March 2022 – Matt's Homepage

Consecration of Russia/Ukraine to Immaculate Heart

March 29, 2022 matt Comments 2 comments

On Friday March 25th, Pope Francis consecrated Russia and the Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
While various forms of the consecration have been done, this time was different because the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Christians asked for the Pope to do the consecration and to specifically name Russia and the Ukraine.

So why is this important?

Obviously, the situation in the Ukraine is impacting and threatening the safety of the entire globe. The consecration of Russia was specifically asked for by Mary in her 1917 apparitions at Fatima. Many have been waiting for this very specific act since the end of WW 1, WW 2, and the Cold War. Various forms of the consecration have been done in the past, but Russia was never mentioned by name due to the fact it was a point of contention with the Russian Orthodox church.

Why a consecration?

Pope Francis asked for Catholics everywhere to pray a novena leading up to Friday’s consecration. The Ukrainian bishops even published the text for a novena that references many of the requests of Mary at Fatima – and the often forgotten oppression and horrors suffered by Ukrainians under Communism.

While many people discount such novenas as cynical ‘hopes and prayers’, even cynics will agree that the first step to change is to admit there is a problem. Catholics have always understood that change requires prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and forgiveness/love. Prayer must come with admission of our guilt, gratitude for what we have been given, and thanks for prayers answered. It must also be paired with acts of self denial that help us turn away from bad behavior (much like going to a gym to get in shape!), almsgiving designed to help change the situation, and acts of reconciliation/forgiveness. Most important to all of those is that we admit we do not have all the answers ourselves and ask for help – inviting God into the broken situation. As people with free will, recognizing we need help and asking for it is the very invitation God wants in order to help us. It is no different than when we ask others for help.

So with that, I encourage you to read the text of the consecration and hear all those elements of the Catholic understanding of how change is to happen.

The full text of the consecration is here on the vatican website, but here is a short piece:

Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer.
Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.
Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation.
Queen of Heaven, restore God’s peace to the world.
Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness.
Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons.
Queen of the Rosary, make us realize our need to pray and to love.
Queen of the Human Family, show people the path of fraternity.
Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world.

Oberammergau Passion Play

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

The history of the Oberammergau Passion play begins in 1633. In the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, after months of suffering and dying from the plague, the people of Oberammergau – a small town south of Munich, Germany – pledged to act out the passion: the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ once every 10 years.

Normally it should have happened in 2020, but was delayed due to Covid. Instead, it was moved to this year: 2022. The 5 hour play will now have performances from May 14, 2022 until October 2, 2022. If you are in the area, you should catch it since it won’t return until 2030.

Mailbox Peak Trail

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

You may have heard Mailbox Peak Trail mentioned in hushed tones, the kind reserved for stories about some legendary storm or a bad accident. What inspires such reverence?

The original trail proceeds more or less straight up a ridgeline to the summit, gaining a jaw dropping 3,800 feet in two and a half miles. After a short flatter section, there is nary a switchback in sight as it climbs and crosses an open talus field. Until the Department of Natural Resources built a new, much gentler trail to the summit, accidents and rescues of wayward hikers were a fairly regular occurrence. Most of the old trail remains, marked for much of its length by a string of white reflectors nailed to trees – an earlier step DNR undertook to keep the uninitiated from losing their way in the most confusing parts of the trail.

While it might not be the most scenic of trails, it is definitely one of legends. It reminds me a lot of the Heartbreak Ridge trail on Table Mountain. It is so steep as to be a near scramble up, or requires using the trees to descend without tumbling. Heartbreak climbs 1650ft in 1.2 miles – which is almost the same pitch, but only half as long.

The future of the Space Industry in 15 images

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

Fast Company did a fantastic job collecting images that represent all the amazing work going on in the space industry. From 3d printed rocket components, to new battery development methods, to innovative star tracking navigation units, etc. Give the article a look to learn more.

Fast, tiny, lossless image compression

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

There are countless image compression formats, and the world likely doesn’t need more. However, Dominic Szablewski was tinkering around with compressing RGB images and came up with his own lossless, super-fast, super-tiny compression algorithm called the Quite Ok Image compression algorithm.

