A great quote

The Titanic 100

On April 11, most of my family went up to Branson, MO to participate in the “Titanic 100”, the 100 year celebration of the sinking of the Titanic. Samuel, Claire, Shea, Grace, and I were able to be in a play on Friday night. 

On Friday night, we also watched the film, “A Night To Remember”, made in 19??, which is based on first-hand accounts of the Titanic. So, overall, it is pretty accurate to the actual event. 

On Saturday night, we boarded a showboat, the Branson Belle, which we were glad did not sink. :D We listened to talks, enjoyed music by Charlie Zahm, and we even had a countdown to the minute the Titanic struck an iceberg, and the minute she actually went down. (They factored in Naval time, daylight savings, and all that other good stuff.)

It was a time to really proclaim the message, “Women and Children First!” Today as a culture, that message is lost. Men no longer hold the door for ladies, they no longer pull chairs out for them. 

We also related the men who died for their wives to how Christ died for his bride, the church. 

“You and I will be better in life and death because of the men’s good example. The real message of this great and overwhelming affliction is that it is the latest revelation of the power of the cross. The men who stood on the deck in the presence of disaster exhibited a power of self restraint. Exhibited it so quietly too, that it cannot be explained on any ground of mere evolution. But the son of man who came into a world that was lost. And so, the men of the Titanic sacrificed themselves for the women and children. The women did not ask for the sacrifice, but it was made.” - Rev. Dr. Leighton Parks

Shea as Miss Eva Hart

The Teach Them Diligently Convention

This month has been a REALLY busy month for our family. I’ll start back at the end of March. By the way, this might take up a couple of posts. :D

Well, back in March, Mom, Dad, Shea, and I went to the “Teach Them Diligently Convention” in South Carolina. The conference lasted over a 3 day period: Thursday-Saturday. Some of the speakers included Voddie Baucham, Doug Phillips, Ken Ham, and Stephen Kendrick. We had a great time listening to talks, and visiting with friends. On Saturday night, we went to the Kendall’s house, and spent some time with multiple families that we knew. 

Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the event because we forgot the camera. I know, I know, but you can slap me later.

Filming At Jamestown

Panorama of Jamestown

Last Monday we went to Jamestown, Virginia to finish up some filming for the video series. We filmed at Jamestown Settlement, a recreation of the original fort and town. It is right across the street from Historic Jamestown, which is the National Park containing the original site. The settlement is a really neat place. They have costumed reenactors there to explain the history. We filmed in the morning, doing a scene at the boats and three others at the fort. Here are some pictures

Setting up the jib

Sunrise over the ship

On the way back we stopped at a nice little country church. It was very old, and several presidents attended there, including George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and John Tyler, whose house was very close by. During the Civil War services were stopped and it was used as a stable, but later it was reoccupied. 

Picture from Instagram

This is a picture I took with Instagram, a free iPhone app. For all you iPod Touch and iPhone users, you really should get this app if you don't have it already. It's really neat. Anyway, here it is:

A pretty great quote

Three apples that changed the world: 


One that Eve ate, 
One that fell on Isaac Newtons head, 
And one that Steve Jobs built.

You Know You're a Designer When:

You know you're a designer when:

You wake up in the middle of the night wanting to change that one thing in your design.

Or when:

You hear "good", and understand, "could be better".

Free Trial Button

This is just a simple button I came up with in my spare time.

7 Lies about Homeschoolers DEBUNKED!

This is a great video everyone should watch called, "7 Lies about Homeschoolers DEBUNKED". It's really funny and you'll get more than a few laughs out of it. Enjoy!

A Great Party

This past weekend, Megan, Anna and Jake came down for a joint Birthday party for Jake and Grace (their Birthdays are less than a month apart). We had SO much fun- we played games, watched Foyle's Warand played airsoft. Here are some pics of airsoft, we took a few of playing games, which I might post later, but for now, here are the airsoft pics.

Crossing the creek to get to our battlefield (Notice me in the background trying to pick the log up and flip Jake into the creek... it didn't work)

Afterward, we posed for a few pics. We were trying to do a kind of "Men/Women in Black" theme, hence the black clothes

This shot was SO much fun to do... I'm glad that the guns weren't loaded :D

I love this pic; it was candid, but sometimes those are the best

I think that this has to be my favorite of them all.

Thank you Megan for taking the pictures!

A Great Quote

This is a great quote from the movie, "The Count of Monte Cristo", the 2002 version. I thought I'd post it because it really stood out to me:

"Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine!"

Sound Doctrine Conference

I'm currently at the Sound Doctrine Conference, a conference on the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, at the Brown's barn. The conference is about a week long. James Fletcher, Jake Dohm, and I have been running sound in the back. We have a table where all of us are working, and since we all have Macs, it's pretty hilarious to see al four of them lined up on the table. It's been fun, but also really tiring at the same time. I'm SO glad that today the conference ends at 6:00. Here are some pictures we took of our "work station."

James Fletcher's Mac

The soundboard, where we do all of our recording.

The awesome line-up of Macs!

The piano that's right behind us.

The gateway to the good life.

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

Now this is a really funny article I came across about Santa Claus. I know most of you, and I hope all of you, don't believe in him, but if you still do, (yikes!), READ THE TEXT BELOW. Actually, even if you don't believe in him, (hooray for you!), you can still read it. :D

Santa Claus: An Engineers Perspective

I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).
At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second --- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them--- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accellerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.