Here is one of the renderings I was working on last night -- this is Case Study House #21 by Pierre Koenig.

As I am sitting here working on my computer renderings I am playing around a little more with those blocks like the other day - oh, by the way, a quick clarification, all these I have posted have been edited in photoshop after being rendered in VIZ.

My goal with these is to create some really nice backgrounds -- I think I have come up with a few. Here is a set of four:

Well I just had my first all-nighter this year (I think) it was a good one though. For some reason working on a model all night is harder to do than drawings by hand or on the computer (which I was working on). Presentations are today at 1 pm and all I have left to do now is the layout and write down notes to help me in presenting.

This is the first presentation I will have done in about 1.5 or 2 years. Usually you present your work regularly but up until this year I have gotten teachers who rarely (if ever) actually had us present. So needless to say I am a little nervous, we have outside reviewers coming which means we will not recognize their faces.

In the mean time, we have been learning lighting in our computer rendering class and so I made some little vignettes as exercises.

Here are two:

An update on the last post.

I have posted a few more of Evan's songs on the web, (these are my personal favorites) including the ever-popular "Talkin' Bad Dream Blues" : ) that he posted the lyrics to a few weeks ago. They are at the same site as the previous song was.

Enjoy Again.

over Christmas break the four oldest kids in my family recorded our own CD on our home computer- it wasn't very good but there is promise there.

In the meantime, Evan has been recording on his own. I have been making sure that he sends me copies so that I can hear what he plays. Two days ago he sent me his version of "Take to the World" (a cover of a Derek Webb song) on which he had figured out how to stack two tracks -- in other words, he is playing lead and background guitar and also harmonizing with himself.

He wanted me to post it so I have it here for your enjoyment. And it is downloadable, just right-click and "save link as"

Enjoy!

Here is some of what I have been working on for studio. This project is ending next week, we present on Friday.


The building houses a gallery, cafe, bookstore and is about 7500 square feet. (Not all in this picture is my building, the gray block is the building adjacent to mine)

You scored as SG-1 (Stargate). You are versatile and diverse in your thinking. You have an open mind to that which seems highly unlikely and accept it with a bit of humor. Now if only aliens would stop trying to take over your body. SG-1 (Stargate) 81% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 75% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 75% Moya (Farscape) 75% Serenity (Firefly) 75% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 75% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 69% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 63% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 44% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 44% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 44% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 31% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

I can't tell you how much I wish I was part of the DS9 crew -- I was tempted to go back and try but oh well...

Not much to post about today, I have been slaving the last couple of days to get a project finished (which was turned in yesterday thankfully)


I was walking through the art building the other day when they were having a sale and I saw this - and had to get a picture.

I wrote a poem about how cold it is tonight.
____________________________________

Frost and Fires are wonderful smells
smells that belong to Christmastime
Christmastime and not February
February is a warming-up month
but not in Lubbock.
____________________________________
It is actually 21 degrees F right now.

Howdy to everyone out there.



Just this morning I taped (well I didn't actually "tape" it) a radio show from Austin in which Andy Hedges was interviewed (along with Andy Wilkinson and Amanda Shires) by the Scottish fellow who runs the Folkways radio show at the UT Public Radio Station. It was good, Hedges sang two songs and talked a little, though the show centered more on Wilkinson.

I put the mp3s up for everyone to listen to. Enjoy!

My mother sent me this, it is an excellent read.

Being Mocked: The Essence of Christ’s Work, not Muhammad’s
February 8, 2006 — Fresh Words Edition
By John Piper

What we saw this past week in the Islamic demonstrations over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad was another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.

If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

When it actually happened it was worse than expected. “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit on him” (Matthew 27:28-30). His response to all this was patient endurance. This was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion.”1 Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.”2 An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominy” of the cross.

That’s the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.

When Muhammad was portrayed in twelve cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the uproar across the Muslim world was intense and sometimes violent. Flags were burned, embassies were torched, and at least one Christian church was stoned. The cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives, like Salman Rushdie before them. What does this mean?

It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that this religion is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).

Footnotes

1 Badru D. Kateregga and David W. Shenk, Islam and Christianity: A Muslim and a Christian in Dialogue (Nairobi: Usima Press, 1980), p. 141.

2 Quoted from The Muslim World in J. Dudley Woodberry, editor, Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1989), p. 164.

Here is a step by step example of my photoshop work - starting from a picture I took the same day as the others.




Just playing around by the way. For my own tastes I probably could have left it at the third picture.

Here are some pictures I took today-- take note of the striking difference between the color and B&W copies (I did adjust the contrast but otherwise they are unedited)

This posting is prompted by the quotefest on e-systems, but also because my roommate thought some of these lines were the funniest he had heard yet. Believe it or not, I play Dylan often enough that he caught himself singing one of the songs as he was walking to class.

This song has some of the funniest lines, though you need to hear it to get the full idea of the song.

Talkin' World War III Blues
Bob Dylan

Some time ago a crazy dream came to me,
I dreamt I was walkin' into World War Three,
I went to the doctor the very next day
To see what kinda words he could say.
He said it was a bad dream.
I wouldn't worry 'bout it none, though,
They were my own dreams and they're only in my head.

I said, "Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain."
He said, "Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane,"
He grabbed my arm, I said "Ouch!"
As I landed on the psychiatric couch,
He said, "Tell me about it."

Well, the whole thing started at 3 o'clock fast,
It was all over by quarter past.
I was down in the sewer with some little lover
When I peeked out from a manhole cover
Wondering who turned the lights on.

Well, I got up and walked around
And up and down the lonesome town.
I stood a-wondering which way to go,
I lit a cigarette on a parking meter
And walked on down the road.
It was a normal day.

Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell,
"Give me a string bean, I'm a hungry man."
A shotgun fired and away I ran.
I don't blame them too much though,
I know I look funny.

Down at the corner by a hot-dog stand
I seen a man, I said, "Howdy friend,
I guess there's just us two."
He screamed a bit and away he flew.
Thought I was a Communist.

Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave,
"Let's go and play Adam and Eve."
I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'
When she said, "Hey man, you crazy or sumpin',
You see what happened last time they started."

Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown
And there was nobody aroun',
I got into the driver's seat
And I drove 42nd Street
In my Cadillac.
Good car to drive after a war.

Well, I remember seein' some ad,
So I turned on my Conelrad.
But I didn't pay my Con Ed bill,
So the radio didn't work so well.
Turned on my player-
It was Rock-A-Day, Johnny singin',
"Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa,
Our Loves Are Gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah."

I was feelin' kinda lonesome and blue,
I needed somebody to talk to.
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind.
"When you hear the beep
It will be three o'clock,"
She said that for over an hour
And I hung it up.

Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then,
Sayin, "Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams,
But mine was a little different you see.
I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me.
I didn't see you around."

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all the people can't be all right all the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
I said that.


Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music