LOLSaints

Due to some crazy holidays, and a lot of things going on, the Saints were on an unplanned hiatus for some time. Luckily, they're back. Expect more LOLs in the coming weeks (starting tomorrow)!

Playing around with the Drupal Views module a while, I think I've finally come to a better ranking method for the 'Most Popular' section on this website...

Instead of the old way, which was:

1. Filter by number of votes cast, then
2. Filter by the average value of a vote.

I've tweaked the filter to go by:

1. Saint must have more than four votes.
2. Filter by average value of a vote, then
3. Filter by number of votes cast.

I wish I could do some sort of weighting to the sorting rules above, so certain saint images, which have tons of votes, and are at a value of 4.8 rather than 4.9, would display before a saint image that has only a few votes but is positioned at 4.9 or 5.

We shall see... for now, check out the updated listing on the Most Popular LOLSaints of All Time page!

Sorry we've been a little sporadic in posting new LOLSaints lately... our site developer has been a little busy with an engagement lately, along with some other fun things.

There are tons of great saints coming down the pipeline, and a bunch of glorious feasts! In addition, we've merged this site into a 'multisite' installation with Open Source Catholic and Catholic News Live.

On the site itself, the saint images have been upgraded with a tiny watermark on the bottom left so people who copy out the images can see where they've come from, and the text editor has been upgraded and speedily improved for the submit a saint page.

Please let us know if there are any other changes or problems we should look into! One of the next things that we'll be working on around these parts is an upgraded theme (much faster-loading, plus more modern and cheesy!).

After a nice, long stretch on HostGator (which has been a great host, bye the way!), we're moving LOLSaints.com over to the main server for Catholic News Live, Open Source Catholic, Midwestern Mac, LLC, and Life is a Prayer.com. Please bear with us as we make this transition.

The site may be offline for a period of a few hours over the next two days, depending on how you connect to the internet. The Saints apologize for their (brief) absence!

As we celebrate all the Saints today, we know we have a great gift in the Church of beautiful images which not only remind us of the great men and women that went before us in faith, but also lead us to prayer. Earlier this year, Zenit ran a wonderful article outlining the ability for sacred icons to lead people to prayer:

ROME, MARCH 5, 2009 (Zenit.org) — To learn the art of icons is to learn the art of prayer that leads to communion with God, according to an iconographer and teacher who just finished imparting a specialized course in Rome.

Fabio Nones, doctor in theology and director of a center of iconography in Trent, Italy, concluded last Saturday an advanced course for a select group of artists in an ecumenical center near the Vatican.

Nones explained to ZENIT that there is a great difference between an artist, in the ordinary sense of the word, and a painter of icons. Continue Reading »

From an email I recently received (I don't normally share these things, but this one was too funny...):

Little Zachary was doing quite badly in math. His parents had tried everything. tutors, mentors, flash cards, Special learning Centers. In short, everything they could think of to help his math.

Finally, in a last ditch effort, they took Zachary down and enrolled him in the local Catholic school. After the first day, little Zachary came home with a very serious look on his face. He didn't even kiss his mother Hello. Instead, he went straight to his room and started studying. Books and papers were spread out all over the room and little Zachary was hard at work. His mother was amazed She called him down to dinner. To her shock, the minute he was done, he marched back to his room without a word, and in no time, he was back hitting the books as hard as before. This went on for some time, day after day, while the mother tried to understand what made all the difference.

Finally, little Zachary brought home his report card. He quietly laid it on the table, went up to his room and hit the books. With great trepidation, his Mom looked at it and to her great surprise Little Zachary got an 'A' in math. She could no longer hold her curiosity. She went to his room and said, 'Son, what was it? Was it the nuns?' Little Zachary looked at her and shook his head, no. 'Well, then,' she replied, 'Was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms?'

Little Zachary looked at her and said, 'On the first day of school when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around.'

Sorry about the sporadic updates the past week or so... the saints have been taking a small break and attending a few personal events. Posts may be sporadic for the next week or so as well, as the saints get things back in shape :-)