a lot of photography and I have used iPhoto for a few years, but have recently upgraded to Aperture. The control and variety this gives me is fantastic. I print small prints on my HP C4100 Multi Function colour inkjet and scanner, but use the HP 1220C A3 printer for big ones. An Epson Perfection 3170 scanner is used to scan old 35 mm slides into the Mac for processing with Aperture. My camera is a Pentax istd* DSLR with a couple of zoom lenses.

Music

Music is a major hobby of mine, but it is also an important part of my ministry. I keep a large and eclectic library of music in iTunes, which I sync with a 3G iPhone. I use my iPhone for video, audiobooks and podcasts. My music library holds a selection of worship music and hymn accompaniments which I use together with other music in services, plugging the iPhone directly into the church's PA system. I have an Ion USB record deck and one day I am going to record all my old vinyl records into digital files.

I use Airfoil and Airport Express base stations to play music around the house. For internet radio I use Radioshift.