Rawr? http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/06/07/funny-pictures-abonm-abomilnal-rawwrr1/

For all who are interested, I just finished up a (double-spaced) 15-page paper regarding the arguments for God's existence. I webbified it as best I could and put it on the wiki Templar's Arguments for God's Existence, in case anyone wanted to read some philosophical stuff. I thought you might like it, Silvie, because I spend a fair bit of time claiming that an infinite regress is impossible, and say that Aquinas' argument is the strongest of the three we read about. Considering the paper is titled "An Applause of the Cosmological Argument and Denial of the Infinite Series", I'm quite certain you'll approve :D

To any who read it, it may be best to copy and paste it into Word, though I fear you'll lose the italics if you do, and I really used those a lot when talking about Anselm's little trick with words :P
Further note: These are not my arguments for the existence, despite what the wiki name says. It's just my page. And the essay will be turned in shortly (like, 45 minutes after I make this post) so no stealey etc, intellectual property and rawr :D

Edit: Also, now it's time for my two page paper on Hindemith's "Harmonie Der Welt" for tomorrow ^^'

Diary note to self that is obviously not a personal entry for whatever reason: (laziness?)

The problem I've discussed on occasion with my 3D stuff is that it usually ends up looking flat, like they all have the same perspective. Well, that was the issue, believe it or not. Change the perspective, and the picture looks different. It took me months to make this conclusion, so apparently A=A and therefore change A, and I change A. It's groundbreaking logic. To a one-year old, maybe XD
But perhaps to be more fair to me, I knew I needed to change perspective and exactly how to do so eluded me. But I kept saying, "it probably has to do with the zoom feature" which would change perspective. Astonishingly, I believe the zoom slider is actually labeled 'orthographic perspective' on Terragen 2. Still couldn't really be sure it would change the perspective apparently :P In any case, I've decided once and for all that the zoom is in fact the feature I need to use to give my pictures a different feel to them, one that places the viewer into the picture rather than outside the picture. See, I couldn't tell how to use the zoom feature, because I pulled the slider to one side or the other, getting really extreme effects. I have not tested, but I would bet that I need very slight variances to get proper effect. Of course, I had no idea what zoom really did, since the effects were kind of vague and hard to predict.

Today, though, I was looking at nature and said, "Zoom would do that." Don't ask me how I know; apparently intuition at times sees it reasonable to put knowledge into your head that you could have sworn it never had. But I was marveling at a view of clouds that I had today, because it was in a wide-screen view (of the long window of a bus, so it was framed essentially) and the ground/trees seemed to form a sort of inverted semi-circle underneath that managed to frame the bottom of the scene but provide no obstruction to the clouds. Which is rare. Usually I have to crane my neck or walk somewhere else to get an unobstructed view of the sky, and usually the elsewhere has it's own obstructions. So I was rather pleased with discovering this brief moment of wide screen cloud footage :D
But it seemed to me that the clouds were of larger size than they should be, compared to the world around me. I figured that it seemed like the camera brought the clouds closer to the scene while the ground stayed in the same spot, but they appeared smaller too. So my mind said, "zooming in will make the center of the image appear the same distance away, but rather than fill in the whole screen with the image, it sort of diminishes what appears on the outer edges of the picture." In other words, to get a proper cloudscape in a digital program, perhaps I should increase the zoom a little with the camera directed at the clouds. The ground should seem to shrink in size compared to the feature. In any case, whether this is the proper application, it seems I now know the use of the zoom feature, and it is to put the image in the appropriate perspective, so the viewer gets the impression of having things to look to at his or her left or right as well as what's shown in the picture. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was before, but this was the problem and now is the solution :D

Suggested reading along the lines of which I've seen Viking post:
Science will be the death of us all- coming to a Hadron Collider near Earth, Sept. 10!
http://www.cracked.com/article_16583_5-scientific-experiments-most-likely-end-world.html

Psychology shows we're all jerks at heart-
http://www.cracked.com/article_16239_5-psychological-experiments-that-prove-humanity-doomed.html

Some freaky weird mental disorders?
http://www.cracked.com/article_15650_5-mental-disorders-that-can-totally-get-you-laid.html

So philosophy class is pretty much my favorite class evar, without question. Until this afternoon, at least, when I went to composition class and we spent like half an hour just listening to how four pitches could sound if you placed them in different arrangements of the octave <3

http://www.ballisticpublishing.com/
Interesting page. The site sells books publishing digital artwork. All very expensive to buy, but it allows a book-preview if you select a specific book and look for the preview part. I glanced through a number of books. The artwork all looked very nice. Might be worth a glance sometime, though I wish I could look at the pictures in larger detail :P Lots of architectural stuff, mostly in the Elemental series, but there are other things in there too.

Aradon's Workplace . It's coming along. Flowers are still too big, I think, but I am rather pleased with them considering I made them from scratch :P Still missing the grass though. I'll add that in next, then unless I'm missing something obvious, I mess with the clouds once more. Any comments now would be appreciated, before things get ultrafinalized.

Oh, and blue and red stuff on Elftown when you mouse over things o.O I don't like the constantly morphing boxes. It's like, "I click here o.O my browser just readjusted itself just so I can type here." No thanks. (In regards to the 'comment' box and the 'goto wiki' box in the right, and all those sorts of things.)

