Roller Coaster Operator

Longing

2010-04-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

I'm reading the book The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller, who is also the author of the much-celebrated The Reason for God. He talks about beauty, and the concept of home and belonging. Here is a quote from his book, which is in fact a quote from C.S. Lewis' famous sermon The Weight of Glory. Yeah, thats right, nested quotes. And you thought Engineers couldn't write.

Keller quotes Lewis, writing about homesickness,

"Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Woodsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Woodsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things-the beauty, the memory of our own past-are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the ting itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself... Now we wake to find...[w]e have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken in..."

Torture, part II

2009-04-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

Hey, so last year at this time, I posted about writing the final exam for my second year vector calculus course.

Well, I just want to give you, my avid readers, some continuity, so in the spirit of such things, I thought I would report to you on my feelings about the subject of vector calculus. See, I recently wrote the final exam for another course, this time in Electromagnetism, and believe it or not Electromagnetism involves a lot of vector calculus. But....

I discovered that double and triple integrals are way easier once you have gone over them again. Once you start to get what you are doing, they are not that hard. So for anyone out there who read my post last year and thought 'I'm going to prove him wrong by learning Vector Calculus' and has since given up the hope of ever understanding it...don't give up. You will learn, and I bet if you just give yourself a break and then try it some more, you will get it!

In Christ,

Anton

Not the funniest video on the internet.

2009-01-24T12:00:00.001-08:00

http://www.thedoorpost.com/hope/Volition/

watch it

b.t.w.

2008-10-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

Yo, everyone. I don't have lots of time or talent to make this sound nice...but maybe I'll still get through to you. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.

Sometimes I wish that my life was different...that I was better at certain things and that I had things that I don't have. But God is teaching me that I should be happy with what I have. And when I see others who have amazing gifts and who are really happy about them...He is also teaching me not to be jealous of them, but to rejoice with them. So be content.

MORE new music

2008-09-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, so, today is a very special day. September 15, 2008 is the day that the final album in the trilogy by BraveSaintSaturn comes out. Bravesaint saturn, for all you innocent and to-be-pitied, is the side project of 4 members of FIVE IRON FRENZY and is therefore catagorically awesome.

No, not really, but they have a very nice, clean, progressive sound and beautiful lyrics that speak to me in my joys and struggles as a Christian. anyways, they have a new album. www.bravesaintsaturn.org.

Also, for diehard fans of FIF, their Saxophone player Jeff the Girl(Leanor) is in a new band, called Hearts of Palm. I kind of like them. and you can download their ep for free! so check them out too!

Woot for new music!

New Music

2008-05-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody. I recommend you check out Hannah Miller and John Mark Mcmillan. They are folk, so be prepared. I just bought Hannah Miller's cd online and she emailed me personally to thank me. How cool is that?! I will treasure it that much more!

Yeah....The links are there ->

Anton

Torture

2008-04-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

So, Today I wrote the final exam for Advanced Engineering Mathematics, specifically Vector Calculus, 2Q04. I started at 9:00. Finished at 12:00(thats how long they give you).

It was really hard. I recommend for anyone that ever takes that course...don't drop out of French class, because all the best mathematicians are French, and all the best mathematicians also happen to be very poor teachers(in my opinion...based on observation, not provable fact). But more than that...yeah, I don't even know what to say. I don't think there is much you CAN do to excel at that course.

There are certain things in life that you won't ever master. Love is one of them. Any kind of love...romantic, for friends, for enemies, even for God. Your sinful nature is another one of them.

And the next most obvious one is Vector Calculus.

Yours In Christ,
Anton

Anti-Meridian

2008-04-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

www.bravesaintsaturn.com

Starling

I think I'm going to cry!

Ducks Forever

2008-03-27T16:10:00.001-07:00

Today I performed 'the duck joke' on my professor in front of a whole class of second year electrical engineering students. It was awesome. If you haven't heard this joke, ask me next time you see me.

It was awesome.

Special thanks to Alana Drost from Redeemer for telling me that joke way back when.

Christian Schools

2008-02-23T08:20:00.001-08:00

Hey Friends. I have a song and a blog for y'all to look at.

