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.

Comments

Stop spending.

[nuxx]

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

Correction (PCP guy, volts and amps)

[ciurana]

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

Christmas isn't about presents

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Two points:

[Galvatron]

1) I like giving presents.

2) I like getting presents.

So fuck off.