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It’s been a long day of pulling through errands, but my ecstatic mind couldn’t wait any longer to write this! I found out earlier that my Portable MAME Control Panel senior design project won the SolidWorks World 2012 Hobbyist Contest! This is very humbling and a great honor from both the SolidWorks Corporation and Dassault Systèmes, because even today, I haven’t experienced as much enjoyment and real-world productivity from using CAD applications as much as this well-honed software. It truly is an art to breathe technical life into free-form imagination, and DS’ talented employees helped turn a bit of imagination into a worthwhile product – one that enables my friends and I to relive the glory days of the video arcade.

All in all, it’s been a pleasure, and I thank your team for being supportive in my engineering journeys. I hope to see you in San Diego next month for SW World 2012, and I’ll certainly be ready to learn even more from the pros.

I remember from years back, a pastor of mine gave a sermon mentioning about God’s sense of humor. As in, the Lord sometimes uses what we say, do, or think about on whims and turns them into lessons for our lives long after we’ve forgotten about the former. Well, it appears that my pastor was quite correct. As an example, before I graduated from high school, an opportunity came up for my class to state our personal quotes for the upcoming yearbook. Mine went like this:

“Time is a God-given thing; everyone is rationed 24 hours to use it for Him.”

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The final night before I head home from this lousy semester just ended, but I was reminded earlier about something that God implanted within me ever since I gave my life to Christ. Because in the end, the one thing that mattered most was Jesus, who gives all those who follow Him true, worthwhile purpose for their lives. And yet I wasn’t being undignified enough to share with others this revelation…
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Utterly boring. That’s what I saw in the woods and the sky along the expressway when I was driving back after seeing James Cameron’s new 3D movie. Because if there’s one thing about perceiving color in real life, it’s immediately recognizing post-production values that set new records for my eye’s dynamic range. Things initially jostled back and forth: good visuals, or good plot? Strong lead protagonists and flat antagonists, or level-headed characters everywhere? Do I really need 3D, or will normal cinema suffice? Hint: I didn’t prefer the new tech.

But Avatar, a ~161-minute movie with costs higher than the smart-as-wood Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, at least managed to get some of the things I longed for in an adventure-action film correct. Not the majority of points like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but more than enough to pass a year-end science fiction movie quality test. Want to spoil yourself? Jump, and don’t miss…it’s a long fall from here!
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Call me silly after viewing the horror that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but when I heard there was well-paced and intense mecha combat in District 9, it quickly ramped my interest up again. Way up. Because I already heard that the film was pulling in a healthy number of great reviews, but now it has robots! After seeing it tonight, though, it’s one of the good things that I can jot down about what makes a strong science fiction movie. With great lead characters, fluid and very realistic CGI, a smattering of original ideas, and good pacing, it held the plot in without many major leaks. But here’s the kicker: with a mere budget of $30 million, Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp have done a marvelous job at producing what was easily the best mature sci-fi film all year long. Take that, RotF and your $200 million black hole!

Don’t leave it to me to spoil the plot for you – go watch it yourself, or at least read what follows alongside the Wikipedia entry. I’ll give a quick rundown of what made the movie great in my eyes, what faltered, comments that fit neither, and overall what I think of this as a Christian film watcher.
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