I mentioned in my “last post”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2004/12/23/white-christmassnow-kidding/ that while Googling to make sure I spelled “Griswold” correctly (in reference to the Christmas lights we saw when out caroling last night…click the thumbnail image to see a full-sized view–gotta love (hate) the bad low-light quality of my Treo 600’s camera!) I ran into some really interesting stuff online. Well, here it is: “Alek’s Christmas Lights Webcam”:http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/xmas_webcam
Basically, during certain evening hours, you can remotely turn this guy’s Christmas lights on and off via the web, and watch it on his webcam. This is just cool enough that I am interested in trying it, except I’m probably too lazy to spend the time (and money) setting it up. His site got “Slashdotted”:http://www.komar.org/faq/slashdot-effect/ at least once a year since 2002 it looks like, which resulted in his ISP popping a 40-amp circuit breaker in 2002, plus a stress-test of his analog on-off switches! The actual 2002 “Slashdot article”:http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/25/0118201.shtml has some pretty funny comments to go along with it (be warned that Slashdot isn’t known for it’s ultra-tasteful comments but this post doesn’t seem to have much of the worst at first glance, and some are pretty darn funny). Slashdot user CableModemSniper, for example, said, “The only way to create a fire-hazard from half-way around the world…Light ON, light OFF, Light ON, Light OFF, Light ON, Light OFF, Light BOOM! –Sparks everywhere…”, and TheOnlyCoolTim said, “We just slashdotted CHRISTMAS. What next, do the editors engineer a DDoS on GOD HIMSELF?”.
“Alek Komarnitsky”:http://www.komar.org/ also has some links to “other sites”http://www.komar.org/xmas/faq/other_sites.html with similar crazyness, like “‘Drive Me Insane!'”http://www.drivemeinsane.com/ which appears to be down temporarily but has much more web-based control of stuff. He also has links to some of the more “‘interesting'”:http://www.komar.org/xmas/2004/cool_pictures/ pictures he has from his webcam (personally, I like his shots of “‘watching grass grow'”:http://www.komar.org/faq/watching_grass_grow/ even better :-)
Want to see the “world’s biggest interactive computer display”:http://blinkenlights.de/? Just more random webcam-coolness…time to go watch more TV!
Oh yeah…I found out about this thingy in the first place from a Google search that lead me to “this Netscape article”:http://channels.netscape.com/ns/atplay/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1120&idq=/ff/story/0001/20041214/1914631691.htm&sc=1120.