Pack it up, pack it in, let Crescendo begin…

I worked on my new game today, which I have codenamed “Crescendo” to throw off ninja-coders who might reverse engineer my entire game design from the title alone. Here is the first screenshot, which has been only slightly doctored:

I know what you’re thinking: “This is such a cool-looking game! How can I pre-order?”. Well, I’m humbled by your compliment. Patience, my friend, on the pre-orders. Currently all the game does that can be seen is create The Root, which is the theme unit of the Nature Kingdom, and all The Root does is draw a green circle on the screen using Windows blah GDI graphics.

BUT, just think of how cool a game could be that has a “theme unit” called “The Root” which is part of something called the “Nature Kingdom”.

In all seriousness, this has been the first day of significant coding on my new game project, and I hope that God will help me work hard on it and see what it becomes. I will update my progress on the Vanguard.

St. Joseph, pray for me! And may he pray for you, too.

Yes, I did cut out the middle part of the cake and eat it because it’s the moistest part.
No, I am not ashamed of it.

(I think I’m finally starting to live the high life.)

This post is really for myself when I search google for why my vc71 vc7 vc 7 DLL project fails to create an import library. Devin, it won’t create an import lib if there are no exported functions in the DLL’s code!

How could that happen? It could happen if you comment out all the functions that you are reusing from Abound for your new game in a particular DLL because they don’t make sense. Leave the function headers in and a skeleton for a body to make sure that when the DLL builds it will correctly create the import library (Creating library …).

Back to our sporadically scheduled programming.

Last week I bought the materials to fix my car door, which I dented and scraped down to the metal on a cement wall. I called the dent fixers this week to see about them getting the big dent out, and they said they are booked til November, and “could try” to squeeze me in sometime in the next two weeks to look at it!

Well, I don’t want to wait that long before doing my part of the repairs, since the rust is already getting large, perhaps the size of a dime to a quarter in some places, so today I went to work. Here was the plan:

1. Scrape off scratched paint.
2. Sand off the rust from the metal.
3. Apply rusty metal neutralizer and primer.

Here is what it looked like after I scraped off the scratched paint and sanded off the rust:

more…

“Yeah, we will shine like stars in the summer night;
We will shine like stars–it’ll be alright”

Those lyrics are from U2’s classic song “With or Without You”, live at Slane Castle for their Elevation tour. I like the sentiment behind them, and it goes well with something I read in Alan Ames’ books of private revelation entitled “Through the Eyes of Jesus”, where Jesus says that mens’ souls are like dew drops. When the sun’s light hits them, they light up brilliantly and sparkle brightly, but without the sun’s light, they are dull. The analogue to the sunlight is Jesus living inside a man’s soul.

So I modify these lyrics slightly sometimes:

“Yeah, we will shine like dew in the morning light;
We will shine like stars–it’ll be alright”

May Christ truly dwell in our little souls and light them up with his beautiful love!

I have read the Catechism of the Catholic Church from cover to cover. That’s a good thing. But I also think that I now “know” the Catechism. That’s not such a good thing. Last week I had to dust off my catechism and take it to the Catholic Men in Action group meeting that I was invited to by a friend. Today in adoration I read the next section that we are supposed to read for our meeting tomorrow, and after doing so, I flipped back through the catechism to read about our Blessed Mother’s sinlessness.

As an Evangelical Protestant, few Catholic beliefs incited me more than “Mary’s sinlessness”. I came to accept this belief along with many others when I became convinced of the Catholic Church’s God-given authority. Today God amazed me all over again while pondering this simple statement:

By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. (493)

more…

I have enjoyed various songs by the band “Our Lady Peace” since high school (for me, that was about 10 years ago–man I’m getting old). I made an impulse iTunes buy today of their breakthrough hit “Starseed”, and decided to get the live version of the song. Unfortunately the live version is not better than the album one, and in my opinion is actually worse. The first four minutes the lead singer plaintively wails a good bit, and then finally he launches into the song. He does a decent job at it, but then when it’s over the last minute is him talking to the crowd.

So I should have bought the album version. I might go ahead and do that anyway, since I don’t think I want to listen to the live version much. Oh well, sometimes you gamble and lose.

Many of their songs have somewhat different lyrics, but they also are usually pretty catchy. The lead singer’s voice is whiny, so you have to get used to it if you don’t normally enjoy whiny voices. I haven’t visited their band’s site because I am afraid that they are really weird perhaps and if that’s the case I would prefer to live in ignorance of it!

but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how this blind teen pulls this one off.

I frequently go to Mass at different parishes, and three different priests at these parishes each do the elevation of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament after the consecration different ways (you know when the priest says “Take this all of you and eat it; this is my body, which will be given up for you”, and then raises the Blessed Sacrament above his head).

Priest 1: Doesn’t elevate the Blessed Sacrament at all, but after saying the words puts it down immediately.
Priest 2: Elevates Jesus for a brief time, probably a second or two.
Priest 3: Holds Jesus up for 20 or 30 seconds!

Because I have a strong belief in Jesus’ Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, I love Priest 3’s reverence and extended elevation of Jesus, which gives me a mini-adoration time and helps me appreciate the fact that I am about to receive my Savior into my unworthy body and soul.

Priest 2’s elevation is not as reverent, and I am guessing is the minimal amount of time “required” by the liturgical laws (I tried to look this up and failed).

Priest 3 doesn’t elevate Jesus at all, and I am puzzled as to why. I wish he would and feel like perhaps he is doing something wrong by not elevating him.

Anybody know about what the laws are on this?

I read an article on catholicexchange.com today about many parishes’ lack of adequate facilities for families with handicapped children, and then I went to the author’s blog and read several of her posts.

Reading her blog made me feel sad and scared: Sad because the struggles she faces as a mother of an autistic child can be excruciatingly painful and hard and scared because one of my long-held fears from my days as an atheist is having a child who is disabled in some way (down syndrome, autism, etc.). I empathize with her sufferings, though I cannot possibly sympathize, and thankfully God has allayed my fears of having a disabled child as I have thought and prayed about it over the fews years I have been a Catholic.

Also, I once was one of those volunteer CCD teachers who had an autistic child in my class, whose mother eventually pulled him out. Me, 25 year old unmarried Catholic convert of one year, teaching 15 children ranging from 1st grade through 5th grade in one class, including an autistic boy: Not the ideal situation, but God did his best with it I hope.

Nevertheless, reading her accounts of life with her autistic child is almost depressing. All I can think of is to pray for them and do my best to be understanding and kind to those parents of these special children at Mass. Truly, only God knows what we can handle, even with his grace, and what is best for us, even such immense difficulties. May all the saints and angels in Heaven pray for her family and for all families with disabled children.