Whenever I look at something someone else has created, be it visual art, performance, music, or even mental concepts, opinions, or theories, I try to understand them. How they work, what the intent of it is, etc. I think that's pretty natural. I've noticed a strange bias effect, however. When observing the creation, I form my own initial opinions about them. I could support those opinions with further observation and analysis to come to what I think would be fairly strong conclusions about the creation. However, if I happen to come across a perspective that shows what the creator might have intended, or get some sort of insight as to how it's 'supposed' to work, then the perspective has a frighteningly large impact. Knowing what the creator intended to focus on and how it was supposed to come together, I invariably end up analyzing, "did it do what the creator intended?" And most frequently I can justify how the creator was successful in those specific goals or features. This hugely skews my opinion of the work.

An example might clarify what the heck I mean. Often in my music education I end up listening to and analyzing modern pieces of music. My initial reaction is that it's terrible and I don't like it. Abstractly I feel this is usually justified. The pitches are not at all pleasant, and there's no compelling force behind the music. But if I listen to it for a while longer, and focus on what I feel the unifying themes are, I end up going, "Oh I see, there's an emphasis on a few of these intervals, there is a textural pattern of ABA, and there's a figure introduced early that undergoes a series of variations." Having recognized this, and what the focus of musical development is, all of a sudden I decide that the piece of music is successful. Do I like listening to it? Nope. Do I feel that it's compelling yet? Nope. But since I know that the composer achieved what he set out to, I tend to favor it as successful and valid, and maybe even good. Even though I'd never enjoy such music.

I just find that inside perspective to be a scarily affirming bias. I have no proof that the things I identified were the foci of the work. I found an interpretation, justified it, and used that to justify approval of the work. It's due to this bias that I'm actually kind of opposed to studying things I like. I feel like gaining an understanding of a work limits my ability to impartially experience it. Which I guess is really obvious actually. But you know. Who would have figured understanding something would limit you.

Depressing flash games? Yes the do exist, apparently. http://armorgames.com/play/4918/the-company-of-myself

The story of a hermit. It actually briefly reminded me of Up.

I'm currently writing a research paper on Debussy's only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande. It's based on a Symbolist play by Maeterlinck of the same name, with only minor cuts of scenes. Debussy is known for his unorthodox harmonies and inventive exploration of new timbres in instrumentation, especially in wind instruments, and his approach to opera was quite interesting. The play itself is rather surreal, and the music for the opera has been described as 'atmospheric' which heightens the surreal aspect. In any case, I've really enjoyed reading about it, and it makes me want to write a similarly-styled opera. In particular, the recitative style I thought was especially effective.
So anyways, this is where I jot down my incomplete plot ideas so I can at least remember them.

Kingdom A is a large and prosperous woodlands kingdom, renowned and successful for its emphasis on learning and scholarship. It's an idealistic kingdom that tries to maintain peace and order. Bordering it (and sharing a border with each other) are two lesser kingdoms, with whom relationships are tenuous, but not hostile. The opera begins with the princess of one of the other kingdoms (B, lets say) being happily married to the prince of Kingdom A, cementing an open and friendly relationship between the two kingdoms. The prince and princess are delighted to be married (and probably sing a love duet in the first act, which is unusual to say the least), but shortly thereafter a messenger arrives from kingdom B saying that the third kingdom has invaded the second, and requests that the king of A attacks C in retaliation. He is opposed, of course, but after pointing out the bond from the princess, and the fact that the military of A would be used to protect B rather than as a weapon, he reluctantly agrees.

A short time later, the Knight-Captain of Kingdom A relays information to the king that, upon arriving in Kingdom C, their armies found no hostility or signs of war, though they nearly started one themselves with their invasion. The king calls the messenger of B in for an explanation, and the messenger attempts to assassinate the king. The princess rushes to stop him, and is caught in between, and killed. (I'd like a better explanation here, but this will suffice for now.) The Prince enters just as the messenger has wounded the king (a would-be-fatal blow diverted by the Princess), and in a rush of outrage strikes the messenger down. The messenger's dying mockery informs everyone that it is too late, that both kingdoms B and C are invading together to take Kingdom A for themselves while the army is diverted. The Prince vows to put an end to their scheming, and then to himself promises justice for his wife's death.

