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2014 was the last year for Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights.

I for one, welcome Timothy has the next Griswold Overlord

2014 was the last year for Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights.

I for one, welcome Timothy has the next Griswold Overlord

For your grilling pleasure, here's an entry for the Biggest BBQ Grill
... complete with super-cool looking Griller! ;-)

Few people have the space for so many panels to run their house on them — even if the problem of storing it were solved. From MIT:

Imagine that your house uses 48 kWh of electricity per day (about average). If you live in Arizona, where the average solar insolation per year is around 6 kWh/meters squared/day, you’ll need 53 square meters (574 sq ft) of 15% efficient solar panels. If you spend the extra money for 21% efficient solar panels, then you’ll only need 38 square meters (409 sq ft) of solar panels. But if you try to power the same sized house in Vermont, where the average solar insolation per year is around 4 kWh/meters squared/day, you’ll need 80 square meters (861 sq ft) of 15% efficient solar panels and 57 square meters (615 sq ft) of the 21% efficient ones.

And 48kWh, which is cited above as "about average", means, no home-servers running 24x7 (about 200Watts*24h=4.8kWh — or 10% more than the estimate — per server), no super-duper Christmas lights, and other limitations...

No, electricity companies are better positioned to produce electricity. And, truth be told, they should be using these wonder-batteries to store electricity during the night so they wouldn't have to charge more during the day. If only we had them properly competing with each other...

There are people who can see UV. This can be a side effect of having certain parts of your eye removed during cataract surgery. So would not being able to see UV when some people can be considered a reduced sense or impairment? Most people would argue not. But it does make you think... What if non-deaf people got cochlear implants to hear better, or have more control over what they hear? If optic implants become common (or even wearables like Google Glass), would it be an impairment not to have them?

You could even go further, citing cell phones, warm clothing, SCUBA gear, and other technological advances as being "super powers," right? How far down does that rabbit hole go? When my friends pull out their smartphones to look something up on Wikipedia, I feel handicapped by my meager meatbrain. Yet I militantly choose to have a 2007 flip phone and deride people who insist on augmenting themselves like that. Call it meatbrain culture, I guess. Ironically, when I was given the opportunity to artificially improve my vision (glasses), I did it without hesitation.

I don't disagree that hearing is great (I'm a musician, so it's particularly special to me). But I don't think we should criticize parents who choose not to give their children superpowers or even normal powers. Bear in mind that cochlear implants are (or at least used to be) very invasive. A long time ago I used to volunteer at a deaf school, and it was obviously a struggle for the kids to get used to them. There was also risk of infection or other complications. I'm sure things have gotten better, but surgery is still surgery.

Since it is not in the summary, here's a direct link to the Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease.

And here's an overly long, but complete history of 'em: part1 and part2.

I'm curious what projects you've done around your own home that you think are especially interesting or clever, whether they're ones you'd recommend to a beginner in electronics or not ;) Do you have sensors everywhere? Have you kept a childhood train set alive? Do you have an impressive Christmas display ala the family Grizwold (or Alek's famous lights for charity -- http://www.komar.org/christmas/)?

They are claiming it will handle 54 Tbps of network traffic ... up from the Vancouver games four years ago that was only 4 Tbps. One interesting tidbit is the ratio of wired to wireless traffic was 4-to-1 back then ... they expect that ratio to be reversed this time ... with 2,000 802.11n access points!

That a bit more bandwidth than this Christmas website has ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

you can use the material from inside a floppy disk as a visible light filter

If you have a developed roll of film, the black frame at the ends of the roll is opaque to visible light but transparent to IR.

If you have an old blacklight bulb, the glass is Wood's Glass, which blocks visible light but is transparent to IR and UV.

Transmission characteristics of Wood's glass

Doesn't say anything about things being different for uploading, but if you are running an Internet facing video camera (or three as seen here) you will easily blow through that 5GByte/month bandwidth cap.

That's ridiculous. You guys in the US are going backwards as fast as you can. They totally gouge for Internet access in Australia and I still manage to get 500GB/month (granted this is actually usage based but the cost of this is reasonable)....and yes you can use that much without pirating.

Doesn't say anything about things being different for uploading, but if you are running an Internet facing video camera (or three as seen here) you will easily blow through that 5GByte/month bandwidth cap.

NCTA calls is "Fair Broadband Pricing" ... for the industry perhaps?!? ;-)

Humans with mutant photoreceptor protiens may well be able to meet the qualifications of the test,

No, UV is blocked before reaching the retina. What you need is someone who has had cataract surgery, and no replacement UV filter.

http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery-crystalens/ultra-violet-color-glow/

Not quite ESP - maybe super-sensory perception?

Humans can see UV light if their IOL is removed.

