AlternateIdea: Odd Gifts of 2006

December 26th, 2006

Odd Gifts of 2006

6 comments on 228 words

Christmas time is that special time of year where most of us attend big family dinners with what can sometimes feel like a group of strangers. The gifting process is an adventure in its own right, as the older we get, the more cautionary we become about opening gifts from our family. Anything from tube socks to the sweater that goes immediately to the closet, never to be worn, are all part of this timeless tradition.

There is also those few gifts that make you do a double take as you peal back the holiday wrapping paper. While your grateful for the spirit of giving, these gifts can only be labeled as ”Odd Gifts of 2006”.

Cake anyone?

We have about four separate groups of family we see on a yearly basis, this years odd gift was spawned from my Wife’s Aunt. Amongst the socks and underwear I had been unwrapping, there was a gift placed on my lap which I couldn’t quite pin down. I started to cautiously peel back the paper, and just as the packaging started to reveal itself from beneath the wrapping, there it was—”Chocolate Ugly, Cake Mix”.

Being the emotional rock I am during the holidays, I turned to the gifter; put on a big smile, and extended a ”Thank you” to them, but on the inside I was still in shock that I had received cake mix. Cake mix: My odd gift of 2006.

Get an odd gift yourself?

If you’ve received your very own odd gift, I encourage you to upload it to flickr and tag it with oddgift2006.

oddgift2006 christmas holidays cakemix

Discussion

Piotr Usewicz said on December 26th

Heh, I hope it will taste good! ;]
Andrew Dupont said on December 26th

My gifts this year were universally normal, but I think this is a fantastic idea.
Justin Palmer said on December 27th

Seems I’m the only one who got an odd gift..heh Maybe it’s a local thing.
Ryan said on December 28th

Got a couple of cases of almonds from my mother-in-law . . . I can’t eat nuts!!
Nate K said on December 28th

I got some shirts from some Clear Function place. Better than chocolate cake.
Alex said on January 16th

You think that’s an odd gift. My mother in law this year gave me a frying pan. I guess she wants me to help her daughter more:)

Sorry, comments are closed for this article.

Justin is the Design Director for entp, the company behind Lighthouse, Warehouse, and Mephisto. You can check out his shiny stuff for proof of his super powers.

Beautifully simple issue tracking and project management. With a beautiful Mac-like interface, email and subversion integration, Lighthouse is the perfect project management tool. We took the suck out of issue tracking.
Web-based Subversion Interface. Manage Subversion permissions and browse through your changesets and files with ease. Warehouse takes the complicated and mundane tasks of Subversion and makes it easy.

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ActiveRecord Ported To Objective-C brought to us by Ninja Kitten
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May06

With the release of Opera’s DragonFly, IE 8’s Developer tools, Safari’s/Webkit’s Web Inspector and Drosera; and the Grand Daddy of them all, Firebug – we’ve now come full circle.
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Feb08

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DoubleClick and Define using Apple Dictionary


var selection;
if(window.getSelection)
  selection = window.getSelection();
else if(document.selection)
  selection = document.selection.createRange();

document.observe("dblclick", function() {
  if(navigator.userAgent.include("Macintosh")) {
      location.href = "dict://" + selection;
    }
});

A quick (and probably dirty) Prototype-based hack allowing Mac users to get the definition of any word by double clicking it.

Feb08

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A strftime for Prototype


Object.extend(Date.prototype, {
  strftime: function(format) {
    var day = this.getUTCDay(), month = this.getUTCMonth();
    var hours = this.getUTCHours(), minutes = this.getUTCMinutes();
    function pad(num) { return num.toPaddedString(2); };

    return format.gsub(/\%([aAbBcdDHiImMpSwyY])/, function(part) {
      switch(part[1]) {
        case 'a': return $w("Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat")[day]; break;
        case 'A': return $w("Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday")[day]; break;
        case 'b': return $w("Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec")[month]; break;
        case 'B': return $w("January February March April May June July August September October November December")[month]; break;
        case 'c': return this.toString(); break;
        case 'd': return this.getUTCDate(); break;
        case 'D': return pad(this.getUTCDate()); break;
        case 'H': return pad(hours); break;
        case 'i': return (hours === 12 || hours === 0) ? 12 : (hours + 12) % 12; break;
        case 'I': return pad((hours === 12 || hours === 0) ? 12 : (hours + 12) % 12); break;
        case 'm': return pad(month + 1); break;
        case 'M': return pad(minutes); break;
        case 'p': return hours > 11 ? 'PM' : 'AM'; break;
        case 'S': return pad(this.getUTCSeconds()); break;
        case 'w': return day; break;
        case 'y': return pad(this.getUTCFullYear() % 100); break;
        case 'Y': return this.getUTCFullYear().toString(); break;
      }
    }.bind(this));
  }
});

UPDATE: Bugs fixed. Thanks Andrew and Stephen

Also, some of my old and new code has been posted on GitHub. You might find something useful.

Feb04

A beautiful, organic animation by Flight404 created using Processing.

Processing in Action
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Aaron Patterson shows us how to define ruby methods which can be called from JavaScript using RKelly.
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Jan07

Dustin might not surprise you at your house with a book in hand, but he’ll damn sure send you his innermost fu in the form of a shiny yellow and black book. It’s an excellent read if you’re looking to put more funk in your functions and class in your classes. Check out “Pro JavaScript Design Patterns” by Dustin and Ross Harmes.

—I’m Justin Palmer and I approve this message.
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IE 8 PAsses the Acid 2 Test for those not keeping tabs on things.
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Mislav has written up an excellent overview on upgrading Radiant (which used 1.5) to Prototype 1.6. The article does a great job of showing how 1.6 is superior to 1.5.
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According to the New York Times, the Daily Show Archives, with over 7,000 videos are online—free and searchable.
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Telemarketer gets owned
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—Erik Kastner shows us how it’s done.

Making an iPhone app in about a minute
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Defining classes and inheritance in Prototype–Incase you’ve missed it, Prototype 1.6 has a new inheritance model.
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Hurricane Dean’s projected path. The most awesomest hurricane ever.
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How Ninjas Work

Who would’ve thought Howstuffworks would be able to uncover the secrets behind these illusive creatures.
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