Blog

Posts by Jeff Geerling about life, marriage, religion, philosophy and technology. Formerly titled 'Matthew 12:37 - Blog by a God-fearing Man'.

How a Hard Drive Works (in Slow Motion)

June 12, 2012

I've been subscribed to the Slow-Mo Guys' YouTube Channel for a few months now, ever since I noticed some of their great videos of random things that look quite interesting when recorded at over 1000 fps and played back in slow motion.

Their most recent video, How a Hard Drive Works (in Slow Motion) is one of my favorites, not because it's elaborate or amazing, but it's the first time I've ever actually seen the internals of a hard drive in operation. I've ripped apart a few hard drives in my day (they're built like tanks!), and they're amazing on the inside... but to see how quickly those read heads pop back and forth is amazing.

Sadly, as we've reached probably the pinnacle of mechanical design for spinning disk drives (I remember so many times having a hard drive randomly crash due to mechanical failure, but it's become a much rarer event), solid state drives are taking over. Therefore future generations will probably know as much about spinning disk drives as they do about record players and 8-track tapes. Oh well.

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YouTube Channel Update Video

June 09, 2012

I popped over to YouTube yesterday to check out my channel page, and realized my videos have now surpassed 500,000 views—that's pretty awesome! I also have about as many subscribers to that channel as I do to this blog's RSS feed, so I figure I might think about catering to that audience with some new videos...

What do you think? Leave some comments here or over on the YouTube video page.

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Interview with the 16-Bit Catholic (Dustin Faber)

June 08, 2012

Halo 4 Master Chief In a break from normal events, I talked with a Twitter friend Dustin Faber tonight about gaming. Many people who follow this blog and follow me on Facebook might know I enjoy video games, but they might not know how much I enjoy them :)

My brother and I both played a ton of arcade and early computer and console games growing up, and I currently play games in the Halo series and a little Minecraft from time to time. Not as often as I did before I met my beautiful bride, but still here and there when I need a diversion.

The 16-Bit Catholic (@16bitcatholic on Twitter) interviewed Stephen Baumgartner (@holy_Spork) and me for today's episode, and we talked about our impressions of this year's E3, some other gaming-related news (Xbox and Playstation games, the Wii U, etc.), and booth babes (i.e. gaming companies going over the line with their objectification of women).

Listen to the podcast episode from the 16-bit Catholic!

(Trivia: The lead-in song for the podcast is from one of my favorite NES games, Mega Man 2!).

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Tech Talk Interview on CatholicMom.com

June 04, 2012

Sarah Reinhard is starting a new column, Tech Talks, on CatholicMom.com, where she interviews Catholics in tech (like myself). I was excited to be asked to participate in the first interview: Catholic Techie Jeff Geerling.

Speaking of tech-related things, this weekend I worked almost a full day on porting the Catholic Diocese App over to Android, and I'm getting pretty close. I have most of the functionality working, but there are quite a few rough edges. More to come!

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2012 Mass of Priesthood Ordination (Photos)

May 27, 2012

I've posted all the photos I took at this year's Mass of Priestly Ordination at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Flickr:

Congratulations to all five men who were ordained; we'll be praying for you!

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Beautiful Flower at the Cathedral

May 26, 2012

During today's Mass of Priesthood Ordination at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, I was waiting for the procession to start outside the entrance, and decided to stand in the garden between the Cathedral and the rectory for a few minutes, even though the sun was beating down (93°F in the morning!).

I was rewarded with a wonderful shot of this interesting little bug:

I haven't done a lot of flower/closeup photography in a while, but it seems this picture turned out just right, without any work. It was a nice little moment in a rather hectic day.

I'll be posting tons of pictures from the Ordination on Flickr soon. Working on processing them now (I've already whittled down over 1,000 photos to 450ish).

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