What would you do if $22,000 suddenly appeared in your life? Would you spend it on stuff? Gamble it away in the stock market? (C'mon, don't you ever learn?) Or, would you, like Christina Ammon, invest it in people? People who have been carried away by generosity to make a difference in this world?

Better yet, if you're getting engaged, would you spend $22,000 on a beautiful diamond ring and, in so doing, help Christina help others?

Todd and I first heard about Christina's With This Ring Project when she commissioned Todd to make a drawing for the project's website. Travel writer Jeff Greenwald (who some of our friends will know has a fierce talent for limbo) is the catalyst in this story, weaving a connection from Christina to Todd in that magical way he has.

When Christina inherited her grandmother's diamond engagement ring, it didn't take her long to decide to auction it off and do something meaningful with the proceeds.

Christina will divide the auction money between people and organizations she has met during her far-flung travels of this world. She'll give it away to those who are making a difference in exchange for little more than the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from doing good. Recipients include Quilts for Kids Nepal, Himalayan Raptor Rescue, 100 Friends, The Sarswati Foundation, and more.

If you're in the mood for marriage, then Christina has the diamond engagement ring for you. It's quite a rock: 3.21 carats set in platinum. The auction runs from January 1st through February 7th, just in time for Valentine's Day. All you have to do is bid.

>> Read more at www.withthisringproject.org or on the project's blog

>> Follow the With This Ring Project on Twitter and on Facebook

A number of people have written or commented asking how to create the photo slideshows included at the end of our travel dispatches, so I thought I'd share it with everyone.

1. Copy and paste the code below into your the html of your blog post or your site's html (don't paste it into your WYSIWYG editor).
2. Replace the text SET-ID with your Flickr set's number in both places. You can find the set number in the address bar of your browser when you're looking at your Flickr set.
3. OPTIONAL: Change the height and width of the slideshow - below at 500 pixels - to fit into the design of your site. Keep the height and width to the same ratio (1:1) so your photos don't get squished.

This is just the way to duplicate the appearance of slideshows on Ephemerratic, which I based on code shared by web developer Paul Stamatiou. Check out Paul full instructions for more parameters to customize which photos are included in your slidesho. You can show all your photos or other Flickr users, base the selection on tags, and more (although unlike what Paul says, you CAN make the slideshow's dimensions smaller, it's just that the slideshow navigation get cropped - see our 300 x 300 example below).

You can also change the layout of the slideshow - in the code below, we include instructions to center the slideshow, but you could align it to the left or right as well. Finally, Flickr has a different embeddable slideshow with a different style - here's Flickr's how to.

Slideshow Code

Sample Slideshow

I've added some paragraph styling in my style sheet to make the text beneath the slideshow small.

If you can't see the photo slide show above, view the photo set on Flickr.