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Christmas is Coming
Couple of Christmas bits to get ya in the spirit: We have a link to
Planet Christmas as well as the tech details and even
some danger. This thing
features 96,790 miniature Christmas lights, 7.2 miles of wire to connect everything, 110 strobe lights, the 8' inflatable snowmen, handled by 425 computer controlled circuits. A slightly
less ambitious project was submitted by apago. This project lets winamp
control christmas lights, complete with schematics for the serial interface
and source code for the plugin.
Actually, it really helps me when people put these things up. I use them as navpoints.
Dancin Santa
Does that mean all the lights turn blue during crashes?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
All this talk of finding new ways of being flashy and new during the holidays and so little talk of the important birthday celebrated on December 25. Really, would it kill you to pay some respect to the very important individual whose birth is celebrated yearly on that one day of the year?
I mean honestly, you all give each other gifts but I, the birthday boy, don't get so much as a card from you!
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
A cheery suicide story for Xmess - Thanx slashdot! .. I'll be hanging out at the mall jabbing sharp products in my eyes if anyone wants to get ahold of me..
air and light and time and space
Imagine a Rudolph cluster of those!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Don't forget:
/etc/passwd > list
:-)
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus town
cat
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist
santa claus town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
Merry Xmas, everyone!
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
Because DEC 25 = OCT 31.
(ducks)
"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepeneur'." -George W. Bush
so, is it bright enough to be seen from the international space station? That's one cool project, but I wonder that the MTBF on the lights are? He must have his kids continuously running around replacing bulbs!
Remember Lexington Green!
Boy, there are a lot of Clark W. Griswalds out there!
Has anyone though about this:OVERKILL? We have some people in our neighborhood who I think can be aressted for disturbing the peace. But these people... they take the (fruit)cake! The computer-controlled lights are kind of cool, though.
Everything is mainstream now.
This sounds neat but I only use Windows 2000 at work-- I use Mac OS X and Linux at home. I wonder if there are similar things for iTunes? Or could this be modified to work with iTunes or XAmp?
Of the dyslexic child on Christmas, waiting for Satan to come down the chimney...
Got Evil?
Is that part of the GameSpy network?
In all honesty this is a bit of overkill ... and I would like to quote this site from http://words.mg2.org/
(It's since been over posted ... but I'll quote what I remember)
TRAGIC EPIDEMIC STRIKES NATION!:
It has come to our attention that there is a huge epedimic crossing the entire nation that strikes right after Thanksgiving and can last till almost Labor Day in some cases.
No know cure for this disease has been found yet, but researchers are working hard everyday to try and find a cure.
The name of this epidemic is "Turning your house into a mini godamned Las Vegas", and can be found everywhere.
I dunno ... I thought it was funny, but I also just got done stringing 4,000 bulbs for my family ... erm ... better go to the doctor I guess.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I ended up making a 0.3 mile paper-chain. It went sub-critical and fell off the wall.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
PlanetChristmas
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
/. doesn't like > signs.. ;)
/etc/passwd >list
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole >town
cat
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus <north pole >town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My floor in the dorm, Thomas Jefferson 4 North at the University of Missouri-Rolla, has done this for years. 16 control boxes controlling a total of 96 strands of lights individually. They are also controlled by the serial port of an old 486 running slackware. This year we even played pong. We'll have pictures and a video up soon hopefully at this page. Okay, so the video won't be that high quality, but the lights kick ass.
Even though this is the US, likely the most overtly Christian nation in the world, December 25th (Christmas) is no longer about celebrating the birth of Christ (which didn't even happen on December 25th). Christmas is now about buying kids (people in general) things that they want, spending money because you feel obligated, and generally being a good little consumer. Even though it is a very hard (nearly impossible) thing to do, everyone should think about not buying gifts for people next year. Instead, make something or do something nice for them. (I'm rebuilding my mom's PC for her for Christmas, parts excluded.) It'll save everyone money, stop the agony over what to buy, give you more free time, and allow you to generally make each other happier.
