More musings

The creative muse will not let go. As of late they've switched back to writing and music (for the past few weeks I've mainly been interested in art). In fact, I decided to try recording some parts of hymns and other songs in GarageBand and mixing them together. It turned out stupendously! Listening to my voice is incentive to work on improving it. :) At any rate, now that I can mix parts, I'm going to start writing some vocal arrangements of various hymns and songs, and I'll upload recordings to Blank Slate as well.

50th Anniversary

Well, it's my 50th post, at least. :)

I'm halfway into 1 Nephi 3 now. For only fifteen minutes a day, it's going really well, and I can easily see how much I've progressed (and this is even without studying Spanish grammar yet). I'm going to start spending more time on it, learning the grammar and making an effort to master the pronunciation and reading more widely. Mmm... :)

And yes, my schedule has changed once again. Dropped computer graphics, accounting, and family finance and signed up for two geography classes (intro and maps), two career exploration classes, and modern American usage (in addition to ancient manuscripts, creative writing, and religion, which never changed). Major-wise I'm thinking that ELANG or linguistics is much more feasible at this point, especially because I already have 100 credits and I can't keep changing my major. Depending on how these geography classes go I may do a geography minor, too. We'll see...

XYZ

After being dazzled by special effects in a number of movies, I couldn't resist the pull to learn more about 3D graphics. So I checked out a few books from the library and devoured them (not literally, of course) earlier this week. I've been dabbling with Blender ever since. I'm currently working on a short animation for my work, with a ship on the ocean and the project's logo. At first I tried to find some blueprints for 19th century steamboats, but that came up empty-handed. Then I realized that model ships would give me what I needed, so back to the library I went. There still wasn't very much source material, but I think it'll be enough. Photorealistic 3D is a lot harder to achieve than I expected, by the way. :) On a slightly different topic, Apple's video compositing software Shake looks really cool and I'd thought about trying it out, but the price tag is just slightly out of my budget ($2999). :)

Gasps of air

It's hot. Last night at 9 p.m. it was 88 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside, which is crazy. Too bad my apartment doesn't have air conditioning... ~sigh~

Anyway, yesterday morning when I woke up I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The microwave knob was set to High, as usual (I always check it now). When I came back into the kitchen to make breakfast an hour later, it was set to Low. How weird is that? I checked to see if there's any way I could have set it myself (if my hand accidentally pushed it when I opened the microwave, for example), but it would be impossible for me to do so without noticing.

I finished reading 1 Nephi chapter 1 in Spanish this morning. My speed's picking up and I'm getting a feel for the grammar and the conjugations. It's one of the most fun things I've done lately. :)

I changed my class schedule for fall again, this time dropping my ELANG classes and signing up for computer graphics, accounting (again -- I'd dropped it earlier), and family finance instead. I'm still not sure what to do, though, so I highly suspect it will change again.

The Scarlet Pi...Letter

I finished reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter today. Splendid read -- it reminded me of Crime and Punishment in many ways. And Hawthorne is a very, very good writer. I wish I hadn't waited so long to read it -- but better late than never, eh?

Let's see, what else... The Spanish reading is coming along very well, and it's more fun than I imagined. I tried the German Book of Mormon too, but it would take a more basic knowledge of the language to get much out of it.

Lately I've been thinking about applying for the graphic design major. Can't apply till February, though, which does give me a lot of time to prepare a portfolio, but it's also a dreadfully long time away (and it means I wouldn't be able to start taking classes for my major till next spring -- and right now I already have 100 credits which makes me a senior). We'll see...

Burmurings

Burmese is coming along well. Yesterday I received two books through interlibrary loan: John Okell's Burmese: An Introduction to the Spoken Language and his First Steps in Burmese (with tapes). They'll be quite helpful. Still haven't come up with a suitable romanization scheme, though. I also began reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish yesterday morning. Found that "la esposa" (wife) becomes "handcuffs" (las esposa) in the plural. I wonder what the etymology is on that one. :)

IAP work is coming along very well. I've been writing the bulk of the software that creates batches of record images for volunteers to extract, and it's almost done (all the pieces will be in place by Friday and then it'll just be testing, bugfixing, and documenting from there). Let me just say that XML is really, really cool. :)

Back from the dead ;)

Yes, I'm still alive (at least as far as I can tell :)). What's been going on these past few weeks? Well, that's a good question and I'm not sure what the answer is. Work, I guess. It's been a somewhat redefining time for me, a time to look at my life and evaluate where I am, how I'm doing, and where I want to go. For the past couple of weeks I've felt like I'm a completely different person, not necessarily for the better. It's almost like somebody jamming my brain frequency or something. But there are moments here and there where it goes away and all is well.

Hmm. Anyway, today after church I watched two of the Church welfare videos ("Pure Religion" and "Ye Have Done It Unto Me"), and I realized that what I really want to do for my life's work is help other people -- service, humanitarian kind of stuff. It's something I could throw my whole heart into without wondering if what I'm doing is right or not. Now, of course, the question is this: is this a viable career option? (Um, I don't know of any philanthropy schools around. :)) Is there any way to pull it off as a career, or will it be something on the side -- perhaps assist with it indirectly in whatever career I end up in. It seems like my future changes every week, wandering hither and thither with wild abandon. I wish it were clear, so I'd know what to prepare for. But I guess it'll be one of those line upon line, precept upon precept things. ~sigh~

At work we're still getting ready for the launch of our software. It's getting close. (Ostensibly we launch on September 1st, but I think we'll be ready long before then.) Working for a cause greater than oneself is an amazing feeling. That's what I want to be doing all my life -- not just doing things for the sake of doing them, but doing them to build up something great and wondrous (in this case family history and the redemption of the dead).