Researching Lost Children
A blog about how children develop in adverse situations, and how to best care for children who have been abused or have experienced trauma.
Distressing Letters from Kids (Funny)
I think Mom and Dad got a few similar letters during my childhood… xD
How much do cats actually kill?
A very informative infographic! (Warning, possible NSFW language)
To wrap up this little series on unusual Magic: the Gathering creatures, I’ll end with the Shades, which are a small but interesting part of Black’s pool of creatures. As you’ll soon see, Shades give Black a little more combat punch than it usually gets!
What Do the Shades Do?
|
Almost all of the Shades work off the mechanic of paying a certain amount of mana to get +1/+1 till end of turn, like Nantuko Shade at left. This amount of mana can be paid as many times as possible, so you can easily end up with a ridiculously powerful Shade swinging at your opponent! (Black doesn’t get such combat-ready creatures very often, so this can give an otherwise control-based deck another way to win.)
Several of the Shades also manipulate mana in various ways, whether enabling you to search for it, giving you more mana per tapped land, or allowing you to sack lands to give it further +1/+1 boosts till end of turn. Other than that, there are a few scattered combat-aiding abilities like flying, regeneration, defender, fear, swampwalk and haste floating around the Shade creature type. With 26 Shades printed thus far, most of them black (only 1 white and 1 red/black Shade exist), they can make a neat Black creature-based deck if one is so inclined. Their mana curve runs from 1 to 6, with most of them hovering around 4 mana. |
More Examples of Shades
|
|
|
|
|
|
All card images are from MagicCards.info.
Further Research: Complete List of Shades in Magic: the Gathering
1 John 4:19-21
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
John doesn’t mince words here: if you hate another human being, who is your sibling in the family of God, then you aren’t showing true Christian love to anyone.
This is an extremely hard truth to realize, especially since most of us have prejudices of some sort when it comes to other human beings. But given that all genuine love comes from God, if I refuse to show love to another person, I’m refusing to show God to them. And if I refuse to show God to another person, how can I call myself a Christian?
This verse hearkens back to two other places in the Bible–John 13:34, when Jesus commanded His disciples to “love one another as I have loved you,” and even back to Mosaic Law in the Old Testament. We are not only commanded to love our families and friends to show God to them, but to love each person as a brother or sister in Christ…even if they haven’t quite made it into the fold yet.
This is a simple command in words, but very, very difficult to live out. It’s part of the reason that being a Christian can be a struggle; our human natures want to hate those who have hurt us, inconvenienced us, or crossed us, but God commands us to love and forgive. It takes diligence and a daily commitment to behave like God has commanded, but it’s necessary if we want to show God’s love to the world.
I’ve been getting my proverbial hands dirty behind the scenes this week, grappling with code in order to put together a probable, working mobile layout for this blog. (The main thing I’ve realized so far? It’s a LOT of WORK. LOL)
|
This is the mobile design I finally came up with, working with the basic color scheme from the new desktop layout I’ve been designing. Its main features:
But it took quite a while to get this design “right”–and it wasn’t easy to figure out how to manage it. Indeed, I’ve struggled most of this last week to come up with a design that actually looked like a mobile site layout, instead of a hopelessly squeezed version of my desktop design! |
The Key: Focus on Readability and Content
I found out while designing this mobile layout that trying to fit all my navigation, my sidebar information, AND my content would just not work. Instead, I needed to make my mobile layout rather sparse-looking by desktop standards:
Summary
Mobile layouts have to be simplified, but that doesn’t mean that they are simple to design. (Indeed, you have to be deliberate and careful in your design choices, otherwise your mobile layout will be unusable!) But with a few considerations, you too can make yourself a layout that will transition well to all mobile devices, big screen or small.
(Tune in next week for part 2, in which I will attempt to make this mobile layout a coded reality!)
After the success of displaying all of my wearable necklaces and dangly earrings with a pretty little jewelry tree, I felt pretty confident about finding all the jewelry I had when I wanted to wear it.
Well, I felt confident, that is, until I realized I didn’t have a good place for the tiny earrings and my rings, not to mention the long hair chopsticks that wouldn’t fit in my hair notions organizer. Then my enthusiasm dulled a bit.
I was at a loss for a little while, mostly because I didn’t have room on my dresser for a large jewelry box (thus the reason for the tall and narrow jewelry tree). Nor did I want a fully-enclosed jewelry box, which would keep me from seeing everything at once and make me have to dig through a box to find things. In my experience, if I can’t see it, I won’t wear it, sad to say.
So I searched around for an easily-organizable, highly-visible solution to my jewelry problem–and found it in an unlikely place!
Small-Item Desktop Organizer, Given New Purpose!
|
Meet my solution to my “small-jewelry” problem–a desktop organizer originally meant for paper clips, thumbtacks, pens, and the like! (You might not be able to tell from the picture, but it is about half a foot tall and a little narrower than that width-wise.)
My earrings are stored in the four clear compartments (one of which my thumb is on in the picture); my rings are in the little tray up top, and my large hair notions are in the back, stored like pens in the upright holders. This puts everything out in easy reach and easy view, and it looks sleek and classy to boot! |
|
What really sold me on this little organizer is that the clear plastic compartments all swing out for easy access, enabling me to use all the storage space without having to worry about “losing” any items back where I can’t reach it. Having four compartments like this has helped me sort my jewelry to my OCD heart’s content, too!
