theMediaman.com

Prologue note #1: The DVD has finally been published, but it required a LOT of overtime, and a LOT of slacking when it has come to updating my Blog. That being said, there are at least three straight days of topics coming up, including my sweet birthday party, and my review of the “Phantom of the Opera” movie. Stay tuned.

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Prologue note #2: There’s an entry on He Who’s Site Must Not Be Linked To’s journal (aka. Reg) regarding Aetheism. Anyone who knows me wouldn’t see me as a Bible-thumper, but I do still have a very strong Faith. I was going to comment in his Journal, but it started to drone on. Instead, I’m posting it here.

Ironically, he mentions “blogs” as something we rely on “to feel safe, and avoid the overwhelming need to drink, or be nihilistically lacking in self-respect”. heh. His comment follows directly after mine.

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There have been some very dark and lonely times in my life. It was my faith in God that reminded me that there’s always someone on my side.

At the risk of dumbing down what is a very complex, philisophical arguement, the easiest comparison I have between Aethism and my Faith is this: When things go bad, and I can’t see anything good to come - I can either believe that I got a bad break, or that God has bigger plans than I can possibly comprehend.

A crude example would be taking Moses (Reg’s cat, not the biblical superstar) to the vet. Moses would not want to go… and frankly, Reg probably would not be too enthusiastic about the effort either. The physical protests from the cat might convince him that it’s just not worth it. Instead, he takes Moses in anyway, because he needs his check-up and shots.

Try to explain to a cat why it’s important to get shots.

Try to understand why God can’t give us rock-solid evidence that everything’s gonna be okay.

Moses trusts Reg…

….

…and after reading this, it will likely compound Reg’s God-complex. But anyway…

I do believe in God, and I do know that He has an influence in my daily life, whether or not I choose to believe it.

God convinced me, when I was most lonely, that I would be happy again. That I would have lots of friends, more family-birthdays than I can keep track of, and someone for whom I feel deep and unrequiting Love.

And He was right.

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Reg’s response

I think you and I agree that IF you believe, then God is a great comfort in times of trouble.

Oscar Wilde wrote an essay called De Profundis (”from out of the depths”) while in prison, trying to figure out his life, which he considered to have hit rock bottom. He wrote, despairingly:

“Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also.

“When I think about religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who CANNOT believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise God daily for having hidden Himself from man. “

I would be one of those people who CANNOT believe — not because of hubris. bitterness, or closedmindedness, or even out of rebellion. A leap of faith is just not in the cards for me. I guess you could say that my conviction that there is no Higher Power is just as strong as your conviction that there is… believe me, life would be so much more bearable if I could “leave it in God’s hands”.

And that last part, about God having hidden himself from man, is relevant to where the comparison between human beings and Moses breaks down — Moses does not have a yearning for truth and salvation; people do. For God to be so lofty and mysterious as to be unknowable is, to me, “hiding” from man. You say he’s revealed himself to you, and I respect that, but I just don’t see it in my own experiences. You might say “there are none so blind who refuse to see”…

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Final note: This is a discussion that could go back and forth for a long time. I suppose that’s why religion is millenia old, but still considered “topical”.
 

The Blog just doesn’t get updated sometimes because of work. Just to reiterate, I only update my blog during lunchhours. When there’s a 10-day span with no updates, you can safely assume I’ve had no lunches - and this rantless gap is no exception.

Despite an Impossibly Shortened Deadline (hereafter referred to as “The ISD”), we somehow figured out a schedule to get the DVD finished AND REPLICATED in ten business days. My most conservative estimates pegged the work at 20 days minimum. We managed to find a place (Duplium) that could stamp and silkscreen 500 dual-layer DVDs in five business days. Honourable Mention goes a guy at Asset Digital, who busted his hump to find some way of doing the 5-day thing.

The ISD was given to the client with the disclaimer that “any changes or delays seriously risk adjusting the schedule” since we had to remove all buffer time. The client came back with changes on “Day 0″ - the day when I have to have all materials to Duplium. Schedule got pushed back one business day to the following Monday… *sigh* Not something I was emotionally ready for, since it would lead to a full weekend in the office, and sleeping on the sofa here Sunday night. I surprised myself in how well I handled the disappointment… possibly because I somewhat anticipated the change in my “Perfeckt Plaaaann” (in Evil Genius voice).

So, now the DVDs are being produced… unbelievably on schedule with the ISD.

BUT NO REST FOR STEPHEN YET!

Despite taking a lunch break now (something I’ve rarely treated myself to in the last month), I’m still not in the clear. There’s about six more hours of breakout sessions that I need to work on. Final day for those to be finished is Monday… which means I’ll be working on the weekend, and burning discs on my birthday.

Just so everyone knows, you can fit about three hours of broadcast resolution video on a single-sided DVD at decent quality if it’s nothing but talking heads and PowerPoint slides! Unfortunately, the “Maximum Quality 2-pass Variable Bitrate MPEG2″ encoding takes about 2.5 minutes for every minute of content… so I’ll be doing just that for fifteen full hours. *sigh x 2.5*

Well, no rest for the wicked… I’ve enjoyed my chicken terayaki and written for about 20 minutes now. Back to the grindstone.

The truly geeky thing is that I’m really enjoying this! DVD Authoring for Fun and Profit!