I was watching a video on youtube by 2Veratasium (like a side channel for Veratasium that is just like rambling vlogs and personal blah blah (PS. Veratasium is a pretty sweet youtube channel that is super smart and is run by this physicist guy)) and I was thinking about various things while procrastinating and knitting.
The guy quoted Einstein. "There are only two ways to live your life; as though nothing is a miracle, or as if everything is." And the guy briefly talks on this point and I really enjoyed that video because it was just about how everything around us is amazing; science is amazing. Point: it made me remember last Saturday. Instead of having a real Young Adults Fellowship Bible Study time or whatever, a bunch of us just got together and hung out. Since I no longer needed to lead a discussion or anything I took out my laptop and got back to the task at hand: copy and pasting every single blog post into a word document so I could proofread and then count the word frequency for my Zipf adventure.
As I had mentioned previously, this Zipf mystery or whatever it should be properly referred to as, is amazing and I wanted to see it in action. My friend AS brought these chocolate chip cookies to the hang out. They were perfectly light and fluffy and melt-in-your-mouth amazing. As I'm copy and pasting, people start asking why, and I explain how amazing Zipf is and that I want to test it and a couple of the guys were well-learned in computer science and code and one thing led to another and then the two of them were spending an hour trying to convert an exported code text file of my blog into a useful format with only the words. They ended up coding like 2 screens worth of code which produced a page that had all of the content from my entire blog separated by year. =O Computer scientists are amazing. I was sitting there dumbstruck the entire time, but their fingers were flying and web pages of standard code were being referenced. Amazing. What would have taken me a week or two took them like an hour or so. Craziness.
The next day after church I was just amazed by so many things.
Weather
Botany
Computer Science
Linguistics
Knitting / Crochet
Math
Biology
etc.
even Policy Management
(Admittedly I have yet to properly understand the amazingness of political science, but we'll see. ;P)
And then a day later or maybe a few days everything can be terrible. My yarn gets tangled. Conflict with my housemates. Onset guilt for lack of academic productivity recently. Struggle with sin. Drop in temperature. Late buses.
Suddenly everything is terrible, when nothing had actually changed, but my attitude and lens to see life.
This makes me think all the more that it's true: when you see everything as amazing and miraculous things are awesome, and when you start to see everything as terrible things get pretty terrible.
James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father
of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Everything we have is from God and it was made good. (Refer to Genesis 1.)
But what is doubly amazing here is that God is unchanging. In the midst of my continual and sudden changes He remains the same.
May He continue to help me build my foundation upon the solid rock of Christ. May He continue to open my eyes to the amazingness of His creation around me. May He continue to show me more of Him.
D.Fa out
PS. One of the things I was thinking about while watching Veritasium was about how I seem to be replacing a lack of social connection with youtube. Idk. Not good definitely. But the answer shouldn't be to simply cut it off. I need to replace youtube with real people. ttyl
18.10.15
9.10.15
Zipf Fun
Yo,
So, I've been rather unproductive, I feel, but at the same time, I think I have done a lot. Maybe at the same time though, I need rest and now I'm not doing much because of that need? I don't know. Whenever I end up feeling like this I get guilty for not really doing anything. Idk.
I've probably also been watching too much youtube. It's a mixture of my regular subscriptions, cake/dessert DIYs, and super smart Vsauce, Veratasium, MinuteEarth, etc. So, I feel like I'm learning a bunch, but I'm probably not really learning that much because it's kinda in one ear out the other?
The other day I was watching this super neat Vsauce video about the Zipf Mystery, which in essence says that in language, all language, we tend to use some words more than other words. What's crazy about that is that if you then rank them in order of use there is a logarithmic relationship. The less used they are, they become exponentially less used and in relation to the 1st word are used about 1/x where x is their ranking. And it's been shown that this is the case in books, in whole sums of authors' works. It's crazy!
I'm really interested in both linguistics and in science, so this greatly appeals to me. Additionally, I just so happen to have a compilation of my works, aka, a blog. So I can actually test this. haha. So, allow me to do so. I realize I have many many many blog posts, so this may take a bit of time. But I also don't want to waste my time, so I'm gonna try to do this as fast as possible. xP
Ttyl.
D.Fa
PS. For this post it is following a somewhat logarithmic distribution! 289 words, 161 unique words. On the left is the simple frequency vs word, on the right is the frequency vs word rank on a log scales with the red being a ideal Zipf distribution if the 1st word had 50 repetitions. this is a tiny sample though.
So, I've been rather unproductive, I feel, but at the same time, I think I have done a lot. Maybe at the same time though, I need rest and now I'm not doing much because of that need? I don't know. Whenever I end up feeling like this I get guilty for not really doing anything. Idk.
I've probably also been watching too much youtube. It's a mixture of my regular subscriptions, cake/dessert DIYs, and super smart Vsauce, Veratasium, MinuteEarth, etc. So, I feel like I'm learning a bunch, but I'm probably not really learning that much because it's kinda in one ear out the other?