While this is somewhat interesting in itself, the comments have a great discussion of how image compression has gone through a whole history of developments.

Story behind the Forest Park Drive-in

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

Perhaps you’ve seen this little drive in located on NW Skyline Blvd. These days it sits empty except for Christmas time when it has a Christmas tree in it.

It turns out this little landmark has an amazing back story. It was run by a WW II veteran called Old Ben (Benjamin Pachkofsky) that built the drive-in himself and also created a zip-line and a gigantic A-frame swing in the woods behind the building. It became a spot for people to come hang out and enjoy his creations and his food. Unfortunately, Ben seemed to suffer from the effects of the war via PTSD. His marriage ended in divorce and his son said he was a generous man that unfortunately needed help. Help that really wasn’t around back then.

The place now belongs to Scott Posey. Ben sold it to Posey for a song when he reached his 80’s. Posey has been approached countless times about people wanting to turn it into a 7-11, bikini baristas, and everything else you can imagine. Posey denied all the requests and hopes somehow to open it back up for it’s original style, but only time will tell.

DeepMind AI coding engine as good as an average programmer

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

Back in the day, you had to write all your code by hand a text editor like vi or emacs, run the compiler by hand from the command line, and debuggers were also command line/text controlled horrors that were particularly notable painful experiences.

Along came programming IDE’s (Integrated Development Environments), and things started getting much better. Integrated editor, building, and visual debugging. This transformed writing software greatly, improving developer productivity and lives. Along came auto-complete and symbol lookups and yet another milestone of ease was achieved.

Google has taken things to the next level. DeepMind now powers AlphaCode – an AI trained to generate code and they claim it is almost as good as an average human programmer. I have already written about new efforts such as Github Copilot to expand autocomplete to entire code blocks using AI, but AlphaCode solves whole problems. When given coding challenges used in human competitions, it achieved an estimated rank in the top 54% of coders. Google is not alone, Microsoft is now adapting OpenAI’s GPT-3 engine to function as a coding auto-completer as well.

If you want to read about one developer’s experience using Github Copilot, check his article from Wired out.

One potential issue is that these AI engines are trained from open-source projects. Analysis shows that most of the code they generate have serious security vulnerabilities. This means that bad actors might start publishing key code blocks with known vulnerabilities in order to spread these vulnerabilities into commercial projects.

When can I retire

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

While greatly simplified, and doesn’t take into account inflation (which you cannot ignore now that we’re experiencing 10% inflation), Networthify has a little tool to show you how much your current savings rate will generate retirement income.

Whirling stilt dancers of Anguiano Spain

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

Each year on July 22nd (Although the main day is July 22nd, this “fiesta” last three days and is often repeated on the last weekend of Sept), the city of Anguiano Spain honors Saint Mary Magdalene in an unusual way. The Whirling Stilt Dancers festival starts with the parade of the dancers and musicians at 10 am. At 12 pm there is a procession during which the dancers, always backwards, dance to the virgin along the way. Two hours later after the mass, the whirling (Danza de los Zancos) starts.

It seems that walking on stilts was common in this area of the country because it was a very damp zone, and the tall grasslands doesn´t allow the farmers to see the cattle. On the other hand the farmers used to dance to the virgin asking for good crops. Both traditions were brought together; every year in July eight dancers on stilts of almost 50 cm high whirls down the stairs of the church and the cobbled street that leads to the town hall. The whirling flight down the steep hill is precarious to say the least. The winner is the one who makes it the furthest.

Using fiber optic cables for office lighting

March 26, 2022 matt Comments 0 Comment

Even as far back as the 80’s, companies and inventors were playing with the idea of using fiber optic cables to bring daylight into office spaces.

It was interesting to learn that there are indeed some buildings in Japan that have these systems. It seems pretty cool, but requires actual physical fiber optic cabling from the source to each light in the building. It also requires trackers that point the collectors continually at the sun, and they don’t work if it’s cloudy or at night. This makes it great for daytime offices with lots of yearly sunlight, but probably not great of apartments/homes or areas that have lots of cloudy days. It also makes me wonder if these transfer full-spectrum light – which includes UV light.

Still, it’s an interesting concept.