Hurray, the notifications that I want are at the top now :)

Music Concept
In construction, I'll add more observations as they come to me. Input from all are welcome- instrumentation, style, progressions, key, rhythms, I want to know it all! :D

<diary:1034778>
Because it merits reposting.

Also, I'm thinking of a making a new wiki for people to add to that lists what sorts of things in music imply different things to different people. In other words, such and such in music gives the music a sad feeling. Such elements could be rhythm, instrumentation, pitches, articulation, or I'll probably include a section for linkage to whole pieces for complete audio inclusion. The wiki would mostly be to act as a guide for me to write program music by. For example I'd be like, "Oh I want to write an exciting song. Let's see what sort of stuff I should use."

Because I know iippo will love: http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=qsz37gm5t3

I like watching Kura's Color Contest. No particular reason, but it provides a nice prompt for me to at least consider for the next Terragen piece. Not sure what I could do with 'white' though. Snow, perhaps, but that's never been a strong point, and more importantly no particular image idea comes to mind for me to use to work on it. It did get me thinking, though, about if music has colors. Can a piece be predominantly white? And if so, is it white to everyone? And how does this question relate to that silly idea of 'is my red someone else's green?' :P

On the other hand, my lack of productiveness is getting to me. I figured it would when the time is right. I spend a lot of my life waiting for the right time. It's served me well so far. My brother keeps mentioning to me that I ought to be spending the summer composing if I plan on being a composer. Easy to say, but how the heck does one do that? I have no freaking idea how to go about practicing composition. I keep waiting for a class that actually teaches composition, but I get the idea that by the time I get there it'll be expected that I have a lot of experience in the field already.
To make matters worse, there are all sorts of these teenagers who are outdoing me before they're even out of high school. I certainly don't know how they do it. But I'm compared to them automatically, since there are few enough composers as it is. I don't know what the heck to do about my situation. It's like, I missed the boat or something, and now I'm stuck -.-

Elysium

In verdant forests and flowered fields
Under the vast celestial sky,
In contentment and sleep’s sweet appeals,
There the blessed dead lie.

In the world above, the realm of the living,
Great deeds won great fame and wealth.
In endless toil were these men their efforts giving,
Searching for happiness and good health.

In the springs of fame they sought to quench their thirst.
Instead they drowned in their ambition and desire.
The more they drank, the more they drowned, yet never sated.
Now content in Elysium, peace and serenity come first.
The men of Elysium have learned to quench their fire.
In the Elysian Fields lie the blessed, happy dead.

You can do anything at Zombocom. The only limit is yourself. You will always be welcome at Zombocom. This is Zombocom: http://www.zombo.com/

Taking suggestions for new Terragen picture. Current ideas I'm considering:
Solar Sea (:o Abstract?!)
Neverland (not likely, my last attempt at a boat model did not work out well)
Above the Clouds (visual rendition this time! Greater than or equal to the musical version!)

Render completed: http://aradon-templar.deviantart.com/art/Banks-of-the-Waterworks-86143584
Number of hours spent rendering: could very well be 666.

Interesting bit of text I was just reading, I thought I'd write something down as it applies to me. I was reading a book about cult activity in Corinth in Late Antiquity (around 600 BC) by Richard M. Rothaus. It was discussing the influence of Christianity for a moment, and said, "As the church slowly assumed the obligations of social relief and even public works, it and its leaders became increasingly important to the people and the city."

This struck me as interesting, because it shows a transfer of responsibility of public care from the government to another institution. I've always thought that public care should be the people's job, to take care of themselves and those around them. Here it's another institution that's taking that job, but it made me think. The US government seems to be fighting for the responsibility of taking care of the public, almost like it's in fear of losing the job that people really care about. If the US government stopped providing social security and welfare programs, would it be devalued in the populace's eyes? Probably.

If the church grew as a result of this and took over social care, would it eventually replace the governmental institution, and give rise to a theocracy? Probably not, I'd bet. But it seems that is how Christianity spread and became so influential. The next thought is one of strange irony. By caring for the populace, you gain access to greater authority, and eventually become exposed to corruption. So through kindness an institution became corrupt.

My curiosity is that if the government stopped welfare programs and people picked up the duty on a local, individual scale (i.e. "My neighbor is sick and can't work, I should make some dinners for them and give them a bit of cash, since I'm doing well"), well, the people can't all rise to power simultaneously. One thought would be that there would be a revolution and that the people would replace the institution with a new institution that would relieve them of the burden of caring for themselves (i.e. what we have now). This outcome would indicate that it would actually be preferable for the current government to continue aiding the populace, because not doing so would merely result in a revolution and a new institution that would help out (i.e. no change).

The other possibility would be that everyone takes on this altruistic nature, which would imply that government is hardly needed. All that would be required of it would be to provide defense from outside forces and an order-keeping system for interior stability (i.e. army and police force). If initiative on a local scale is great enough, then the populace could form local militia, and a loose coalition in the event of a large scale invasion.

This last idea seems kind of ideal and weak, and overall unlikely. It's merely my musings. There would need to be an overarcing governing body declaring unifying laws for commerce between local districts and such, but such a national body would be largely diminished.
Pointless musings, but fairly interesting to consider.

Dude. Portal, in 2D flash. All it's missing (besides a third dimension and sexy graphics) is GLaDOS.
http://armorgames.com/play/107/portal-the-flash-version