Current forum discussions
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Welcoming Santa
Phineas and Ferb welcomed Santa to Danville with this rest stop/clubhouse. Now you can welcome him into your home with something based off of this picture.
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Crat Corner
by Topher208
’Tis the Season
Welcome to the holiday skin, everyone! We all remember the skin from Across the Second Dimension that we used over the summer, and the different background for Halloween. Well, this is the one that started it all, even though we're using a different background this year. We're in our third year of changing our skin for the holidays, inspired by another fantastic special: "Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation!"
We're looking into doing more of this as we become inspired to. We have brought up ideas in the past such as using Ducky MoMo for Easter and converting our colors to green for St. Patty's Day. We should start creating different backgrounds for use on the wiki. In order to make changing our colors easier, we should start adapting our infoboxes and other oft-used templates so that we can change them using CSS classes rather than modifying them all individually. If anyone out there has mad Photoshop skills and/or knows CSS really well and would like to help out, drop me a line.
So what do you say? Should we change our skin more often? Should we get a new "permanent" background? What changes would you like to see once our holiday skin is done in January?
Odds 'n' Ends
- Phineas and Ferb has been confirmed for a fourth season, which means the series will last through at least 2014. (LA Times Blog)
- "Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation will, once again, air on ABC-TV on Friday, December 23rd. (TV Blend)
- About three weeks ago, I posted a bunch of Phineas and Ferb-based avatars that were parodies of the default Facebook Photo. Check them out!
- Ryan Stoppable has another blog on the ratings for "Lotsa Latkes".
- Don't forget to Like us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter.
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Retro Review: The best of the worst
by RRabbit42
Since Disney Channel is still splitting the recent episodes in half, let's head back to season 1 for two of its episodes.
Earlier this year when the New York Times hosted their "Times Talk" panel with the cast of Phineas and Ferb, Dee Bradley Baker gave a demonstration of how he does voices for animated shows. It was fun to watch Alyson Stoner's facination with the process because she hadn't see it done before. Swampy Marsh also expresses his admiration for how flexible Dee is with his voices, describing how Dee offered to do voices for some cows and "he had the cows emoting".
The episode where this happened was "The Magnificent Few". This episode opens with a western movie and song, complete with harmonizing cows. It was also one of the first episodes with a fourth wall break when Phineas explains to the audience that his mother "means well" with her enthusiasm over the fact that he and Ferb are sedately riding horses in a ring.
Not only do we see another example of Isabella's infatuation with the Big Ideas Phineas comes up with, there's a reference to Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies and Dr. Doofenshmirtz demonstrates once again how he mangles common words and phrases.
But more importantly, this is the first episode where we meet another member of his family. Though he first introduces her as just his assistant, we learn later that Vanessa is actually his daughter. Vanessa switches from indifference to what her dad is doing to not understanding how he could make such obvious mistakes in dealing with his nemesis. He's even gone so far as to put together everything Agent P needs to escape from becoming "platypus flambé". She sums it up very nicely: "worst 'bring your daughter to work day' ever".
The companion to "The Magnificent Few" is "S'Winter". Like other season 1 episodes, it has its share of firsts.
In this case, it's the first time we learn about Linda and Lawrence's interest in antiques and that they have an antique store. The store becomes more important later on in the mind-twisting "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo". Candace and Vanessa meet for the first time, but neither one knows how similar their lives are.
Isabella gets to sing for the first time. It's a preview of Alyson Stoner's great singing skills that we get to enjoy in later episodes, with City of Love being the highlight for me. And also on the same front, this is an episode where we learn that Dr. Doofenshmirtz hires musicians to play his incidental music, followed later by his jingle singers.
As I watched this episode again for this review, I noticed that the mountain the boys make in their back yard is probably the largest physical object they've ever made. There's been things that have been taller like the elevator to the moon, or encompassed a larger area like their rollercoasters, or gave the appearance of a larger area like the biosphere from "The Great Indoors". I have to exclude when they carved Candace's face onto Mount Rushmore because they were just using a portion of an existing area. The S'Winter mountain is tall and huge, yet fits into their back yard, just one more example of how Ferb knows how to maximize space.
The final first in this episode is an important point in the relationship between Doofenshmirtz and Agent P. For as much as he wants to take over the Tri-State Area, he shows how much he needs Perry to thwart him. If nothing else, to be there to make the day's attempt more interesting.
Unfortunately, I have to end this review on a second. Disney Channel has games on their website related to each show. Some are inspired by the show while others are based on specific episodes of the show. S'no Problem wasn't the first game there based on a Phineas and Ferb episode. Cowabunga Candace was, based on "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror". But, S'no Problem is one I enjoy, and I think you will, too. Give it a try.
