random book of mormon chapter
Sometimes reading / studying my scriptures can get boring (a sure sign of apostasy, I’m sure … I’m doomed!), but it occurred to me the other day that while we are instructed to read our scriptures on a daily basis, nobody ever said anything about reading them in any certain order.
So, while I was tweaking the db layout of the lds_scriptures tables, I added a new table: chapters. Then I setup a view to pull out a random chapter and its verses. This works much better than me randomly flipping something open in my book, because if I do that then I usually land somewhere near the middle. This time, anything goes, baby! Anyway, I wrote a quick php script to pull them out, and put it on my server, so here you go — a random Book of Mormon chapter each time you refresh the page.
For some reason, *every* time I run it, I get a really long chapter that comes up. I think the Lord is trying to tell me something. Doh!
November 26th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
That’s so cool!
November 26th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
what I find helpful is to have the institute manual opened up next to you while you study. They have little tidbits of information on what you read that are quite interesting. Besides, taking a break every few scriptures to catch up with the supplement helps to break the lull that can happen when reading.
Grab it.. it’s worth the $5. http://www.ldscatalog.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10151&storeId=10151&productId=42864&langId=-1&cg1=14117&cg2=14122&cg3=14129&cg4=14131&cg5=&sortId=3&sortOr=1&retURLtext=Back%20to%20‘Student%20Manuals’&retURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ldscatalog.com%2Fwebapp%2Fwcs%2Fstores%2Fservlet%2FCategoryDisplay%3FcatalogId%3D10151%26amp%3BstoreId%3D10151%26amp%3BcategoryId%3D14131%26amp%3BlangId%3D-1%26amp%3Bcg1%3D14117%26amp%3Bcg2%3D14122%26amp%3Bcg3%3D14129%26amp%3Bcg4%3D%26amp%3Bcg5%3D%26pageId%3D1%26pageCt%3D15%26sortId%3D3%26sortOr%3D1
Cheers!
November 28th, 2006 at 9:34 am
The Random Chapter is cool. I love the idea of being randomly presented with the scriptures. It reminds me of a challenge that my Seminary teacher would give us to randomly select a chapter and see how often it was an answer to prayer. I was just working on a similar random project. I just created a javascript include so people can add a random verse out of Scripture Tag (the site uses the MDP Scriptures) to their sites. There is more information on the Scripture Tag blog (http://scripturetag.com/blog/?p=27). Keep up the good work.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Cool idea. Can you set up a RSS feed that will feed/generate a random chapter daily? Thanks!
March 13th, 2008 at 8:35 am
@Richard,
Yah, I’ve been meaning to do that for a while. I need to get on that.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
It’s generating errors now ~ the site (lds.org) redesign may have affected this.