Pen and paper

I am a college graduate student pursuing my doctorate degree. I grew up always using pencil and paper/notebook as a way to jot down important note as i am sure many have also done. However, every time a new school year starts, there is always a mad rush to the store to purchase a new supply of loose paper and a stack of new notebooks. What happens to the old notebooks? They get stacked onto a bookshelf and eventually finds its way to the trash. Never to be used or looked at again.

When laptops started to become the norm and massively available, I figured i won't be buying paper/notebooks, much less pencils or pens. Pens i lose as quickly as i get my hands on. With the emergence of the laptop,  i thought note taking should be a breeze. It meant one less paper notebook i would have to  purchase and carry around. It also meant i wouldn't have to remember to make sure that i put it in my  bag before i left home.

Taking notes wasn't too hard as i can type pretty fast. No more stacks of paper notebooks collecting dust. One less tree will be cut down. Technology is such a wonderful thing. Then my laptop crashed. At that time, flash drives were pretty costly and the cloud was not even in existence yet. What am I going to do? Maybe i should have stuck with the traditional and conventional methods. Paper and pen seemed to be a much better option.

Much to my horror, I couldn't find the bag of pens i just recently bought. What paper/notebook i bought on sale at Walmart, i donated to one of my nephews since he uses it more than i did. Desperate times call for drastic measures. This was one of many to come.  I tried to make a deal with my nephew to return the supply i gave him. He already used it.

Lucky for  me all was not lost. Black Friday was but a mere weeks away.  I would be able to buy a replacement laptop without breaking the bank. I was fortunate to be able to invest in a flash drive. Not bad considering if my new laptop had an accident, i still have access and backup of my files. Unfortunately I became a little too dependent on that stick. I saved more than just my class notes and papers. My collection of hard to find music and irreplaceable pictures  also found its way into my flashdrive.  Then i lost my flash drive. 

Will this bad luck never end? Then the announcement of the cloud happened.i did not have to rely on a flash drive anymore. No matter what computer/laptop i used, i could simply save it to the cloud. I could also pull up past papers I have written and definitely not have anything to worry about. The only challenge I face though is remembering the password i use to log on with.

Currently, i do not have a laptop, school is shut down because of s major holiday, and i still have a paper to write. Black Friday is two weeks away and I still have to somehow complete a major research paper due in 1.5 weeks. WHAT am i to do?

Thank goodness for the invention of smartphones, tablets, and the cloud.  I can pull up the articles i need to use from my cloud, then copy, paste or write  notes onto an app which i can then save onto the cloud. When i am able to get to a computer, I can simply pull it up and construct my paper. There are tons of apps in the App store that have been created to mimic the feel of having a pen and paper in front of you. Especially with the invention of the stylus. Samsung really did a great job incorporating the stylus with their Note phones and tablets so the stylus doesn't get lost. Yes it makes things convenient somewhat.

I use apps such as Evernote and Google Keep and i love both of these apps. These apps don't quite fit the purpose i of what i am looking to accomplish in the long run.  However, my quest for the one paper/pen app that i can use effectively still continues on.

The Passion of the Christ vs The Son of God

First of all, I am just a college student writing an opinion. I am in no way affiliated with any big news crew and it is not like anyone is paying me for this. I just wanted to share what was going on in my mind.

I just finished watching this movie. I went with an open mind because everyone has a different take, interpretation of this story. Plus, I have seen so many other different versions of this story. Who hasn't? When I first heard of this movie, the two movies that came to my mind was King of Kings and Greatest Story Ever Told. Those two movies were a lot more in-depth than Son of God, and as soon as the credits started rolling, I started critiquing and comparing this movie with the older two. With the scenes leading up to his death, I started thinking about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.

While most movies try really hard to stay inline with the books/stories that it is trying to convey, Son of God I would say really did not portray too much in the life of Jesus. With the exception of raising Lazarus from the dead and healing a paralyzed man, not too many of his miracles were shown. For me, since they decided to show the raising of Lazarus from the dead, I think this movie could have shown Jesus weeping. After all, Lazarus was one of his close friends and while it may not seem important to too many people, this showed that Jesus not only was a human, but that he had feelings and emotions. 

Roma Downey and Mark Burnett did a wonderful and superb job with this movie, but I felt it could have been done without worrying a lot about time restriction and I just felt that this movie was a little bit rushed. They could have just made this into a TV mini-series of its own and spread it into 3 2 hour episodes. Another alternative would have been to split this movie into 2 parts on the big screen.

However, without nitpicking everything else about this movie, I want to focus in on the part that mattered the most, the scenes leading up to his death in which I chose to compare with the Passion of the Christ. I tell you, the scenes that show Jesus being flogged and eventually nailed to the cross is never easy to watch, no matter who made the movie. Son of God did not get as gruesome as Passion of the Christ did, and I was able to watch this without getting queasy. However, seeing the nail hole in his hand just made me dizzy. However, watching this did not make me feel compassionate and I felt that his death scene fell kind of flat. I would have rather watched a whole village get bombed. Watching him carry the cross felt like I was watching another Easter re-enactment that you see at church. I had no feeling of compassion. Even the scene where Mary (Roma) runs to Jesus while he is carrying the cross just did not feel genuine.The only scene though that made me feel any type of sadness of what our Lord went through was when a stranger was pulled from the crowd and made to carry the cross. 

This is where Passion of the Christ worked. Yes, that movie was gory, gruesome and made my blood boil.

However, that movie had me in tears. I literally cried, especially when Mary ran to Jesus and then they showed the flashback of Jesus when he was a child. I watched Passion of Christ twice, and that scene still made me cry. I felt rage and anger towards the people that made our Lord suffer.

I noticed that both Roma Downey and Mel Gibson are Roman Catholics. There's nothing wrong with that fact at all. They are both passionate in sharing the story of our Lord and I really give them both props for telling that story. The death of Jesus is important to mankind. Without Jesus' sacrifice, there really is no hope for us. The thing I admire though about Roma and Mel is that they both really made they movies about what he did for us. While Greatest Story Ever Told and King of Kings were ok for the time period they were made in, those two feel so much like another Hollywood production. Passion and Son of God did a lot more than just making their respective works more than just another movie. I just believe Passion did a much better job. I am also glad that Passion also just focused on just one area of Jesus' life - his death. Had it tried to tell his whole life story, the meaning or the message would not have worked.

I really do believe that people should go and watch the Son of God and just enjoy it regardless of what you might think. I am excited though this year, 2014, is the year other Bible stories are being made for the big screen. When Passion of the Christ came out, I gave it a 4 out of 5 star movie. To this day, I believe it still is a 4 star movie. There is still a little more room for improvement. However, I believe Son of God is more like a 3.5 out of 5 star movie. There's a lot more that could have been done. Overall, I know that when it comes out to home dvd, yes, this is one I will purchase to support the work that Roma Downey and Mark Burnett are both trying to do.