Extreme Christmas Lights In Orlando

tripmine writes "The Orlando Sentinel has a story about a geek who can't get enough Christmas light. 'This Christmas, tech-savvy people such as Hansen are increasingly building the biggest, most elaborate holiday lights in neighborhoods across Central Florida and throughout the country. They typically work in fields such as computer programming, Web development, engineering or audio and visual services and are armed with a technical knowledge that the average person lacks. They trade tips and stories on message boards and set up Web sites with step-by-step descriptions of how they installed their lights as well as pictures and videos of the finished product.'" Many cities have neighborhoods where the spectacle takes up blocks at a time, not just individual houses, too, as anyone who's strolled down Austin's 37th Street can attest. Links invited (in comments) to the best / worst light-spectacles you know of.

Comments

Good Thing It's Not in Boston

[imaginaryelf]

Or the police would've locked down the city already.

Re:Good Thing It's Not in Boston

[Anonymous Coward]

Lady: Hey, what are you doing!
Officer: We believe this may be an improvised explosive device so it's being removed using a controlled explosion.
Lady: BUT THAT'S MY HOUSE!!!
Officer: Ok you heard her boys, book her, she admitted to being the terrorist.

Re:Good Thing It's Not in Boston

[QRDeNameland]

Popele were just acting rashionally when they saw a st4range device on important imfrasturcture.

Yeah, I have a hard time keeping away from the eggnog, too.

Re:Good Thing It's Not in Boston

[19thNervousBreakdown]

rashionally

I doubt this was on purpose, but it is an outstanding word. I propose that it means, "perfectly rational, if you are crazy."

Global warming

[Yusaku Godai]

What's the point to banning some incandescent light bulbs if this bullshit is allowed?

Re:Global warming

[orclevegam]

You know, the the celebration Jesus's birthday? Interestingly enough there is no record of when Jesus was born. One of the original dates that early Christians believed was March 25th, which also corresponded with the date he was believed to have been crucified. Early Christians also did not celebrate the birth of Jesus because they believed saints didn't celebrate their births. The Christian church however has never been one to pass up an opportunity to subsume a competing religions holidays, and late December was a time when almost all cultures celebrated some kind of festival (Yule, Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, etc.). It made it much easier to convert people to Christianity if they got to keep most of their old holidays (see also Easter, corresponding to the Summer Solstice and many cultures fertility holidays [ever wonder about easter eggs?]).

Re:Global warming

[lilomar]

Um, not to be pedantic, but Easter is near the Spring equinox, not the Summer solstice.

Re:Global warming

[orclevegam]

Um, not to be pedantic, but Easter is near the Spring equinox, not the Summer solstice. I stand corrected. However, the point still remains that Easter was used to replace pre-existing pagan fertility holidays.

Re:Global warming

[prandal]

Easter retains its Pagan origins, being celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

Re:Global warming

[One Childish N00b]

What's the point to banning some incandescent light bulbs if this bullshit is allowed?

Shut up. This has been a year to end all years. We've been bullied into accepting bullshit laws left, right and center, we've seen our countrymen lose their lives in a neverending bullshit war, and the holiday season is the one time of year when we get to let our hair down and have fun without petty moaning getting in the way.

Yes, it's garish, and yes it's a "waste of energy", but you know what? I feel like getting up and going to work every day just to fall into bed and do it all over again tomorrow is a waste of energy, too, and I look forward to the fun and silliness of the holiday season, and things like this add to the fun. Pretty much everything else fun has been legislated to death, if we start legislating Christmas then we might as well give up the fight altogether and become mindless automatons retiring to our alcoves for 8 hours 'recharge' in between 365 days of work.

Re:Global warming

[Deadstick]

unless there's something I missed

There is.

rj

Re:Global warming

[Rich0]

Uh, the New Testament wasn't authored in Hebrew - it was originally written in Greek, which was the common language of the day (owing to Alexandar the Great's March across most of Western Europe/Asia).

What you are probably getting confused over is the fact that Matthew quotes from Isaiah - which was written in Hebrew originally. Matthew translated it when he quoted it (since he was writing in Greek - not that he was the first to translate the Hebrew bible to Greek).

