Monthly Archives: February 2010
Valentines Day Special
Posted by Andy on February 15, 2010
1 comments
Yesterday was Valentines Day. Whoop-de-doo! Looking back, the highlight of the day was spending time with a collection of other [mostly] single people who are comfortable about being single. In fact except for a bunch of jokes between friends, the day passed without the normal kind of ‘valentines day pressure’ that one learns to expect.
This morning an interesting idea occurs to me: The search for intimacy can as easily be about fear as it can about love.
I see the two as opposites. In the words of Michael Leunig:
There are only two feelings, Love and fear:
There are only two languages, Love and fear:
There are only two activities, Love and fear:
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results, Love and fear,
Love and fear.
With regard to relationships, we get worried, slightly concerned, some of us get desperate, because we feel like we have a narrow window of opportunity to find a life partner. We are afraid that we will wake up aged 40 and find ourselves alone. We fear we will never find someone who understands us and who stands by us, we are afraid our plans wont all turn out.
None of that has anything to do with love. We can love people without needing to possess them. We can find companionship in good friends. We can find love and understanding in God. While we’re all moping around waiting (or searching frantically) for our significant other, we seem to get distracted from the job of simply loving other people.
Travel Plans
Posted by Andy on February 8, 2010
2 comments
It the past two weeks I have told about 20 people, in varying degrees of detail, the plans for my trip in march. Since I’ve resolved to use a blog to keep people up to date on my travels, I figured I should start now.
Yes I am going overseas, and yes it involves franciscan monks.
Heres the plan:
I leave wellington on March the 12th and fly Korean Air to Paris via Seoul. I arrive in Paris on Saturday, I stay the night at a hostel in Paris and take the TGV to Macon and then a bus to Taize
Taizé:
This is where the franciscan monks come into play. In wikipedias words Taize is…
“an ecumenical Christian monastic order in Taizé, Saône-et-Loire, Burgundy, France. It is composed of a little over 100 brothers who come from Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions. Over 100,000 young people from around the world make pilgrimages to Taizé each year for prayer, Bible study, sharing, and communal work.”
…which I thought summed it up pretty well. If you want to know more: www.taize.fr/en.
I’m interested in Taize for several reasons. Firstly life at Taize is about community. Community interests me. I really think community is the key to what Christ intended for the church. Our society (and even our churches) seem to have rid itself almost completely of the idea and framework of communal living, to its demise. I want to learn more about community, and Taize I think holds some answers.
Next, Taize interests me because of its worship. Its simple. It involves a bit of silence. Its not trying to be cool, or popular, and yet thousands of young people find some satisfaction there. My soul yearns for the kind of worship that leaves room for God. I’ll post more of that somewhere else.
Third, Taize interests me for the people. If anything is driving what I do on my trip, its the potential to meet people. I’m only vaguely interested in seeing a bunch of European vistas and exploring some ancient cities. For me the draw card is meeting people who have come from different places and see the world in different ways. Taize represents an way to meet a lot of people in a shared experience - the key to finding anything more then smalltalk.
After Taizé
I’m not sure how long I’m spending in Taize. When I’m done I’m not sure where I’m going. The plan is deliberately vague. Possibilities involve wwoofing in either Spain, Hungary or Romania. Or maybe something else if I make friends in Taize, who are keen to put me up.
So that pretty much it.
Oh yeah, I’m planning on coming back to Wellington on the 8th of June.
openGL
Posted by Andy on February 3, 2010
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A few weeks ago (before I moved and put my PC in boxes) I was playing with OpenGL on SDL. This time I left all the crazy memory management stuff, and the segfaults behind. I got as far as some code that draws 3d walls correctly linked at the corners, on a flat plane. I’d post a screenshot, but my PC’s in boxes in my parents garage. Maybe later. [Edit: like now]
Its just a bit of an exercise to get back into the C++ way, and to learn a bit about openGL and graphics programming.
The interesting thing I ran into is the need to calculate normals for all the polygons to do lighting correctly. I’m in the process of learning how to do this.