Every December, our team runs a friendly competition using advent calendars. Each person has their own calendar, and every morning we all open a door and share the picture we get. If someone reveals an image that nobody else has that day, they earn points. At the end of the season, the person with the highest score wins a small prize and, more importantly, bragging rights for the rest of the year.
This year, a few advent calendars arrived with missing, blank, or duplicated images. Rather than let that spoil the fun or disadvantage anyone, we decided to build a simple tool to help fill the gaps: the Festive Spinner.
The spinner generates a random festive icon that can stand in for a missing advent door image. It keeps the daily competition fair, consistent, and just as light-hearted as always. You can try the spinner yourself here:
https://mdcinternetsolutions.co.uk/FestiveSpinner/
It was a quick project, built in the spirit of keeping the tradition going. These small ideas are a reminder of why we love what we do: taking a simple problem and creating something useful, fun, and immediately impactful.
As with many of our experiments, we will likely revisit and extend the tool next year. For now, it has served its purpose perfectly and kept the festive competition alive.