Images from the Scrapbook

'Sup? Another rainy, dreary day in Isles

Music: You Should Be Dancing by the Bee Gees

 I've been on a bit of a political rampage lately, so I thought I'd get real now and calm things down a little.

I recently found myself looking through backup directories for some images, and found a number of ideas and partially finished drafts that I'll likely not go back to. So I thought I'd share a few here. In some cases I never finished them because of software upgrades. For example, when I went from Daz3D v2 to v3, there were problems reading the files. I've now discovered that the latest update of version 3 seems to have fixed that, so perhaps I will go back to a few (so I won't show those here).

Slow Burn - EHRydberg

 Slow Burn is a fairly early image I did combining models from Daz3D with landscaping and other models from Bryce. It was meant to have a book cover feel set around a story idea I'd had.

I've always liked the way the image turned out, but if I could find the original files, I'd like to remove the shadow under the big ship and possilby make a better divide between the people and ships so that it would more easily fit into a book cover format.

Tunnel - EHRydberg

Called 'Tunnel' for lack of a better title, this image was done by playing with primitives and texture/lighting in Bryce. The idea was a tunnel between times or dimensions, the close on being primitive, the distant more advanced. I developed this image further, but thanks for various moves and computer crashes, I can't find any of the other images.

Beach Memories - EHRydberg

Hellsing - EHRydberg

 Beach memories and Hellsing were both done primarily in Daz3D as simple model-centric images. Further postprocessing with Gimp made them what they are today.

With Beach Memories I've just played with the photo filter, which adds the specific border and a sepia colour filter to give it that aged-photo look.

Hellsing was a bit boring until I used the radial blur to give the appearance of action. I'm not entire I've used the optimal setting as looking at parts of the image almost give me a headache! Regardless, the blurred version is far more dramatic than the original.

The oval lighting was most easily achieved in Daz3d using a spotlight, although I suppose a similar affect could be achieved with a mask in Gimp.

Mutant Spider Woman - EHRydberg

 Mutant Spider Woman. The title kind of says it all. This creation was made around an idea for part of my Gateway story series where one colony of human have landed on a particularly mutagenic planet and changed into spider-like people over several hundred years. There's more to it than that, by why spoil the story for you?

The Daz3D image was created using several Victoria models overlapped and then turning off visualization of all but their legs. I'm quite happy at how the model turned out, but I haven't had call to use it in any further images as of yet. Although now that I've dug it out again, maybe I'll play some more.

Spygirl - EHRydberg

 Spygirl is another portrait experiment made a rendered entirely in Daz3D. My main interest was in seeing if I could get some dramatic light and shadow. I used a single spotlight and played with the positioning until there was just a bit of back lighting and it worked fairly well. If I was to do this again, I would probably use multiple spotlights with some set not to cast shadow, just to get more control over the model's front.

Underwater Search - EHRydberg

This was early attempt at an underwater scene in Bryce. I'm quite happy at how the light and colour turned out, although I didn't develop the image any further.

The water effect can essentially be achieved in multiple ways with Bryce. The easiest and cheapes on the renderer is just putting  a coloured plane in front of the camera. The other is to use a water-textured volume. I think in this experiment I actually did the latter, which is a very demanding render. I haven't played too much more with water scenes, as my main interests lay elsewhere at the moment, but I still think to return to it again sometime as water pieces do have an attractive, eerie quality to them.

Insight and longevity

'Persecuted' is an Overused Word in Modern Times

'Sup? Hoping hurricane Sandy loses steam before reaching Canada

Music: Eyes Wide Open by Gotye

These days it seems everyone feel persecuted, even those who have no reason to. Or perhaps the word has just become overused and people have forgotten what it really means. After all, how can someone belonging to a group with over a billion members worldwide, who controls the dominant Western governments, still feel they're being persecuted? Is it because they no longer have the freedom to excercise the bigotted parts of their beliefs?

While there are numerous examples of this in recent times, I'm specifically referring to the following article where a Christian couple who run a B&B refused full and equal service to a gay couple.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/18/bnp-nick-griffin-address-gay-couple

They owners recently lost the court case against them and they are quoted as saying:

"Naturally, my husband and I are disappointed to have lost the case and to have been ordered to pay £3,600 in damages for injury to feelings. We have the option to appeal, and we will give that serious consideration. We believe a person should be free to act upon their sincere beliefs about marriage under their own roof without living in fear of the law. Equality laws have gone too far when they start to intrude into a family home."

There are so many things wrong with their statement that's it's hard to begin. So consider this: a hypothetical religion that preaches hatred against some group--say, the elderly. Should its members then be allowed to discriminate because their religion says they can? Of course not. They must still act within the dictates of the society they live it. This is the fundamental reason we have separation of church and state in modern western countries--so that all members of the state are respected by the laws, and not just those people who subscribe to a specific theistic belief system


I do admit to being torn about this story in one regard. It's hard not to feel that businesses should be allowed to deal with whomever they want and live or die by their racist, bigotted views. After all, should people not vote with their wallets? Well, no. Businesses should not be above the law that the rest of us are subject to, nor should they be allowed to set public policy, which is exactly what would happen if they could choose which part of society they sell to.

And make no mistake, despite their claims otherwise, this couple are running a business. I think we all realize that's what a Bed and Breakfast is. So, for many reasons, to allow this couple to cry foul on ground of freedom of religion is ludicrous at best, and harmful to society at its worst.

Insight and longevity.

Of Traitors and Religion

 'Sup? RSI's galore. Why does this body of mine lock up so fast?

