Sabbath glory and updates

Here's a general overview of what I have been doing since my last blog post.

Some days have just been simple, with some anatomy, perspective, some reading, and enjoying Summer.
Because of all the fires around Corralitos and such, the air quality has decreased somewhat and a quazi-fog has been hovering around in the sky.

The highlight of last week was on Friday (and no, there was no pizza). Jessica's birthday/graduation party commenced at 6:30, with a fairly large gathering of mostly their family and some friends. Sarah didn't bring her camera, so she used mine (really, I was fully intending to use it at some point). Unfortunately, she shot with 1600 ISO, and the Powershot is only low-noise through 400 ISO. Oh well. Even the Wallaces showed up a little later, and I spent most of my evening chatting with Chris about Java, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and life (of course). We both agreed that he should come over pretty soon so we can hang out. *grins*

Concerning Java, the reason I have dipped into it is because Mr. Norman down at Trinity recommended it as a good programming language to start with, after hearing my interest of a new hobby. I actually haven't even completed the "Hello World!" tutorial as my JRE dev tools were not in the right location, so I couldn't compile the .java to make a source file. This week, I plan to finish the tutorial and move on.

With drawing, I have continued learning more about perspective, and have been doing a little bit of head-review in anatomy. I finally figured out what Riven Phoenix was trying to say in one of his videos, a certain line that I hadn't been adding. I really want to keep moving on at a fast pace, but it seems the program is going rather slowly, which is the best way to utilize it (lots of practice!). The goal is to get very strong art foundations, and then start doing more work in 3D.

Another good event graced my path on the magical day of Friday, in the form of a package from Amazon. Yes! My Blender physical simulation book finally came after a pre-order in December and a very long wait. I have to remind myself to take breaks every little while, and to not make it my only focus.

Yesterday was mum and dad's 28th anniversary, and they celebrated it by taking Sarah to the airport at some frightfully early time at 4 something in the morning. Joke aside, they did go wine-tasting at an almost-local winery down in Alameda, and Katherine and I just hung out, me reading my new book, and her, doing "stuff." We then ended up going out to "Rigatoni's", a seemingly-Italian restaurant in Castro Valley with fairly good food and tables suggestive of Denny's. I wonder if there was gum under the table. Overall, it was a moderate restaurant, not the best and not the worst, a middle-man if you want to give it a name.

After afore-mentioned event, dad said he wanted to rent a movie, so we got "The Iron Giant" a little-known film put out by a studio that went out of business (through production or after?) and was Brad Bird's first movie.The main reason we rented it (aside from an unkown free rental) was that dad heard a review/recommendation from Jason Farley. http://www.stannespub.com/thecellar/23/ (Track 17 if you're wondering). The movie is about storytelling, and tries to explain their importance. I won't spoil the ending for you but the strongly Christian themes near the end are so great, I have to give it to Bird for not just making another animated movie that can be thrown out along with Shark Tale, Bee Movie, and a whole slew of other movies. (I'm looking at you DreamWorks) It's as if studios think: "Hmm, there's this great thing called 3D animation; let's try and make a movie, even if the story is so awful and the themes are cliche and bad and see how much money we can make off it." Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would seem how it is.

Today was an absolutely fabulous day. Jason Farley has been preaching for the past couple weeks out of the Psalms (The 1st Sunday was on singing them), and simply put, his messages are the effective preaching and equipping of God's people. I can't say anything else aside from that it is awesome to see a man so blessed and full of joy teaching the Word to the Sheep. Trinity Covenant could not have ever asked for a better pastor. Thank you God for blessing us and bringing the Farley's to California.

Today's sermon was from Psalm 2, David's message to the heathen authorities, that also contains Messianic themes seen in lots of places in the Bible. God laughes at the rulers when they try and break his cords, and get away from His Law. He laughes when courts think they can define marriage as between the same sex. Their feeble attempts will be brought to nothing.

Tomorrow, I have some math, piano, guitar, and art; a light load for another good day. Good night and may your day be blessed!

~Bradley