Speaking of the "lost web", we no longer see as many offbeat websites like this one ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

My eyes...ze goggles, zey do nothing!!!!

The Sydney Morning Herald article may have been sparked by Anil Dash's recent Blog Post - The Web We Lost ... which was discussed on /. last week.

Anil also wrote a followup titled "Rebuilding the Web We Lost" that may be worth reading.

Speaking of the "lost web", we no longer see as many offbeat websites like this one ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

There might be some additional benefits: Superhero vision http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery-crystalens/

I can vouch for that as an eyewitness. I was severely nearsighted all my life with 20/400 vision. Then I got older and was farsighted as well, then I got an eye infection and the treatment gave me a cataract. My vision is now 20/16 at distance and 20/12 at close up; way better than the normal 20/20. No glasses, no contacts, not even reading glasses... and I'm 60!

You would have been better linking CrystaLens itself rather than your surgeon's site.

Not everyone gets that good of results, however. The literature from CrystaLens itself says 98% of patients wind up with 20/25 or better. 20/25 isn't bad, but nowhere near super vision. I got lucky and had an excellent surgeon. My ex-wife wasn't so lucky, she had the surgery at a different place and now wears bifocals.

But the implant TFS is talking about is far from super vision; at 525 pixels you would still be legally blind, which is better than completely blind.

There might be some additional benefits: Superhero vision http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery-crystalens/

Here's a pretty Heavy BBQ for 'ya - size matters when it comes to grilling! ;-)

Tough viewing conditions in the Republic of Boulder, Colorado as lots of clouds - check out this image showing a lotta crud between me and the sun.

I was hoping to catch a time-lapse of the partially eclipsed sun setting over Longs Peak and it re-appeared literally at the last minute ... if I had been just a little bit farther South, I probably would have been totally skunked. Plus we weren't in totality, so never got the ring-o-fire. But still very cool to watch and here's my time-lapse video.

BTW, since I didn't have an ND filter, mine was total makeshift ... cut out one of the "eyepieces" from my Son's Eclipse Glasses and wedged that into the 2xTC teleconvertor! ;-)

Tough viewing conditions in the Republic of Boulder, Colorado as lots of clouds - check out this image showing a lotta crud between me and the sun.

I was hoping to catch a time-lapse of the partially eclipsed sun setting over Longs Peak and it re-appeared literally at the last minute ... if I had been just a little bit farther South, I probably would have been totally skunked. Plus we weren't in totality, so never got the ring-o-fire. But still very cool to watch and here's my time-lapse video.

BTW, since I didn't have an ND filter, mine was total makeshift ... cut out one of the "eyepieces" from my Son's Eclipse Glasses and wedged that into the 2xTC teleconvertor! ;-)

Nifty pinball place in Lyons Colorado - some pictures from a recent visit.

As the person who has Ultraviolet vision after Cataract Surgery, a reminder that many IOL's (Intra-Ocular-Lens) actually do filter UV light - this is also mentioned in TFA. I've read quite a bit of Mainster & Turner's work and while I'm a wanna-be-eye-doctor at best, believe they are "right" in that you should not filter UV with an IOL.

LOL on the "engineering masterpiece and marketing nightmare" - shame this type of stuff happens. I actually spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to find flashlights that don't bleed into the visible spectrum - it's really hard to find spectral power distribution ... plus if you have flaws in the glass/plastic covering (or "wrong" material), it will fluoresce into the visible.

So give me a holler if you have an extra one of those lights around - "Captain UV" would love to take it for a spin! ;-)

P.S. Your description of how other people would see it as black and I see it as violet is exactly correct - I tried to show that on the first picture of my webpage - note the poly carbonate glasses and UV filter, both of which dramatically change the look for me ... but not for others.

LOL on the "engineering masterpiece and marketing nightmare" - shame this type of stuff happens. I actually spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to find flashlights that don't bleed into the visible spectrum - it's really hard to find spectral power distribution ... plus if you have flaws in the glass/plastic covering (or "wrong" material), it will fluoresce into the visible.

So give me a holler if you have an extra one of those lights around - "Captain UV" would love to take it for a spin! ;-)

P.S. Your description of how other people would see it as black and I see it as violet is exactly correct - I tried to show that on the first picture of my webpage - note the poly carbonate glasses and UV filter, both of which dramatically change the look for me ... but not for others.

Actually that's a good question: since you see UV light, could you use a UV flashlight to walk around in what appears to be almost complete darkness but you see just fine with the UV flashlight? I suppose that would be cool, not sure how useful that would be but interesting anyway.

Answered my own question: half-way down this page he says he can see light from a 365nm UV flashlight that appears to have no light. So yes, he could light his entire house in 365nm UV light and "see" while everyone else would see pitch black.