Later, the armies have been repulsed and might Kingdom A has fought its way to Kingdom B's capital and castle, where the prince confronts the evil king, is ready to kill him in vengeance, but instead sees the emblem of the kingdom on the King's chest, a rose and a drop of blood. The colors (which I intend to develop as a symbol/theme) remind him of the happiness he had with the Princess and how murder had taken it all away. He then forces everyone out of the castle and lights the castle on fire, symbolically destroying his authority.


Obviously it's a complicated plot, which is one problematic contrast with Debussy's Pelléas. I wanted to develop some symbols of the wind, the color red, and ideally two or so others, which will give it a little more substance for literary analysis. Finally, the ending is fairly incomplete. There is not much resolution. It can use some more working, if I ever decide to take this up.

I had a rant in here about that 'Evony' browser game and how its ads such because they basically look like porn ads and are entirely irrelevant to the game itself, but it got erased by my archenemy 'navigating to another page while letters are in the diary box'. It was complete with the angry face that ad gives me, which looks like this: >:(

The other half of the entry, before it disappeared was some links to Final Fantasy piano collections, courtesy of BlueLaguna.net . It's good stuff, for the most part, I'd give it a listen. I do apologize though for whoever listens to the Cosmic Wheel one from FF XI. It is a blatant, and horrible rip off from Jurassic Park. There is nothing I can do to help this. I am sorry :P

FF VI: http://bluelaguna.net/music/ff7pc/mp3s.php
FF VIII: http://bluelaguna.net/music/ff8pc/mp3s.php
FF XI: http://bluelaguna.net/music/final-fantasy-xi-piano-collections/mp3s.php

And the rest of the Final Fantasy selections, of course: http://bluelaguna.net/splash/ff.php

Hope you guys enjoy them. No real reason for linking, just listening to all of them and thought they were nice and maybe someone else might like them :)

Had a fun dream which contained a particularly picturesque scene that I shall describe here for future reference, should I ever attempt to reproduce it in Finale.

Basically a simple scene, it was looking up a hillside. The horizon was complemented with trees, close enough that individual leaves could be made out easily, and the leaves were various colors, orange, red, green, and white. Sunlight was flooding the horizon behind them, causing the light to illuminate all the leaves, and bleaching the sky white too. There wasn't much sky above the trees, so the majority of the picture is filled with green-brown colored grass (the color being a result of the sunlight, not deadness). There ought to be another tree closer, in the middle ground. It was really windy, and thus lots of leaves blowing around everywhere. Finally, two people were running around playing.

The picture overall is very warm, soft, and glowing. I can do most of it, but the people, which fill up the focus of the picture, will be difficult. Oh, if only I had downloaded Poser when I had the chance :(

Zomg picture is rendered. 265 hours of solid rendering. My computer needs a break. And you need to check it out :P
http://aradon-templar.deviantart.com/art/Star-Ocean-134773596
Yeah, same old landscape formula, but honestly I'm using new shaders every time. Included in this installment of moon over body of water are post-worked stars and in-program light manipulation, as well as some good technical work on water. Hurray!

I have a job, and it makes me sad :P
Posting this here because it is a momentuous occasion where Templar has actually bothered working, instead of expecting everything to be handed to him on a golden platter. Needless to say, I find it less than pleasant. On the bright side, I learned how to make omelets today, and there is the prospect of learning the art of smoothie making in the future.

In any case, you should all be sufficiently shocked that I actually went and got a job, and even more so that I am still alive, the spoiled loser that I am :)

I'm doing work and I'm Still Alive.

o.O

Wow. Lots of clouds. <3
http://retro-grade1.deviantart.com/gallery/

Whew. After much fiddling with GIMP, I now have the groundwork for a starfield, per the tutorial at http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html . If any of you would like the GIMP file, I would be happy to share. All that is left to create your starfield is to erase stars from the large and medium layers, and then clone brush away with screen or normal brush modes to shape the sky as you wish. After that, you may flatten, then duplicate, gaussian blur that layer (as described in the link), set that layer to screen, and then colorize the image to get essentially a really nice looking starfield :P

Anyways, point is, I have a file that serves as the groundwork for all this, so if you are interested in obtaining this, let me know. The tutorial was designed for Photoshop, so GIMP users have a tough time getting this groundwork, hence I'm writing this :)

OOTS seems to be going through an "Everybody's evil now" story arc XD

From Viking's diary questions thing:

"Will this Friday be a good one?"


Hahahaha

Silbee is making a wonderful forum here for us artists to use to improve our technique. If you are interested in honest, precise feedback on your work, you should check out:

I have no need of your god-damned sympathy.

