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...