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Frequently Asked Questions
Didn't you do this last year? Past few years, actually. You can see the 2010 calendar here, the 2009 calendar here, and 2008 here. I'm going to try to do one every year. Each year I get closer and closer to the deadline. This year, I had planned to really work on this during the month of November, but then we had a baby on November 6 - so this year I am REALLY behind, and short on sleep, and short on time. So watch out, friends. Why'd you do this? When I was a kid one year I got a chocolate Advent Calendar. A picture of a little town with 25 little doors in it, and each door had a number, each day you could open a door and get that day's piece of chocolate. Each piece was shaped like a different Christmassy thing - you know, a tree, a star, a nutcracker, etc. I freaking LOVED that thing. I mean, cheap, stale, shitty chocolate would've been good enough, but I really dug the mystery of wondering what the next day's shape would be. Milo, my older son, had an Advent calendar like the one I remember, and it was the high point of his year last year. Bottom line, I thought it would be cool and fun to do. I hope you like it. Did you know Leslie? She used to do Advent calendars, and this makes me think of her. I did not know Leslie Harpold, but she was a dear friend of many people who I know. I didn't know about her Advent calendars until I made mine, and my impression is that they are really not very similar. It isn't my intent to reference her work, and it isn't my intent to compare what I am doing with what she did, but if it brings you fond memories that is great by me. I certainly mean no disrespect. So, you're, like, really religious, huh? Not at all. I am in no way religious. Other than the words "advent" and "christmas" this is a completely secular endeavour. I love Christmas, I really do, but I don't believe in Jesus any more than I believe in Santa Claus. But why throw the baby out with the bathwater? So, you're, like, mocking Jesus, huh? Not at all. But if my non-belief is uncomfortable for you feel free to seek your internet amusements elsewhere. I'd like to send this to my 5 year old nephew. OK? Um. There's probably nothing actually offensive on this thing (other than the fact that I say "shit" several times in this FAQ. Oh, and I say "buttmunch". too), but my drawings can be a little weird and, honestly, at the time of this writing I am not done with all the drawings, so maybe one will be a giant turd or something. Unlikely, but it's possible. You know little Schmedly better than I do, you make the call. How does it work? You can click a number, corresponding to the date, and see all the dates up till that point. You can only see the dates that have come to pass, so no opening Christmas day on the 5th of December, and so forth. I have even put in some security measures to ensure that it would be hard (but not impossible, I reckon) for someone to cheat and see future dates' images. How does it work, in a more technical sense?Poorly! For real, this stupid thing is fairly brittle, poorly implemented, and inefficient. It's kludgey .asp that generates a nightmare of a nested table based layout full of animated .gif's and a few inline styles. There's even some shitty JavaScript. Really, it's like a perfect storm of bad web design. Ho ho ho! This is stupid. Merry Christmas to you too, buttmunch. Can I ask you a question? That's a question already. But yeah, sure. dirtdirt at gmail.com. This looks screwy in IE on the Mac (or whatever). Sorry. |