Stop spending, start sharing. Christmas shouldn't be about gifts and money, it should be about family and helping each other and being nice to each other.
-Steve
Jesu, some one wants some attention. look at me look at my lights look how bright they are love me hug me want me. "hello i am dying over here; yeah i am the guy that's being crucified for your sins over here, what! ok i don't care go pray to that golden 30 feet statue of santa(satan)"
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
But you can turn my Xmas lights on/off via the internet. Check out the interactive webcams at http://206.54.177.105
:)
The Xmas lights are in the living room. Now I've got motivation to do something more impressive for next year.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Don't forgot about Hannakah, too :)
Fuck Ajit Pai
That, and I wonder what happens to TV reception in the area once they plug that sucker in? I only have 2 strands on my tree and the cable guy told me today that that's what's been screwing up the picture.
Is your company running tools written by ma
D00d, j00 r0ck!
I built an (analog) gadget like this in college, but this kicks vastly more ass.
When I saw the story I originally thought of stringing a room full of ultrabright LEDs or doing some case mods (hmm, all the holes in my case glow and pulsate in time to the beat, changing colors as lights mix), but as soon as I saw "triac", I immediately thought "xenon flash lamp", a.k.a. strobe light.
You've just given the hardware-geek contingent of Slashdot something to build over the holidays, and that's the kind of Christmas present that we've always wanted, and that our relatives never get for us ;-)
Damn, that was quick! :)
Those pictures on the Danger page are very entertaining. I wish there was a video. Oooo that would be great!
From the "danger" article:
At that instant 16,600 volts shot through his body.
There is no way for 16,600 volts of electricity to shooth through anything, even copper wire. We are talking about amps at this point, i.e. the flow of electricity (coulombs/second) depending on the guy's resistance when he touched the other wire. Volts are a measure of "potential energy" not of current, which is what shot through this guy's body.
I wonder if PCP made him more conductive than the average person. After all, you can really say this guy was pretty wired...
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
And don't forget to listen to Christmas music at my website nopants.org
Top 10 things I wanted for Christmas ... but didn't get :(
;)
/dev/null that gives - and not takes
1. triple caffeinated penguin mints
2. semis@slashdot.org
3. A Hemos action figurine
4. "Fear the Penguin" T-Shirt signed by bill.
5. one of them things from fufme.com
6. a new hotmail exploit on Bugtraq
7. my shell to say "Merry Christmas - jackass" when I logged in
8. "slashdot me, baby" boxers.
9. a
10. A Picachu voodoo doll
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
This is a great monument to geek inginuity! However, it would be even better if it could be controlled through Linux! Anyone got a patch or directions to switch over from windows winamp? Thanks!
You know, I used to think this way too, and then something occurred to me. I figure there's at least three (* somebody pointed out to me years ago that there's a fourth) stages of looking at Christmas (or gift giving in general): Greed. Give me everything. Anti-greed. "No, no, nothing for me...I just want to get everybody else things." Other-awareness. Realizing that when you tell your mom not to buy you anything, that makes her *unhappy*, and that if you really want to concentrate on other people's happiness it won't kill you to make a Christmas list. Anybody that tells me that having a christmas list means not thinking about other people's happiness, i point them to state 3. If it's evil to receive, then there's no point in giving.
P.S. The fourth state is "Now go do something nice for a total stranger, like volunteer at a soup kitchen, instead of thinking that your friends and family are the only ones that merit your help this year." Not a lot of people get to this one, unfortunately.
I wonder if all those lights blinking in sequence causes elliptic seizures in passers by? Possible Lawsuit anyone.
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
I have a get-rich-quick scheme. First, I make a crappy PC game. Second, I title it "Christmas." Lastly, I sign a deal with those "PlanetFreakingEverything" people and have them sue this site for stealing my domain name.
------
Today's Top Deals
'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the LAN
Not a gamer was playing, 'cept the dude with the van.
The cables were hung by the server with care, In the hopes that by morning the hubs would be there.
Want more? =) Check it out at 3D Action Planet!
