Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Liveblogging at Steubenville St. Louis Conference
This weekend I'll be joining the colorful cast of characters from the Office of Youth Ministry down in Springfield, MO for the 2009 Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America Youth Conference. My role? Take tons of pictures, video clips, audio interviews etc., and put them on the oym's LIVE site: live.stlyouth.org.
Next weekend? Same thing. LOLSaints podcasts might have to be put on hold for a few days ;-)
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Introducing... the LOLSaints Podcast!
Well, in the wee hours of the morning, I decided to sit down and test out the recording abilities of my iPhone 3G, using the built-in voice memo program and my trusty ol' voice (which is, thankfully, working okay).
What resulted is the first-ever brand-spanking-new super-cool and fantabulous LOLSaints Podcast (embedded in today's saintly posting)! The podcast is integrated right into the normal LOLSaints postings, so you can either play 'em just below the saint of the day (if you're one of those types who can't stand to click through the post and read a story!), or you can subscribe to the LOLSaints Podcast (click the link for the feed) via iTunes or whatever software you choose!
(Click it... LOLSaints dares you!)
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Fireworks at Fair St. Louis - High Def with the D90!
Earlier this evening, my family and I attended the fireworks display at Fair St. Louis (downtown St. Louis), and viewed them from the third floor balcony at KMOX (which just so happens to be the first building after the Arch grounds, affording a beautiful view!).
Here's an embed of the video from YouTube:
The video was shot in HD on my trusty ol' Nikon D90, and turned out pretty well; I didn't do any kind of manual exposure, and the fireworks were pretty much properly exposed (which surprised me). It was shot at the wide end of my favorite walkaround lens, the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Open Source Catholic - New Website
Over the next few days/weeks, I'll be devoting a little time to Open Source Catholic, a new website for Catholic techies, web developers, communications personnel, and others involved in promoting the Catholic faith via new technologies. Expect more news on this front if I ever have time... for now, check out the website, see how it was made (series still in progress over on Midwestern Mac), and contribute!
From the website:
"We want to help Catholic techies, web developers, organizations, dioceses and all other Catholics involved in software and web development to find effective solutions for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Photo of a Priest at Prayer
Taken earlier today, for Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America:
More information about the photo can be found on the Flickr page (click on the photo to view). I really, really, really like the D90 paired with the 50mm f/1.4 lens!!
Be sure to check back in over the next few days—tons of information from the Archdiocese and the Review about the Pallium pilgrimage in Rome, and tons more about the Catholic New Media Celebration!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
New Portrait for Social Media - [Updated]
[Update: I have chosen... based on feedback, I needed a little more of a smile. And I'm glad for it, because I'm usually not as serious as I was in the pictures below anyways! Check out the About page to see the final picture.]Last night I glanced at my old portrait I was using for most of my social media purposes (and on this site). I noticed three things: 1) It's more than five years old now, 2) I wear glasses now... pretty much all day every day, and 3) I don't think I even have the original file, so making a larger copy of it is out of the question.
So I decided to take some pictures. Grabbed the D90, aimed a flash at the far wall, and stood in a corner in front of the large white wall, setting the 50mm to AF with the remote control. After about 40 frames in two outfits (really, two shirts... who am I kidding?), I picked the two photos below:
What do you think? If not one of these, I do have a few with a smile... or at least a half-smile. I can, if there is some sort of public outcry over the above pictures, throw one of those in for consideration as well. This picture would be pasted all over my Facebook profile, my Twitter account, and pretty much all the other places my picture is posted.
Just pick either number 1 or number 2 in a comment on this posting. Or reply to @geerlingguy on Twitter.
Lighting: It Does a Condo Good
After having some fun playing Guitar Hero and DDR with some old friends, I (and one of the friends) installed some strip lighting in the main room, to (a) replace an old light fixture that screamed early 90s, and (b) used 200 watts of power without much effect (it used a bunch of the candle-style incandescent bulbs).
The main room is just about complete... I am going to focus a little more effort on getting the bathroom and kitchen in tip-top shape (both in cleanliness and style), but for now, a well-light main room is nice!
On the far left, you have the TV, game and sound system, a little wall table, and two lamps. Then you have the large patio doors (three panes of glass across the whole length!), covered with sheers (I think those might be gone soon). Next is the couch flanked by two in-wall speakers (left/right surround) and capped by a large canvas print of the Saint Louis Arch (picture by yours truly, from a few years back). Next is a media/book shelf system from Lowe's using spiffy shelves attached to the wall (can't hold much weight, but they look darn spiffy!). Finally the Last Supper is depicted on the wall above the small dining table.
Not pictured is a little wood end table on the far side of the couch... I'm thinking of getting another small table on the opposite side (facing camera) of the couch, because it's so nice to be able to set your drink down at an arm's reach.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Where I've Been - The Installation, The Condo
It's been a while! You might be wondering where I've been hiding all this time. Well, this being the first time I've been able to sit myself in front of my home iMac for more than 10 minutes in two weeks, I decided I'd finally stick a posting on the 'ol blog again, with a quick update of the happenings in the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
The Installation
Basically, this has been my life for the past two weeks. During a normal day, I would prepare for the installation, go home, work on the condo a bit, then worry about the installation. Then, I'd go to sleep, wake up, prepare for the installation, etc. (repeat this over and over again). In fact, from Monday through just a few hours ago, I think I spent more time at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis than in bed!
