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?"
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
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
- 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 experienceNice 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!
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.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
Those aspects of other cultures that became a part of American culture were brought here by immigrants from long ago. . .
Well, if you consider the introduction of the Christmas tree in the early 20th century long ago, I guess.
I guess we're considered exotic or something. Fancy that.
An expert is an ordinary man away from home. Brought a college girl over from Prague once, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
All she kept saying driving away from JFK was "Oooooooo, it's so pretty."
You understand that we're talking about Queens here.
For better or worse, we as a nation, are really just not interested in what other societies have to offer, from a pop-culture standpoint.
I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so.
In the 60's it was Carnaby street mod. Yeah, baby!
In the 90's it was Aussie chic and puttin' another shrimp on the barbie, mate.
America has always looked outside for cultural fads, we just like to pretend we don't, because it shakes the great myth of America as the great independent. We Americanize things, then pretend they were really all ours in the first place. In a way very much like Japan.
KFG
Maybe for 2005 you can upgrade to Apache 2.0, where the hard limit is 20000. It is pretty snappy at the moment, interestingly enough, for a site that has thousands of /.ers looking at it. Most people's server-in-the-basement -on-DSL wouldn't stand a chance.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
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.