Matthew 12:37 - Jeff Geerling's Blog

Amazing Video: Lightning Strike at 9,000 FPS

geerlingguy — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:14:55 +0000

Video on YouTube of a lightning strike @ 9,000 frames per second - it's amazing how many 'little strikes' and sparks make up one single visible lightning strike!

Archbishop Carlson proposes a solution to the St. Stanislaus situation

geerlingguy — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:16:35 +0000

From the St. Louis Review's story, Archbishop Carlson makes an offer to the parishioners of St. Stanislaus:

In order to help get the parish re-established, I have committed that the archdiocese would provide the pastor for the first year of the reestablished parish without cost to the parish and would contribute up to $10,000 to pay the cost of the consultant for a fund drive to secure the finances of the parish corporation and the St. Stanislaus Corporation for the future.

This proposal has my full support and I will do everything in my power to make St. Stanislaus succeed as a personal parish for Catholics of Polish heritage.

I ask that you please join me in praying that reconciliation can be brought about and, with the help of God, healing will take place.

Just as with Archbishop Burke before, Archbishop Carlson seems to be willing to go to very great lengths to ensure the Catholicity of this once great parish—let us pray that this situation gets resolved sooner rather than later!

Some of my earlier postings on this situation:

Patrons of Archdiocese of Saint Louis - Stained Glass

geerlingguy — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:20:14 +0000

I recently visited the Church of the Most Sacred Heart in Eureka, MO, and took many photos of the interior (view a full gallery of the pictures I took). The standout photos of the bunch were of the stained glass windows. Below are the three patronal saints of the Archdiocese of St. Louis (depicted on the left side of the Church, when sitting in the main body of the pews).

(from left to right: St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, St. Louis IX, King of France, St. Vincent de Paul)

Even though this Church was recently renovated, it has a very strong style of 'noble simplicity' - the Church is of a traditional cruciform layout, but the stained glass is very well made, and most of the liturgical instruments (candle stands, the altar, the tabernacle, etc.) are beautifully restored or newly crafted. The Church even features a beautiful (and functional) pipe organ in the rear choir loft!

Two months away! [Engagement Photo]

geerlingguy — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:25:52 +0000

Click the image above for more details on the Flickr page. Self-portrait taken in the main room of my condo, with a neat little cross of Natalie's hanging on the wall behind us. Isn't she beautiful?

Catholic Programmer's T-Shirt and Mousepad

geerlingguy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:45:35 +0000

Reposted from Open Source Catholic:

A few weeks back, after finishing a full day of swimming in PHP, HTML and CSS, I was pondering the great mystery of human existence, but probably had a little too much to drink. The result?

You can buy the design on the following products (via Zazzle):

Would you like the design on anything else? I could do a mug, or socks, or anything else in Zazzle's catalog...

Alternatively, can you think of a way to code this better? ;-)

Applying for a Marriage License in St. Louis County, MO

geerlingguy — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:22:06 +0000

Finding guidelines for acquiring a marriage license in St. Louis County is somewhat a pain in the rear. Because it's a convoluted mess of links to get to the information you need, I thought I'd put it a little more succinctly, for those who, like me, just want to get it over with...

Bride + Groom must appear in person (at same time) at the Recorders of Deeds Office in Clayton (map). (The marriage license office is on the 4th floor of the County Government Building.
1. You must both be 18, and have a government-issued photo ID. Blood tests are not required for a license. Must also provide proof of Social Security Number (SSN).
2. Marriage license application is $45. You can get a copy of the license for $1.
3. You must use the Marriage License within 30 days after its issuance.
The bride may change her name at the Missouri Department of Revenue (for driver's license) and the Social Security offices.
1. She can use a certified copy of her marriage license for this purpose.
2. Copies of the marriage license: $2 for photocopy; $9 for certified copy; $10 for authenticated copy.
3. Find your local Social Security Office »
4. St. Louis County License Office locations (DoR) »

Still rather convoluted, but at least you can do this all in a couple of days, most likely. Getting a name change everywhere else is a pain in the rear, though (bank, Church, forums, etc.).

Source: St. Louis County website.

Major Storm at Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America

geerlingguy — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 15:26:22 +0000

There was an amazing storm that practically parked itself over Springfield, MO yesterday. I grabbed my iPhone 4 and shot some video, getting a few intense lightning strikes, a trash can lid blowing across the field of view, and some daring souls who braved the storm to get where they needed to be!

Live-Blogging to Drive Up Interest in an Event/Organization

geerlingguy — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:31:12 +0000

Check out my post, Live-Blogging to Drive Traffic, Interest to Organizational Events, on Open Source Catholic. From the post:

The Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America conference is attended by over 6,000 teens every year, and there are many parents, friends, and other teens who wish they could participate as well. We have always posted information after the conference, but in St. Louis, for the past two years, we've started live-blogging and posting to social networks frequently throughout the conference, driving up traffic to our OYM websites.

