Timothy's Thoughts

In an encounter with some Calvinists, one of them kept asking (more like demanding) why did you believe but others didn’t? Being that they are Calvinists, what they want to say is that the reason one person believes and others don’t is because we’re just following our nature. They want to say that God gave some people a nature to believe and others a nature to reject him. They like asking that question because it gives them a nice simple answer, while those of us who believe that the nature God gave us is to have the freedom to make choices have a hard time answering it. I can point to plenty of things that led up to me accepting Christ, but I can no more say why I made that choice than I can say why I sometimes choose vanilla ice cream and sometimes chocolate ice cream. So, I told the person that I could no more answer that than they could answer why God chose them. Interestingly, the person responded by saying, “I know why God chose me,” and then he quoted, Ephesians 1:5, “Having pr...

It's no secret that I have been vocal about issues with ProPresenter 7. We have frequently had issues in which ProPresenter would crash at inopertune times. Up until this time, my hope was that by being the sqeaky wheel they would fix the problems that I have been seeing. Instead of doing that, this weekend, RenewedVision chose to block my access to a forum that they moderate on Facebook and also their own Facebook page. The only post that I know they took issue with was "Is anyone else seeing multiple crashes that aren't reported by the crash reporting system." Aside from that, I made some comments concerning problems with their software development process. My initial assumption was that someone unassociated with Renewed Vision was resposible for blocking me, or perhaps, one employee who hadn't been trained properly. But after contacting them directly, it was revealed to me that it was, in fact, a RenewedVision employee who chose to block me and that it was a de...

H ow do we pray during something like this? In the news we hear about this crazy bug that is going around. We know it is causing suffering and with so much news about it it almost feels like it is hanging in the mist around us, even though the numbers indicate that’s not the case. Even if we don’t catch the bug, we’ve been affected. Some are off of work. Others wish they were off work because they worry every time they hear a co-worker cough. Normal is disrupted. How do we pray in times like this. My thoughts turn to Romans 8. Paul was discussing some things here that often get overlooked because of some controversial doctrinal issues that laid on this passage, but it’s worth our time to focus on what he was saying and not just the doctrinal implications of the example he gave. In Romans 8:16-18 he states, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer...

W ith the efforts to slow the spread of the virus, most churches are running up against meeting size limitations and ours is no exception. But we can’t just drop everything and wait for this thing to blow over. The work of the church must continue. One way of doing that is by holding staff, team, committee, etc. meetings online, rather than in person. Having recently conducted a committee meeting like that, I thought it might be beneficial to someone if I were to document what I did and why. Please, do not take this to be an expert opinion on how these things should be done. I went into this looking for a low cost solution that I could set up quickly. I did not evaluate all of the options and there may be a better solution out there. Tool Selection Going into this, my first thought was, “How can I do this with Skype?” We’ve been using Skype for Business at work for a long time, so I knew that was one possibility and it is one that would do what I needed it to do. Skype has better name...

A mid the talk of coronavirus, I’ve seen plenty of posts about Psalm 91. Many focus on verse 10, “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” One preacher declared that if people would claim this promise that the virus would stay away. It bothers me when I hear people make claims like this because simple observation tells us that Christians are not immune from viruses, or cancer, or automobile accidents, or anything else. How are we to explain this? Is it a lack of faith? Is God a liar? Does this passage even mean what people think it does? Psalm 91 is a reassuring passage to read because it mentions many protections that only God can provide in a way that says it will be done. But does it really say that we can go to the Lord and say, “You promised that I wouldn’t get sick?” It’s interesting to note that Satan used this same passage when he tempted Jesus to throw himself down from the temple, but equated this with “tempt[ing] the Lord thy God.”...

V alentine’s Day is that special day when those of us who are single feel miserable because we are alone while those who are not single are all mad at their significant other for not being romantic enough. At this point in my life, I’ve spent a significant amount of time considering the question of why I’m not married. And I’ve had plenty of people give me their own thoughts on the subject. I used to have people tell me that “God has someone for you.” I believed them. And I heard of people who spoke of what they believed was God putting them together with their perfect match. While it made for a great story, I couldn’t reconcile the logic of it. For one thing, there were far too many divorces. If God were picking and choosing the people to place together in marriage then why would there be divorce? Either there were people who married when they should have waited for the right person to come along, or they were rejecting the one God had chosen. The second might have been true, but they...

W hat are the arguments for saying that the Earth is old and what are the arguments that the Earth is young? Below is a list of some that I have heard on both sides. I doubt that anyone will read this and go away having changed their mind on the position they hold. I do, however, think that if someone wishes to argue their position they will need to address the reasons that are given on the other side. Reasons for Young Earth Reasons for Old Earth The Bible says creation took six days. The word used for "day" could be translated as "period." The Bible says that Adam was "in the beginning." The word "day" is used multiple ways in Genesis 1. The great flood would have removed evidence of anything prior to it. Hebrews 3 implies that we are still in the seventh "day." The geniologies have enough people to cover about 6,000 years. Genesis 1:12 declares that "the Earth brought forth," implying that it took some time for the pl...

I remember thinking when I was a kid that stories were just a segment of the characters lives. You could think of an author picking a beginning point of the story at some key event, finding a good end point, and just giving the details of what happened in between. But as I began to write my own stories, I discovered that this isn’t the case at all. It may be true of the beginning and ending, but it’s that middle stuff that gets you. When outlining a story, there are some key things that have to occur at various places in a book. The setup for the story always occurs at the beginning, even if you have to rip it out of the middle of the sequential order or even after the end of the story. The reader has to understand what is going on and why it is important. Then the characters have to be seen doing their thing. This is where the reader really starts to enjoy living in this world we’ve created, but it only goes on for about the second quarter of the book. Then it all falls apart. The wo...

