The Scriptures in Audiobook Form, and How to Do It Yourself

also called "How Shell Scripts Saved the Day".

As I'm sure many of you know, I'm a Mormon, and as a Mormon, we are taught to read and study the scriptures. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has provided many ways to bring the scriptures to the people. In addition to the print edition of the scriptures, the Church provides them online, in mobile applications, and in audio form as a set of compact discs or a set of MP3 files which can be downloaded gratis and played on an audio player (e.g. an iPod).

The thing is, that they're provided as a set of MP3 files, with one MP3 file for each chapter of all the scriptures. This is fine if your MP3 player can only handle MP3 files, but if you have an iPod, iPhone, or iPad, your device supports audiobooks with the M4B extension, which are much nicer to manage, and they can remember your position as you listen to them. They can also be divided into chapters, but these chapters are in a single file, which is nice if you're listening through a book, so that the chapters play together in order as opposed to them playing in a random order. They also appear as audiobooks in iTunes, as opposed to music.

This is how I have it with my copy of the scriptures in audio form. I did this a few years ago, using a shareware app whose name I don't remember, on Macs in Queens College's computer labs (as I didn't have my own Mac at the time, and you could only make these audiobooks with chapters on a Mac). I was on these computers a few hours at a time, entering information by hand and the rather slow book-by-book process (and by "book" I mean the subdivisions found in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price). After a couple of weeks of this, I had a complete set of the Standard Works in audiobook form, for my enjoyment.

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago. My mom asks me if I can put a set of audio scriptures – in Spanish – on an iPod for someone. I figure, "Well, I might as well give it the same treatment."

This game of Scrabble is for adults only.

The title for this post is the text of a sign that should have been posted after a move I made in a game of Scrabble I was playing a few months ago. Here's the situation. This is what the board looked like when it came to my turn.

U

B

B

A

R

N

S

P

A

G

E

M

S

M

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E

T

F

A

R

T

N

A

H

A

T

J

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S

D

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I

N

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O

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E

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N

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D

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Y

O

K

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It should also be noted that there were no tiles remaining to draw, and my rack had these seven tiles.

Z10

X8

C3

S1

D2

N1

N1

It kinda resembled the bottom row of a QWERTY keyboard (except for the D, the S, and the extra N of course). I pondered over it for a while, and then, I found a word I could use. I put it on the board.

U

B

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X

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I explained that I put it there just to get rid of the X, and play continued from there. Of course, the mention of sex in the church in the context of being used in a game was so funny (especially with words like nun and amen already on the board), that the four of us playing (all but myself being adults who had children) couldn't help but laugh. A lot. One of the other players even suggested using the word, "HEYSEXY" to get rid of his tiles, which resulted in even more laughter. What's worse was that their kids were in the room, hence the desire for the sign with the post's title. One boy asked his father, "What's so funny?" I replied, "We'll tell you when you're older." Play continued, each of us putting down words where we could, sometimes without regard to what other non-words were being formed, and here's the board at the finish.

U

B

B

A

R

N

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P

A

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M

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H

M

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T

F

A

R

T

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F

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N

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A

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U

L

J

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D

G

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U

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U

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S

R

N

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Z

X

C

O

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N

D

D

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A

L

Y

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K

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So there you have it. You just saw "sex" in church. Now get your mind out of the gutter before I march in there and kick it out!