But the payoff was huge:
The Mass of Installation was an emotional and exciting event. Archbishop Carlson's homily was well-received, the media was pretty well-contained, and the faithful were happy to be part of this historic event. What was I doing all this time? Well, first I was working on tuning the Archdiocese's new web server (hosted in Texas), making sure it wouldn't go down like our old server did during the morning of the Archbishop's press conference (more to come on this from Midwestern Mac soon!). I heavily optimized the MySQL database server, Apache, and PHP, then spent some time working on a page caching mechanism for the Review and the Archdiocese (both sites were hammered pretty hard—150 page views per second!).
Then came putting in some cabling—namely, four Cat5e cables (two for video monitors, two for in/out mic-level audio) and two R6 coax cables (for the two floor manned camera positions). I had my fingers crossed the day before the Installation, when we finally tested everything. It worked, and I was ecstatic! With some help from one of the Associates, the maintenance crew, and Jesus' aid, we were able to get over 5,000 ft. of cable run throughout the 100-year-old building and have the connections end up rock-solid.
On the day of the Installation, I was helping the dynamic team Sid Hastings, Teak Phillips, Lisa Johnston and Jerry Naunheim to post up-to-the-minute pictures of the event on the St. Louis Review website. In addition, I was working to make sure the web stream on archstl.org was running without a hitch (it did, the whole time!), and recording and posting the homily within minutes of it's delivery. Believe me, this stuff took more preparation than I could've imagined. But with the proper preparation, the execution can be a joy... which it was. I wanted to meet Mr. American Papist himself, but was unable to. I did see a lot of priest friends, and many others besides!
The Condo
It's nearing completion. There are (and always will be) a few small projects I haven't gotten around to, but at least it looks nice around here:
The living room area (half of which is pictured above) is almost finished, and will remain carpeted up to the right edge of the built-into-the-wall bookshelf. The couch (with matching pillows ;-) is brand new, the stretched-canvas photo of the Arch (from a few years ago) just came in yesterday from Canvas Press, and the end table in the corner was just put together yesterday. There's a nice icon of Jesus, and a picture of my graduating class from Cardinal Glennon College on top.
The two in-wall speakers, you'll notice, don't have any visible cables. Since the wall they're in is a shared wall (with my neighbor), I couldn't go tearing anything down, and the wall was stuffed full of insulation, so I had to get creative to hide the cables... more to come on that! (Hint: look down below the speaker closest to the camera position, and see if you can figure it out).
I'm going to be putting in some Pergo (wood composite) flooring in the welcoming/dining area, and I'll be doing a little more painting/touchup work, but other than that, the main things are complete. The most important areas are now completely functional: kitchen, laundry, bath, bed, and entertainment (5.1 system + Xbox 360 + 27" LCD + brand new couch = relaxing!).
One thing I've figured out after becoming a new homeowner is that you get tons of unsolicited mail from 'loan help' and 'mortgage assistance' companies out to grab a few quick bucks! Now I'm getting spam in my email, my mail, and, heck, even on the phone!
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Priesthood Ordinations and a New Camera [UPDATED]
[UPDATE: Pictures are now online - you can view them over on Flickr.com].
I just finished importing all the photos from today's Priesthood Ordination Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis; it was a beautiful Mass (as is usual), and, as we still don't have an official Archbishop, the Archdiocesan Administrator, Bishop Robert Hermann, celebrated the Mass and ordained the four men as holy priests.
Pictures will be coming... for now, you'll have to be content staring at the picture below, taken with a—gasp!—Canon SLR. That's right; I pulled a list-minute audible and was able to borrow the a brand new Canon 5D Mark II from a friend, complete with a nice 24-105mm f/4 IS lens:
More pictures to come, sooner of later. Probably later at this point, as I have a little resting up to do. I just moved into a condo, and most muscles in my body are aching right now due to moving and assembling all things furniture!
Pictures were taken with the aforementioned 5D mark II, plus my trusty Nikon D90 with an 80-200mm f/2.8 and a 50mm f/1.4 (NICE lens ;-). View them all in my Flickr photostream.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Extraordinary Beauty
From a marriage at which I was the photographer late last month:
It was a Wedding Mass done in the Extraordinary Form, and the whole ceremony was very solemn. Definitely not the kind of Mass that giddy multi-thousand-dollar-spending brides would love, but the kind of wedding someone who has a strong Eucharistic devotion would like!*
Instead of focusing on the marriage ceremony throughout the Mass, and having a lot of touchy-feely moments like a community candle (whatever you call it), the Mass starts with the marriage rite, then the bride and groom are led to the altar to kneel before the Lord during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The whole congregation is focused on the liturgy—the love feast of Heaven on Earth—and the focus is on the Eucharist.
One fact that I'm not sure most people know is that the bride and groom are themselves the ministers of the Sacrament of Marriage. The priest/deacon/whomever is simply a witness to this holy union.
View all the pictures from this set on Flickr.
(*Note: Don't take this post to mean that I'm some kind of anti-English-wedding-Mass nut. I'm just expounding the virtues of the extraordinary form rite of Marriage. I think that there are some excellent ideas in both forms... but all to often the focus of the Wedding Mass itself is completely lost on those for whom it should matter most: the groom and bride!).
