X10 Hallowe'en Display

Spic writes "I'm sure alot of us remember the Christmas light display using X10 that was up for last Christmas, well, the same guy has a Hallowe'en display up. Pretty neat idea. You can even vote for your favorite politcal candidate: Bush, Kerry, or The Incredible Hulk. Looks like he also anticpated our arrival."

Comments

Re:awww

[zors]

Actually, his "Incoming Slashdotter" Java Pop up indicates he's fairly well prepared.

RTFA

Re:What's X10?

[hookedup]

http://www.x10.com

Re:What's X10?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Use the halloween webcam to view live images of a buncha halloween lights and also CONTROL them - i.e. YOU can turn them ON and OFF via your web browser! The halloween webcam has PAN and ZOOM capability that you can also control. The webcam and webcontrol demo are ONLY operational between 2000 and 2400 Mountain Time. Each web surfer can only update the webcam 10 times, change the lights 3 times, and play with the pan/zoom 5 times, withen 5 minutes - this limits the load on my server/Internet connection and I'm concerned about the halloween webcam being (ab)used too much and the blinking lights bothering the neighbors! ;-)"

From right above the portion you read.

RTFA

Christmas linky

[jangobongo]

Google cache page to save the website from being /.ed:

Christmas lights

*sigh* Mirrordot...

[Sarcastic Assassin]

Here's a MirrorDot. As for the Christmas thing, it seems to be a yearly tradition.

Slashdotted - Mirrors Here

[Kinetic]

MirrorDot has the page with the pictures.

Re:What's X10?

[sdo1]

NO! X10 is a communication protocol. X10.com is a company that sells (mostly) X10-based equipment. You know, X10.com is a company that had lots of lots of pop-up and pop-under ads touting the wonders of secretly recording video of women. I hate it that they effectively hijacked the technology and have seemingly convinced the public, through their scummy advertising tactics, that X10 the protocol equals X10.com the company.

-S

Re:OH CRAP!!!!

[xmas2003]

Load factor is currently 5+, but the web server is actually a bit more responsive now that I have pulled the images from the webcam and halloween page. I pushed the start time back to between 2100-2200 ... gotta let things cool down a bit ... so take a break on it guys - will be up for another 2 weeks so I promise everyone will get a chance to vote! ;-)

P.S. Some bizzarre perl/apache errors popping up occasionally in the errors_logs - YIKES!

PPS. Good points moosesocks - I'd mod you up if I had any points.

Re:Wikipedia answers all but the question asked

[aaza]

Halloween derives from Hallowe'en.
Hallowe'en derives from Hallow's E'en.
Hallow's E'en derives from Hallow's Even.
Hallow's Even derives from Hallow's Eve.
Hallow's Eve is the day before All Hallow's Day (or All Saint's Day) - the day that celebrates the saints that have no day of their own (eg, Saint Patrick, Saint George, Saint Valentine).

Useless fact #37 for the day. Enjoy.

OT- Modding, Karma, and funny

[mekkab]

Funny no longer earns you any karma;

so the new thing is to mod up things that are really funny with something other than funny; underrated is typically the best option (it maintains the previous "funny" tag but ups the score and ups the karma) but not everyone got the memo.

That being said, it'd be pretty fresh if my halloween display next year could indeed run Xwindows... or at least Xbiff and Xeyes.

Re:OH CRAP!!!!

[Myen]

Depending on his setup, .arpa could mean within the network. (IIRC, stuff like 192.168.* gets resolved as *.in-addr.arpa)

The OS/2 stuff is still cool though :)

don't try to visit ... it's a gated community

[morcheeba]

Ok, first I considered the facts...

- the guy has a big public display of lights at his house, twice a year
- he encourages zillions of people see his house & publishes it on the web
- he publishes detailed pictures, the address, and lan/lon coordinates of his house.

You would think he'd want people to come see his house, right?
I saw he lived pretty close to where I was so I decided to visit - I thought it would be neat to post a video of what the house looked like as people voted.

so I drive there only to find, IT'S A GATED COMMUNITY!!

I got to the head of Blue Heron, and there's a gate that closes at 7 pm. I could call and ask to be let in, but it was 9:15pm on a Sunday night and I know this guy has two little kids, so I don't bother calling - it would be rude. As a faithful slashdotter, I would have tried the "911" entry code, but I saw there was a special key for emergency personnel, so I didn't try (plus, they put they keypad in a hard-to-reach place)

<RANT>What is it with gated communities?! I don't see how crime is much of a problem in this place because it's pretty much alone in the countryside. It's not like there is a crackhouse next door. And, since most burglaries occur before 7pm, the gate won't help much. And, if you want to commit some crime at night, just get there before 7pm, wait, and then make your getaway whenever you want -- the gates will always let you out.</RANT>

I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I think he should reconsider where he lives, or push the homeowner's association to remove the gate.

So, anyway, don't try to go there. You're not welcome... unless you come before 7pm, and then sit on their lawn until dark.

Re:don't try to visit ... it's a gated community

[xmas2003]

morcheeba: I mentioned your post casually to my wife and ... it was ... not good ... that's why I shut things down at 2300 tonight. I really DO appreciate you NOT knocking on my door late at night (yes, we do have two little kids) - I assure you (and others) that will almost guarantee shutting down the whole operation for good ... and HEY, we got 2 more weeks before the election! ;-)

There's a bit of controvery over my lights since in 2002, the Boulder Camera wrote about them and a lot of people drove by (the gates are opened for about two weeks then) and the homeowner's association was not too happy about that. You are welcome to Send HULK an Email (from the webcam page) if you want more info.

And on the "gate issue", while I'm a technical guy, I don't do layer 8 of the networking stack - i.e. except for "Vote for Hulk", I stay outa politics.

P.S. BTW, "Beware of Dog" (really!) - see D-6 in the webcam FAQ

Re:What's X10?

[sstidman]

No, actually, it's not. Pico Electronics Ltd created the protocol at the request of British Sound Reproduction. See here for a history of the X10 protocol (you may have to scroll down a bit).