looking to hit something

okay...i've been playing around with an idea in my head for a few days now...i was going to model a barrel in Blender (which i did), create a crate in Google Sketchup (changed it to a signpost), create some scenery in a Blender/Sketchup/Wings combo and setup and render scene in Blender. so i'm done with Sketchup for the moment, having exported to Google Earth...and try to import the file into Blender...but can't find the importer (Blender 2.44)! who stole the importer? why? do i get to hit them (or at least their monitor)? die, die, die! rethinking it - don't. i can't fix it yet, and you won't be able to if you're dead...ah well

last week i got to attend some sessions of the "Open Door" meeting at Canaanland. The guest ministers were Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and Creflo Dollar. They kinda sounded the same (but at least i got to stay in the same room with them - it was a rather large room with lotsa other people in there, though ;) as when i get their messages and watch them on TV. no matter. it was a great and rather grueling experience (or at least going to and from Canaanland was, anyway) all in all.

i guess you'd have heard about C.S Lewis by now, and if you haven't, he authored the children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. what you might not know is that he wrote other books, such as The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain and The Screwtape Letters.

now, i am in no way a C.S Lewis expert, but i'd never heard of the last title i mentioned above until yesterday. The Screwtape Letters is - if you will - a fictional account of the correspondence between a demon, Wormwood, and his uncle, Screwtape, as well as Wormwood's field notes. it basically outlines strategies for snatching human souls from "the Enemy" (God), and is very thought-provoking. while i celebrated Lewis' work in the past, i don't think you'll remain quite the same if you can get a copy of this work and read it. read it, and above all, think about what it says. 'nuff said.

Blender 2.44

a scant day after i read of the possibility of Blender 2.44 being released after @ndy won the splash screen contest, it's out! and since i finally got a fix for my ATI video card's problem with Blender, i'm going to be trying it out. maybe my gallery will finally get a new entry.

Inordinate laziness.

i heard that Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, created it because he was inordinately lazy. i also recently read that the person who developed the first programming language did so because of a similar reason. unfortunately, i can't remember his name - all i remember is that he's dead and got the Turing award.

anyhow, i'm developing this application and it's taken forever so far, and i'm not done. just when i had an end in sight, i had to go and break the code, and so i'm starting over. anyhow, i'm using wxWidgets as the application framework as well as the STL, and IBPP. i was not paying attention in church on sunday, choosing instead to work on my code, when Biola and i had a discussion about it. he wanted me to use Ultimate++ (U++), and proved his point by creating an application in less than 5 minutes using U++'s TheIDE. he also recommended using Qt over wxWidgets - because he's lazy and wants everything done quickly. i have the Qt 4 opensource edition, and some documentation for it - but i haven't just got round to using it just yet. i really would have loved to use U++, but the fact that i don't have offline documentation for it is kind of a pain. maybe i'm not just lazy enough.

Things need to change

so here i am in a cybercafe, since the internet connection i use at home sucks, and i'm trying to get a large volume of materials (about 50MB, give or take). i get told that the police is coming over, and in less than 5 minutes the cafe is nearly empty and the doors are locked. i guess i got warned specifically because i'm using my laptop and they go for guys with laptops. that's hard. i can't even move around freely anymore because some people are trying to get rich quick by ripping off other people online. really hard. anyway, my time will soon be up, and i'll leave the cafe. things really do need to change, and more importantly, i need to change.

What do they teach kids these days?

i seen it, but it's really hard to believe it. as you might already know, my school was closed down just before exams started. after loafing and goofing off at home, i decided today to take a look see at some materials in preparation for my exams. so here i am, looking through the complete course list of MIT's OpenCourseWare, and i see a course titled Magic, Witchcraft and the Spirit World under Anthropology. dude, like, what is that? what, they ran out of regular stuff to teach kids these days? time was, when you went to MIT, you went to learn something about technology, and you became an actual witch to learn about witchcraft - or you joined a seminary and heard about it. now, you can grab the details of witchcraft online - for free too, since the entire OpenCourseWare is licensed under the Creative Commons 2.5 license. that's just weird, for lack of a better word.

Opensource 3D on Slashdot

since Woody introduced me to Slashdot, i've always seen it mostly as a comedy site. for crying out loud, you'd expect nerds to have more sense. i rarely take anything other than a announcement seriously if it's from Slashdot. it seems like Slashdot lives up to its reputation: i got this article from BlenderNation (the original Slashdot article is linked therein). God help opensource developers!

now ladies and gentlemen, we present...sand!

from Wired, via GMail...

Guys only: what does running water do to you?

i subscribed to the theory that when some other guy is taking a leak, you'll be motivated to take one too. however, i never did believe that running water makes you want to take a leak - until rather recently when i noticed it. i thought it was just coincidence until i took a leak, stepped into the shower right after, and wanted to take another leak while in the shower. that said, nobody bother threatening me with tales about water!

nothing to blog about

but i do need to keep this blog alive. ciao!