Slashdot Mirror
Alek's Christmas Lights Webcam is Back
millert continues "You can Email Santa page and he does respond to Email inquiries. Alek is already thinking ahead for Christmas 2005 ...
The picture quality on his cool webcam pictures seems much better than a run-of-the-mill webcam; the image quality under low-light conditions is surprisingly good. In question D-5 of his FAQ, he says he has it under non-disclosure and all he can say is that it is a "640x480 pixel image using 1/2.7" sensor - size matters when it comes to pixels" and he is right about that -- this is one of the reasons the pictures of Mars from the Spirit Rover were so good. Even more interesting is the info in the jpegs' EXIF header (as displayed by ImageMagick's identify utility. There's quite a bit of information in there, including a reference to a company that provided IP-based video security for the 2004 Olympics and a comment saying 'do NOT release to marketing droids' Fortunately, this is Slashdot.
Slashdot crushed it in 2002 and 2003 -- will the 3rd time be the charm for Alek?"
Dead before it even got out of the mysterious future.
We'll see how well everything works tonight - expect things to be nuts and we'll see if mod_perl can save the day on the web server - fortunately, the analog stuff is throttled at one/second! ;-)
I actually turned things on early tonight, but
I may need to disable if the load gets too high. For those
interested in data, I'll be updating my Christmas 2004 Slashdot Effect Analysis and
I'll provide some followup here.
P.S. WRT JPEG/EXIF stuff: ummmmmm ... let me get back to you on that one!
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
till some creative troll figures out how to make goatse out of Christmas lights?
Monstar L
not for long...
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Is drivemeinsane.com still up and about? I always wanted to play on his remote controlled car, but it was never on. Boo, I say.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Merry christmas
hahah, he said he might stand a chance. no comments yet and its already dead. i hope his server isnt near the xmas tree cause its gonna catch on fire.
is blinking on and off..
Just kidding. Best of luck to the webserver!
- Too laggy
- Not the right time
- Server not responding
So this was actually the first time I've done it, and I think it is very cool. Thank you for this experienceFor what good it did him.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Looks like his system handled it well, it withstood the /. for at least 3 posts... Is it possible to /. the electrical grid?
PRINT "Signature line broken."
GOTO 1
Not only can we pan/zoom the webcam and control the 17,000 christmas lights - NO! We can also burn his house down by letting his web server die a horrible heat death.
Talk about an arsonist's dream.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
"Yikes. Incoming Slashdot'er. Full power to the web server!"
She cannae take anymore Jim!
Survive the slashdot effect? I think not...
I don't see the "Chevy Chase" button... :(
"and annoy my understanding) neighbors! "
Dude, you just put this link on Slashdot? Understanding undershmanding, you had better hope they have strobe-induced seizure insurance.
You would think with the number of times this guys sever has been /.ed he would upgrade alittle bit... Maybe not hosting it at home, springing for a better plan this time of year etc.
Nice website, and I like the pop-up, but I can see the possibility for people to /. this guy's entire Christmas light set-up. Either the constant turning it on/off will burn out more than quite a few bulbs (hope they aren't the kind where if one goes, they all go).
But yeah.. I'm sure what with all the slashdotters there that the neighbors are probably going to be seeing a nice strobelight-like effect. Scare the hell out of anyone who's driving by because of the chaotic patterns of the lights turning on and off. Whee.. slashdotting fun.
Ah, you found me!
an entire flock of Colorado geese are completely disoriented tonight. They have been waddling around bumping into garbage bins and parked cars without rhyme or reason.
This odd sighting is being reported only blocks away from the residence of the woman who was inadvertently hypnotized by her electricity meter earlier today.
*blinking cursor*
Well, 4 out of 15 tries actually got a responce from the web sever. Think it needs more juice.
Serenity|Chaos
For a geek-oriented site (his, not /.) that's not a very good showing, unless the other 87% is lynx.
A good friend of mine recently completed work on a 6 thousand light computer controlled light display.
His website has all the details on how it was built. Along with pictures.Custom built all the electronics, and wrote a number of custom programs to control the lights.
Best thing is? Being able to sit on the street with a laptop and terminal service into his light controlling computer and control the lights :D
Great fun for the neighbourhood.His real-time analysis was akin to monitoring a forest fire from the top of a tall tree.
At least now he knows what he wants for christmas... a new server.
webpage
All the Slashdotters down in Slashdotterville liked Christmas a lot, but the AC, who lived just north of Slashdotterville, did not. The AC hated Christmas -- the whole Christmas season. Oh, please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. Or maybe his head wasn't screwed on just right. But I think that the best reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
the webcam/webcontrol will be operational in 1 hour, 1 minute.
:)
He thought of everything
Has slashdot ever been slashdotted ?
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
Let's somehow gain control of the lights of his entire house and then coordinate it so we can turn them all off right as he's in the shower.