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Chat rules proposal
by Bpendragon
As a Chat Moderator for Special:Chat I have noticed an issue. Specifically the lack of a complete standard list of rules, that is why, about a month ago, with the permission of RRabbit42 and Topher208 I began to work on such a list. At first I was at a loss of what to do. I then remembered the wonderful rules of the IRC channel #EquestrianStudy, which the owner (Lord-Blazer) has graciously let me modify. The rules I am proposing are based upon his rules, link can be found below.
A few important notes on the rules:
- Rule 0 cannot be changed/removed, no exceptions, the law on the matter can be seen here: Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act
- Serious comments will be considered, these are fairly close to finalized, but not there yet.
- Rule 2 includes pony dislike, do not spam me, the Pony channel or anywhere else about that. Just because the rules are based off of those for a pony-specific channel does not make them bad. In fact, these are some of the best Chat Channel Rules I've seen, and I've seen a lot.
- Rule 17 does not disbar non-Phineas and Ferb links, only links that are Not Work Safe/Not kid friendly.
- These rules only apply to Special:Chat, not our IRC Channel, there is already a rule list for that.
Rules can be seen here: Proposed Chat Rules
Discussion Blog is here: Discussion Blogs
- EquestrianStudy is owned and managed by Lord-Blazer and is devoted to helping My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fan artists and Fanfiction writers, and can be found here. Please do not go simply to go though, please be serious in the channel, and remember, the discussion is pony related, as always, before doing anything there ask What Would Phineas Do?. Again I thank Lord-Blazer for letting me modify his rules, which can be found here. (They have undergone revision for his Channel since I started making ours, but those changes are almost entirely IRC related, and thus, have no bearing on ours.)
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Hands-on with the new merchandise, part 36
by RRabbit42
My merchandise review is actually more of a spotlight this time. We're coming up on Christmas again. Last year, all that was available for Christmas decorations was a couple of ornaments. This year, we have three, plus two stockings.
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This year's Christmas ornaments from Hallmark and the Disney Store
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The two carried by the Disney Store continue the Across the 2nd Dimension theme. We have Phineas and Ferb looking at their 2nd Dimension counterparts and Agent P fighting the Platyborg. They originally listed for $10.50 each, but the Disney Store website is now selling them at 40% off ($6.30).
The Hallmark ornament is part of their Keepsake line and is only available in their stores. As you can see, it takes its inspiration from "Rollercoaster", complete with the boys' hair being swept back by the wind rushing by as they roll down the coaster. I don't know if you can see it in the picture, but Agent P is attached to the coaster by a spring, so it looks like he's just about to land on it, just like he did in the episode. You can get more information about the ornament on Hallmark's website.
For those of you who adhere to the tradition of hanging a stocking up by the chimney, Toys R Us can help you out with two choices. Both have designs from Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation! and both are 20 inches tall. The blue one is just called Phineas and Ferb and the red one is called Welcome Santa. The "Welcome Santa" is embroidered into the trim and if you look carefully, you'll see that the letters are the same as what's on the rest stop for Santa as shown at the top of this issue.
The original price is $9.99 each, but like the Disney Store, Toys R Us also has dropped the price. They're now 20% off at $7.99 each.
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Bunny Bites
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| by RRabbit42
Last month I did a little bit of cleanup on the newsletter articles that users sent in. They've been moved to a new Published submissions category so we can track what's been used, and when you go to the Newsletter submissions page, you will see just what waiting to be added to a newsletter. If you turned in an article and it didn't get added, let us know and we'll fix it in the next issue.
I don't if anyone's noticed, but we've had the same Featured Article on our main page for a few months. Part of that is because we haven't taken the time to go through what's been nominated recently and see which ones qualify.
Sometimes a nominated article is close to being ready to be featured but may need just a little more work. In these cases, it will help if we can get a few people that are willing to put the polishing touches on the article. Once that's done, we can put it on the main page.
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Since we're approaching the end of the year, it's time to start thinking about the bonus issue of the Gazette. For those of you that joined the wiki in 2011 and haven't read the past newsletter, we try to have a bonus issue after Christmas that has a few puzzles and features a lot of fan art. The idea is to help those artists get more exposure for their work and encourage them to draw even more Phineas and Ferb fan art.
Many of the artists are located over on DeviantArt. I have quite a few bookmarks of pictures by new artists to check and see if they'd like to take part in this year's issue. Previously-featured artists will be invited back, too.
But, there may be artists on other fan art sites that might want to participate. So, if you know of a site or an artist, leave me a message so I can check out their work.
There will also be a blog that prospective and returning artists can read to get info about the bonus issue, and can accept or decline on that page. That will have to be done pretty quickly, probably within the next 2 or 3 days.
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Coming in two weeks:
- Hands-on with the new merchandise, part 37
- Recent episodes review
- Other articles to be determined (submissions wanted - send to RRabbit42 or use the Newsletter submissions page)
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Got a question or comment about this issue? Leave a message on this issue's Discussion page.
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