Holight Day Fun
Venomous Kate has struck again with this bit of news on lights:
No time to put up your own holiday lights this year? Never fear. You can borrow Alek Komarnitsky’s between the hours of 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. (Mountain time). All you need is a computer and a browser, and then you’re in control of his lights. –more–
The Komarnitskys, called “the Griswolds of our neighborhood” are a family that loves lights. At least Alek does, and he has hooked up his 17,000 lights to a Linux box for the world to control (literally). ” This month alone, more than 1.3 million Internet browsers…have visited the site.” Yesterday, the site received 369,023 requests! - Gleaned from the Yahoo News story: Interactive Christmas Lights an online hit and Alek’s Christmas Lights Webcam page.
This is great and I will have to try it out. It reminds me of sitting in front of someone’s house with my parents and brothers a couple years ago. I’m not the type that likes Christmas lights much, but I can enjoy them when they are tastefully done. Unfortunately, most don’t have a sense of taste, or balance apparently. This house was different: There were tons of lights, but not all on at once. They all faded on and off, making a wonderful show. We ooed and ahhed as the lights around the roof faded from one color to another and gasped as a deer appeared on the front lawn. We must have spent an hour just watching and I don’t remember a repeat in the pattern. I think it must have been controlled by a computer, but not thousands of internet users (it would have been too chaotic). The Komarnitskys’ house is off the hook and I look forward to adding to the chaos!
The Komarnitskys’ site also has links to other wacky stuff with lights like the Texan DriveMeInsane.com where you can mess with a table full of lights, turning them on or off. There was also La Bastille, that turned Brown’s fourteen-story Sciences Library in a gigantic Tetris game or Project Blikenlights in Germany.