That would be neat, but some things that would appear as black to other people actually appear as violet to him. I would find that annoying, I guess technically he's now color blind, "the inability or decreased ability to see color, or perceive color differences, under lighting conditions when color vision is not normally impaired", since now he perceives some black colors as violet.

Think I'll pass on this superpower.

Actually that's a good question: since you see UV light, could you use a UV flashlight to walk around in what appears to be almost complete darkness but you see just fine with the UV flashlight? I suppose that would be cool, not sure how useful that would be but interesting anyway.

Answered my own question: half-way down this page he says he can see light from a 365nm UV flashlight that appears to have no light. So yes, he could light his entire house in 365nm UV light and "see" while everyone else would see pitch black.

That would be neat, but some things that would appear as black to other people actually appear as violet to him. I would find that annoying, I guess technically he's now color blind, "the inability or decreased ability to see color, or perceive color differences, under lighting conditions when color vision is not normally impaired", since now he perceives some black colors as violet.

Think I'll pass on this superpower.

The website has a lengthy disertation that talks openly about the Xmas Light Hoax - "100% real from 2005 on".

Here's a time-lapse of the Moonset setting over the Colorado Rockies in early/2010

I may venture out at O-dark-30 to shoot it again this year to see if it truly looks any bigger.

Tech Crunch and All Things D. Sounds like the Yahoo folks aren't too happy about the word leaking out - "whoever it is, gone!

With Yahoo shutting down Del.icio.us, where will we bookmark things such as these delicious Christmas Lights ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

Alek O. Komarnitsky
(December 2007)

This is a first: an Ethics Hero who emerged from the shadow of an Unethical Website designation. Back in 2004, Alek O. Komarnitsky received national attention for a whimsical holiday website that allowed people all over the world to turn his Christmas lights on from their home computers. Everyone had fun, which was clearly Alek's design. Still, when it became known that his site was a hoax and that the lights going on were only an illusion, the Scoreboard weighed in with the opinion that perpetrating such a large-scale deception was wrong, no matter how well-intentioned. Alek objected, and has maintained a spirited defense of his stunt in e-mail exchanges with the Scoreboard. But you can't keep a Christmas spirit down. At a significant cost in time and money, Alek figured out a way to really let people all over the world turn on his lights, at http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/christmas_webcam---the very same site that the Scoreboard previously deplored. He has done this for a couple of years now, but has added a new feature in 2007. To quote Jolly Old Alec himself "There are three live webcams and X10 powerline control technology system so web surfers can not only view the action, but also *control* the 17,000 lights. Heck, you can even inflate/deflate the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer SimpsonWhile people around the world (157 countries last year) enjoy seeing the lights ON, environmentalists will be happy to know that they can turn the lights OFF with a click of the mouse. Better yet, this is the 4th year I'm using 100% Wind Energy and even though that is "clean" energy, I even did a Carbon Offset contribution for the 0.61 Tons of CO2 for the ~MegaWatt-Hour of power consumed; that's about the same as one cross-country airline trip. Finally, by providing viewing via webcam, you don't need to burn fossil fuels by driving around to see Christmas lights - Al Gore would be proud! But HEY, the $3/day in electrical costs are well worth the joy it brings to people (especially the kids) when they see the display in person and/or on the web. And new this year is a Hi-Def option, so gather your family around the large screen" The website, Alek reminds us, is free, and also exists to raise awareness of Celiac Disease,which afflicts his two sons as well as many others. He says his lights have raised nearly $20,000 for the cause. I've visited Alek's site, and it is fun, and you can turn the lights on and off, as well as inflate and deflate Homer. You win, Alek! The Scoreboard hereby pardons www.komar.org, and declares you a true Ethics Hero, and a damn persistent one, I must say. Thanks from all us kids, and a very Merry Christmas to you! You've certainly earned it.

Welllll ... the webcam is also used to broadcast Halloween Decorations and Christmas Lights.

Welllll ... the webcam is also used to broadcast Halloween Decorations and Christmas Lights.

If it's penguins you want on your screen:
Gentoo Penguins - King Penguins - Penguin being attacked by a Skua!

If it's penguins you want on your screen:
Gentoo Penguins - King Penguins - Penguin being attacked by a Skua!

If it's penguins you want on your screen:
Gentoo Penguins - King Penguins - Penguin being attacked by a Skua!

Very well organized and lots of fun - here's the presentation I did on Antarctica at Boulder Ignite a few months ago.

