Alek's Christmas Lights: Humbug

g00set writes "Alek's Christmas lights story was previously covered on Slashdot here, however the Denver Channel is now reporting that it was all a hoax: 'The Lafayette man said he accomplished the trickery by taking 12 "base" photographs of the house with lights on and off and then constructed a Web page that appeared to show lights going on and off when the Web visitor clicked.'"

Comments

No fooling

[eigerface]

I discovered the same thing at 12 noon Denver time when a night time shot of the house was listed as "live".

Alek Comments

[xmas2003]

Hey /.'ers ... it was all fun ... I'm SLAMMED ... will say more later ... but be SURE to read MY story of the events and also what Wall Street Journal guy wrote ... and then if you want, go to that Channel-7 site and cast your vote if I was naughty or nice!

Would you like a tissue?

[CarnivoreMan]

did you read the FAQ?

" How do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories? We don't. You do. :) If something seems outrageous, we might look for some corroboration, but as a rule, we regard this as the responsibility of the submitter and the audience. This is why it's important to read comments. You might find something that refutes, or supports, the story in the main."

Re:LOL

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Well, he lives about a mile from me, so I did consider driving by to play with it "live" before Christmas. Turns out, his house is in a gated community.

new perspective on my attempted visit

[morcheeba]

I tried to visit his house when he had the haloween lights up, but found it was in a gated community that was closed to visitors after 7pm. His house is a bit out of my way & I was a bit annoyed that this heavily-promoted house wasn't on public display, so I never returned. I wanted to see how often people where flipping the lights -- the webcam didn't refresh often enough to show that.

His response to my post was interesting.. it seemed legit and appropriately paranoid about strangers knocking on his door (which I would never do!!).

His explanation...

[josh3736]

Who actually read his explanation? (Yes, I know this is Slashdot, but you can try to RTFA)

It seems like for all the trouble he went through to set up this hoax, it would actually have been easier to hook up the X10 to his computer and plop a real webcam outside.

What it took for the hoax:

• Taking 12 pictures for the various "on/off" states
• Taking those 12 pictures in varying amounts of snowcover
• Dynamically inserting airplanes overhead
• Dynamically changing the position of the garage door by superimposing the garage on one of the 12 pics.
• Dynamically adding stars in the sky that move over the course of the night
• Occasionally Adding "cars" driving by
• When the local news crew took him up in the helicopter, his wife stayed at home flipping the lights on and off.
• Putting a real (but disconnected) webcam in the neighbor's tree so snoopers would see the webcam.

For all that trouble, he might as well have just done it up real.

I guess at least now we know who is really responsible for the moon landing video.

Re:I bet the AdWords wasn't a hoax

[xmas2003]

BOY - you'd wonder if anyone reads the FAQ - good for you. First, Google Adsense hasn't been around for 3 years ... and I just added this to my hoax explanation

Several media folks are slamming me for running Google Adsense and saying I cleaned up on it. That is simply not true ... but unfortunately, I can not comment on this due to Google's Program Policies ... but let me just say that the Google Adsense Revenue for the month will just about pay for my wife's 40th birthday party and I would have made a LOT more if I had taken that Radio Station's $10,000 offer. I invite the media to contact Google for the actual numbers and they have my permission to release 'em.