Music:  Skyfall by Adele

I had a strange thought today. Hard to put it away, however, especially given my sci-fi bent, so I figured I put it down here.

Eseentially, the question is this:

Could those who worship a God be considered traitors to humanity?

The answer depends on what you deem the nature of God to be and, to a lesser extent, what his/her/its motives are.

For example, if you believe God to be the anthropormorphism of nature then, of course, there is no issue. God is essentially a metaphor and a metaphor can't, in and of itself, harm anyone.

But most people, and especially most church/mosque/synagogue goers, tend to believe God is a real, actual, physical--albeit intangible, invisible--being. They have to, otherwise what purpose is there to frequent a place who's sole existence is for the worship of such a being? And they believe it with their heart despite generally not thinking through the following questions:

Where does God live? What are his affiliations?

As a physical being, the answer in our hearts is not satisfactory as that's essentially another metaphor, like saying Elvis resides in our hearts. A more telling answer is everywhere, so let's think on that.

Everywhere essentially implies the entire universe, or Earth and everywhere else. Although this would be incredibly challenging for any organic being, dependent on the true nature of the universe of course, it could be possible for an immensely old machine. But that's irrelevant. The real issue here is that more of God is out there than is here on Earth, simply by scale and vastness of the universe. That is, there is no reason to consider that God has any particular loyalty or affiliation to Earth.

I am, of course, making the assumption that the bible maybe inspired by, or even written by, God, but there is no reason to believe it is the absolute truth of life and everything [see my last post An Open Letter to Christians].

So, God is not a human, and resides mostly in the wider universe or elsewhere, and we have no evidence to believe that He has put any particular stock in the future well-being of humanity. In fact, even the bible suggests that He has been particularly kind to us in the past. So, whether by track record, or logical extrapolation, we conclude that, at best, God would be indifferent to our plight, and could, given provokation, be hostile.

Why Support/Worship God?

Given that we know very little of His motives, His whereabouts, or even His nature, why do so many humans worship Him?

Some will suggest it's love. Thank you for creating us and everything else and all that. And for some people this is probably true. For many others the answer is fear. The fear of God's wrathful vengeance, the fear of eternal damnation in the afterlife, or the fear that he will wipe out humanity. In other words these people want to be on the winning side when God comes down hard on us.

Think on that for a minute. These people willing side with a foreign power against their own.

Now if, for example, I replace 'humanity' with 'American' and 'God' with 'North Korea' then most people will immediately see that an American siding wth North Korea to bring about the destruction of the US is a traitor to America. So why is it when we see a fundamentalist gleefully proseletizing about God wiping out humanity, we just grin and ignore it? Well, my own view is that most people, religious or otherwise, don't really believe in God as an actual being, they just think they do. But that's for another post.

Traitors then?

So I propose that, in many cases, religious fundamentalists could easily be considered traitors to humanity. Of course, following that reasoning, those who love and worship God to court His favour would be considered patriots, with the following caveat. A superior power may rule for a time, and courting favour for survival is a fine and useful end when necessary, but it does a great disservice to your species if you begin to believe the rhetoric and forget that you too can achieve great things.


Also please remember that this has just been a thought experiment. I find it interesting to follow to conclusion some of these ideas and who knows, they may find their way into a future novel. But for now...

Insight and longevity.

An open letter to Christians

'Sup? Late again.

Music: Son of Sam by Shinedown

First off, this is not a rant.

And I'm not dissing Christianity or any other religion.

I'm also not trying to convert anyone to anything. Nor am I going to present you with numerous scientific facts to contradict the bible or any other religious text. Those are games for university kids and I've had enough of those discussions to know that faith can't be swayed by such things.

Instead, I only propose a few family-oriented questions/thoughts to ponder--after all, we're all in the family of God, are we not? These are mostly aimed at fundamentalists, those who take the bible as literal truth and who think we should spend our entire existence in worship, although all are welcome to read and think on them.

On Eternal Servitude and Leaving the Earthly Nest:

Do you think God, as a parent, would want us to remain forever in His home, always kowtowing, running to Him whenever there's a storm, or would He want us to grow up sometime, moving out into the universe on our own and eventually speaking to Him as equals?

Which would you want for your own children? Personally I would hope that I've done a good enough job raising my daughter that she's capable of, and not afraid to, go out into the world on her own.

The Bible Literally. Are You Sure It's the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth?

 If we were as children to God, then would it be realistic for Him to reveal all truths in the bible if He didn't think we were ready to understand?

People of the biblical era had no way of comprehending even the basics of what we now take for granted, how could they possibly understand fundamental truths of the universe. Do you, as a parent, teach your children everything you know, as you now understand it? Of course not, they wouldn't understand without greater knowledge and experience. Instead, you teach them partial truths, or stories that describe the general idea of the truth, but aren't necessarily true themselves. Believing the literal truth of the bible is like growing up never realizing that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy aren't real.

My child, for example, watches the kids' show Octonauts. It features a group of intelligent animals that speak to each other and learn about/help other sea creatures. It's a fun show that teaches her something about the ocean and its animals. But of course as she grows older she's realized that it's not real, that animals don't actually talk like that. So the show serves a valuable purpose, and teaches useful lessons, without being the literal truth.


That's all.  For me, those two considerations, using our own family experiences, are enough to strongly suggest that even if the bible is written by God, it in no way need embody the literal truth of the world or creation. Moreover, I see no reason that a loving God would want us to worship Him forever, and not venture out into the universe to make our own way, possible meeting Him as equals at some point.

Insight and longevity.