The WIRED piece threads what is written in the summary around the story of how Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at Bell Labs discovered Cosmic Radiation after being puzzled for a year about background noise on their radio telescopes ... even scraping pigeon poop off their gear as a possible source until they realized the signal was real - Homer Simpson would have said D'OH! ;-)

It's fun to read article in The Sun (ditto the National Enquirer). While there may be some validity in the findings (especially if you wear a tin foil hat), if you RTFM, it's a hilarious read complete with pictures of Patrick Duffy from the 1970's TV show "Man from Atlantis" along with an artists impression of the "lost metropolis" under water.

Speaking of nifty water shots, here's some cool pictures and time-lapse webcam images of the Antarctica Cruise Ship Ocean Nova which recently ran aground. Good news is everyone is safe, but they had to evacuate the passengers to another ship; guess they got quite an adventure! ;-)

Here's the actual info & specs from Red themselves - be sure to scroll down to the bottom where they have the "Oh ... by the way - 3D" teaser. Crazy stuff (makes my Canon 40D look pokey) - we'll see if they deliver.

Since so many people are checking online, I bet TV viewership goes down - be interesting to compare and see how strong an inverse relationship it ends up being.

I.e. in the old days, everyone would watch the TV anchors drone on so they could hear a snippet what each particular viewer was interested in. But using pull (instead of push) technology, you can zoom in on what you are interested in much more quickly and efficiently.

P.S. In the meantime, I'm support the HULK for President! ;-)

Watching and turning a bunch of halloween decorations on & off ... ;-)

Because when the Wine people screw up, you get blamed.

Haha, no.

Care to explain your position? Or would you rather just troll?

Being featured on Slashdot won't get you added sales, sorry.

This guy got almost 400,000 hits -- for some christmas lights. Keep in mind, that's actual hits, as in actual click-throughs from Slashdot.

According to this page, cost per click is between 5 cents and $1. At 400,000 clicks, that's between $20k and $400k in free advertising -- from a demographic already predisposed to gaming and technology in general.

And that's ignoring any additional sales.

Put another way, why do you think Blizzard is letting Slashdot interview them? Out of the goodness of their heart?

Quake Wars is irrelevant in the grand scheme of the industry.

However, Id tech is not. Nor, for that matter, is Epic.

Popularity isn't a measure of technical difficulty, I never said it was.

Yet you continue to ignore how technically difficult it isn't to port to Linux, particularly a game.

What was the point of mentioning popularity, anyway? It has nothing to do with the technical difficulty, as you've just admitted, and the feasibility of any port is based on percentages, not popularity.

Putting something on Linux will get you about 17 extra sales.

Pulling a number out of your ass will get you nowhere.

Let's try some real numbers from a tiny indie game. Turns out the number is actually 333 -- out of 3635.

The breakdown was:

73% Windows
20% OSX
7% Linux

The math is very simple: If it takes less than 7% of their time to develop and maintain a Linux port, Linux is a profit.

Given how much effort goes into Warcraft, particularly the content, it would take significantly less time to develop a Linux port than goes into, well, any aspect of the game today. And I forget, but what's 7% of 10 million customers?

The only remaining question is support -- and Linux users would tend to be more self-sufficient, on average, meaning the support costs would be proportionately lower.

It is NOT worth the effort by any convoluted, exaggerated, emotionally charged measure.

Let's be blunt -- you've given me a single number, which you pulled out of your ass. I've given you actual statistics. If we are playing facts versus subjectivity and emotion, I think I win by default -- you haven't contributed a single fact.

Hulk for President!

Vote here for the SMASHING Big Green Guy because you don't want to make him angry - you wouldn't like him when he is angry ... ;-)

Hulk for President!

Vote here for the SMASHING Big Green Guy because you don't want to make him angry - you wouldn't like him when he is angry ... ;-)

Assuming 8.5 hour trading day (0700-1530) and 250 trading days/year. Maybe a squirrel caused the problem ... ;-)

Here's the letter from NOAA to the Lunar X participants that outlines how this is pursuent to the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 - says it may take up to 120 days to obtain the license - think about that before you take your first picure! ;-)

In the meantime, you can use existing satellite photos to image your house and here's a cool way to get a nifty Earth view.

Interesting test - pretty amazing how FF3 basically flatlines at around 120 MBytes for over 2 hours of usage ... would have been interesting if the same methodology could be used with FF2 to see how much of an improvement FF3 is over that and how well the leaks were fixed.

From Ken Perlin, professor of computer science at New York University "... everyone's eyes will be implanted with tiny displays. All the information we need about the city will be accessible to us without conscious effort: where to go, what to buy ... how to hook up with friends."

And not surprisingly, Robin Nagle from the New York City Department of Sanitation predicts "Sanitation workers ... will be heroes"

On a lighter note for the holiday season, here are the Christmas Lights of the Future! ;-)

http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/christmas_webcam