Evolution and Creationism

I figured that maybe people would rather a "topic of the day" as it were rather than an in-depth blow by blow account of todays events. This morning's service was a Baptism service, Andrew and Dan were being baptised and it was really nice to be there. Afterwards we had lunch at the Thatched as per usual and I went home. My question is odly enough about Evolution and Creationism. The Christian Bible says that God created the world and all the creatures on it, hence the name Creationism. The theory of Evolution says that everybody evolved from Single Celled Organisms. I'm taking a lot of this form a talk Michael Ots did on Mission Week, the three I recorded are located here. There are 4 key questions to ask. 1) Where did the world come from? 2) Where did life come from? 3) Why did single celled organisms become multi-celled? 4) Why are humans so much more advanced mentally than any other animal? I'm not going to answer the question yet, as far as I can see, an Evolutionist would only be able to answer number 3 and possibly 4. If someone with a view on the theory of Evolution feels that they can answer 1,2 or 4 then I'd love to hear how evolution explains it, you might as well include 3 in there for continuity's sake. Incidentally, if this doesn't make you want a Polar Bear as a pet, odds are you already have one.

Activity!

Actually there's very little activity today. I got up I did WoA stuff I watched 300 with Huw, Andrew and Ryo. So, what on earth will I write? I don't feel it'd be worth your time to visit my blog if all I said were three things? Firstly I'll warn you that what follows is not for everybody, I reckon my guys than ladies will find it interesting. If you find it interesting, you might be interested in World of Arl. 300 is about some Greeks and some Persians. The Greeks fought in what's called a Phalanx, for those interested in a bigger read, Wikipedia has an article on it. For those that don't want to read a lot of stuff, the principle was to have a wall of shields, each man would cover a good portion on the man to his left with his shield while his spear would be held in his right hand over the top of the shield. If you've seen Troy, they use one there. Why am I suddenly interested in something I already knew? Simply put, the Spartans (Greeks) use one. Yeah, I've seen Troy, so why do I suddenly care, and more importantly, why on earth would I care, it's not like I'll find a use for it? Troy focuses very little on the tactics used, it focuses very little on the combat. Sure, it's rather impressive but overall it was a bit fancy and just not my thing. 300 on the other hand was much more combat orientated, in particular, the tactical side was a lot more in-depth than most films. So, now you know that I really like films that display tactical thinking, but why? Well, in World of Arl you can morph a team to whatever you like, one of my teams has it's fighting based around the Roman Empire, it's men have big shields like the Romans and generally fight like them. My current team is based around one person who has an ego that makes a planet look small. 300 has inspired me to design a team that revolves around the phalanx. Specifically the application of such a thing with a very small number of men. I will devote the rest of today to solving the problems inherent in fighting with a Phalanx, specifically one where you have few numbers. 1) A Phalanx has weak flanks The spears point forwards, if you come from the side or worse yet, the rear, you'll crush a Phalanx. The typical method of solving this is to have more men to the sides. Obviously this is going to be the biggest problem with few men. As such I can think of only two solutions to this problem, the first is to fight in a mountain pass, the bad news is that this only works in mountains. Number 2 is to get some allies, now, this is a much better idea, if they send an army and I'm in the middle then my flanks are secure (I hope). 2) A Phalanx simply holds people there Once a charge hits the Phalanx, if it holds then it'll revolve around neither side gaining much ground, the chargers hitting their weapons on some shields while the Phalanx poke people with sticks. Clearly this is a problem. My solution is a simple one, develop my Phalanx to be able to push forwards properly. In WoA you can evolve your people, both physically and mentally, even going so far as to give them an entirely different race. If I make my people 6-7ft tall rather than the standard 5-6ft of most nations, then give them something around 30-50% more muscular strength than the enemy, they'll literally be able to press forwards, trapping and/or crushing the first row of foes, when trapped, they make easy targets for a spear thrust. 3) A Phalanx is defensive You can't charge an enemy with a shield wall, the men are all too close together and if there's a single weak-spot then the entire line can fall. The solution is very simple, march fast in a semi-shield wall to ward off arrows. When near the enemy, form a shield wall. As I'll be using very few people, I will be able to afford to train them to elite status where they can do things like that much faster than normal soldiers. 4) Really heavy infantry can kill you Lets assume I stand still and someone runs into me, I will get knocked over. Now lets assume that I am braced with one leg bent and the other stretched out behind me, odds are they'll bounce off of me. If two or three people hit me within short succession I could well be driven back. If we assume that I have a shield it'll really have little effect. If I put studs on my shoes and was on grass or other soft-ish terrain then I won't move backwards as easily. Better yet, I can have spikes on the bottom of my shield, if I then dig those into the ground then I can withstand several men, even several men wearing very heavy armour (who would thus be harder to stop). Summary 1) To protect the flanks, either leave a wall there or get allies to stand there 2) To kill the people that just ran into your Phalanx, be bigger and stronger than them, then just step forwards slowly but surely 3) To make a Phalanx offensive, well, you can't but you can do the next best thing of making there be less space to advance over 4) To withstand a charge, add studs to your shoes and spikes to the bottom of your shield so that they're basically pushing against a solid wall This was "Tactics with Teifion: The Phalanx" if you have any comments, please leave them. I'd enjoy writing about things like this more often but reckon people would be bored by them. I saw Sam mentioned that people might take an interest in my programs if I explain them more, is this the case?

