Something old made new.

Last week I was rather depressed and felt like I haven't really been accomplishing much lately. Later in the week I started writing scripts to use the voice commands on my computer and playing around with a workflow which uses them.

Then I decided it was time to go through and clean up my directories. I hadn't done that in a while and my computer was a bit of a mess.

While cleaning, I stumbled across a directory of my animated Artist Ambush entries and was suddenly struck by the realization that some of them weren't bad. Weeblez quality and a fair bit better animated than some of the stuff that plays on Cartoon Network on Sunday night.

So I gave myself a project for the weekend. Take all of these old animations and do the little bit of work that was needed to finish them up and publish them on my website.


My animation directory uses a cruddy old Perl script I wrote back before there were even CGI libraries for Perl. It's crusty and funky and not very friendly. Decided it was time for something new.

So I wrote a PHP script to take the contents of a directory and display them. It's not a fantastic script but it's a lot easier to work with than my old program was and it requires a minimum amount of effort to get stuff into a webpage when uploading new bits. I'll probably work on cleaning it up one of these days but it's good enough for now.

The next thing was to actually find all of these Flash animations and finish them. Some of these were done back when I was using Windows. O_O Happily, I archive pretty well and didn't have much trouble finding most of them.

The last thing, of course, was to go through and finish them out, fix the timing, and other problems that they'd had in their original 'drawn in 30 minutes' format. (Yes, seriously! All of these were animated in 30 minutes) The majority of them didn't get changed at all, but several had slight timing adjustments.

DragRace got a new title page (since I couldn't find its source file)
Wheel of toppings got a couple of static elements added to the scene to make it feel more done.
FleshyCon, Scrappy, MadScience, and StickSquirrel4 got basic color jobs to make them look decent.
Fridge was one I'd already fixed years ago. It didn't have sound in the original entry.


Anyhow.. None of these are high art, but some of them are pretty darned good for 30 minutes (or even an hour if you add the time I took to finish them out) but if you're curious, you can find them here. http://circle.twu.net/animate/ambush

But wait, there's more!

As if the Ambush stuff wasn't enough, there are 3 other directories that I should probably show too. They're not new or improved though. Just directories of stuff that I didn't have links to on my website.

http://circle.twu.net/animate/flash //Subset of stuff from my flash class.
http://circle.twu.net/animate/political //Political messages I made during the last election.
http://circle.twu.net/animate/misc //Random stuff. Mostly birthday cards.

PS: Yes, I'm aware the last two directories have broken images and no text. I'll fix that tomorrowish.

Better cancel easter, they found the body.

Unless you live in a cave, you've probably seen that there is a documentary airing on Discovery channel in a few days about a possible tomb containing the body of Jesus. It's become the top tedious news story, blasting Brittney Spears new hairdo clean out of the headlines.

So I suppose I'm expected to say something like the topic of this post. It's no big secret that I find religion farcical and a huge detriment to society. The thing is... I apply that evenly to all faiths. Accepting a news sound-bite without any thought is just as bad as accepting religious doctrine. Obviously, I don't have any real information on this tomb, and even if I did, I'm not an archeologist and I wouldn't know how to interpret it, but one thing is absolutely certain in this: The researchers cannot have overwhelming evidence. Christian mythology is adamant that Jesus had no heirs so there's no way we can compare this body with a living person who claims to be descended from Jesus. One might be able to prove a familial connection between the bodies in the tomb and that the names match, and that the date is correct, but that's no smoking gun. Regrettably, much as I'd like to see christianity upset, there just isn't sufficient proof. As a for-instance: Even if the bodies are of the proper age, stone does not carbon date. There's plenty of room for an explanation on the lines of 'an ancient forgery' even if one ignores the possibility of mistaken identity.

Now don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean for a second I believe all of the 'Son of God' rubbish. Nor is it agnosticism. I still find every religion I've researched to be absurd and deeply flawed. God's existence or lack thereof is completely irrelevant.

All I'm saying is that I am very skeptical there's a way to conclusively prove this body is the one the christians gibber about. Moreover, I'm absolutely certain that even if such proof did exist, it would be completely ignored by the vast majority of people calling themselves christians.

On the whole though, this news story just makes me sad. There are many things happening in the world that are more deserving of such intense media coverage. It is also sad to see these right-wing asshats being interviewed, spewing their well-rehearsed propaganda lines as quick as they can in an attempt to undermine scientific process by espousing half-truths and logic faults. The mainstream will probably buy it. On the other hand.. Just as sad is the knowledge that in the future I am sure to see other atheists citing this tomb as their gospel, presenting it as an absolute truth that cannot be ignored. Come on guys. That's still religion. triggur recently posted this handy diagram. It's fairly accurate, and you should try applying it to everything you 'know' to be true on an occassional basis.