An Epic of Epic Epicness

Step One: Play video

Step Two: Fall off chair

Step Three: Repeat

Oh internetz, when will you quit?

Day 17 - Your Beliefs

I am a Christian. That is what I've grown up in and what I have decided to be. It frames the way in which I see the world and is the starting place from which I form all of my opinions about everything else. I believe in a knowable, personal God who is not distant from the world, but is active in His creation. I believe that Jesus existed as a real person who walked on Earth in human flesh, and yet was also God. I believe that He died on a cross for my sins and the sins of everyone else throughout time, the perfect sacrifice for an imperfect world. And I believe that, more importantly, He rose again. I believe that that we are impure and imperfect in God's eyes, but if we accept the gift He has given us through Christ's sacrifice he will forgive us and cleanse us and that we can enter into a personal relationship with Him. I do not believe that becoming a Christian is an instant solution to all my problems: those will continue to exist by the very nature of the world we live in. I do, however, believe that becoming a Christian can give you hope and strength to get through the tough times. I also believe that God is active in the world through the Holy Spirit, a guide to speak to us and enable us who dwells within everyone who follows Christ's teachings.

This is the core of my beliefs, and should be in line with the core beliefs of every Christian. They are the only beliefs I have which are not up for debate. Everything else that follows, everything not central to my salvation, reflects the decisions I have made through my exposure to different faiths and denominations. I won't write about all those because the list would be too long and to changing to be of any real use to anyone, so I'll just leave it at this.

Day 16 - Someone Who Fascinates You And Why

This question is more complicated than it first appears. I'm not really all that great about picking things, and picking people is even more of a challenge. And then you have to write about who they are and what they've done to garner your attention and why the fascinate you so much... gah. Too much decision-making.

Pulling a name from a hat.

So Bill Gates then. Founder of Microsoft, one of the masters of Silicon Valley along with Steve Jobs, philanthropist. Love him or hate him, Bill Gates is a pretty cool guy - digs at personal hygiene aside.  Honestly, it wasn't enough for him to help revolutionize the computer world (if some of the actions Miscrosoft were, well, questionable), he had to go ahead a become this great charity-guy as well.

On the Things That Interest Me side of the Bill Gates equation, I recently read his book The Road Ahead in which he muses on the future of technology. It is a little lopsided in its portrayal of the tech world (if you were to read this in a tech vacuum you could almost believe that Microsoft was the only computer company out there), however a lot of what he has to say is both eye-opening and largely applicable today. Jobs gets a lot of credit for being a visionary, but I think that Gates deserves some recognition on that front as well.

One of the things that impresses me the most about Gates is his commitment to charity and philanthropy. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the worlds largest private foundation and is involved in relieving poverty, enhancing healthcare, and improving access to information technologies and education. One of the most interesting projects that they have started as a kind of sidebar to the Foundation is The Giving Pledge: an attempt to get the world's billionaires to pledge to give away the majority of their fortunes away either in life or in death. This is a project which they started with Warren Buffet, who has pledged to give away an astounding 99% of his fortune. Even if they can get a few of those wealthy who have committed to giving away their fortunes to actually do so, the potential impact of all those dollars is phenomenal. Forbes has a really interesting, if long, article on the whole shindig if you want more information, and I sincerely recommend reading it.

Day 15 - Your Favourite Blogs

It is actually kind of bad how many blogs I read: as of this moment I have something like 620 unread posts in my Google Reader stream. There are just so many people out there blogging who have interesting perspectives on the world and lots of interesting things to say. That is, after all, the purpose of a blog - to get fresh ideas and perspectives out to whoever is interested in listening. Here are some of my top blogs:

The Personal - Broken, In Repair

Just a guy being healed by Grace

It may embarrass Hansen to be mentioned - again. But I actually appreciate and read his blog quite a bit. He writes with brutal honesty about personal issues and struggles, as well as successes and joys. He approaches his blog with the same kind of openness which he helped me foster when he was my leader at camp, and that I appreciate.

