@speaker said:

What kind of camera did you get Brodie?

I'm not sure if this is the exact one but it's real close

Amazon.com

(www.amazon.com)

It's got the little image viewer on the front for self portraits which my wife and I take a lot and it's got a great touchscreen on the backside with great haptics. It's a point and shoot but it takes some great photos and is really slick. It also doesn't seem to be very common, at least in the states, so I get a lot of comments on it. It also came about 2 weeks after my previous point and shoot died on me so the timing was great. If you're in the market they seem to be pretty inexpensive now and I highly recommend it.

-Brodie

Ya, can't wait to get my IPad I'd actually won a really nice digital camera from them awhile back for a material competition. The only downside was that the charger plugs were European rather than US Hopefully I don't have that issue again, but either way I'm sure I can get some US style plugs if necessary.

They took down the prizes announcement pretty quick and I couldn't find out what they were. As I recall there were some more licenses and then a bunch of lomo cameras.

Gui, I loved your rendering! I've never seen mechanical systems look quite so artful! I'm really glad the NL team recognized the beauty there.

-Brodie

Edit: just emailed the NL employee I've been in contact with and he said they'll send my IPad over via a US retailer so no worries on the charger plugs

@speaker said:

I ended up 2nd in both categories

Oh, haha Your entry is great. The 'dusty light' effect is really well done.

-Brodie

Thanks There were a lot of good entries submitted. I'm very honored to have won.

Which entry was your Speaker?

-Brodie

I don' think there's any way directly but you should be able to hack something together. This is the first thing I'd try.

In 3ds max get the xyz coordinates of both the camera and the target and draw a line from one point to the other. Then export that line as 3ds or dae and import it into SU. Then you should be able to use the Position Camera tool selecting first the camera location end of the line and then the camera target end of the line. Just make sure your lens size (35mm, 55mm, etc.) matches the 3ds max camera as well.

-Brodie

to tack on another question to Pete's list

What happens if someone gets pregnant without a license?

-Brodie

I'm with Pete on this one. He and I have had a couple relatively heated debates in this thread but I think we're still as much friends as we were before. I think for the most part for a religious debate it's been quite a civil discussion by all parties.

Most of your points, Rich, are well taken though. There are a number of productive SketchUp related discussions to be had, but sometimes you just have to take a break from talking shop for awhile and have a good ol' pub conversation at the corner bar (while your stuff renders).

At any rate the thread seems to be dying of old age at this point anyhow, so no need to kill it

-Brodie

Perhaps, but I think it's highly unlikely. From all indications that I've heard the issues are quite rare now whereas several years ago they were rampant. It wasn't so much that models would 'hang' necessarily but lots of glitchy OpenGL bugs. I had an ATI for awhile and experienced issues such as, I'd click on a face but SU would select a face that was behind the one I selected. Also, things like the highlight that occurs when you'd select a face could remain even after it was deselected and such. In your case it sounds like the typical SU performance issues.

My dislike for ATI is mostly just a hold-over from those old times. Both cards offer similar options at similar price levels so I just don't see why I'd take the chance if given the choice. It's just a minor paranoia but one that I've yet to find a compelling reason to face head on. If I used a GPU based renderer and ATI made a great card for less money than a comparable nVidia card I'd probably bite the bullet and give it a shot.

-Brodie

@hieru said:

I don't think it's a complete solution, but I think it's an important factor that has to be considered. We could be dealing with the testimony of people who weren't initiated into the inner mysteries of the cult and misperceived a non-literal resurrection rite. There are lots of mundane explanations that are more credible than the paranormal explanation.

What your saying is contrary to the historical documentation we have though. Matthew and John were both apostles who followed Jesus daily for 3 years. Likewise, the creed Paul is quoting says that people actually sawJesus after his resurrection and even names names of people who were alive at the time. These aren't the non-initiated.

Furthermore, a non-literal resurrection doesn't even make sense within the Jewish frame of reference. Beyond that this is part of the reason for showing the early date of the creed as it is extremely literal in it's tone.