Not a hugely active day

It wasn't a bad day, it wasn't a good day. I spent most of it programming and playing warcraft 3 (what a surprise huh?).

Much better

Yes, my day was great. It didn't start too well, Group Project is boring and I don't like it. The Software Systems lecture wasn't nearly as bad, afterwards I talked to Martin Cripps about Mac stuff for ten minutes and saw some of the very old pre OSX applications he made. Gareth and myself went to Tesco and then went home for some Warcraft 3. Now for the good part. I have long loved the game "Total Annihilation". It's a great strategy game and I played it a LOT. Sadly it doesn't work on my current computer or I'd be playing it still. Supreme Commander is pretty much the sequel to TA. Gareth has a demo of SC on his computer and let me play it. I love it (particuarly the big bad mega units) however, I feel it doesn't live up to TA. The other bad news is that I have no idea if it's going to come out for the Mac. I was entertaining the idea that I'd get Windows just to play SC, however, it's just not good enough to warrant running Windows solely for it. So far the day has clearly not been that great has it? I have to agree, if that were my day I'd be saying my day were simply "Okay". As it is however, myself, Gareth, Huw, Ollie, Greg and Lawrence went to see 300. 300 is basically about a small group of Spartan Warriors against an army of Persian men. It's about an hour and a half long and is pretty much a very big fight. I really liked it. It rocked, it was incredible and I might be seeing it again this Saturday with some other people. Yes, it's that good. I suppose I should explain how often I go to the cinema. Hardly Ever. It's got some naff bits, but they're few and far between. And they do actually contribute to the storyline. I'd not advise going to see it for the storyline, but I think you saw that coming. It's very gory and violent, needlessly so sometimes.

Programming is good for you

Yes, it's true. Well, it's true for me anyway. Yesterday I did a lot of programming, today... I got up and went to see David Ndzi (one of the lecturers at Uni) about a web based thing he wanted me to do. I got the first set of requirements and decided to have a go at it. In between bouts of Warcraft 3 and WoA, I've gotten it working. It's simply a page that lets you register a lot of details, no, there's nothing really amazing (except that it's the first time I've ever actually handled logging in to do things). Today hasn't been so bad, HP think there will be an interview late next week, they've yet to give me an actual day or time, when they do I plan to ask if it can be in the afternoon if possible. Incidentally, I've been using this little calculator thing, previously I've had a calculator on my Dashboard (this cool thing that Mac users get which holds a load of small but normally useful applications), this was pretty fast. However, Calq is faster still, I just hit Cmd + Shift + C and a calculator window appears where I can type stuff in, hit Cmd + C and it'll not only copy it to the clipboard but also hide the calculator right away! This very Mac-esq freeware even has a Windows version, it's really great and I strongly recommend it for anybody that thinks they may want to do some mostly simple maths at some point when using their computer.

Not Awful and Not Amazing

Monday wasn't awful (maybe the trend of okay <-> awful system is over?). Nothing particularly interesting happened, if it did, I'm sure I'd remember it. Today I got to my 0900 lecture and realised why I'd not been going to any of my 0900 lectures. I learnt nothing new, on the plus side, it wasn't a complete waste as I did some PHP stuff while waiting to hear something interesting, because I know that some of you won't be able to believe that any lecture can be that rubbish, here is one of the facts I managed to remember. Does anybody know how to make the system 100% secure? *pause in which time my friends and I agree that it's impossible to make any system 100% secure* You turn it off I'd assumed that being a network engineer would involve keeping the network going but I going by this I've been wrong. This is the same lecturer that never confirmed I was correct/incorrect when I questioned him, hence the lack of questioning this time round. For the next two hours I did some more PHP, yes it's WoA related. The afternoon lecture wasn't too bad, not amazing but not too bad. I went home afterwards and guess what I did. Yes! More PHP, MySQL and even some Warcraft 3!!! Coel and I are getting very very good at working as a team and it really makes the game so much more fun. I suggest that if you've got a friend who plays a game that you like, that you have a go at playing a team version of it, it's a little tricky to communicate fast at first (some people have a voice chat running) but if you're cool like myself and Coel then you just type fast. Actually, kudos to Coel, he plays the game with a Trackpad. As you might have noticed, my blog has a new template. I couldn't be bothered to spend ages looking at how it was laid out and putting a new colour scheme on. So I used this one that looked roughly similar, yay or nay? Incidentally, HP phoned saying that they're still interested in Interviewing me so the interview is going to be rescheduled. Hopefully I'll get more than 4-5 days notice this time round, I have no problem getting to Newcastle, it's just that it was looking to cost over £200!

As predicted, it was okay

Got up, walked with Siän, Ceryn and Luke to church, helped with discovers and then went over to Amanda's for Lunch (She cooked for a load of students). That was the highlight of the day. I'm trying a green colour thingie.