2004 slashdot effect analysis:
error 404: analysis not found
Five: You dont have any friends.
Six: You are lonely and bitter. Christmas hating Grinch!
Seven: You love your Mother
Eight: She loves you.
Nine: Profit from her paying you for sex?
Blade Melbourne
Here's the pic I'm referencing.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Could have been without that annoying javascript. "Yikes! Incoming slashdot'er." And the annoying marquee telling me what my IP was.
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
24 million dollars from Nigeria
On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
Two Rolex watches
On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
One penis enlargement
On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
Three better orgasms
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
18 Viagara pills
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
Two bottles of Cialis
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
25 weight loss pills
On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
A better home mortgage
On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
Two breast implants
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
28 million email addresses
On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
A new bank account password
On the twelveth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
A bundle of Discount Windows software
By heart I am thinking you mean server.
This is another way of starting a sig with this and ending it with that.
Phone messages for Alek:
"Please prepare your server for a slashdotting."
"You have 10 minutes to prepare your server for slashdotting"
"You have 5 minutes to prepare your server for slashdotting"
"You have 1 minute to prepare your server for slashdotting"
"Please extinguish your server".
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I tried going to mirrordot, but they didn't have his house mirrored.
Though I applaud the effort, I weep for the amount of energy that is used by people just to show off their house to their neighbours. This has nothing to do with a romantic christmas in my view. The amount of lights is going up here (the Netherlands) as well, probably due to the fact that we have too much money (or energy is too cheap). Some people still think its interesting to copy the USA for some reason...
Now, let's see if I can turn these lights off.
As in:
/dev/null & /dev/null &
#!/bin/bash
while [1]
do
lynx -dump (Whatever GET request to turn lights on) >
lynx -dump (Whatever GET request to turn lights off) >
done
Actually, ssh is quite responsive - it's just the darn MaxClients limit of 256 I'm bumping into - plus I restarted httpd twice. I think if folks would not open up every link in the article, it would help - every time I've check, Apache Status is showing all 256 requests - I just bumped the TIMEOUT numbers down a bit, so people may see timeouts sooner, but this should release some child process slots for folks.
HECK - this is looking good - lets turn it on!
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I wonder why he doesn't say what type of webcam it is. My only thought is that he's possibly afraid someone will find where it is hidden and steal it because its nice. Some form of security through obscurity I suppose.
ok.. so heads you lose tails I win. right?
When I go to that page, I get "connection refused." Yep, his analysis is right on the money.
You can even do this at home, if your site isn't cool enough, with the slashdot simulator.
What will he do if we turn all lights off? I call on slashdot to turn off all nights tonight! Can we do it?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
HEY - that's a little "unfair" don't you think - my comment was meant to say lets do a "fair" /.'ing ... get enough of your friend togather and keep doing "wget's" and you can crush anyone ...
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Truly a nerd's aspiration... Stuff that matters.
Merry Christmas!
And get us out of Iraq!
Your Hostname : xxxxxxxxxx.zen.co.uk
Get your own free personal location tracker
It's been a while since we did a good slashdotting, and I was starting to lose faith in our ability to exert domination over any thing with an electrical circuit.
We've slashdotted NASA, gameboys, and entire countries, but is this the first time we've slashdotted a house?!
The geeks strike again from their hidden rebel basements!
Whilst you're at it, why don't you "accidentaly" install reloadevery and set to reload every, say, 2 seconds...?
You know you've been IMing too long when you almost say 'lol' out loud to a non-geeky friend...
A guy I talked to arranged basically an digital EQ on his roof.
He took green, yellow and red lights and arranged them in 16 rows of 16 colums where the bottom 8 light blocks of each column were green, the last 8 were divided between 4 yellow and 4 red. The columns divided among the frequency range he was going for. He built a piece of hardware to control on and off and mated it with some software to take Winamp music and read the frequency and power data and adjusted the lights accordingly to make his roof lights change to show an EQ. He also put some speakers outdoors to play the music the EQ was showing to people that stopped by. I had some pictures but they are unfortunately gone, that was pretty hot too.
Ways Geeks Celebrate Christmas
11. Mountain Dew-nog
10. Printing out "One Year of Free Computer Service" certificates to give to the family.
9. Designing elf-killing levels for your favorite FPS.
8. Explaining to children how it would be physically impossible for Santa to deliver all the presents.
7. Wear mistletoe hat and keep fingers crossed.
6. Devise a computer-controlled system to detect and prevent household members from trying to peek into their presents before Christmas.
5. Put a santa hat on your avatar.
4. Change the blue neon lights in the case to flashing red and green.
3. Decorating the tree with SDRAM and CPUs burned out from your last overclocking experiment.
2. Rewriting Christmas carols in Tolkien's Elvish.
1. Programming the christmas lights to flash out "I hate this holiday of unbridled consumerism" in binary.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
His page explaining the Slashdot Effect appears to have been slashdotted. Oh, the irony.
