Exercise and Weight

Don't kill yourself.

The educational resources of the internet are seemingly limitless. This is really awesome; and I don't even generally say that.

How to Raise your Grades By Half A Point
Khan Academy
MIT Courseware (just posting again in case you missed it)

Now, go learn something. ^_^

The First Bit

Alright - here is the first of my works that I said I would start posting.
It was made a few weeks ago in Blender (the 3D software I use).

I'm not making any promises to post clippings every week..

In some sort of preparation for a post on Harry Potter and magic, I want to make it quite clear that this blog has become something I did not want it to be - a sort of stuck-up place where my preachy self has posted things with a state of supposed importance; and, I am really very sorry for that.

All I am is a Christian, expressing my opinions and views on what I believe to be right - there is nothing more. 

Swine Flu Deception

Other religions promise to save men from their troubles; their idea of salvation involves lifting man magically out of all problems and giving him peace. Biblical faith says that God tests every man, and salvation is not deliverance out of testing, but victory over our problems, not flight but triumph. - R.J. Rushdoony

To start fresh, here is yet another post with some links that I found today.

Canon Press Free MP3 Downloads
Right and Wrong Ways to Close an Email
MITOpenCourseware

Fin.

A few things have happened since my previous post earlier this month, several being Into the Woods encore performances, various illnesses (poison oak and the flu), though thankfully not simultaneously, and the much anticipated visit of Kristin and Daniel.

The end.

I put off procrastination today and did what needs to be accomplished: Starting on walk cycles in my animation book! It's rather unfortunate that school starts fairly soon.. but thankfully, there are still a few weeks of vacation left. I consider this to be a sign that perhaps, sometime in the near future *laughs*, I could eventually start posting clippings of what I do throughout the week.

Right. It's off to work then!

Cheers,

Bradley

Several things I found today.. And yes, the last one is not at all related. ^_^

Last week, I started going through A Christian Survey of World History by R.J. Rushdoony.

How we interpret history is a major part of our world view. Pagans define the meaning of history according to man; e.g. all that man has learned, discovered, etc. For a Christian, it is blatantly obvious that because of our faith, the definition of history is not confined to humanity.
I would state the following, but it has already been written (by Rushdoony, of course).
"To a Christian, history is the story of the world, of the rise and fall of man, and of his kingdoms, and the struggle of two powerful forces to dominate history. It teaches us that the world began with God and that it shall end in terms of His purpose".

So Christians see that history is not only limited to the dominion of men. When God is included in the meaning of history, things start to make sense. We see that God has a purpose, even from before the beginning of time, and that within that span until the end, it is being made manifest. And now you can understand why the way people interpret things (specifically history) is so important; it shows not only what they believe in, but also makes known their overall view of life; how they function.

Just watched a feature on The Half-Blood Prince, it looks brilliant!!
Only 19 days to go. ^_^

Rev. 2.0

Okay, so Summer is finally here.

I've neglected this blog long enough in favor of other things, but the time has come to refresh it.
In fact, I was just working on a new post up until now, but the paragraph seems to have reached a dead end; so I will choose a new subject.. soon.

Cheers,

Bradley

An Abnormally Large Budget and New Stuff

Here's a little something to think about: What a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) looks like. It's something of a fright to see our government using the term in casual speech like it's a few dollars out of some people's pockets..


I know I haven't posted for a little while - But other things have come up like an encore performance of Into the Woods (-1), yard work (+1), and more frequent work on my current reading list (+1).

Soon, maybe I'll get around to making some more posts; and they should be getting better, as I plan to write about my views on Harry Potter, maybe finish my old post on our current situation, and start writing about some of my art experiences (hopefully animations, 3D, etc).

Cheers,

~Bradley

Update

After several long months, Into the Woods is now officially over... T_T
the entire journey being loads of fun.. Now I have to figure out what to do with my life.

At least that means that now there will be a bit more time for blogging! I do want to get around to writing about my thoughts on Harry Potter, hopefully that will be coming soon.

On a different note, I've been getting back into using Pandora, and one particular genre that I've come to really love again is techno, specifically trance-type and and songs with an upbeat style similar to "Ready, Steady, Go" by Paul Oakenfold. My current station is still very much a work-in-progress; just today, I added a new experimental song seed, and there still are a lot of songs that get thumbed down. ^-^ One of my very favorite songs is Dawn, by ATB (ignore the irrelevant WoW video). Also, there is a really good artist that I have discovered:Andy Hunter, a British Christian DJ.

So, erm, yeah, that's all for now.

Laters,

~Bradley

I found an interesting video where Ron Paul addresses the swine flu issue.
Watch it if you want to hear a sensible perspective of this situation!

Such Fun

Sweet. I just found out tomorrow is Talk Like Shakespeare Day.

Legalize Marijuana?

Oh yes... Ron Paul is right again.

Undermining Expectations

Man... why did the Harry Potter movies, Goblet of Fire and onward have to be so awful?!!They could have been so excellent. I'll have to go back in time and get Alfonso Cuaron to direct them all..