--- Read my mind.
If you were a soviet citizen, you'd be enthusiastically crying for the deporation to labor camps of the stupid people who bought *icing* on their *cakes* when they could be using their resources to build more powerful hydroelectric plants, or better tractors. Just think of all the stupid people in california who waste energy using electricity to play silly 3D games, or watch stupid sitcoms on TV (non-productive use of electricity), or huge movie theaters showing silly moving images that don't produce anything.
:)
Yeah, have sympathy for a company that can afford to shell out a few million dollars to the local congressmen (of course, they are not expecting anything in return), and can afford to hire PR reps who whine about turning off the lights so their employees can make chips in the dark.
Guys like you need your heads rattled to see if they make a hollow sound. Sheesh. Check your temperature and see if you're alive.
I bet you probably snitch on your co-workers if they are playing games or reading email jokes, just to boost that 0.0000013 % improvement in the economy.
Andy Grove himself would send you a personal generic christmas greeting card.
I bet you're a bundle of fun at Christmas.
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
"The lights come on every night at 5:12pm."
And the City go black 5 min later...
"Tui Nati vulnerati."
Go here to see what a real light display can look like. I visited this one year a while back. Rumor had it that his neighbors put complained enough about him putting up 1 million lights on his property that he bought the houses on each side of him and put 1 million lights on each of those properties. After the supreme court wouldn't hear his case, he was forced to shut down his display. Disney ended up getting in contact with him and now he does the Specticle of Lights down at MGM Studios (I think).
Now we know whose been clicking on all those X10 pop-ups....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Quick, get the videos before the site goes down. It's probably too late already.
"A slightly less ambition project."
I guess thats one way to do it.. but when I was a child I made my christmas lights blink in time to my stereo by just cutting the wires and then plugging it in to my second speaker channels on my stereo.
It worked and the overall brightness matched how loud I was playing the music.. heh.. hrm.. wonder if I was hurting anything...
Sigs are awesome huh?
Here's Google's cache of planetchristmas.com
How generous of you to rebuild your mom's computer , parts excluded.
She must be very proud.
Yes, it's very PC, but Christmas is purely a tradition for me. This is the melting pot, folks! Enjoy the diversity!
So Happy Hannukah, Merry Kwaanza, Happy Yule (for the Wiccans), have a rejoiceful Ramadan. And Happy (insert tradition here) to the Hindus, Buddhists, shamans, Incans, Native peoples, Taoists, at whatever time of year your celebrate your, uh, thingy. And a big shout out to all the pagan brothers and sisters practicing their "fertility rites" during the break from work. You know who you are.
-Dean
I seem to recall seeing other pictures from this event at some point in the past, but they're turning up really hard to find.
Turns out the guy that did this ended up surviving.. crazy stuff. Wish there was more info on it cuz these sorts of things always facinate me. ;)
the 8' inflatable snowmen
That must be for the real lonely people at christmas i presume?
Today is one of the most astronomically, planetary, and mythologically important days of the year, and yet I have heard no one mention the fact that today is the Winter Solstace... the Shortest day of the year in the Norther Hemisphere and the Longest in the Southern.
The Winter Solstace was one of the most important days of the year for the Celts, Germans, Normans, and other European pagans. As a matter of fact, there is significant evidence that Christmas Day was placed where it is now in the calendar in order to supplant the pagan solstace festivals.
So, in honor of the Solstace, I'd like to propose a few changes!
Let's hang sausages from the trees this year instead of garland or glass balls, in remembrance of the ancient warriors who strung the entrails of animals and their enemies (if they were good in battle) all around the ice-covered forest.
Let's build some ripping big bonfires in order to warm the body and get the blood to boiling.
Let's see some virgins 'sacrificed' (nudge nudge, wink wink, if you know what I mean) live on the internet!
Let's also bring out all the old Solstace carols that time has forgot, like these old favorites:
-"Oh, Come all ye Pagans!"
-"Deck the halls with well-tanned Goatskins!"