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it." - G.B. Shaw
Whoops, forgot to hit post anonymously, so allow me to add:
Seriously now, have a heart. This is a single Xeon 2.4GHz with only (I think) a T1 line, so if he does actually manage to even half stand up to the whirlwind of slashdotters, then deep kudos to him...
You know you've been IMing too long when you almost say 'lol' out loud to a non-geeky friend...
National Lampoon's Christmas just came on little over an hour ago (7PM, CST, on Channel 11) Here in Minnesota. Watching it as we speak...stupid commercials...
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You think christmas lights are fun? Just wait till a 1000+ geeks all fight for control of the webcam.
I know just what to do!" The Grinch Laughed in his throat.
And he made a quick Slashdot link and a post.
And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a great Grinchy trick!
"With this link and this post, I'll Slashdot Saint Nick!"
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
But I did - Thank you for a fun moment.
A dual Opteron may not be in the budget, but do you (guy with the lighthouse) have any other computers sitting around the house?
Last time I looked at the openMosix web site, Apache couldn't benefit from openMosix (nor MySQL or some other apps) but this may have changed in the more recent past. Also, you are running not just Apache, but a backend process for the webcam. From my understanding of openMosix, any additional processes besides Apache should benefit from openMosix, taking some load of the Apache server.
Any thoughts of trying it out? Already tried it out? With the speed of new processors these days, even lowly Duron/Semprons or Intel equivalents should be able to handle some of that load. Adding two or three computers, regardless of age (according to openMosix even old 486s could do some minimal lifting), should help with the load.
They're off. Very off.
I'll pass, but I'm about to beat your brains out--that is, if you have any brains.
If you're reading this Alek, I just thought that you could make a little bit of money off your lights, enough to pay for better or more hosting bandwidth and have some fun at the same time: Each year, when you're about to set up your web-controllable lights, why don't you organise a light party at your house at the same time the story gets posted to slashdot and other sites, say over a weekend when people have time.
If you organised the lights so that some kinds of funky patterns could be made via the web, you could make some good money with music, drinks and a grill outside for people who turn up to watch the show.
someone should be sure to post this again in a couple days!
Keep up the good work :)
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I actually felt bad about clicking on that... no, I'm not so much against kicking someone when they're down... it's just that this is really on another level. They're not just down--they're long dead, buried, forgotten, even now rather badly decomposed. And I'm not just kicking them: it's more like I'm desecrating the grave.
That's one smart Alek.
Okay. Fine. But writing an LWP script to post in new lights settings at random intervals, *that's* over the line.
We did this in 1999 and 2000 here in Southeastern Virginia.
:-)
It was based on FreeBSD.
1999 details:
http://www.757.org/main/projects/xmas99/
Used Sealevel DIO cards for digital output
2000 details:
http://www.757.org/main/projects/xmas00/
Used breadboard ISA card for digital output
It was tricky because broadband wasn't availible widely. I was planning to do it this year, but so many other projects hit I didn't have time. People in the neighborhood were mentioning it around Halloween.
I was looking into trying to use a large amount of end lit fiber on DMX-512 control from QLight for Linux or a hardware controller.... Stuff isn't totally cheap enough to produce lit tips all thruout the grass and all over the roof
I recently found out archive.org has interface captures of http://christmas.757.org, which was the web site the lights were driven thru.
Enjoy! A dialogic employee (now Intel) has us all beat, with a very insane setup including lots of strobes, low power FM. He uses Solid state relays, not custom PCBs using TRIACs.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
- I was using the same web interface as everyone else (and reloading Slashdot.org to see when the story would hit) and it was fairly responsive after it showed up in the Mysterious Future
... until 1749 ... and then BAMMM ... welcome to /. ;-)
- Per the Christmas FAQ, the Web Server run Linux/Apache/Perl - IIS on Windoze 2003 - yea, right!
- Main stats page is here - yea, big JUMP
... and as of 2100, Firefox is > 50% browser percentage.
- I'd like to see AC#11069825 put HIS web server on Slashdot, especially with dynamic content. I had turned the webcam on early this evening at 1712, but then disabled it shortly after the story hit at 1749, but turned it back on 1930 and (except for a few Apache restarts for tuning purposes), the web site is semi (!) responsive and the machine was never rebooted
... plus (knock on wood), I haven't blown any fuses ... yet! ;-)
alekHulk SMASH Celiac Disease
D/L Opera (Recently updated.) With opera, you don't have to install anything superfluous, so it would appear more of an accident.
If 87% of slashdot readers are trying to use lynx to view a site with a webcam feed, we've got bigger problems.
Please help metamoderate.
...why don't you organise a light party at your house...