We had triple the number of visitors this year than we had last year, and the residual traffic for this event is pretty strong, and keeps up interest for the event throughout the year.

My Live-Blogging / Photography Gear

geerlingguy — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:13:01 +0000

Watch it on YouTube (shot with my iPhone 4, using an external Lavaliere microphone)

Why I'm Switching Back from Chrome to Safari 5.0

geerlingguy — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:25:06 +0000

Chrome was great. It was Safari, with a little more speed, better tabs, and a cool status bar that would only show when it needed to.

But I'm switching back, for the following reasons:

Safari 5.0 is just as fast as Chrome.
Safari's tab system is nicer looking than Chrome. Not a biggie.
Safari can read PDFs without opening up an external application, and without downloading it to your Downloads folder. I hate having to clear out my Downloads folder every day after inadvertently clicking on PDF links (who uses PDFs anyways? ;-).
When you right-click on an element in Safari (anywhere on the page), and click 'Inspect Element,' it works correctly. In Chrome, if you do this to an element under where the Inspector shows, the inspector shows an overview of the html structure...
Safari allows you to set a default page for new windows/tabs/etc. Chrome requires an extension to do the same, and it doesn't work as well.
Safari has Reader. Awesome. Instant Instapaper.
Safari's recent page gallery view is much nicer than Chrome's recent pages view.
Safari lets you drag URLs straight from the URL bar to the desktop (or any app that supports files being dragged to it), creating a link file. Chrome doesn't.
Safari has a built-in RSS reader that beats the heck out of any Chrome RSS extension.
Safari is a Mac OS X first-class application. Chrome is always lagging on the Mac platform, behind its Windows counterpart.

The only ridiculously awesome thing Chrome has that Safari doesn't is the ability to search straight from the 'magic bar' or whatever Google calls it. ~~Keywurl used to support this, but I'm not sure if it works with Safari 5... maybe there's an extension I can use somewhere.~~ Nevermind. Keywurl works great with Safari 5, as long as you follow these directions for editing Keywurl's info.plist file.

Another minor quibble is that Safari can crash altogether due to one page crashing... Chrome opens a new process for each tab, which is a nice feature.

I'll still use Chrome as my 'anonymous user' browser, but Safari takes the cake for beauty and efficiency. For now.

(Some might ask why I don't use FireFox... I say it's way too slow for anything except, ironically, YSlow).

Using a Lav Mic with the iPhone 4 - HD Video/Audio Recording!

geerlingguy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:41:37 +0000

Formula for success: iPhone 4 + iPhone TRRS Mono Mic Input Adapter + RadioShack Lav mic

Using this setup, I am able to record interviews on the go on my iPhone, without carrying around a mess of equipment. This rocks. Here's a picture of my entire on-the-go interview kit:

O Hai Archbishop!

geerlingguy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:17:26 +0000

Funny. Babies are pretty funny in general... but most especially when they stare at Archbishops! Read more about the Steubenville Conference, at which Archbishop Carlson celebrated the closing Mass for over 3,100 youth from both the Archdiocese of St. Louis and other midwestern dioceses!

"Good Catholics Cannot be Pro-Choice" (by Archbishop Carlson)

geerlingguy — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:42:47 +0000

From Archbishop Robert J. Carlson's "Before the Cross" article for the last Review edition:

God's law in the Old Testament is clear and unambiguous: You shall not kill. Jesus is even more demanding: Every one who is angry is liable to judgment.

Sins against the Fifth Commandment are easy to commit. Any time we think, speak or act out of anger or hatred or jealousy or revenge, we abuse God's commandment that we respect His most precious gift, the gift of life — especially human life.

Human life is sacred because, from its beginning until its natural end, it involves the creative action of God. The Fifth Commandment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely sinful. God alone is the Lord of life. No one has the right to end arbitrarily what God has begun, and sustained, through the gift of His love.

[...]

You cannot be "pro-choice" (pro-abortion) and remain a Catholic in good standing. That's why the Church asks those who maintain this position not to receive holy Communion. We are not being mean or judgmental, we are simply acknowledging the fact that such a stance is objectively and seriously sinful and is radically inconsistent with the Christian way of life.

Read the rest of the article on stlouisreview.com »

Live-Blogging at Steubenville 2010

geerlingguy — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:18:18 +0000

This weekend and next I'll be live-blogging for the Office of Youth Ministry at Missouri State University, for the Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America youth conference. Check out the Live Blog here, and see photos from the first week of Steubenville on Flickr (I'll be updating all of these things as time goes on!).

(Above photo: Nikon D90 w/ 12-24mm f/4 lens).

Whoops! Always check the recipient...

geerlingguy — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:38:20 +0000

Always, always, always makes sure you check your text message's recipient before you hit 'Send' ;-)