A fter watching several videos from the One for Israel Ministry ( www.oneforisrael.org ) I began to notice a trend. Many of these Jews who have come to accept Jesus as their messiah declare that they were surprised to learn that Jesus was a Jew. Some chose not to read the New Testament because the rabbis told them not to and they assumed that the New Testament was instructions to Christians to persecute Jews. “Jesus is not for us” is a common theme that these people were taught. So when they began to learn about Jesus being a Jew, and reading the New Testament that is written by Jews and about the Jewish scriptures they were shocked. I don’t know many Jews, but I encounter plenty of gentiles who speak of God in ways that are inconsistent with who I know God to be. They speak of God as being an evil being and I question how anyone could read the Bible and come to that conclusion. But that’s just it. They haven’t read the Bible. They don’t know my Jesus. These people aren’t rejecting J...

I 've always had a fascination with mazes. While messing with the Python plugin for Art of Illusion I decided to write a maze generator in Python. The image to the right is a rendering of the maze that is produced by that code. I did it as a Scripted Object, which was probably not the best idea since it recalculates the maze whenever something changes, but my excuse is that I was testing out some things related to Python scripted objects in Art of Illusion. I'm including the code below, but with the caveat that it has a defect at one of the boundaries that I haven't figured out yet. It doesn't remove a wall for one or two of the cells. Aside from that, it will produce a good 3D maze. import random mazeWidth = 25 mazeLength = 25 wallLength = 1.2 wallHeight = 2.25 wallThickness = 0.05 WALL_UP = 0 WALL_DOWN = 1 WALL_FIXED = 2 class cell():   X = 0   Y = 0   N = WALL_UP   S = WALL_UP   E = WALL_UP   W = WALL_UP   visited = False   def createm...

H ere's a question for you: what is the advantage of using Python over Java? Because of the recent publication of the second edition of Extending Art of Illusion I've been spending time working on scripts for Art of Illusion. Straight out of the box, Art of Illusion provides scripting capability for Groovy and BeanShell. This makes sense because Art of Illusion is written in Java and both of these scripting languages are based on Java. But most other graphics programs use some variation on Python as their scripting language. In a post on Python Scripts in Art of Illusion  I wrote about creating a plugin that adds Python to the languages that Art of Illusion supports. I use Python for things I do in my day job mostly because it's available. But with adding it to Art of Illusion I have a direct comparison between Java and Python. It got me thinking. Is there some reason to choose to script in Python rather than using Java, Groovy, or BeanShell? When I setup the interpreter...

I took a break from the cloth simulator to look at adding Python as a scripting language for Art of Illusion. I had some success at pulling in the Jython library and was able to get the following Tool Script to add a Cube to the scene: undo = UndoRecord(window, True) obj = Cube(1.0, 1.0, 1.0) objInfo = ObjectInfo(obj, CoordinateSystem(), "Cube "+str(1)) window.addObject(objInfo, undo) window.updateImage() window.setUndoRecord(undo) In a video I demonstrated that a Groovy script could be used to add a Cube to the scene . The Groovy script was as follows: undo = new UndoRecord(window, true); obj = new Cube(1.0, 1.0, 1.0); objInfo = new ObjectInfo(obj, new CoordinateSystem(), "Cube "+1); window.addObject(objInfo, undo);                       window.updateImage(); window.setUndoRecord(undo); As you can tell, the code is essentially the same except Python doesn't use the new keyword, True is capitalized in Pyt...

F or each of the first ten chapters of Extending Art of Illusion I have created a video that demonstrates some aspect of it. One of the things I found when writing the book was that it is difficult to demonstrate animation on the printed page. In chapter 7 I give code for a tracker object that will rotate an object or objects so that the object is always pointing at one of the other scene objects, no matter where it is located in the scene. In the book I tried to show this with a sequence of still images taken from the animation. But in the video I have been able to show the video of a head with eyes that follow an object as it moves around the scene. Not only that, but it is possible to show that these changes are occurring even as the scene is being edited. Below is the list of videos: Chapter 1: Use a Script to Add a Cube to Art of Illusion Chapter 2: Storing and Loading Chapter 3: Position Objects on Floor Chapter 4: Point at Objects Chapter 5: Resting One Object on Anot...

A fter the second edition of Extending Art of Illusion went to press my attention turned once again to the question of getting it into the hands of readers. Outside of people called Mom, people don't generally buy books just because someone wrote it. I've purchased a few books just because I knew the author, but I don't buy second and third books "just because."  Those of us who love books need a reason to buy a book. No, that's not right. We want a reason to buy a book. We are begging authors and publishers to give us a reason to buy a book. We want to see a book and say, "If I buy this book this is the knowledge I will gain or the story I will enjoy." We are cheering for authors to provide us with a good book. It's in that context that I make the case for people to buy the latest edition of Extending Art of Illusion . I stopped to ask myself why anyone would need this book. It may seem like it is a little late to be asking that question. O...

R obots don’t sin. Of course we’ve all seen movies where some robot makes decisions concerning right and wrong, but the reality is that robots just run programs. The brain of a robot is nothing more than a device that reads data and writes data. It’s actions are controlled by what that data tells it to do. Robots don’t have a soul. If a robot does something that it shouldn’t do, we may shut it down. We may repair it. We may throw it in the landfill. But we don’t do that out of a sense of justice. If there is anyone held responsible for the evil done by a robot it is the designer, the programmer, or the operator, not the robot. Robots don’t sin because they have no capability to decide to go against their programming. But if the inability to decide to go against their programming keeps a robot from sin then that implies that anything that can sin can decide to go against their programming. I mention this because I recently heard someone claim that “freewill is a myth.” Their basis for t...

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...