I'm not so sure about this, from what I can gather, right now at his place it's an epileptic's nightmare. It might be cool for a few minutes, but a few hours and the influence of alcohol and I can see it being annoying.
He says that it's too bandwidth-intensive to stream video... and I believe him. Here's another idea: once a Slashdotting starts, put up a video camera and film it. The next day, when the webcam is off, start a torrent and share it around...
So it looks like Alek knows how to run an apache webserver, and at 11:11pm central time the webcam is still running, and giving what appears to be alot of diagnostic info about the slashdot effect. What happens when this kind of traffic hits non-apache webservers? Is Apache the only webserver that can handle the slashdot effect? Is Apache the only webserver that can handle and be admin'd by a regular guy in his spare time?
Glad you noticed a difference. I am curious to know how well just this setting would allow other sites to survive a slashdoting
Morphing Software
Clicking through his google banner might help with the money too!
In Soviet Russia, Alek's Christmas Lights Webcam watches you!
:) Yay!
Really should try the Mistletoe Belt Buckle at the office Christmas party. Much more amusing than the hat.
The scrolling "Hello" seems to be out of control. That is not my IP. :p
First suggestion... look at using thttpd next year. it can handle a slashdotting much easier than apache can.
second suggestion, have the default picture from the webcam be 1/2 the size that you show already. give it the ability to show regular size with a radio button if you desire.
third suggestion, dump perl fo this. I love perl, but php is certianly better at the load, python would handle it even better with C being top of the heap in handling a slashdotting.
basically, look at the tar file sizes of each scripting language... the larger it is the better the chance it will implode under heavy loads. Slashdot has 5 servers in a load balanicing array with a T3 and good networking gear coming in, even though you are a rich guy you can not touch the connectivity or gear that slashdot has. (yes, rich guy's use words like gated community, drive a Saaab and own a 300K+ home. welcome to the club, tell your wife, have your kids start talking snotty and demanding a butler.)
finally, if you are having problems with the processor load (your connection should die way before the computer had problems) upgrade to a 2 processor box. an old P-III 800 dual processor box will kick the ever living crap out of a single processor P4-4.5ghz box or an AMD64 box. SMP rules here, listen to the server gurus not the gamer freaks.
(not directly controllable, but perhaps pulses or colors as a sort of traffic indicator...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
A little off-topic, and sorry to nag: you keep talking about "Distributed Denial of Service". However, the denial is not distributed, the attack is. So it's always a "DDoS attack".
Good luck on the project.
This would save him tons in energy costs, plus speed up the lights going off and on.
Camera ... check w/Legal before
Make : IndigoVision
Model : NightStalker - 8/17/2004 hardware
Orientation (start point): Upper Left
X Resolution : 72
Y Resolution : 72
Resolution Unit : Inch
Firmware Version : Beta 2.2.1
Date/Time Modified : 2004:12:05 20:49:49
Artist : Lab Rat
YCbCr Positioning : Centre
Copyright : Indigo Vision blah-blah
code freeze
Unknown Field 0x9217 : 2
Image
Exposure Time (sec) : 1/4
F-Number : 3.5
Exposure Program : Manual
ISO Speed : 400
EXIF Version : 0220
Date/Time Taken : 2004:12:05 20:49:49
Components Configuration : 1230
Subject Distance (metres): 30.0
Metering Mode : Other
Focal Length (mm) : 7.40
User Comment : Lab Use Only - do NOT release to marketing droids!
Subsec Time : 826
Subsec Time Original : 826
FlashPix Version : 0100
Colour Space : sRGB
Image Width : 640
Image Height : 480
Related Sound File : Disabled.zzz
Exposure Mode : Manual Exposure
Digital Zoom Ratio : 1.00
Focal Length (35mm equiv): 50
Gain Control : High Gain Up
Contrast : Normal
Saturation : Normal
Sharpness : Normal
GPS
Version : 2.2.0.0
Latitude Reference : North
Latitude : 40 01 07
Longitude Reference : East
Longitude : 075 07 37
Altitude Reference : Sea Level
Altitude : 1612.00
Time : 2:49:49
Satellite : 7
Measurement Mode : Three-dimensional
Image Direction Ref : True Direction
Image Direction : 180.00
Geodetic Survey Data : WGS-84 per Fred
Dest. Bearing Ref : True Direction
Destination Bearing : 180.00
Datestamp : 2004:12:06
Differential Correction : 0
...Add an an audio synthesizer + loudspeaker component so we play christmas tunes for your neighbors (actually so we can play the 5-tone sequence from close encounters over and over and over...).
"There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."
I'm sure you source all the jokes that you tell to your friends, don't you, pedant?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Komar admits to faking the whole thing.. to spread happiness.....9 9327110132,00.html
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB1104173
Or he could devise a hoax, hoodwink the local and national media, get tons of traffic to his site, and make a killing off of Google ads...
Oh wait, he already did.