@unknownuser said:

That's a non sequitur. Obviously early Christians made claims regarding the resurrection (some seem more literal than others), but I take issue with the notion that these claims are made very early - the supposed eye witness accounts are said to have been recorded a considerable time after they occurred and are subject to human error and deliberate fabrication, so it doesn't follow that we aren't dealing with 'legend'.

Isn't this the exact issue we've been discussing? I provided historical evidence that this creed dates to within just a few years of Jesus' death (some argue even sooner). If you want to 'take issue' with it that's fine, but it's no good to simply not like it, of course. What's required is some sort of counter-evidence that suggests my 'early date' conclusion is incorrect.

@unknownuser said:

I wasn't referring to the Bible but Christianity itself i.e. a single authority.

Would we expect to find a source who'd witnessed Jesus' resurrection and didn't convert to Christianity?

@unknownuser said:

That's begging the question as it presupposes the existence of the supernatural. There has never been objective evidence for any supernatural phenomena and if the supernatural isn't subject to empirical study then we simply couldn't be aware of it anyway - it would have no means of interacting with reality or being perceived by anything that is limited by the materialistic laws of the universe (which includes all of our senses).

It's not begging the question as I'm not presupposing the supernatural. I'm saying that IF Jesus was resurrected in the way it's claimed, then it was a supernatural event. Since early Christians weren't claiming that Jesus naturallyraised from the dead then what naturallyoccurs is irrelevant.

@unknownuser said:

That's what I meant by a hook. The early Christians set themselves apart by offering something other cults did not. It may seem counter-intuitive but showing how much you are willing to sacrifice for a cause can be a good draw for would-be converts. The fact that you think it speaks to the credibility of the resurrection shows how psychologically powerful that can be. Which brings me back to Heaven's Gate. Should we also consider their beliefs to be credible just because they were willing to die for them?

Many people have been willing to die for a cultic or religious belief. Heaven's gate, Islam, Christianity, etc. The difference in this case, though, is that the apostles were dying for something they claimed to have physically seen with their own eyes. That's quite different from dying for what someone else claims to have seen or what they claim to be true.

Most cults are easily dismissed in the sense that, if the one guy at the top is just bat crap crazy, the whole cult is doomed. Likewise, if the guy at the top is making a bunch of money or getting a lot of power out of the deal, we can be highly suspicious of his motives. But history shows us that Christianity's earliest for was a group of men claiming to have seen a resurrected Jesus which they then spent the rest of their lives proclaiming to other people despite persecution, hardship, and eventually execution. Combined with many other details, this fits the model of no other cult I'm aware of.

-Brodie

Either of the cards you're looking at look good to me. I always recommend nVidia for SU use as it's the safe bet. SU used to have issues with ATI cards.

But just know that this won't necessarily end your problem or even make it better. Whereas in video games or video production a better GPU = faster better performance, that's not always the case within viewport modeling programs. Sometimes a $60 card performs just as well or better than a $300 card. If you're only having this issue on 1 model, and it happens to be a heavy model you maybe wasting your money.

SU 8 does have some odd quarks when it comes to speed and I've yet to hear a definitive reason. In another thread we had going there was a speed test we used to run with and without shadows on. It worked fine until SU 8 when the 1st shadow test was one speed but running the test again reduced the speed dramatically - even faster than w/o shadows on. It would seemthat SU is trying to cut some corners under stressful situations to prevent the sort of lag you're referring to.

Also, fyi, your SU geometry is all being rendered in viewport by a single core of your CPU while textures and shadows are rendered in the viewport by your GPU. So if your model lags without textures and shadows on, that's a good indication that it's not your GPU's fault. And it's not your CPU's fault either as you have a great one. It's simply a current SU limitation.

-Brodie

@hieru said:

You would be surprised at the way people can drastically misperceive what they have seen. Even large groups of people can mistakenly believe that they have seen some kind of exotic phenomena.

Is that your position as to what happened here?