The word used in Isaiah is probably best translated as young maiden. In using it to refer to the virgin birth Matthew translates it to Greek as virgin to go along with the rest of his account. It is obviously a more recent phenomenon than Isaiah, but it dates back to the first century - it isn't like this was a mistranslation from the middle ages. Matthew's intention of communicating that Mary was a virgin is very clear from the lengthy account of the whole story.

Now, if you think Matthew was full of it I suppose that is something else, but this isn't some invention of modern translators or anything like that.

How about an analogy (since this is /.): The US Supreme Court issues a ruling in English based upon some treaty written in French. It turns out that the supreme court choose to use a less-common translation of a French phrase in the treaty as part of its ruling, and quotes it in English. In the USA the only binding law would be the Supreme Court's ruling, based on the alternate translation from French. The Supreme Court's ruling isn't really a translation-error per se since it is also an original creative work, and the Supreme Court's intention wasn't to just translate the treaty, but it chose to quote a part of it in English to further some larger purpose. You couldn't look at the ruling 100 years later and say that the Supreme Court didn't mean what they said because the translation of a line of French was debatable - the Supreme Court clearly meant what they said in the bulk of their ruling, and the translation was in support of the larger work. Now, you could choose to disagree with the Supreme Court, and that is neither here nor there.

So, while Isaiah is likely to have meant "young maiden" it doesn't really change the fact that Matthew was trying to communicate "virgin". And if you really are just interested in historicity then you'd probably tend to put more stock in a document written after Jesus's birth than 600 years before it when trying to figure out what happened.

So 90's

[Cthefuture]

These type of flashy animated displays are like flashing HTML text and all the other tacky crap from 90's web design.

It can be done a lot more tastefully.

Re:So 90's

[kylben]

It can be done a lot more tastefully. Yeah, they could get about a million red, green, and blue lights and string them up in a grid, with a computer to control each light individually instead of entire strands. Then they could port Firefox into the code that controls the lights and just show the damn Trans Siberian Orchestra house video on it.

Re:So 90's

[orclevegam]

So very very tempted right now.

Re:So 90's

[Belial6]

When I first read your comment, I though you were just one of those people that just like to complain. Then I saw the video, and had to completely agree with you. The display shows little to no creativity, and seem to be just a "I bought more lights" display. We used to have a house here in Santa Rosa, Ca that had a big display every year. It had a tenth of the lights, and was dramatically more impressive. It had spinning carousels, elves making toys, and various other animated displays. Buying more lights isn't impressive. Show me something I haven't seen before if you want to impress me.

Cease & desists and/or lawsuits in 3.. 2.. 1..

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA:
Hansen's 25,000-light display is synchronized to five songs, which he broadcasts over an FM-radio frequency so passers-by can pick it up in their cars.

Radio broadcasts a/k/a "public performance" of likely-unlicensed music? So who's gonna get him first? The RIAA? The ASCAP? The FCC?

Takin' all bets!

Rochester (MI) has some nice lights

[dpryan]

Rochester Michigan has a really nice light display setup on all of the stores on Main St. Here's a link to a slideshow from the company that put them up. Not surprisingly, the lights cause gridlock for about a mile in each direction, but it's worth it.

Awesome

[Reality Master 101]

Of course, it's all fun and games until the bus of epileptic kids drives by.

You too can do this

[YrWrstNtmr]

Computer controlled, fully programmable.
Lite-o-rama

If you're insane and anal enough to do it right. Some of the displays are pretty impressive, though. In an over the top, freaky, kind of way.

Armed with technical knowledge....

[cc1984_]

They typically work in fields such as computer programming, Web development, engineering or audio and visual services and are armed with a technical knowledge that the average person lacks ..and lack social skills and good taste which others are armed with.

Lights? Call me when you get a pair....

[PhreakOfTime]

Thats not creative at all. its just plain old boring.

Now, THIS is original and creative. Id love to see the neighbors faces when this thing fires up on the front lawn! If some pinheads flashing lights annoy you, just pay them back with the wonderfully tuned sound of static discharge! Enjoy!

are so doomed

[tero]

I don't think the human race will survive the coming global warming and after watching that video, I don't think we deserve to either.
The display gets full points for not having any taste though..

You think that's bad?

[jd]

If enough houses got together, they could make a great set of fake runway lights for aircraft.

Re:Global warming QWZX

[Eternauta3k]

Canada.

Blink

[Frosty Piss]

They typically work in fields such as ... Web development

Got to do something with all those unused "blink" tags...