So...go to Mark Mathis' ReverbNation page. On that page there is a blog/buzz section. Go to it and look at the post called 'Christian Schools'. There is a song on there that you can download, or you can also listen to it at his Myspace Page. Listen to the song(its pretty chill, I hope you like it). Also read his blog about it.

So this struck me kind of hard. I went to a Christian School, and some of my closest friends are homeschooled as well, so I have a bit of a mixed perspective on both. Now I'm not going to point the finger at my highschool (Guido De Bres) because that is not the point here..niether am I going to comment on homeschooling.

What I was thinking about is this: What are we doing here? like the song says in the bridge..we have so many opportunities to show Christ's love and I think sometimes we get caught up one of two mindsets:

a) WE have pie-in-the-sky ideas that don't actually do much except help us feel good and are not realistic.

b) WE are selfish, and don't want to give stuff up, because after all in our cultural position, its hard to live 'sparsly'-living is expensive, and also the things we 'need' to have are expensive.

So I don't really want to accuse anyone of being a miser, or of being an idealistic evangelist or anything like that..but I want to encourage you all to think about what you are doing here, right now. What are your goals? What is your life's ambition? What is that going to do for you when you die? Like the song says..there were people who devoted everything they had to give to others, just so those others could have an education. Not because they were going to be able to necessarily 'make them into Christians'..but just so they would be able to do something with themselves. I dunno..I think it would be hard to give myself up like that..giving up what I have so that someone else can have it-watching others enjoy what I could have had..that would be hard. And I think thats something I need to change.

Anton(aka Capita'n Carot)

PS. I love Mark Mathis

electro-magnetism

2007-10-18T15:47:00.000-07:00

Ok, so great minds have been churning, and new ideas are pouring out of the woodwork like flies out of a fly-machine. Sorry, that may sound dumb, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

So, The new articulating/non articulating buses that the HSR(hamilton transit) purchased recently are very nice, are they not? But there is one problem. They have a very rough textile seat covering. Now this is a very nice covering for sitting on because it is soft and it has just the right kind of friction to keep you from sliding around on it. But the problem lies in the fact that it also has the property of really-good-sticks-to-food. So when some schmuck beside you spills all the mayonase and mustard out the end of his sub and it goes on the seat..it stays there. Now the old buses had vinyl seats, and why? They slide, like leather. Now this is a good thing for maitenance, but they are also very slippery, and on a bus, with all the stopping and starting, slippery is not good.

The problem at hand, then, is how can we solve this problem? Either slippery seats that send you head over heals across the yellow line every stop, or soft seats that are impossible to clean and get dirty quick. The answer?

Electromagnets.

Picture this: you buy a bus pass with your student card, and the bus pas comes with a years use of a special pair of bus-riding shorts. but these are not just any shorts, they have magnets in them! I'm thinking like a diaper type of thing, made of like vinyl or something, like one of those cushioning mats they have in gymclass, or like a high-jump mat-durable but comfortable. So you are going to go on the bus right? so you strap on your custom-fitted ferro-magnetic vinyl diaper and you step on the bus and you go to your seat and you...wait for it..

you dont sit down. Why not? well why would you..that takes energy! Why not let magnetism do the work! So you stand by your seat, and the busdriver looks in his mirror to make sure everything is hunky dory, and he closes the door. Then he flicks the Transit-Magnet button, and worlds collide! A giant electrical current travels through solenoids in your seat, creating an ELECTROMAGNET which attracts the magnets in your diaper and sticks you firmly to your seat! No Effort. and no mess! Problem solved! I'll let your imagination fill in the gaps.

Special Thanks go to Sarah, Garnet and Nate for their contributions to this grandiose scheme.

advertising

2007-09-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

so, Its been a while.

has anybody every clicked on my advertisement? The last thing i ever added to this blog was my advertisment..apparently i get a cut of whatever business it generates.
Unfortunately, no one every clicked on it, so..I didn't get any money. Thanks guys.

Ok, but seriously, now you can't click on it, because it would be fraudulent for me to tell you guys to click on it. Only click if you are interested.

Gee, I can't even click on it myself, because that too is fraud. What a sad little advertisement..its all alone. I'm sorry, advertisement. I really do love having you here, but you are neglected! Poor thing.

Ok, so seeyou next year!