Er, yeah, 'Nuff said.

^_________________^

A little while ago, I finished tweaking my desktop and Firefox to match Mac OSX;
well, at least for now... ^_^

Firefox
Desktop

The Firefox theme is Foxdie by Tanjihay, with a few of his included modifications,
and my desktop is styled with Mac4Lin, a theme that purposes to mimic Mac OSX's user interface.

~Bradley

Oi! Can You Hear This??!

Due to my faster recovery, I thought I might post this interesting link I found last night. I could hear only through 17 kHZ, and that was with the volume up a bit louder than at 15 kHZ.

Happy Friday!

~Bradley

Well, well, your author finally decided to reply to all his fan mail imaginary letters filled with awfully annoying comments about his (did I mention imaginary?) lack of "observations"...

He attributes his short absence to the cause of being "under the weather", if you know what I mean, claiming that he is recovering well, do to the enormous moderate amounts of tea he is drinking, er, or was that hot rum? That is all I have to say for now; Mr. Machamer will be well soon enough to write the next post.

Sincerely,

Executive Secretary to Bradley Machamer, Head-in-Chief of the Department of Literary Nonsense,

Alastaire Lockwood

Just this evening, I am starting to re-read one of my animation books I have dropped several times before (The Animator's Survival Kit. And no, I don't mean that sort of dropping). It is really frustrating when you are diligently doing something from time to time in a scheduled sort of way, and end up in some way or another ceasing from practicing or doing whatever that thing was, only to end up dusting it off a few months (or maybe more) later to start over again, having lost the benefits of what you learned, at least partially.

For me at least, I have suffered the consequences of that several times, and it is hard to stay focused on something you want to do, when each week brings different workloads and focuses. I guess the key is to just keep slowly plugging away at it...

'Night.

~Bradley

Fresh...

As you can see, I finally decided to change the template of my blog (don't mind the monster, he won't eat the whole page). Since I don't do my own website design, I went with a pre-made template (as a fair bit of people do), something kind of fun that stands out a little more than my previous minimalistic one.

That's all for now.

~Bradley

Crysis Screenshots

Thought I haven't played it, I've seen screenshots of Crysis and it is beautiful (for 3D graphics). This link showcases some particularly realistic scenes people have made in the game engine. It's amazing to think how games will only get more realistic, with real-time ray tracing and such...

Without a Title

It's interesting to note how much time entertainment takes out of our life (not necessarily in a bad sense), and how everyone enjoys an excellent film.

After just watching a movie (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), I was thinking about morals and stories. The foundation is the story, off of which all the other elements will pivot. Of course, a final composition will also require everything else to be top-notch, but films will fail with the lack of an excellent story. The reason why this is true is because humanity's own world is designed the same way; our God is a master storyteller.

And this is also true since we find ourselves identifying and relating with certain aspects of stories like the battle between good and evil manifested in a certain way, because the relationship is the same in our world. Obviously the powers of both sides vary from story to story, but you get the idea.

That's all I'm going to write for tonight (maybe there will be a few more posts on this subject), but I felt like I had to post this, as I came rather suddenly into the mood that was perfect this post, that made me feel in awe of the way God has created each individual person in His image with the vivid and intricate depths of the mind that enable us to go out and create things such as films, music, books, and so on, but also giving us each a soul to be able to identify and relate to each single work in the precise manner the author desires us to.

This hard-to-explain mood is the kind that makes you wonder at how God has not created everything dull and gray, but added color in a wonderful way that makes us realize the unfathomable depths of our Creator and how we ourselves could not have been designed any better than we originally were, and shall continue to be transformed into, from bios to zoe, as C.S. Lewis would say.

Cheers,

Bradley

I've been slightly absent in posting for a few weeks, but here's something new.

Just today, I listened to an excellent lecture on Harry Potter from Jeffrey Meyers, a CREC pastor
(at least I think he is). It covers various arguments and criticisms against the novel series, positive themes and elements, and even goes on to talk a little about the author's faith. If you have negative thoughts about Harry Potter, maybe you should give this a listen and then see if you are interested in
reading one of the best-selling series of all time. And then again, don't unless you want to of course. ^_^

Philosopher's Sorcerer's Stone, here I come!

~Bradley

I came upon this interesting article on my lunch break today.
Once you think about it, it makes sense. Now, I'm off to do work with my uber-enthusiastic non-procrastinating attitude!

Erm, hopefully you understood that was a partial joke.

~Bradley

Here's just a quick link to a short and timely LewRockwell blog post on presidential inaugurations.
Something to think about for tomorrow....

Flickr

Everybody loves a peek inside Pixar; or at least I think they should. ^^

Hurray for the weekend!

I apologize for the recent absence of posts. Starting school and choir and other various things
has led to my life being a bit busier than during Christmas break, but I'll try to make time to blog
fairly often, even though that seems to be the last thing on my mind at the end of the day.

And yes, I have noted that there are no readers (or at least ones that do not want to comment).

That pretty much sums up what's happened lately.

Bye.

~Bradley