The other day I was watching this super neat Vsauce video about the Zipf Mystery, which in essence says that in language, all language, we tend to use some words more than other words. What's crazy about that is that if you then rank them in order of use there is a logarithmic relationship. The less used they are, they become exponentially less used and in relation to the 1st word are used about 1/x where x is their ranking. And it's been shown that this is the case in books, in whole sums of authors' works. It's crazy!
I'm really interested in both linguistics and in science, so this greatly appeals to me. Additionally, I just so happen to have a compilation of my works, aka, a blog. So I can actually test this. haha. So, allow me to do so. I realize I have many many many blog posts, so this may take a bit of time. But I also don't want to waste my time, so I'm gonna try to do this as fast as possible. xP
Ttyl.
D.Fa
PS. For this post it is following a somewhat logarithmic distribution! 289 words, 161 unique words. On the left is the simple frequency vs word, on the right is the frequency vs word rank on a log scales with the red being a ideal Zipf distribution if the 1st word had 50 repetitions. this is a tiny sample though.
5.10.15
God is sooooo Good.
Yo.
So, when I am down and really struggling with sin I end up beating myself up and beginning to believe how worthless I am and that nothing good will come from me and that I should isolate myself to minimize damage and that I need to work on myself before anything happens. And then I get depressed because of how bleak my future would be looking.
But grace is sooooo much more than sin and God is sooooo much better than we can ever imagine. Even when I am down He picks me up. He shows me that He values me. He shows me that He can work in and through me. He shows me that following Him and helping others to do so is worth so much more than trying to hide. God can overcome anything in my life. He will bring to completion what He has started. He is good. Always.
A couple weeks ago I was given the opportunity to talk to a Masters student at Carleton. I hadn't met her in person yet, but she was emailing the P2C email account, which I was overseeing. So I messaged her back and we got to meet up. It was amazing! Like literally, we just started talking and getting to know each other and then she was asking about Jesus. God has been doing a lot in her life, various tough times, and a bunch of friends sharing Christ with her, and now she is seeking on her own. She doesn't want her friends to bias her search, which is cool, but they're gonna be so happy when she finally tells them. haha. We were looking at the Knowing God Personally booklet, which outlines 4 basic points of the gospel, and she was asking sooooooo many questions and was sooooo interested in hearing more! After point 2: we are separated from God because of our sin and there's nothing we can do about it on our own, she was pretty bummed out, but point 3 is amazing and I was so excited about it and then she got so excited about it! Man. We talked for like an hour and a half about the Bible and who God is and why we love sharing the good news with others in P2C. She told me about the Prince of Egypt movie and I told her more of the story in the wilderness and of God's faithfulness. So good. We haven't been able to meet up recently, but I am going to try meeting up this week. She said she'd be happy to meet up and talk more about God! Please pray for her!
And then at Summit this weekend, after the Saturday evening session I saw a girl sitting alone and felt prompted to go talk to her. Carleton was going to do something and I was told to hurry up, but whatever, I'd rather follow this prompting and talk to her. So I sat in a chair beside her and asked what was up? She was a little overwhelmed with what God had been telling her. In the session they had shown a video about mission trips and how there are so many people around the world who have never heard the good news of Jesus, and she felt really compelled to go. Well, actually, at first she was just kinda crying and didn't know how to explain anything, so I prayed for her a bit encouraging her that no matter what difficult situation she was going through or felt God calling her to that He is good, that He would provide, and that He loved her deeply. She also was feeling convicted in regards to decisions she had been making. She had felt called to go to a University away from her home town so she could be pushed outside her comfort zone and rely on God, but she had been not taking those steps, she had been coasting, she had been defensive. I don't remember all of the details anymore, but she was feeling super convicted by the Spirit to trust God more and follow Him wherever He was calling her, and that's amazing! So I asked if she could pray, and then I prayed for her too. She was so much happier afterwards and more sure of what God was telling her. Please pray for her too! I'm so glad I stopped to talk with her and listened to God. So much of what she was saying I resonated with and was also convicted of. < 3 God is so good!
I literally love ministry and experiencing God through it. I don't remember exactly what she said, but the speaker at Summit said something about how we don't do ministry for God, when we participate in ministry it is us experiencing and allowing God to live in and through us. I don't want to ever stop serving others around me. I don't ever want to believe lies about myself. I want to submit everything to God and continue to serve wherever I go by His Spirit in me.
God is so good.
Seriously.
If you've never really met Him you should read the book of John and ask for God to reveal Himself to you, and talk to a friend of yours who does know God. And if you do know God, let's pray that He lets us get to know Him more, that we take steps of faith and grow in our relationship with Him, experiencing His power and presence in everything we do!
God is sooooo good.
Ttyl.
D.Fa
So, when I am down and really struggling with sin I end up beating myself up and beginning to believe how worthless I am and that nothing good will come from me and that I should isolate myself to minimize damage and that I need to work on myself before anything happens. And then I get depressed because of how bleak my future would be looking.