Captain Carrot

More megamorphic metaphor-sis

2007-05-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

Ben also pointed the following out to me, and subsequently I experienced it. When you chip stones up, you take some parts of the stone away, and what you uncover is something that has been around probably since the very beginning when God created land. The stones sometimes have hairline cracks in them so they crack right through under the force of your hammer and chisel, often rendering the piece useless or no longer fit for the spot you intended. however the other day i had one split apart along its face, so it's shape didn't change, only its thickness. the new face was incredibly contorted and turbulent, as if the lava that cooled to form it had cooled in little balls that had broken out of the face, leaving bubbles and spheres and ridges like a glacial landscape(this is from a purely geographic viewpoint, i could not prove that they were formed this way, although I think it is likely. i should write a post about evolution and stuff sometime, that would be cool..it would be interesting to get some sweet comment/debate going). but i realized, having been alerted to this by Ben, that the face i was looking at had never been looked upon by any person in the history of this entire earth and all the stones that had ever been formed. the only ones who knew what it looked like were me and God.

A new meta-phore

2007-05-07T17:41:00.000-07:00

You know how in the Bible and in well known poems and certain songs, the Christian is compared to clay? The comparison is made that God is the potter and we are the clay, and so God molds us into the shape that he desires, and he doesn't ask us what kind of bowl or pot we want to be, he just makes the way he sees fit. It is interesting to note that God is a very skilled potter, since he has made all different shapes and sizes of pots, even square ones-quite difficult since usually the potter molds the clay on a wheel..it would be hard to make a square pot on one of those, and yet God does. And, also interesting is that usually potters make certain types of pots that they are good at over and over and over again, and sell the same pot to different people. God, however, being the ultimate craftsman and artist that he is, one who works in a medium of hearts and minds and spirits and bodies and the like, has never made two pots the same

Anyways, on to the real stuff of this post. So I was at work to day, and I'm not going to tell you what I was doing because that would give it away about 2 sentences earlier than I'd like. The suspense is killing you. No really, it is, you should take some medication for that!

Anyways, on to the real stuff of my post. So I was at work today, and I got to thinking..you know, clay and potter are a good way to express the power of God in our lives, but they don't give a very accurate description of how God brings this about. So, If you know anything about the way I think, you might know that my mind sometimes goes really fast-no, not when I need to make decisions or speak or something, or like do something simple, but when I'm doing math or physics or daydreaming..so I kind of thought up a new analogy for how God forms us, our personalities and talents and gifts.

I would like to suggest that in our lives, God is like a stone mason and we are like stones. Not bricks or tiles or blocks, but real natural stones, like the ones you put on a wall. Wall stones. See, when you make a stone wall, and you get your stone, you first start off with this big, thick, ungainly hunk of rock that looks like it would never look good. So first you have to square up the sides so its kind of a uniform thickness, so you have a starting point, something to work at. So you lie the stone on its back and mark around the edges of the stone so that all your markings are the same height from your workbench. then you chisel all the edges so that the front face of the stone is the same thickness around the outside-roughtly- and more importantly, the edges are all on a plane. But this chiseling is not always easy-sometimes the stone doesn't chip easily, or it doesn't chip at all, and you end up with a wierd looking shape where the stone broke.

The next step in building the wall is to find a spot for the stone. So you try to find the best spot where the stone will fit on its own, but you almost never can find a perfect spot, so you take the stone back and you cut pieces off of it and then you fix it so it fits. Now, you have your finished stone. It now looks like..a big hunk of rock with sharp corners and weird chunks out of it and cut marks on it. Great. So you take it over and put it on the wall and mortar it in, and you keep going, and by and by your wall is finished, and you look, and lo and behold, you have a beautiful stone wall. And you think to yourself 'You know, i knew that shape would just lend itself to making this wall beautiful. The colours of this stone match perfectly with the ones around it, and all its blemishes and imperfections that make it have rough edges give it a beauty I cannot describe easily'

WE are like stones. We start off as just hunks of rock, and we look like we could never make any wall beautiful. But God sizes us up, closes one eye and lines up his thumb, and says "Hm, well its coulor would fit right here, and its shape lends itself to this, and..hmm" and he gets out his chisel and starts to change us. But he doesn't grind us down into perfect little squares and line us up in rows-no he takes our imperfections and the shape that we have, and he finds a spot for us- a little chipping here, a little realignment there. Sometimes he cuts off a big chunk of us because we are no good when we have that extra. But its not always easy! Sometimes we resist-we don't want to chip and and break and be shaped, so we resist his will-even to the point of crumbling in his hands. But even then, God can use the pieces left over for some other spot in the wall. When we are finished, we might not look like much-one stone is all we are, and we just look like a rock. But when we are put amongst all the other stones that God has laboured over, we become a beautiful creation. Being the stones that we are, we can't always see how good we look on that wall..all we know is the chips we have lost and the cutting of the saw. But God sees us, and he sees our beauty, and he says "I knew that was just the spot for you!"

