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Blinkenlights Reloaded - The Matrix Returns
An anonymous reader writes "On the occasion of this year's Chaos Communication Congress some hackers of the German CCC have set up another Blinkenlights installation in Berlin (they use the glass facade of a house as a giant computer screen). It is on the same house as from September 2001 till February 2002 but with similar capabilities to the installation in Paris in September/October 2002. Heise has a story about this (German, here's the Google translation), but actually there's better information on the project website itself."
Just something to think about while it's slashdotted. At some point last year, I believe, the blinkenlights people added support into mplayer so that they can play back any video clips on the matrix. It should be interesting what they do this year.
The old Burroughs B-205 console is seen all over the place in various movies & TV
(the old 1960's Batman TV series...all the batcomputers are B205 consoles)
They are the ultimate in Blinkenlights.
Some crazy nerds at CMU did something like this a few years ago... played tetris on the side of a really big building.
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/media/Blinkenlights/
Damn cool.
So it'll look pretty similar, I imagine.
Meep meep
See here if you want blinkenlights for your desktop computer.
This reminds me of a hack I discussed with some friends in college, though we never got around to pulling it off: rigging the lights in the rooms of the Green Building at MIT to make a big Tetris screen. A Media Lab guy made a Java applet representation of it, but I don't know that it has actually been done on the building itself. A few years ago it was rigged up as a VU meter, though.
I was walking past Selfridges dept. store and noticed their Christmas Lights display. It looked like the worst kind of modern art: a series of identical objects stacked against the window, with lights flashing randomly over them.
But as I was going home by bus, I was far enough away (and the traffic jam gave me plenty of time to look) to notice the lights were using the objects as a billboard to scroll messages.
It was wonderfully impressive to witness, even on that small scale.
"And that solves the mystery of the missing ring" - Bender
Hummm what a good idea.
From what I understand, getting slashdotted is far worse than getting Farked.
On the top of all Fark comment pages, they tell how many times the link has been followed. It is usually only around 4-5,000 click throughs. I've heard Slashdot generates considerably more than that on most stories.
It really amazes me just how much longevity the CCC has displayed, despite having gotten mixed up in scrambles that would have totally taken apart anyone less hardy. From concerns that one of their members might have been bumped off, working for the KGB, breaking into NASA... and somehow still finding time to run the Blinkenlights and the congress every year.
I know I would have cashed my chips and left a group like that a long time ago. Hats off guys, how do you do it?
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
This guy has his Christmas Lights controllable via the web ... and you can view 'em via his Christmas Webcam.
... but claims he is more "ready" this year ... even so, I'm sure his neighbors would appreciate a front-seat view of the Slashdot Effect! ;-)
He actually got Slashdotted last year