Aha, random insight into my personal life that will be pretty uninteresting to everyone else, but I'm putting it here so I can rememeber :P

Reason I don't date other people at this time: not because I'm no good in social situations, too shy, too busy, or any of those other excuses I've claimed to myself. It is, in fact, because I view myself as a piece of art in that I don't consider myself a complete, refined work that is worth sharing with other people. Until I'm happy with myself as a finished piece (or at least a good draft of it), I'm not showing anyone :P

I was just happy I was able to articulate it clearly this time, since I've been hinting at it but never quite getting it right for months years.

Stole from a friend on Facebook. Supposedly this list comes from the BBC, and they expect the average person not to have read more than six of these.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Yarr
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Yarr
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling Yarr?
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (a good deal)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Yarr
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell Yarr
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Yarr
Running Total: 6

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott Yarr
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Yarr (almost done, at least)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien Yarr
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger Yarr
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Running total: 10

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Yarr
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Yarr
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck Yarr
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Running total: 13

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Yarr
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Yarr
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Running total: 15

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding Yarr
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Running total: 16

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert Yarr
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Running total: 17

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Yarr
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Running total: 18

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Yarr
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Running total: 19

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert Yarr
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Running total: 20

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams Yarr
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Yarr
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Grand total: 22

So, continuing an examination of God as a transcendental being from my previous diary entries. God exists separate from time, and as thus I am going to assume He cannot change. Perhaps He appears differently from our in-time perspective, like we can only glimpse a portion of Him at any given time, so it looks like He is changing but really isn't. Perhaps. I'm not really interested in that at the moment. Instead, I am interested in the fact that, when God made the universe, if we assume that space and time are in fact tied together as is commonly believed by scientists, then God created time simultaneously with existence. If so, it seems to me that God still existed apart from time, and so all of time and space were created simultaneously. I'm not being clear here, so let me try to explain what I am getting at. It seems to me that ALL of time was created, start to finish, with the act of Creation. I'm not talking about predeterminism, where by creating the first cause, He has necessitated a specific outcome, but that by creating time, He has created all moments at once, or so it must seem to a being outside of time. God would view all moments as one thing.

Which gives rise to a problem, for me: he old conundrum of why God would make something imperfect. One cannot say that it was with the intent of the final product being perfect, because this present moment comes packaged with the final product. Creation has already been flawed, and thus it will always retain this flaw. How can we be sure it is flawed, you ask? What if the world is a sort of purifying stage for us, and is functioning as intended? I would point out the need for Jesus, then, to come down and suffer as he did. HIS soul was not in need of purification. If the world were perfect for its task of purification, then Jesus wouldn't have been needed. Another counterexample I would offer is that mankind has rebelled against God. Isn't that flaw enough? In an ideal universe, wouldn't that sort of thing that is by nature and definition absolutely 'wrong' be kept out?

Anyways. I also figured today that in order to make a series of moments last an eternity implies complicated math :P We can define a moment by an infinitely small unit of time. Essentially, in any given period of time, be it five minutes, an hour, or half a nano second, there are an infinite number of moments. To stretch any specific length of time into eternity would require that these infinitely small and infinitely numerous time units would gain some sort of length, such as a millisecond. Then, no matter how short of a length you give them, the infinite number of moments expands into an infinitely-long period of time. I'm not sure what this means, other than that the end product of a series of moments stretched into eternity is altogether very similar to our current experience of time, and this underscores the relativity of time. Perhaps our universe is really like, two minutes stretched into billions of years, a brief flicker in some other universe's eyes :P (Do not ask me where I was headed with this. All I know is that it's really boring to stand on a bus.)

For those of you interested in text art, or writing, or word clouds, http://www.wordle.net/ is an interesting site. Paste text into it, and it creates a word cloud based on frequency of words, with choices to select how it organizes them. This caught my eye because I pasted a bit of writing into it that I did, and the results immediately struck me as a valuable way to look for variety in word choice and see if you are overusing some words, or names. Large words mean you use it a lot, so make sure you have a good reason :P

To contradict my earlier diary, I have remembered that simply because a line can be described as Y at time X doesn't mean that it has a single identity and therefore has no change. Such a graph's derivative represents the change of the graph. The function y=x as a whole does have a change, and therefore similarly, a being existing across all time has a derivative, and therefore changes.