But grace is sooooo much more than sin and God is sooooo much better than we can ever imagine. Even when I am down He picks me up. He shows me that He values me. He shows me that He can work in and through me. He shows me that following Him and helping others to do so is worth so much more than trying to hide. God can overcome anything in my life. He will bring to completion what He has started. He is good. Always.
A couple weeks ago I was given the opportunity to talk to a Masters student at Carleton. I hadn't met her in person yet, but she was emailing the P2C email account, which I was overseeing. So I messaged her back and we got to meet up. It was amazing! Like literally, we just started talking and getting to know each other and then she was asking about Jesus. God has been doing a lot in her life, various tough times, and a bunch of friends sharing Christ with her, and now she is seeking on her own. She doesn't want her friends to bias her search, which is cool, but they're gonna be so happy when she finally tells them. haha. We were looking at the Knowing God Personally booklet, which outlines 4 basic points of the gospel, and she was asking sooooooo many questions and was sooooo interested in hearing more! After point 2: we are separated from God because of our sin and there's nothing we can do about it on our own, she was pretty bummed out, but point 3 is amazing and I was so excited about it and then she got so excited about it! Man. We talked for like an hour and a half about the Bible and who God is and why we love sharing the good news with others in P2C. She told me about the Prince of Egypt movie and I told her more of the story in the wilderness and of God's faithfulness. So good. We haven't been able to meet up recently, but I am going to try meeting up this week. She said she'd be happy to meet up and talk more about God! Please pray for her!
And then at Summit this weekend, after the Saturday evening session I saw a girl sitting alone and felt prompted to go talk to her. Carleton was going to do something and I was told to hurry up, but whatever, I'd rather follow this prompting and talk to her. So I sat in a chair beside her and asked what was up? She was a little overwhelmed with what God had been telling her. In the session they had shown a video about mission trips and how there are so many people around the world who have never heard the good news of Jesus, and she felt really compelled to go. Well, actually, at first she was just kinda crying and didn't know how to explain anything, so I prayed for her a bit encouraging her that no matter what difficult situation she was going through or felt God calling her to that He is good, that He would provide, and that He loved her deeply. She also was feeling convicted in regards to decisions she had been making. She had felt called to go to a University away from her home town so she could be pushed outside her comfort zone and rely on God, but she had been not taking those steps, she had been coasting, she had been defensive. I don't remember all of the details anymore, but she was feeling super convicted by the Spirit to trust God more and follow Him wherever He was calling her, and that's amazing! So I asked if she could pray, and then I prayed for her too. She was so much happier afterwards and more sure of what God was telling her. Please pray for her too! I'm so glad I stopped to talk with her and listened to God. So much of what she was saying I resonated with and was also convicted of. < 3 God is so good!
I literally love ministry and experiencing God through it. I don't remember exactly what she said, but the speaker at Summit said something about how we don't do ministry for God, when we participate in ministry it is us experiencing and allowing God to live in and through us. I don't want to ever stop serving others around me. I don't ever want to believe lies about myself. I want to submit everything to God and continue to serve wherever I go by His Spirit in me.
God is so good.
Seriously.
If you've never really met Him you should read the book of John and ask for God to reveal Himself to you, and talk to a friend of yours who does know God. And if you do know God, let's pray that He lets us get to know Him more, that we take steps of faith and grow in our relationship with Him, experiencing His power and presence in everything we do!
God is sooooo good.
Ttyl.
D.Fa
4.10.15
Intent and Simplicity
I have so much I want to say right now, but I feel like I always miss the right time to say it.
I don't want endlessly long posts, which would bore.
I often don't want to post super real posts which might affect the way people see me and so I wait too long and then forget what I was feeling or it is no longer relevant anyways.
I waste too much of my time and end up feeling like I don't have the time to say anything.
I want to get back to regularly blogging. I have been keeping a short list of things that I'd write about on a memo on my phone.
I intend to get to them, but we'll see. Let me just say though that this weekend was amazing and God is awesome and so good.
The gospel in all it's crazy power to save all who would believe it from the rightful and just wrath we deserve, can be so simply received through faith, not by works. So simple.
And more than that, God doesn't just save us so we are saved. He saves us so that we may then experience Him and know true life in Him.
Just reflecting on these things and others after a retreat with P2C. God is good all the time.
Ttyl.
D.Fa
I don't want endlessly long posts, which would bore.
I often don't want to post super real posts which might affect the way people see me and so I wait too long and then forget what I was feeling or it is no longer relevant anyways.
I waste too much of my time and end up feeling like I don't have the time to say anything.
I want to get back to regularly blogging. I have been keeping a short list of things that I'd write about on a memo on my phone.
I intend to get to them, but we'll see. Let me just say though that this weekend was amazing and God is awesome and so good.
The gospel in all it's crazy power to save all who would believe it from the rightful and just wrath we deserve, can be so simply received through faith, not by works. So simple.
And more than that, God doesn't just save us so we are saved. He saves us so that we may then experience Him and know true life in Him.
Just reflecting on these things and others after a retreat with P2C. God is good all the time.
Ttyl.
D.Fa
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