-"It's beginning to look a lot like Samhain" (A little out of season, but still in the spirit)
And
"Let's all Dance Naked 'Round the Old Bonfire"
Any excuse for a party, right?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Looks like he stripped the site off all the content.. got slashdotted a little to hard..
Every dollar wasted on tacky light displays and the electricity to power them is a dollar stolen from a needy charity.
Just drive the 15 kv transformer with an open collector circuit and generate the frequency with software, unless one kick will do it (it might). Put a diode between the emitter and ground if you need some bias.
Do you guys ever wonder how long the site you just linked will last? I always find it amusing how a site goes down five minutes after it gets Slashdotted.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas Planet Christmas from the loving readers of /.! LOL!
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
And here's link more likely to survive the slashdot effect.
that disney bit is an urban legend
----(o)----
Speaking of the Station check out this story from CNN SCI-TECH. Apparently the astronauts will be teaming up with NASA and NORAD to track Santa's progress on Christmas and display it on their web site.
2) I like getting presents.
So fuck off.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
as Danger is 404.
sulli
RTFJ.
Wrong. The Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights is at Disney-MGM Studios now-- they've even set up a 'neighborhood' all decked in lights. a link to the Disney page about it.
The best type of ninjas are....TROLL ninjas!
A slightly less ambition project was submitted by apago
s/ambition/ambitious
Maybe someone should get CoyboyNeal a grammar checker for christmas.
On a note related to the article: Got these cool lights at Target for like $5, have 8 different modes and it's a huge strand of them. Check them out for cool lights.
--Yahiko
Everything I say is a lie.
Except that. And that. And that. And that.
Nice to see PlanetChristmas gets the wonderful gift of a /.ing this year.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
It's been slashdotted!
I wonder why this Commander "Taco" (if that really is his name) is posting a story about 8' inflatable snowmen.
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
Santa ought to bring these guys a new server and more pipe; 16:02 PST and it's still /.ed!
You've slashdotted Christmas.
HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
Internet Information Services
I've tried several times throughout the day to access the site, and it's STILL /.'ed as of 18:56 PST.
The future isn't what it used to be.
Only kick I get out of xmass is making the kids behave by saying "Now Behave Otherwise Santa Will Eat One Of His Reindeer." Well it works till the 25th
Other than Troll Tuesday, it's my favorite web-based holiday theme.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
well i do it every year, and most everyone has probably seen it, but this is a scientific article (dont worry, it's hilarious-- from the online "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy) into the existence of a santa claus./ 02R/02R055.html
--
http://www.hawo.stw.uni-erlangen.de/~asheiduk/pgg
Just an FYI, BOFH/BFH stands for Bastard Operator from Hell and PFY stands for Pimply Faced Youth.
The last line is priceless "'Merry Christmas to all and the drinks are on us!!'"
I really hate Dan Patrick.
geez cmdrtaco read over your poast and tell me that there isn't anything wrong with it.
when come back bring pie
The sound of Xmas is magical for all to hear-
"dada da da daa da dada daaaa!"
(That was the result of my mp3 -> ascii conversion on the Final Fantasy "battle won" music..)
Hey, everyone knows you can't get more festive than a phat chocobo...
Here in the uk I just hope my import copy comes on time!
My brother and I always get the latest FF game on import and play it together- it helps us like, bond and stuff.
graspee
Thats a nice quote from his nephew on the
front page!
Cheese city!
"The computer program was originally written in Microsoft's QBASIC and ran on DOS 6.22."
That whole project is nuts, crazy, way too much. What a great hack, I wish I had made it.
What does your wife do to help? Marla offers advice after everything is up and going. "Chuck, that tree over there needs some more lights."
Now there's a sentence I'd would not expect to hear. I'd say "There is way to many lights", "I have no idea", "This is ruining the design of our house" or maybe just some head shaking would be a more likely response.
But I guess it would never have gotten so huge whithout Marla's approval.
merry christmas with porn-get for the whole family
Windoze not found: (C)heer, (P)arty or (D)ance