Also, I like the fact that I can store my rings out in the open, as well as my large hair notions. I don’t have to open any drawers nor fool with any fancy ring holders–they’re just there, ready to be picked up and worn! |
This picture shows just how much jewelry I can fit in this little organizer, and yet still have it sectioned out. Now my earrings aren’t getting tangled up with rings and brooches–yay! And my large hair notions aren’t lying forgotten at the bottom of a box anymore–double yay! 😀
To Buy This Organizer
The organizer pictured can be purchased at Walmart.com for $3.47. Additionally, if you’d like one in all black, this one, also at Walmart.com, is $6.73. And, if you want a larger organizer in this style, I found one with eight swing-out compartments and two top trays at Walmart.com for $13.81.
EarthLED.com
Planet-friendly LED lights!
Funny (And Strange) Letter from a Kid
A thank-you letter from a kid who apparently wants to be Ultra-Lord of the Universe with unicorn servants in a 200-story castle someday…(read to the end, it gets even better)
Infographic: 18 Amazing Facts about the Human Body
8 Homemade Hair Treatments
You may have heard of the old “eggs as conditioner” trick, but what about the “sour cream as gentle pre-shampoo treatment” trick? Read on to find out more?
Okay, all grossness and revulsion aside, Ooze IS indeed a creature type in Magic: the Gathering (even though only 23 exist to date). It’s a type that is not often explored on its own merits, but finds itself worked into various generic-creature-type strategies. Let me show you:
What Do the Oozes Do?
|
Oozes are all about +1/+1 counters, thematically speaking, even though their specific abilities vary quite widely among the 23 Ooze creatures printed. There are a couple with Deathtouch, one with Indestructible, and a few with cumulative upkeep costs, but even the cumulative upkeep costs have benefits resulting in +1/+1 counters. Depending on which Ooze you run, you can get +1/+1 counters for:
(There are plenty more abilities contained within the Ooze creature type which give you +1/+1 counters–it just depends on what you need.) Oozes are mostly printed in Green, with a few Red and Black scattered among them; there is Blue involved in the casting costs of a few Oozes as well, though not many. The mana curve runs from 1 to 7. (There are also a couple of Unhinged joke cards that have the Ooze creature type, so be ready to laugh at some of their abilities!) |
Other Examples of the Ooze Creature Type
|
|
|
|
|
|
All images from MagicCards.info
Further Research: Complete List of Ooze Creatures in Magic: the Gathering
Ruth 4:1-6
1 Meanwhile Boaz went up to the town gate and sat there. When the kinsman-redeemer he had mentioned came along, Boaz said, “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” So he went over and sat down. 2 Boaz took ten of the elders of the town and said, “Sit here,” and they did so. 3 Then he said to the kinsman-redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling the piece of land that belonged to our brother Elimelech. 4 I thought I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, do so. But if you will not, tell me, so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line.”
“I will redeem it,” he said.
5 Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the land from Naomi and from Ruth the Moabitess, you acquire the dead man’s widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.”
6 At this, the kinsman-redeemer said, “Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it.”
This whole scene happens because Naomi needs someone to help her and her daughter-in-law Ruth get back on their feet. They have lost so much financially and emotionally through the deaths of Naomi’s husband and sons, and the best way for them to begin building up again is for someone to buy the land that once belonged to Ruth’s husband, Elimelech. Since Boaz is kin to the family, he would be a natural choice, but the kinsman-redeemer is closer of kin.
However, this move would bring with it its own perils, at least financially. Anybody who buys the land would also be obliged to marry Ruth, and could end up losing his own lands to Ruth’s offspring in due course of time. As we see in these verses, the kinsman-redeemer is not willing to take that risk…but Boaz is, because he realizes he is meant to care for Ruth and her mother-in-law, since they have so little left. He takes on the burden for them, and in so doing gives them renewed hope and life.
Here, we see the drama of Christ’s redemption acted out in miniature; this is only a foreshadowing of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Even though His life was sinless, He took on our sin and paid for it Himself; even though His journey to the cross brought Him extreme pain and death, He was willing to do it to redeem us. No one else would have done nearly what He did for us! Just as Boaz took on a seemingly untenable financial burden for Ruth and Naomi, Jesus took on our spiritual burden…and gave us renewed hope for eternal life.
So I started cleaning out my wardrobe over the last couple of weeks…
And if you’re thinking this is the “before” picture, you’d be wrong. This is actually the “after” picture, with the wardrobe reduced by about half. Almost none of it fits in the dresser drawers (though, admittedly, this is the same dresser I used in childhood, so…it’s probably not really made for “adult-sized” clothes).
THESE are all the clothes I’m either selling, donating, or trashing. (I think about 60% of the clothes I have in my house fall into this category, lol!)
What I’ve Found Out So Far
What Happens Now?
So now that I’ve sorted through quite a bit of my clothes, what’s next? I thought the project would be done and over with–I’d take bags upon bags of clothes to Goodwill, and that would be the end of it. But nooooo.
There’s Work Yet Left to Do! D:
In short, I’ve got a lot of the “easy” work done (bagging up some of the clothes I no longer wear), but the harder work of making things donate-able, even as I winnow down the number of clothes I want to keep, is still ongoing.
Stay Tuned…
This fight against my wardrobe is not nearly over, and is only a small part of my long siege against the Clutter Dragon in my house (whom I wrote about last fall!). In my next update, I hope to have a good bit of these problems resolved!