You are so funny, My Child!

2007-04-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

If you want to make God laugh-tell him your plans.

3.14159265358979323846264

2007-03-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

Pi

First I thought...wow, they are real geeks.
And then I thought...wow, people will worship anything
And then I thought...wow...

Take it as you will, but I think these people are amazing

2007-03-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

Tickle

How Smart Are You Really?

Anton, your IQ score is 141

Your overall intelligence quotient is the result of a scientifically-tested formula based on how many questions you answered correctly. But it's only part of what we learned about you from your answers on the test. We also determined the way you process information.

The way you think about things makes you a Creative Theorist. This means you are a highly intelligent, complex person. You are able to process information of nearly every kind with ease, using both creativity and analysis to make sense of the world. Compared to others you also have a very rich imagination.

How did we determine that your thinking style is that of a Creative Theorist? When we examined your test results further, we analyzed how you scored on 8 dimensions of intelligence: spatial, organizational, abstract reasoning, logical, mechanical, verbal, visual and numerical. The 3 dimensions you scored highest on combine to make you a Creative Theorist. Only 6 out of 1,000 people have this rare combination of abilities.

Find out which intelligence dimensions you scored highest on and how your IQ score compares to others in your personalized, 31-page Super IQ Report.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What can I say...I guess I'm pretty smart. would you believe it? only 6 in 1000 people have this rare condition. That means I am one of only 180,000 in Canada! there are only 39,491,187 (9:10pm GMT-5 according to the US census bureau) like me in the world! I'm going to have to find out where they-WE-hold our conventions! yikes! maybe theres a tax credit for 'Creative Theorist'. Hmm..can anyone think of any creative theories I have come up with? Actually I did have this one about a reverse microwave to be used in steel fabrication, but apparently thats already being researched, so...dang. These creative ideas are really hit and miss. Maybe if I get the 30-no sorry, 31- page report it will tell me what I need to know about creating theories, besides just conspiracy theories.

On another note, check out the World Population Clock. If you wait for a minute to pass, it starts updating only every minute, and it went up like..1000 since I started writing this. But anyways the point is, according to these numbers, which are probably not entirely accurate in magnitude, but in terms of rate-of-change, reasonable , nearly 150 children are born every minute. Thats like..5 every 2 seconds. Its crazy to think of how many people are born every day into this world. And if you think about it, roughly 80% of the world lives in utter poverty. Not taking into account that birth rates in most developed countries are much lower than in 3rd world countries, or factors such as high abortion rates in developed countries and high infant mortality rates in underdeveloped countries, rougly 150 children are born each minute, and of those, nearly 120 of them are born into utter poverty. And 100% of them are born into utter depravity.

Tell a friend.

And now back to our feature presentation...

Yukon Gold

2007-01-29T18:45:00.000-08:00

I am very sorry to tell you this but i'm sure you have noticed that indeed the carrot meistro has been unable to officiate his duties of updating his web propaganda. Now I myself am quite unexperienced with such propaganda of this sort but i took it upon myself to reassure you that captain carrot is still alive. Now im sure you are all doubling over with worry at the thought of anything happening to your dear captain carrot. I do not know if our dear captain will ever be the same again. It seems the pungent potato poo-heads have decided to take matters into their own hands. Last week they came to were captain carrot lives (location undisclosed) and spread salad dressing on his front step! Captain carrot phoned me up and said "Is this some sort of dipping sauce joke!?" I wondered what he was talking about and he told me about the salad dressing, of course it was not I. I would never dream of doing such an evil thing. My wits danced around my head with uninterrupted intensity, and then without a second glance I tossed on my shoes and cantered off in the morning air.

