to persevere: parenting stories and other geekery

I just discovered, looking through this week’s Wal*Mart flyer, there is no PST (Provincial Sales Tax in Ontario) on bicycles. This new policy change came into effect on December 1st, 2007, and remains in effect until November 30th, 2008. It applies not just to bicycles, but also to accessories such as helmets, lights, reflectors, and more.

I’m surprised that the provincial government would do something cool like this, and I’m definitely going to benefit when I get the kids bikes this year. More bikes = staying active, less driving. I can get behind that.

I wanted to highlight a research foundation that I’ve been doing some work for at the studio, The Sanfilippo Children’s Research Foundation. Sanfilippo syndrome (also known as Mucopolysaccharidosis or MCP) is a genetic disorder that affects the body’s ability to break down sugars, resulting in a buildup of heparin sulfate in various organs in the body. It affects normal development, with wide ranging symptoms. Individuals with Sanfilippo syndrome usually live into their late teens.

Elisa Linton was diagnosed with the syndrome in 1999, and her parents Randall and Elisabeth decided they would dedicate their lives to raising awareness and funds to find a cure. To date, they have raised over three million dollars for research.

As a parent myself, it touched me deeply to hear of Elisa and her battle with MCP. It’s heart-wrenching to know that the disease doesn’t manifest itself until age two, and so amazing to see how Randall and Elisabeth have responded.

I had the privilege of working on a short video for the Foundation’s upcoming fundraising gala. When it’s finished, I hope to be able to share it here. As you can see, it’s a Dr. Seuss themed gala, and the video is the story of Elisa, told in the style of a Dr. Seuss story. The story was written by Tracy Keenan, and I recorded the voiceover in the studio. For the musical score, I was able to enlist the help of my colleague and friend Howard Baer, an amazing and talented composer, who agreed to orchestrate and score the video. Both he and I felt compelled to donate our time to this worthy cause.

To find out more about the foundation, please go to www.alifeforelisa.org, where you can find out more about Elisa, the foundation, and Sanfilippo Syndrome. Thanks!

This is the worst commercial that Russell Oliver has made to date, I think. He has sunk to new lows.

Because I’m a glutton for geekiness and I like to try out new stuff, I upgraded this blog’s inner workings to the latest Wordpress 2.5 (Release Candidate 1). That’s right, I’m running this whole thing off of a beta. Call me crazy, I know.

My impressions so far:
The Dashboard interface has gone through a major redesign and I have to say it looks great. I like it. It’s cleaner, it looks much more web2.0, and things are completely rearranged so I get to discover where everything is again. Isn’t upgrading fun? No, seriously, I do like it. The post page looks like this now:

There’s a cool lightbox effect pop up when you add media to your post, and oh, there’s even an alignment setting now. Hope that works. Yep, hey, it does work. I’ve been fiddling around with getting images to align properly, so maybe this will ease my pain a little. We’ll see.

All in all, it looks like a ‘big deal’ and hopefully any bugs will be ironed out before the final is released.

Happy blogging!

Today the Comic passed a momentous milestone: she’s tall enough to go into the IKEA Smaland playroom. W00t!

Update: If you see her, don’t hype it up too much, because she hasn’t actually gone in yet, they just went and checked her against the height measurement line. Somehow, I’m sure I’ll be writing about her first time in the ball room!