Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Christmas Lights and Google Maps

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the on-a-lighter-note dept.

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."

5 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. A day late and a dollar short? by XorNand · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    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 .wmv. Also a Snopes article with more details).

    --
    Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
  2. Probably can be seen from space by craXORjack · · Score: 4, Interesting
    like this house in British Columbia that has 87,625 computer controlled lights synchronized to an FM radio station.

    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.
  3. xmas light geeks by Alien54 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    well, while there are plenty of houses out there, that guy in Ohio hit the Today show right after Thanksgiving (warning, IE required), and he had to turn things off because of the traffic going into his cul-de-sac created problems. That said, his work was the best coordinated of many shows out there. Compared to others on Google Video, his work is much better.

    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"
  4. Re:Disgusting by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's ok, Alberta still has 4.7 billion barrells of oil left to power our retarded Christmas lights.

    The U.S. uses 21.93 million barrels of oil per day, of which 13.21 million barrels is imported.

    4.7 billion barrels / (13.21 million barrels / day) = 355 days

    If we imported all our oil from Alberta we would run out 10 days before Christmas.

  5. Re:have mercy on neighbours by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There used to be one on our street like that (in NJ). Its opening was announced every year in the newspapers and in the churches, and people would come from miles away to parallel park in front of our driveways. We called it "The Monstrosity". This guy had an entire "winter wonderland" in his backyard with a lighted path that you would walk around in. Everything was there- primitive animatronics, blinking colored lights of all sorts, and hundreds of hand-painted plywood cutouts of elves and Snow White and the seven dwarves and Bambi and various other Disney characters (recycled from school plays at the local Catholic schoool I think). There was a life size talking Santa at the beginning of the lighted path telling people to enjoy themselves and stay on the path as they went through, and at the end of the path there was a GIFT SHOP in his basement to defray his electric bill I guess since they weren't charging admission.

    I don't live in that neighborhood anymore but my parents say it stopped in recent years since the guy was starting to get too old for it. (Either that, or Disney's lawyers got wind of his plywood cutouts.) You could walk by and see them starting to erect all this crap in September, and after Christmas they were in their back yard taking it all down until well into March! It was a half-year operation every year. Something about Christmas makes people lose their minds.