Better late than never.

It has again been far too long since I posted anything here. I've either been too busy or too lazy to get write anything. But now the wee hours of night are drawing near and my focus is becoming clear and I have nothing to do in the morning (at least I hope I don't!). So I'll just ramble about... stuff.

So I just graduated from high school a pair week ago. Not really a monumental event for me. I don't feel "Grown Up" or whatever people expect when they graduate. My parents didn't get me a car... or a driver's license, for that matter! But I'll live. Happily. Happily in my own grumpy way. I'm enjoying the relaxation while it lasts, though. I start up college next Monday, the 29th. I'm very excited but really scared too. I just pray my nerves won't shatter on me. I'll be taking English 101 and Pre-Calc II. So it's really a brush-up quarter. Nothing too new, just getting me ready and reminded about those things. A

That seems to be all for now. I have some ideas for future blog posts, so don't forget about this too soon. Though do keep in mind that school will have a higher priority than this, so I may not have time. I'll be done in August, though. So if I disappear, fear not, just post a comment in August and I'll try to get something written up.

First post in ages

Wow, it's sure been a while since I last made a blog (silly word, blog is, sound like something you'd find in a spooky marsh), and so much has happened, I wonder how many people still visit....
For starters, it's a new year! Happy New Year, peoples! And Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Good Freodinalliak day (Don't bother looking it up)!

We're finally over our dreadful winter snow storms (I hope?), which totally slammed us in december, and lots of rain since. The rivers are only now getting back to their proper size. Most of them were flooded over. Glad I live on a hill.
In more personal (but not so much so as to bore anyone) news, I've recently gotten quite a lot written about 7,000 words over 3 days (yay for winter break and vacation!). I also have a big basket of chocolate on my desk, which I snitch from every few minutes or so.
Tomorrow marks the one-week memorial of the Death of vacation (Let's have 30 seconds of respectful silence, in loving memory), but that only means my creative juices are all the more anxious to escape. And that leads me to the actual reason I sat down to this blog: Pictures! Nah, just kidding. They're only renders. I stayed up until midnight working on this last night, which was stupid since I had Soundboard duty at church this morning.
Without further ado, here they are:

Sphere

Ring

Those are my first non-fail (imho) cg/photo composition. In the unlikely case you couldn't tell, the copper ball/ring is the fake part. Be sure to zoom in close, and you'll be able to make out the reflections. That was the hard part, and the whole point. Feel free to tell me it's stupidly simple. I'll agree with you, pat your back, and give you a kiss. *oops* Chocolate kiss.... From the candy basket.... Oh forget it.

Volcanoes

This blog is like a volcano. At one time, it was active, and gushed forth lots of hot stuff. But at times, a volcano will go dormant, and it will sleep for a long time. But then it can erupt at any time. My blog is currently dormant (or is it?).

Music

I'm a really big Coldplay fanatic. So I'm really excited about their new album coming out later this month--Viva la Vida. I'm looking forward to this CD, since their last CD, X&Y, blew away my standards for music. Totally clean, lyrically deep, and musically exceptional, it has to be my favorite CD ever. I'd recommend checking it out from your library at least, if you've never heard of them.

Violet Hill. I thought I'd share:




*CORRECTION: It's not free, per say. It is available for listening on their website. It seems that they had a limited-time free download a while back, that's where I got it.

What a life.

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I haven't written any blogs in several weeks.  I've just had a complete lack of writing ability lately; I've not even been able to write any more of my story.  I haven't even been all that terribly busy.  I hope that I'll be back at it, churning out words and letters into late at night, sometime soon.  Rest assured, though, that I'll probably stick to non-controversial topics.

But I do want to get back int to the writing mood, and so I forced myself down and just wrote what came to my fingers.  The result is a short story, not fully developed, and not ended.  Perhaps I'll finish it someday.  Or, perhaps I'll leave it in my Unfinished Stories folder to collect cyber-dust.  Who knows?  We'll see.

Talk to you guys later,

~Nuntius

Playtime!

I've done a few really serious posts recently, so I thought it would be fun to do something a bit more fun for a change.  How many of us watch videos on YouTube?  Almost everybody (everyone who doesn't have a filter, that is).  But how many of us are sick of the horrible quality of the movies (No, not the stupidity of the kid pouring soup down his brother's back, I'm talking about the video quality, the sharpness of the picture)?  I know I am.  At least, I used to be.  However, I recently was shown this really cool trick: if you add &fmt=18 to the very end of the video url, it forces Youtube to play in higher quality!  See, when you upload a video to Youtube, it gets recompiled into FLV.  But, when you add this code, it plays an MPEG-4 version, which is higher quality.

Now for the caveats.  Since this video is higher quality, it is also larger (For one Music video I checked out, the FLV version was 11 MBs, while the MPEG-4 one was 22 MBs).  This means if you have slow internet connection speed, or a slow computer, you'll want to use this feature with caution.  Also, this doesn't work with every single video on Youtube.  I think it's just more recently uploaded ones.  

Enjoy.

Nature of Death

This entry is a continuation of my previous post, Ophidian's Oration.  This time I'm going to discuss the Death before the Fall.

 Often times, young-earth creationists claim that one of the reasons old-earth creationism is wrong is because they do not believe that anything died before the Fall.  Old-earth creationists (of which I am one), however, claim that the world is millions of years old and that animals were dying long before the Fall.  

Why do young-earth creationists believe no animals died before there was sin? They site this verse: Gen. 2:16-17 (ESV)  And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,  but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Let's step back and examine this verse.  This is the first and only command that God gives to Adam and Eve.  Thus, breaking this one command is the only way they could have sinned.  God makes a statement here "for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”.  Death.  What is death?  How would Adam have known what it means "to die", if he had never seen anything dead? It would have been like God telling you not to eat the cookies on the shelf, for in that hour you will glostugiliath.  I can imagine your blank face as you try to figure out what it means  to glostugiliath.  If Adam and Eve didn't know what death was, why would God tell them that they would die?

Also, I would like to point out that God appears to tell a lie. "for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die".  Well, we all know that Adam and Eve went on to live for a few years--enough to have several children--before they expired.  How do we fit that in with God's warning?  

I believe the answer appears a long time later, in book of Romans, chapter five.

 "For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.  Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.  For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.  Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

So we see here that through Adam came death, but through Christ comes life.  We all know that Jesus gives us eternal life, that's what we're taught from the very first time we hear about Him.  Now follow me here, and pay close attention.  Through Jesus, comes Life. Through Adam, came Death.  Are we comparing apples and oranges; Physical death vs. Spiritual life?  I don't think so.  I believe that Paul is talking about Spiritual life and Spiritual Death.  When Adam disobeyed God, he introduced not physical death, but the death of the soul.  For added support, in John 8:51 when Jesus said,  "I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."  [This sounds vaguely like the other side of what God said back in genesis ("If you do not keep my word, you will die").]  Is Jesus talking about physical death?  Absolutely not.  There is no one who has not died--Paul, John, Luke, Matthew, Mark--they died, some by very unpleasant means.  So, we can see that He meant spiritual death.  

Why would God punish sin with physical Death, while offering Spiritual Life through Christ?  I believe that Adam brought Spiritual Death to mankind, while Jesus Christ brought Spiritual Life.