@unknownuser said:

Obviously the historical method takes account for this fallibility, but along with the problem of bias it's also the reason that historians prefer not to draw conclusions based on a single source - especially when we are dealing with incredible claims - and will seek out corroborating evidence from various sources or even other fields. When it comes to the resurrection there is no evidence outside of the NT and our empirical understanding of medicine tells us that it's impossible for someone to come back to life after clinical death.

You're jumping the gun again. I'm not going right for the jugular to prove Jesus' resurrection based on this one point. The only thing I'm trying to get some sort of concession on is that Christians were making the claimvery early on that Jesus had raised from the dead, therefore this isn't legendary material.

The Bible isn't a single source. It's a collection of multiple sources, various letters, histories, and such. To count it as a single source would be historically inaccurate.

It's valid to ask why we don't have extra-biblical sources attesting to a particular event but that doesn't necessarily discount the event occurred from a historical perspective.

Applying the historical method we can't lend claims regarding the resurrection any more weight than say the claims of the Heaven's Gate cult.

Medical science shows us that a dead person doesn't come on account of natural or any known man-made cause (at least not after a few days of being dead). But this isn't the claim (people knew even back then that dead people don't come back). The claim is that Jesus was resurrected by supernaturalcauses, for which science has nothing to say. If I keeled over one day and came back a few days later that would be unfathomable and unexplainable. But that's because there's no context. Jesus, however, insinuated and hinted several times that this would happen, then it did. I don't expect you to take all that at face value but that's the price to pay for getting ahead of ourselves I guess.

@unknownuser said:

Every cult needs a hook to draw the punters in.

That doesn't explain anything. The Jews at that time weren't waiting for an a-political resurrected messiah. They were looking for a political leader that would overthrow the Roman oppressors. That's why in every other case after the 'would-be' messiah was put to death, the followers gave up hope that he had been the messiah. Even if inventing the story made sense from a historical perspective, by all accounts the early leaders did nothing but suffer for their convictions and ultimately died on account of them. Again, there's no motivation.

-Brodie

@hieru said:

Not really. Perceptions can change within hours of witnessing an event and it doesn't take long for that perception to change to such a degree that it bears little resemblance to the reality of the original events - this is a problem with all eye-witness testimony and not limited to the supposed eye-witness accounts recalled many years after the fact in the Gospels.

It's one thing for someone to remember a shorter person as being tall or a red car as being green. It's quite another to mis-remember a dead man as having appeared to you. Eye-witness testimony isn't infallible and the historical method doesn't assume so. But within the historical method we have documents reporting on events sometimes hundreds of years prior to their written recording that we accept as credible accounts. It would seem that by your standards we couldn't trust even first hand eye witness accounts which would essentially make any historical study nonsensical. That's why I'm trying to adhere to accepted historical method. These aren't myrules for determining historical accuracy, these are methods developed by historians and scholars.

@unknownuser said:

Add to that the agenda of the Gospel authors and you can't objectively accept the events of the resurrection without any non-biblical documentary evidence (something which is tellingly in short supply).

In ancient times EVERYONE writing a historical record had a bias. People didn't do these things for fun. They were difficult and often costly. The historical method takes these factors into account by looking at what there biases were (not ifthey were but what) and factoring that into the equation. Josephus for example was a Jewish historian employed by Rome and yet we regard the majority of his accounts as quite reliable. Here, in 1 Corinthians we might ask what people had to gain by claiming Jesus to have been resurrected?

-Brodie

@alan fraser said:

@unknownuser said:

I think you're missing the point. There are multiple sources that corroborate that Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected.

Umh! yes, you could simply ask one...given that it's in the Creed.
That's all settled then. The Bible is confirmed as historically accurate. Therefore Genesis is true. Therefore God created the universe. End of thread.

If I might resurrect this thread [...ooo, see what I did there? clever]...

That wasn't my aim from one small argument of course. I was simply trying to establish that the claimof Jesus' resurrection, at least, began very early on. This counters the common argument that such a 'myth' developed many years later like a game of telephone. Alone, the argument certainly by no means proves that the event being claimed actually happened, but it seemed like an appropriate place to start.

I didn't anticipate so much falderal on the matter, however. I guess there's no use continuing on to any other points though as everyone seems to have given up on me.