"See! Look what the fiends did!" I glared my eyes wide as i waited for my pupils to adjust to the straining light of the wintery sun. There before me was a vast, viscous mess of thick ranch dressing that had been splattered all over the front stoop of our Intrepid Captain's spacious 3-bedroom bungalow with vaulted master bedroom, ensuit, jacuzzi, hot tub, wireless internet hub, and 34" convection oven built right into the kitchen! Such was my surprise that I grunted in astonishment.

"What could this be, Captain? Some kind of salad spectacle? Some defunct dressing debacle?!" The Captain, obviously traumatized by this dastartdly deed, was at a loss for words, but he pointed at the center of the salad mess.

"Look"

I looked.

There, surrounded in mushy footprints and specles of dirt and gold nuggets, were spelled out in the dressing 4 distinct words: "We Know Where You Live"

"No, thats 5 words. Fix that. And by the way, like Duh, they already just pranked my house, of course they know where I live! These guys must be pros, to leave a message so vague!" digressed the captain.

"But Wait!" I deliberated! "there is more written in the salad..dressing!"

Scrawled in the speckles of dirt that had fallen from the bodies of whoever had done this deed, were written the following messages: "You had better know whats best for you, and stop fighting the carrot rebellion. If you know whats good for your, you will give up the gold, and be consoled with the consolation prize. You have a lot to loose in this 'venture' of yours. Don't drop the ball."

"Hmm, sounds like they mean business" mused the Captain as he fuzzled his muzzle. "I'd better get to the bottem of this! But just who are we dealing with?! Thats the real question, I say."

"maybe it was a leaf sect, sir?" I suggested. "Some of those fiends can be quite the dirty types..roaming Romaines, Frigid Icebergs, i wouldn't put it past them. And who else would have such an impressive selection of salad dressing? This is gourme-"

"NO! Wait. something about first place? Gold, they say..first place...Gold. Hmm...gold....Gold nuggets...nuggets. Kinda reminds me of a gold rush...like the one in California, or the one in....the Yukon!!! Dirt Clods. Gold..Yukon Gold! of course! Those dirty dirty scoundrals. I should have known they would be behind this act of terrorism. I know exactly what to do!!!! I hope you have your pocket peeler, because we will definitely need it! Lets Ship out!"

Carrot Juice Constitutes Murder

2007-01-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

I dont know where this came from, and I am quite shocked as to its cause, so I thought I would give you all a heads up as to one of the biggest challenges that we as a community will face. It attacks our rights and freedoms beyond the status quo, more than any other organization would ever make or do or go beyond by its gobeyondedness. I am talking about the Beta-Carrotene private eyes. I know, you may say, that they dont exist. "A Farce!" you would then add. "I never heard such a preposterouse statement in my life." You would also add.

But, my friends, a sad day has come, and we are faced with a reality that even our basic rights to oppress carrots are being smothered in the tide of 'tolerance' and totalarian terrestre. This group actually believes that we should change legislation to promote the welfare of carrots. A crying chame, to be chure, because for the last 100 years carrot labour has supplied us with many amazing products like toothpaste and non-residual, strong-enough for a man-but-made-for-a-woman deodorant. This group seeks to change this, to take away our freedom of expression slash freedom of opression of our sightly friends. What can we do?

Well here is what we can do....we need to lobby the government to make their group illegal. We must crush them. Shut down their alleys of expression and curb their allies of equal and opposite intention so that they wll get no attention-not even a pension! We can't let anyone know the true facts and costs of carrot oppression, as this might lead the authorities to make a moral judgement condemning it. And we must not let the evil buggers get us down, because once they do, those carrots can walk all over us..and theyve got sharp ends! Hike! Please dont give up in the fight for rights of Carrot Opression. the Beta-Carrotene Corperation needs YOU. NOW.

this is going to change the world as we know it

2007-01-04T21:31:00.000-08:00

hey everyone..i caved and made a blog because i really wanted to comment on my friend's blog and i hadda make a blog to do that because..you have to make blogs to do that. I felt very disconnected because of this problem. It hurt real bad. Thanks beta blogger. So anyways..now i have a blog. i hope you all learn worlds of wisdom from me. mabye later i will post a little about myself and you can guess who I am. i hope you like my pathetic attempts at text modification.