I do think, however, that perhaps I have misconstrued the meaning of 'transcending time and space', simply treating it as 'existing through all time and space' rather than rising above and beyond. A transcendent being doesn't simply exist across all time, but beyond all time. Which boggles my mind, so I'll end this here, and contemplate its meaning a bit more :P

Another odd thought occurred to me. I was wondering what it would mean for someone to be transcendental through space and time. I figured they would thus occupy all space and time in existence. For them, time wouldn't be something traveled through linearly, of course, but set out more like a picture, all events at all times happening in different locations in the picture. For example, take a simple timeline, and each event in the timeline happens in a different physical location, rather than in a different time, so I think transcending time would be something similar to that. Similarly, a being that could walk in four dimensions would find traveling forward in time similar to walking in front of them, a physical location to be journeyed to.

That is all well and good, but how would you define a being that transcends all of that? More specifically, how could they change? I myself can change by being one type of person one day, then being another type the next. I am said to change in personality. But a being like that couldn't really change, could it, since it always exists at all times? (The word 'always' there seems kind of meaningless so-) It might not be all that different from me changing, since I exist over a set time frame, and change along that time frame still counts as change, but I don't consciously exist in, or am not aware of other times. As an identity, I exist only now, and the fact that I am different from the past identity means I change. An entity that exists always throughout a timeframe is always the same identity, and there's no 'past identity' to compare to. It exists as a whole series of things all at once. For example, identity X could be A at time a', B at time b', and etc, but that is like describing parts of its body rather than different states, if you consider for it that time is similar to geographic location. Just like 'just above its head you find short hair', 'just after the Industrial Revolution it was unhappy'. Both describe features at a given time/location, rather than changes from A to B.

Now, I worked so hard to rationalize (however unclearly or unreasonable- it is nearly midnight for me, so my apologies :P) that a time-transcending being does not change even though it is different at different times because it solves, after a fashion, a dilemma I've had with God. God is a time/space transcending being, who is also not supposed to change. However, there's a clear change between Old Testament God and New Testament God. For starters, one thinks it's okay to destroy the whole world, or maybe just a town or two if they don't behave, and the other decides He'll put up with it in hopes of them repenting without His threats. Change, where it isn't supposed to happen. Always bugged me, and it still does since the above logic is hanging together so loosely that it wouldn't serve as a fishnet even if you were trying to catch a whale. Or other large amphibious creature. But it is interesting to think about.

Also, someone let me know if they do not agree with my mental concept of time being similar to a geographic plane, because I'm not absolutely certain of how it works and having a questionable mental concept never leads to anywhere good :P

So I read somewhere about a language that was unequivocable and without double meanings. I don't know if such a language exists or ever existed. I also thought it would be pretty handy and straightforward to have such a thing. I also thought it would be a shame to lose all the creativity, wit, and elegance of using unclear words. It makes communication a lot more effective, but a lot less interesting. Good thing to have, or bad?

Well, for some reason today I also thought, what if human reactions were of a ratio of 1:1? To be far more clear on what I mean, what if any given action always entailed a specific reaction, and that specific reaction only occurred in response to that specific action? Impractical, but for example, say I was caught stealing an apple, and the prescribed response was to cut off my ring finger (for food. other fingers for other stuff :P). Then, anyone who understood the set of action and response (Which theoretically would be everyone, since I'm thinking like something of this nature evolved in a species) could see a specific result and know that I was a thief. Similarly, any particular action instantly conveyed to anyone who saw a specific situation that caused the action, because only one thing could have caused any given action. By this logic, there are several consequences. First off, the first action causes a reaction, which causes other reactions, which ultimately reinforces determinism :P Accordingly, this seems to detract from free will, but I would argue that one could choose not to react accordingly. They would merely be confusing others, who would not understand such a person's reasoning. They might be declared insane. Secondly, this seems to me to be a form of language through action, the action equivalent of the earlier-mentioned language. So someone not reacting accordingly would be basically shouting out non-sequiters and gibberish. Finally, this would effectively remove all misunderstanding from society if everyone followed the appropriate reactions. I can't help but wonder if such a thing would elevate conflict or reduce it. It seems to me that conflict would still exist, but over more definite things, with understood ground. People wouldn't, obviously, fight over misunderstandings and it seems to me they wouldn't squabble over frivolous things, either.

Well, random musings for today. I'm surprised to note that my last diary entry wasn't for almost two months ago o.O