-Brodie

@solo said:

@unknownuser said:

Brodie wrote:
It's illogical to NOT believe something simply because it happens to be in a book you disagree with.

So you believe in Middle Earth?

No. But if you'd like to make a historical case for its existence, I'm all ears. I've never heard the case that Tolkien thought he was writing anything other than fiction.

-Brodie

@unknownuser said:

It's illogical, Brodie, only because of your approach. You are still insisting on standing reason on its head.

I've given a very specific example of my approach and thus far the response has amounted to 'it's in the Bible therefore it's not true.' There has been no refutation of my claim that this statement in 1 Corinthians is an early Christian creed based on historical means.

@unknownuser said:

You say "It's illogical to NOT believe something simply because it happens to be in a book you disagree with."

That's not the case at all, in fact it's entirely the wrong way round. Those disputing with you don't start from the position of disagreeing with the Bible and thereby disbelieving what is in it. According to historical method, they will be cogniscent of it, but remain duly sceptical until such time as it can be corroborated from another source.

I think you're missing the point. There aremultiple sources that corroborate that Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected. My point is that this is the earliestsource which points to this fact. There's can't be multiple earliest sources.

-Brodie

@box said:

You are free to insult me, I have made my points clearly, I have not insulted your intelligence and I have bowed out of the discussion by agreeing to disagree.

Sorry Box, I'm a bit snarky today and that probably was said in frustration. I kind of felt like you bait and switched me a bit there by asking the question and referring to your knowledge of the historical method and then summarily rejecting a historical text after I'd put together what I feel was a thought out and reasoned response.

-Brodie

@box said:

@box said:

I'm sorry, I see no point in continuing with this.
You believe that what is said in the bible is true, I believe it is the stories of many people and as such is written with an agenda.
We will have to agree to disagree.

see above

I find your blatant intellectual dishonesty refreshing. It makes the pointless conversations much more short and sweet.

-Brodie

I'm simply suggesting for the sake of the argument that the Bible is a book - a collection of letters, histories, poems, etc. It's illogical to NOT believe something simply because it happens to be in a book you disagree with. I man wrote a letter, we can use the historical method to derive a reasonable estimation as to when the letter was written whether that letter is from Paul, or Plato.

I'm not suggesting that because Paul said it in the Bible, it's true. I'm merely showing that based on the historical method, we can illustrate that this statement was common among Christians within a few years after Jesus' death.

If you understand the historical method then I'll ask that you refute my points from within that method rather than making illogical claims and generalizations. Otherwise, concede the point but tell me why it's irrelevant.

-Brodie

Box, you're speaking in vast generalities and I'm trying to hone in on something we can sink our teeth into. I think there's some extra-biblical evidence we can talk about but it's not nearly as convincing or persuasive, in my mind, as a good historical look at the evidence within the Bible.

For example, if we dig into 1 Cor 15:3-8 a bit...

@unknownuser said:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

This is generally believed by historians to be an early creedal statement that dates to within a few years of Jesus' death.

Jesus died in the early 30's and Paul was converted some 3-5 years later. 1 Corinthians was written in the mid 50's putting the statement at MOST about 20 years after Jesus' death. But Paul implies that he 'received' the creed which historians believe to have an Aramaic character which would suggest that it was created at a time when the church was made primarily of Jews rather than gentiles. Based on these and other historical evidences, this points to the very early date of the creed. This counters the notion that the resurrection could have been some sort of later evolution of an idea that developed over time.

Starting here, do you have any disputed on historical grounds?

-Brodie

@box said:

I am very familiar with the historical method, which is why I asked to see your evidence.
If you are going to point to the bible as your evidence then the conversation is pointless.

Well, at least that's a starting point. Before I start spouting random factoids about the Bible, though, is there a specific reason you don't believe that it can be used as a historical source of information? To keep things concise I'd like to stick to the gospels here as it's primarily where we find information on the resurrection.

Edit: one notable exception I probably should have mentioned is 1 Cor 15:3-8 which deals directly with the resurrection and is generally accepted to be a sort of extremely early creed

-Brodie