2012 Holiday Advent Blog – Day 15 – Some Faith in Humanity for 2012

Posted on by Scott / 0 Comment

It seems impossible to make sense of the tragedy that happened yesterday … 20 children and 6 of their educators murdered in the very halls meant to foster the earliest stages of their lives. And this wasn’t even the first shooting to take place this year, having already seen bloodshed earlier this summer from the shooting in Aurora, Colorado that took 12 lives during a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.

In light of such senseless violence as well as the holiday spirit in general, I think that this link is worth passing around to show that there is still good in society even in the face of darkness…

26 Moments That Restored Our Faith in Humanity This Year
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/moments-that-restored-our-faith-in-humanity-this-y

These are the ones that I liked the most:

1. The parents who made their son’s wheelchair into the best Halloween costume ever.
5. The people who helped out (after Hurricane Sandy) any way that they could.
9. The police officer who bought shoes for a barefoot homeless man.
15. The Disney security guard who is amazing at his job.
17. The quick-thinking little girl who saved her mom’s life by slapping her with a piece of pizza.
21. The community who came together to make Caine’s dream a reality.

2012 Holiday Advent Blog – Day 13 – Random Acts of Kindness

Posted on by Scott / 0 Comment

I love it when the holidays bring out the best in people, like in the case of 87 year-old Patsy Roberts. She’s a victim of Hurricane Sandy who loved to collect the greeting cards sent to her by friends & family – she told her son-in-law that she had intended to read them all during her final hours to remember those who she loved, but they ended up being among her losses from the superstorm earlier this year.

When the son-in-law heard this, he posted a simple message on Facebook asking his friends and family to send her some new cards in hopes of filling her mailbox this Christmas.

That same request is now popping up all over the Internet and it’s pretty safe to assume that Patsy Roberts’ mailman is going to be quite busy this holiday season!

Whether it’s giving toys to sick kids in the hospital, helping out a random stranger in need, or even simply mailing off an extra Christmas card to an old lady who loved everyone she ever met – there’s something special about this time of year that brings out the best in us, and it’s comforting to see its random effects on people who we’ve never even met.

WordPress Santa Smiley!

Posted on by Scott / 0 Comment

So you noticed that cute, little guy at the end of my last post, did ya?

:santa:

He was actually pretty easy to add to the standard smilies catalog in WordPress!

  1. Just save the image above and upload to /wp-includes/images/smilies/
  2. Then add a new line to the end of the array in /wp-includes/functions.php (assuming WordPress 3.0+; I believe you want /wp-includes/vars.php for earlier versions)
':|' => 'icon_neutral.gif',
';)' => 'icon_wink.gif',
':!:' => 'icon_exclaim.gif',
':?:' => 'icon_question.gif',
':santa:' => 'icon_santa.gif',

Now I should note that if you happen to be using a smilies plugin like I realized that I am here, you’ll likely need to do step #2 in the config file for that plugin instead. I’m using Smilies Themer, so the file I ended up updating was /wp-content/plugins/smilies-themer/default/package-config.php.

You’ll also probably notice that this particular icon is just a tad taller than the standard WordPress smilies, so it tends to throw off line heights if you’re using a default. I thought about scaling it down a bit to try to put it in line with the others, but you can just as easily put it on its own line and it saves you a trip to the Photoshop! Nonetheless, it seemed like a fun, little way to spruce up your WordPress blog around the holidays – enjoy…

:santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa: :santa:

2012 Holiday Advent Blog – Day 12 – Lego Holiday Village, 2012 Expansion

Posted on by Scott / 0 Comment

Courtesy of my wonderful Mom, we made another expansion to our quaint, little Lego holiday village this year – it really has become a favorite among our household Christmas decorations, to the point where it’s looking like we’re going to need to find a bigger home for it all should Lego continue new offerings in the line come next year! Still, we’ll gladly take ’em – we actually talked as we were building the new Village Cottage this year about maybe getting some nice snowy white base plates to put down for everything to sit on … not sure exactly where we’ll store such a monstrosity in the off-season, but it sure would make reassembly after a year in the closet just a wee bit easier!!!

So to date our village consists of the following (not sure how many of these are still available, but more just listing them for illustrative purposes):

And thanks to last year’s advent calendar (and an alternate from the Collectible Minifig Series), we’ve even got our very own Lego Santa Claus, preparing to slip down the chimney and deliver toys for all of the good little boys and girls of our winter village – how cool is that?!

village2012_1

village2012_2

village2012_3

village2012_4

village2012_5

village2012_6

Next year I think we need to get creative and throw a couple of reindeer into the mix, complete with light-up nose for Rudolf!

:santa: