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Christmas Cheer The Internet

Christmas Lights and Google Maps 68

Posted by ScuttleMonkey 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."
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Christmas Lights and Google Maps More

Christmas Lights and Google Maps

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  • A day late and a dollar short? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by XorNand ( 517466 ) * on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:25PM (#14333232)
    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 [coxnewsweb.com] put together by an electrical engineer in Ohio that's worth checking out (link goes to a .wmv. Also a Snopes article [snopes.com] with more details).
  • 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.

  • warning (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:29PM (#14333249)
    87,625 computer controlled lights synchronized to an FM radio station.


    Not for epileptics.

  • New year's resolution (Score:5, Funny)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:29PM (#14333250) Homepage
    [ ] 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.

  • Probably can be seen from space (Score:5, Interesting)

    by craXORjack ( 726120 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:33PM (#14333267)
    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.

  • From last year's stories, Foxnews [foxnews.com] and CHannelCicinatti.com [channelcincinnati.com] (video clips included, but don't know if they still work). Taken from AQFL [aqfl.net].
  • Somebody needs to get a life, not just go outside. :O
  • Where's Komar's set?

  • Google maps lights? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Council ( 514577 ) <rmunroe&gmail,com> on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:46PM (#14333313) Homepage
    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.

  • have mercy on neighbours (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:53PM (#14333343)
    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 simple solution is to place a scarecrow in your driveway holding a mock shotgun. Of course, the sound of engines idling down and then suddenly revving as they drive off will continue to be a problem.
      • Except this is Canada.

        Nobody here would be scared of a scarecrow holding a mock shotgun because everyone would know it wasn't real.

        And if it was real, they'd be shut down in less than a day by the law.

        Of course... if the Conservatives win next year, ironically our already conservative gun laws may be in for a large overhaul.

    • Perhaps a large mirror in your front yard is in order.
    • 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 t

      • Easy one. (Score:3, Funny)

        by jd ( 1658 )
        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.)
    • The guy who put on the "Wizards of Winter [mypartypost.com]" display had to shut it down [fox19.com] after it caused a vehicle accident a few weeks ago.

  • Advertisements on Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)

    by rincebrain ( 776480 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @05:04PM (#14333374) Homepage
    The contact of the "Anonymous Coward" who submitted the story is workshop@santastars.com.

    Hmm...
  • Wow, that's rather unexpected... my house is actually on that map for the house in BC.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "87,625 computer controlled lights" Does it run NetBSD 3.0?

  • The very best displays are those that show up on NASA's GOES East 1km Visible [nasa.gov] Satellite Imagery.

  • 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
    • 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."
      As opposed to say hotting up your car, modding your PC case or "lets see how many more bedrooms we can have than the Smith family"...

  •     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!

  • 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 [komar.org]
  • the actual website of the house in BC is: http://alightchristmas.com/ [alightchristmas.com]. You'll find actual video clips there.

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