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Christmas Lights and Google Maps
Anonymous Coward writes "SantaStars.com uses the Google Maps API to show the locations of some great Christmas light displays. Everyone is encouraged to post a picture of their Christmas lights and you can vote for your favorites. Some of the houses are quite elaborate like this house in British Columbia that has 87,625 computer controlled lights synchronized to an FM radio station."
It's Christmas Eve and there's only 37 houses listed? It would have made more sense to post this three weeks ago in order to get the word out.
.wmv. Also a Snopes article with more details).
But not to scrooge anyone's Christmas fun, Here's a display put together by an electrical engineer in Ohio that's worth checking out (link goes to a
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Why is it that they have a giant freaking star that covers the house of the satellite view? I mean, I've seen lots of decorated houses. I know what a house with christmas lights looks like. I'm only looking at the site to find out what it looks like from space.
Not for epileptics.
[ ] Quit smoking
[ ] Help the poor
[ ] Feed the hungry
[x] Buy more christmas lights
I'm wondering if the influx from slashdot (the slashdot syndrome) will make the lights go out on all those crazy christmas displays. Seeing the page took about twenty seconds to respond when I opened it. And this this has only been up for like 15 min.
Well if it isn't the leader of the wiener patrol, boning up on his nerd lesson...
Holy cow! Even if the average power consumption of each light was only 1/2 watt, that's still about 44KW. This guys power meter must by zinging around like a table saw.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
This is just plain disgusting waste of energy. The more electricity you need, the more American soldiers are going to die for oil in Iraq.
From last year's stories, Foxnews and CHannelCicinatti.com (video clips included, but don't know if they still work). Taken from AQFL.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Somebody needs to get a life, not just go outside. :O
Where's Komar's set?
The real geeks of this sort of thing hang out at Planet Christmas
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What we need is a christmas lights display that's visible on the zoomed-out Google Maps (hybrid or satellite) simply by virtue of brightness.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
There's a higher resolution version which is part of a Miller's Lite beer commercial
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
One of the unfortunate side effects of a big Xmas light display in the neighbourhood is the extra traffic. All kinds of people slow down in front of my house to see the lights next door. This is disturbing enough given the number of car engines rolling up and idling then roaring off. They also use my driveway to turn their vehicles around. This is annoying because (a) the sound of a car/truck roaring into drive; (b) headlights blasting through my windows as I am sitting/sleeping there; (c) tires compressing snow into ice on my drive -- these people drive over fresh snow and even any snow berm at the end of the drive left when the grader goes by.
Please use some courtesy when you go to see lights!
And if you are someone who puts lights on, please use some courtesy as well. My house is blasted by the huge number of lights across the street and we get all that extra traffic and annoyance. Please show some common sense and do NOT advertise it widely and do NOT run the lights week after week at all hours.
The contact of the "Anonymous Coward" who submitted the story is workshop@santastars.com.
Hmm...
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Wow, that's rather unexpected... my house is actually on that map for the house in BC.
PS - This is what part of the alphabet would look like if the letters Q and R were removed. ~Mitch Hedberg (1968-2005)
Some of the houses are quite elaborate like this house in British Columbia that has 87,625 computer controlled lights synchronized to an FM radio station. ... and 20 neighbord that want his death. Synchronization of death to the radio station unnecessary, but preferred.
"87,625 computer controlled lights" Does it run NetBSD 3.0?
When fiction hits reality, dreams have no air-bag.
The very best displays are those that show up on NASA's GOES East 1km Visible Satellite Imagery.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Don't you mean Holiday Lights, you insensitive clod? In case you haven't noticed, there's a war on Christmas going on outside.
Could you imagine trying to find the dead bulb on that strand of lights when one goes out?
These huge displays are kind of useless if you ask me. You spend all this time setting them up, then a huge amount of time taking them down. All you do is piss off the neighbors and spend a huge amount of money on an astronomical electric bill.
Now, I can understand trying to make a huge display on some public/office building with a huge amount of lights using a bunch of volunteers just to have fun, or to raise money from charity. But not when it's "OK, lets see how many more lights we can buy than the smith family can."
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I think so many lights is just a complete waste of energy.
What happens when these cretinous Xmas lights overload the puny domestic electric wiring? The family fries in the ensuing fire. This year the deaths of one entire family in the UK has been attributed to an over-enthusiastic xmas light display which caused their house to burst into a conflagration. 5 died.
Of course, at least this thins out the gene pool.
I wonder if the fire showed up from space?
All I can think is, how do that family and their neighbors sleep? They have their own artificial freakin' sun in their yard.
Come on Bob, we're trying to sleep over here. Shut those damned lights off!
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
If enough houses were bright enough "pixels", seen from high enough, you really could make the world's largest electronic billboard. Remember, the eye doesn't see gaps as well as it sees light sources, so you don't need every house in an entire district to do this. From, say, an aircraft at 35,000 feet, three or four houses with 80,000+ lights over an area of ten square miles should be a sufficiently high density.
Now to work on getting enough uber-rich geeks for next Christmas who are strategically placed to spell out "Bah! Humbug!" and are close enough to a major air corridor to be seen...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I always knew those Richmond people where crazy. I wonder if I can see it from my house.
Also, can't forget this guy http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/xmas_webcam
Just invent "anti-lights" - christmas lights 180' out of phase with everyone else's christmas lights. The light will cancel out, and the homes will be saved. You'll make a fortune selling them, not to mention going on talk shows. Your only concern will be the rabid scientists with uzis coming after you for breaking the laws of physics. (You're not supposed to be able to set up interference patterns with essentially random non-coherent light sources.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cincinnati
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...your house is insured for more than it's really worth. The airline company would probably pay you to keep quiet, anyway.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
i'm terribly offended by the use of the word Chritmas Lights. As a frequent slashdot reader, I hope we take careful considerations of all people and call it Holiday Lights.
the actual website of the house in BC is: http://alightchristmas.com/. You'll find actual video clips there.
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