Picture of the Day 1

This is something new I have decided to do to ensure I blog every day like I want to. Recently I have developed a passion (maybe and addiction) for photography. It started when I began to shoot in RAW on my digital camera, and develop the files in Adobe Lightroom. I was able to get some really good photos, but I wanted more control over my focus and exposure settings, and it was just a pain to do on my "slr-like" digital. Well, fortune smiles upon me, my Grandmother just gave me all of my Grandfathers cameras and photography supplies. Among them was a Pentax MX, with the four main lenses needed! The MX is a fully manual camera, the only feature it needs batteries for is the exposer meter, and those are supposed to last for 10,000+ pictures! So, armed with these two cameras, a nice array of lenses, and far too much time on my hands, I'm going to take lots of photos. The best of these photos will be part of my new feature of "photo of the day." For any photo enthusiasts, I will give the camera and lens I took the photo with, as well as shutter speed and aperture settings (as best I remember them.)
So, here is the first photo of the day:
(Click to enlarge)

Taken in my back garden 09/X/06
Pentax MX with a SMC Macro 1:4 100mm lens
Shutter speed: 1/250th of a second
Aperture: f8 (or thereabouts)

Check back each day for a new photo.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday

Book Meme

Katie tagged me with the book meme, so here goes.
1. One book that changed your life.

The Screwtape Letters

2. One book that you’ve read more than once.

The Man who was Thursday

3. One book you’d want on a desert island

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

4. One book that made you laugh.

The Decline And Fall of Practically Everyone: Or, We Blew It Real Good

5. One book that made you cry.

The Amber Spyglass

6. One book that you wish had been written.

His Dark Materials IV

7. One book that you wish had never been written.

The House of Seven Gables

8. One book you’re currently reading.

The Five Love Languages

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read.

The Confessions of St. Augustine

That's it for me. I don't know who has gotten this, so if you want it, it is yours.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

The Quote Meme

Dom from bettnet has tagged anyone who wants it with the quote meme. Seeing as I didn't have anything to write about today, I will consider myself tagged.

The Directions:
Go here, to the random quotes generator, and look through random quotes until you find five that you think:

a) reflect who you are

OR

b) what you believe.

The Results:

1) "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
~G. K. Chesterton
2) "A room without books is like a body without a soul."
~Cicero
3) "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on."
~Carl Sandburg
4) "All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."
~Aristotle
5) "I can resist anything but temptation."
~Oscar Wilde


I now tag Katie, Mary Liz, Claire, Antonia, and MM.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

First Anniversary

Today is the First Anniversary of Thursday's Trifles! One year ago I decided to start blogging, and set up my free blogger account. Ironically, I was given a very nice gift today. I have been helping someone to fix his computer, and he gave me a Balvenie 50 mL sampler pack. It has a 12 year old doublewood, which has been aged first in standard oak casks, then in sherry casks; a 15 Single cask; and a 21 year old scotch that was aged mostly in oak, then spent the last few months in a port cask. There is no better way to celebrate such an auspicious occasion as with 3 fine single malts.
Thank you for sticking with my blog over this last year, and please join me in raising my glass in hope for many more to come.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

Spinoza: On the Infinite nature of God.

This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.
~Spinoza, Let58-P04.

No one can deny that Baruch Spinoza was a genius; a misguided genius, but a genius nonetheless. His work on Infinity was 300 years ahead of its time, though few people give him the credit he deserves.
Last semester, I took a seminar course on Spinoza’s greatest work, The Ethics. I was amazed at the complexity of the work. For those of you who have not come across it, it is all done in geometric proof form. Almost every definition, corollary, postulate, and proposition interlink to form a web that goes from the beginning of book I to the end of book V. True, he does make several slips here and there. At one point, he references a postulate that doesn’t exist; and at another, he declines to give a proof for a proposition, stating it is “self evident.” However, if something is self evident, it falls under the umbrella of a definition in Spinoza’s work, and should not be a proposition.
In the end, however, the system in flawed. There is a fundamental difference between Mathematics and Philosophy. I can make a mathematical system where 2+2=5, and make it internally consistent, much like I can make a simulation of the laws of physics after changing a few constants. The system will not be externally consistent, that is, it will not be equivalent to reality. Philosophy requires external consistency, or it is meaningless. Spinoza never proves that his initial definitions are equivalent to reality, and therefore, we do not know if the system is externally consistent.
This was not the point of this post. The last two paragraphs show that Spinoza was a misguided genius, with the emphasis on the misguided. What I wanted to write on was the absolute genius in the opening quotation. However, on considering it further, I don’t think there is anything I could add to the perfect simplicity of the statement. So, instead, I will leave you to dwell on it.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

Better than Site Meter!