The Tech - Gizmodo & Engadget

These two rivals share space as my favourite tech blogs. I read Engadget for the long list of new and shiny tech invading the world, as well as for their excellent coverage of the Windows Phone 7 plateform, aka the phone I own, which Giz has more or less annoyed much to my annoyance. The only thing that really annoys me about Engadget is the commenting community which more resembles YouTube than anything particularly useful. Flame wars abound and there are often more admin-deleted comments then not. That is where Gizmodo steps in. Like any tech blog, they have their fair share of trolls and fanboys; that said, they do a better job then most at keeping them in line. Giz is also my source for tech news that falls outside of the realm of personal gadgetry: it collects the gamut of gadgets as well as essays on gadget culture and the science behind the tech. Note: as much as I love Gizmodo, it is best viewed with the t/not:NSFW tag appended to the end, unless of course you are in to reviews about sex toys. In which case, fill your boots!

The Awesome - io9
My favourite blog of the lot and the one I follow the most, io9 is a must have for any geek's reading list. They bring together sci-fi and fantasy fandoms into a crazy mix of books, comics, tv shows and movies as well as covering cool scientific breakthroughs and just keeping you well informed of the things geeks love to know. Add to that probably the best community online for respectful and engaging discussion and you have one of the absolute best blogs on the web.

Day 14 - Your Earliest Memory

To be honest, I'm not all that good at reminding time frames to begin with. Ask me a question about something that happened in a book I read or a show I watched years ago and I can probably answer that; ask me a question about myself... chances are not as great. That said, I do have some hazy memories from when I was younger, albeit with no particular concept of a timeline and the only marker distinguishing them as the earliest being my place of residence at the time.

Is it strange that all of my early memories are tied to relatively unimportant events? No birthdays or Christmases; maybe Thanksgiving - but those have a serious tendency to blend together. No, I can remember playing Lego in my bedroom closet, my brother bloodying his lips rubbing them on his crib, losing my boomerang on the playground, and playing Pluto in a class play on the planets (back when Pluto still was one). I suppose on the important side you could count my Kindergarten graduation, though it really doesn't count as my earliest memory. If you asked me to order the others, however, I couldn't do it in a million years.

I guess it just speaks to the enigma that is our brain. By what arcane methods and arbitrary criteria does it chose to store and remove certain memories?

Day 13 – Give Pictures Of 5 Girls Who Are Famous Who You Find Attractive

Figures this would be on Friday the Thirteenth (day). I have no idea really how to properly gauge the fame-level of people these days, especially since my interests fall just a little bit outside of the mainstream. So regardless of how famous the following five may or may not be, they make the list in my eyes. And hopefully I don't get into trouble ;D

... please?

In no particular order:

• Summer Glau
  
• Felicia Day
  
• Scarlett Johansson
  
• Amy Lee
  
• Emma Watson
  

Day 12 - Bullet Your Day

Maybe I should have tweeted this as I went along and then collected them here: I don’t use Twitter as much as I might like.
Then again, lets take this one thing at a time.

• 8:45 – Woke up and showered
  
• 9:00 – Morning routine: eat breakfast, check email and RSS, survey Ogame empire
  
• 10:00 – Counselling appointment
  
• 11:30 – Had lunch with Emily and chatted about life, the universe, and youth work
  
• 14:00 – Class! The Wenjack makes me sleepy
  
• Apparently Freudian Psychoanalysis is a plague (says Freud himself)
  
• 15:30 – Ghosting the corridors of the OC, my old haunt. Check up on my fleets, again.
  
• 17:00 – Class! Again! Developing for the Web though, much more interesting
  
• 19:00 – Walk out to my truck to discover that my headlights had been on since I got there. Hooray for dead batteries! Now to find someone to boost me.
  
• 20:07 – …aaaand no such luck yet. Call Seana to see if she will come and rescue me :D
  
• 20:40 – Help arrives, and my dead battery adventure is over.
  
• 21:20 – Home, and dinner. Chat with my mom about the day
  
• 22:10 – Call Seana and catch up on the rest of the day
  
• 22:30 – Dad get home and we rock the freezer, getting it loaded in the van.
  
• 23:10 – Bed time! No, wait. Blogging time!