Cube Teaching

I built this as a way to teach people about the plan of salvation without having to redraw all my artwork every time and so that I could provide scriptures alongside the illustrations in such a way as to encourage people to study more on the subject.

Click the picture to go to the photoset. (Middle click in firefox so you can keep reading)

Plan of Salvation Cube and Artwork

Patent Pending (Keep your hands off my idea.)

This cube is my Beta, with my Alpha model seen in the picture set about mid way through. (It is the white and pencil drawing, smaller, no color, less detailed version seen at one point.) The cube folds open to reveal the artwork, which is spread across the 48 mini squares. Each of the 48 squares was hand drawn with a pen and colored with markers. Some faces or drawings had multiple initial versions before I decided on the ones that made it into the final model. All the drawings are presented to teach in sequence by rotating and opening and closing the cube in the way it is in the picture set. As it is opened and closed it progressively constructs and arranges the 48 squares into groups of either 4 or 8 squares which teach the Plan of Salvation in the principle order from PMG lesson 2. No drawing (minus 1) contains anything not directly taught in Lesson 2, for example, there is no veil, and no outer darkness. The only thing on the final cube which is not directly from the lesson is a reference to Lehi's vision, seen on the right hand side of the artwork for The Atonement principle. (It's a very small tree of life I put at the end of the path.

Comments anyone? Future versions I intent to not only be colored, but be constructed with hinges and slightly bigger yet again, to ease the distance from which it can be taught and used. The current version is constructed using 8 wooden symmetric blocks each covered with the artwork which is drawn on notecard paper (proper texture) and covered with packing tape to ensure it stays together. The current model also hinges together with packing tape.

Time Passes

For those who haven't been sent emails or simply lost the ability to link into them, here are the links to my picture sets. http://picasaweb.google.com/PepeThePrawn

So I figure that if any of you want to know what I'm up to you can check that out. I used to post here via email but then Google broke that and I don't know that they've fixed it so I can't do that as I used to.

There are many things I've done which I haven't journaled here, mainly because I haven't had the time. When you have an hour on email per week sometimes it's a choice between responding to emails or reading them, much less visiting someplace few people go.

I update pictures frequently so go look at them! They're even tagged for my amusement.

Lack of Sleep Doodles

Ok, So a couple days ago I laid awake for 4 hours and decided just to get up and start doodling to pass the time. I had my reasons for the initial choice of doodle but after that it was just stuff to pass the time. Honestly the reason for the colors is that I had primary colored cardstock on my desk. It seemed like the logical choice for doodles I guess. All other colors and things were chosen for some reason or another by me at 4am after having gone for nearly 24 hours without sleep, so don't read too much into these.

Mission Office

I work in the arizona phoenix mission office now. So I have frequent (here read almost constant) access to a computer and the general internet. Still, I'm on a mission so I don't go anywhere bad or sketchy even, but I do spend a ton of time on the computer. I had a thought, what if people sent me their panorama digital photos and I spend the time and stitch them for you when I get bored? To take good ones just follow these simplified rules I came up with:

1. Stand still, hold the camera as steady as possible with it zoomed all the way out.
2. Use a tripod if possible. You don't have to have a Pano-head, I can still do the pictures.
3. Tell it not to use a flash
4. Use manual exposure. Meaning don't use "Auto"
5. Pick a setting say Manual and the camera says something like: f/4.3 1/100s Use that setting for every shot in the series. Use something that gets as much details as possible but not auto.
6. Overlap all your shots at least 1/3 for good positioning.
7. The best ones are 2 shots tall and 3 shots wide at least. 6 of them overlapped leads to about 4 nicely aligned ones.
8. Take pictures of something interesting!

I got transferred. As always, try writing to the Mission office address if you haven't been writing me. That's the best way. Those of you who write often, this is just so that you get my address faster than the 5 days it takes to get a letter to you.

I figured out that I should actually be out till about february 24th of 2009, so three days longer, I'll see about updating the count down timer. The longer time has to do with how the schedules for transfers go. They happen every 42 days I think so I it doesn't come out exactly.

Biking

Ok, so if any of you want to know where I went mountain biking today (this morning) I was out at 33.692305 N latitude and -112.201111 W longitude. Pretty fun stuff. This link will take you there if you want http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Biking&layer=&ie=UTF8&om=1&t=k&z=15&ll=33.692305,-112.201111&spn=0.009998,0.02296

Yay for missions

Ok, so I'm in the mission field now. My new address is listed in the comment to this post below. (just to keep it from getting found by those who shouldn't be sending me mail.) I'll be at that address for the next couple weeks. About 12 weeks or so I believe. If you want to know something, write me an email, it's quicker and I can type faster than write so it lets me get to more people. That being said, I only have so much time in a library and I love getting mail so snail mail is most appreciated. Write to my pepetheprawn address and my new one here on a mission: 5thwheel@myldsmail.net. The myldsmail one doesn't seem to work very well at all so I'm using my pepetheprawn address instead. Thank you all for writing to me and I hope that everything is going well back home. If you want to write I would love to hear from you in snail mail, then I can re-read it while not at a computer see? I ride a bike here in the phoenix valley. It's about 90 ish outside all the time and often up around 105 or so. I love it though, nothing to really complain about. I'm told that they have monsoon season here in august and september when storms come in and dump rain all at once. Saguaro cacti are aweasome and plentiful. Pronounced 'swarro' by the way.
Anyway, gota go! Lots to do!

Messages from a distant state

I just wanted to post to introduce this blog, the place I'll send emails that I would normally send to everyone, but I wouldn't have time to. I may not get email at all but just in case, this is here.