I love looking through my site meter. It is incredible that I can get so much information about who is visiting my blog. I just found something better. Site meter is only free if you don't want to see more than the last 100 visits. Google has a service called Analytics that offers all the features of the professional meter services, and then some. It has meters you can use to see how a change on your website affects traffic, Graphs to show which keywords are bringing the most traffic to your site, and graphs that show the "loyalty" of your visitors. It really is a great service. Sign up for it now, while they are still offering it for free. When you sign up, they ask for an invitation code, just ask them to email one to you, and you get it in less than 5 minutes.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

An update on the screenplay.

As I said a couple months back, I am working on a screenplay for The Napoleon of Nottinghill. I would like to thank Katie, who put all the dialogue into script form. I am working on the direction and the narration, and maybe in a couple weeks, I will be able to post some selections.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

Okay, my summer break is over. . .

I know I haven't been posting at all this summer, even though I said I would. I decided I was too busy with work and other things to give the posts the time they deserved. But, I registered for classes today, signaling the end of my break. I'm heading back to Canada on the 2nd or 3rd of September, and classes begin on the 6th. I think I have a really fun course load this semester. Just take a look at this: (click to enlarge)

So, now I am going to try and get back into the habit of posting every day. I may miss a few days here and there, but I am hoping to get most of them. Thanks for sticking with reading this blog even when I had nothing interesting to say.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

In the Airport

Well, I am in the airport waiting to board my plan to Minnesota. BDL still has free wireless, so I figured I would take this moment to catch up on my email, and post a bit. I am really looking forward to the conference, and hopefully I will get to meet some of my readers there.
I guess I really don't have anything to post on. . .
Well, I will post later on today.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday

I'm back. . . No, I mean it this time. . .

Hello to my long neglected readers, and sorry again about my absence. My sister was married on June 1st (pictures to follow), and work has been pretty brutal in the last few weeks (sorry, I don't have any pictures). Well, those are my good reasons, my other one being I didn't have anything to blog on. . . But that is all going to change. I will be at the Chesterton conference this week, and will be blogging the whole thing. I will also be posting on my experiences of Jury duty tomorrow (well, it is really going to be more of how I try and not get impaneled as I have a plane to catch on Wednesday.)
But, for now I will leave you with something I just discovered: "Anglicanism is like non-alcoholic beer, there just really isn't any point."

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

Compendium!

Yes, I know I haven't posted in a month, and I am sorry. The last few days I couldn't though, as I had no access to the internet. So, anyways, I am out in St. Louis to help my sister pack and drive back to Massachusetts. Her wedding is in 22 days now, and it is my job to make sure she makes it back home safely.
I went to an RCIA class at the Cathedral Basilica, because my sister teaches there, and sat in on an excellent talk given about the Trinity and the Catechism, and got a FREE compendium to sweeten the deal. Now, like doughnuts, there are no bad compendium, but a free compendium is even better. so please permit me a celebratory w00t.

w00t!!!!!!

That's all for now, though I am going to be updating more regularly after I get back home (this Saturday.)

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

Math Conference

Hi all,
I just back from a Math Conference in Westfield MA (very near my hometown). The Conference was great. My University payed for the rental of the van to get down, and for rooms in the Marriott in Springfield. I heard some great papers on Game Theory, Number Theory, Set Theory, Probability, and the History of Mathematics. One of the talks was on Phi. Now, Phi is a really, really, really cool number! Look at this, how can anyone not find this cool:

It is the most irrational number. Pi has nothing on Phi.
And Phi has this other cool property called the "recurrence relation."

or for the special case of n=1,

It also works for n=2, but in that case, it is:
(PHI)^2=(PHI)+1 (sorry, no image)

So, yeah, Phi is cool. Want to know what else is cool? The shirt for the conference! I have one ordered, I should get it in a few weeks.
I am going to try and sleep now. I haven't gotten too much in the last few days. I will get the blogging I meant to get done, but it will be tomorrow.

Yours in Christ,
Thursday