Timothy's Thoughts

P olitics in America according to social media is nasty. We’re divided along party lines and there are a lot of angry people yelling at each other. You would think that there’s no way to bridge the divide, but all of us have friends who are on the other side. We may avoid certain conversations when we are with them, but somehow we get along. Why? If the other side is so bad, then how is it that our friends can’t see that? Could it be that the two sides agree on much more than they care to admit? Here are twelve things that Republicans and Democrats agree on. Mass murder is evil. A strong economy is good. Children should be protected. The strong should not be allowed to prey on the weak. Cops who break the law should be prosecuted. Skin color doesn’t make one person better than another. Protecting our environment is important. Non-citizen criminals should not be allowed into our country. Individuals should be able to express their opinion. The police have a responsibility to ...

Update: I'm happy to say that after writing this post I made the decision to revise the book and it is now available for purchase. In the process, I developed a cloth simulator plugin for Art of Illusion. I include it as part of the book as an example of a use of Art of Illusion Distortions. W hen a reader of Extending Art of Illusion contacted me about the possibility of updating the Art of Illusion scripts to Groovy, I became concerned. Firstly, because he wasn’t able to download the source code from the location specified in the book. Broken links on a webpage are one thing, but broken links in a book can be costly. Secondly, because I haven’t attempted to keep up with all of the changes to Art of Illusion that have taken place since the publication date of the book. There hasn’t been enough demand for the book to justify a revised edition. To address my concerns, I went back through the examples I included in the book—rebuilding with latest Java compiler and using Art of ...

U sing a resource file in Eclipse is possible. While writing a blog about how to develop Windows programs using Eclipse and C++ I ran into a problem that I needed a tool for, namely to quote C++ code in the blog. So, I wrote a little program in C++ using the techniques I was discussing, but later I decided it would be an ideal project to rewrite using a resource file (.rc). There are a few things you have to do to get it to work. First, Eclipse doesn’t provide the slick resource file editor that you find in Visual C++. This means that to edit the .rc file you will need to use a text editor. This isn’t particularly hard to do, but I did find myself questioning whether I was gaining anything by using the resource file over just making the calls I needed in the C++ code. One thing that I can say that I don’t like is that you must use #define in the header file rather than defining constants with static const or as an enum . Second, the .rc file has to be compiled using a special compile...

E clipse CDT (C/C++ Development Toolkit) is perfectly fine for developing Windows applications in C++. But you might be asking, why would I want to do that when Visual Studio is so readily available? I started down this path because I spend most of my time with the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment) running on my machine and often with multiple workspaces on both Windows and Linux, but the C++ code I develop isn’t intended to run on Windows. But ever so often I will develop a simple tool with a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Since I’m familiar with Eclipse, I would prefer not to have to switch to another IDE just for a simple tool. But one thing you notice when you look at an IDE like Visual Studio is that it generates a significant amount of code for you and it makes use of various libraries, but how much of this do you really need? I assume you’ve built with the Eclipse CDT. If not, follow this guide first: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/14222/C-Development-usi...

So, when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. – Hebrews 6:17-18(ESV) Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. – II Thessalonians 2:11-12(ESV) D oes God lie? The writer of Hebrews based the certainty of God’s promise on the unchangeable truth that it is impossible to lie. It’s the sort of thing you expect to see written with needlepoint and hanging on a wall next to a cross. But what about what Paul wrote to the assembly at Thessalonica? “God sends them a strong delusion.” Can they both be true? We certainly can’t write it off as a mistake because the Bible gives us...

O nce more we hear the news of another mass killing. And once more we hear much talk about what we need to do to prevent it from happening again. Though there is much expressed anger on all sides I have yet to see anyone present a solution that would’ve prevented one of the recent mass killings, let alone all of them. Some people have focused on gun control, but the most recent shooting involved guns that the gun control advocates thought were safe. And then there are the killings like the New York truck attack and the Boston Marathon bombing that wouldn’t have been stopped by even the strictest gun ban. For all the talk of what we need to do about these killings there’s been little talk about why they are taking place. How can we prevent them if we don’t know why they are happening? One person said they knew why they are happening, “It’s Satan.” I don’t disagree, but I also don’t think that answer is helpful. Even if Satan himself is whispering in the ear of each of these killers we s...

I t was a post shared by Mike Huckabee that caught my attention. " Google Rejects Christian Publisher's Ads Because They Mention Bible and Jesus " the title read. In the current political climate it's the kind of thing that people are likely to point to as more persecution from the left or to point to as much ado about nothing from the right, depending on what their political leaning might be. So, which is it? While I respect Mike Huckabee a great deal, he isn't always so great about verifying his sources and "The Western Journal" which is were the article is located often gets things wrong. I really began to question it when I noticed that it was talking about "AdWords" and " personalized content ." For those of you who don't know, "AdWords" is the term Google uses to describe advertising that targets a particular audience based on what keywords they search for. For example, if you type "coffee" into the Goog...