Linux-Powered Christmas Display Puts Rudolph To Shame 68
xmas2003 writes "Over at Linux.com, Zonker writes about Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease.
This annual Internet tradition uses a hi/low-tech combo of LAMP'ed Redhat Web Servers, a 7+ year old Thinkpad running Ubuntu for the X10 control, and an old-school webpage design that could be politely described as Web 0.0 — wait until you see the animated cursor — D'OH! The site is free (and totally fun) as it also raises awareness and donations for Celiac Disease — over $70,000 to the University of Maryland.
Nifty pictures of the crazy christmas display can be seen on the Christmas Blog (notice Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg in post #220) plus watch videos of it in action with comedic history.
Nothing quite says Christmas like a giant, inflatable HULK wearing a Santa Hat... along with three wise men of Elmo, SpongeBob, and Homer Simpson. The Slashdot Effect of turning 21,000 Christmas lights ON & OFF this evening should provide quite a Christmas Eve show to Alek's neighbors... and also the International Space Station."
Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
Backslashdotted!
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Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Funny)
Windows can use mount points as well silly, you can mount a drive to a folder and then remove the drive letter, leaving you with the mount point that is just another folder like Linux. You need to learn a little more about computers before spouting BS. Did mummy forget your Christmas present.?
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Yes, but it's ghetto and hackish. It's not transparent either. It causes sharing permission hell if a drive is mounted as the subfolder of a shared folder. Nothing near as clean as smooth as a Linux (POSIX?) filesystem mount.
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to make windows... take unix, beat it up, give it a lobotomy, cut its balls off, put a tutu on it and then give it a gay name (vista).
The site loads faster than Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Old school rules.
Re:The site loads faster than Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
It's about a technological implementation of extreme tackiness. I say he is right on target with the web site.
Re:The site loads faster than Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Old school rules.
Maybe. Doesn't mean you know what to do once you're on the page. That page was just painful.
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I sure hope they don't get their feelings hurt about why Santa has unlimited gifts, but he still chose to give Johnny across the street his own PS3 while my kids only got a shared, second-hand Nintendo DS. Someday in a few years my kids will hate me, but that's okay because, until then, I will lie to them and say Santa Claus exists while encouraging awkward materialism. Then the kids will experience a huge disap
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But... lying to them is so entertaining!
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Old school rules.
Yeah, sometimes it really does. Unfortunately this is not one of those times. Now I need to bleach my eyes...
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Yup, I love it. Part genius, part insanity, all fun, and in a good cause as well. It's also the most... energetic website I can recall seeing.
'Christmas Blog' appears to link back in time. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's MR X fun holiday page (Score:2, Funny)
It's MR X fun holiday page
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Annoying tiled background, animated gifs, comic sans, horrible layout - I thought people stopped making websites like this?
For some reason a lot of the municipal websites in Texas are still like this. I was doing research that required me to visit a ton of sites and the proportion that looked like they were from 1995 was disturbing.
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People are donating... so that he will fix the site.
easter mini-eggs (Score:2, Interesting)
load the site in Opera
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I'm not.
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Hello Linux Chrome Surfer xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (refered by linux.slashdot.org) from Outback Nowhere United States (33.7146N 94.3731W) Appears to be your first visit (?)
Personally, I don't much care what technology is being used, whether it's bleeding edge, or two millenia old. Tacky is tacky. I'm not curious enough to open the site in any alternative browsers.
It's melting! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think
Don't forget to donate if you can
All you negative people... (Score:1, Interesting)
What have you done to raise money for a charity and generally lift the spirits of people all over the world?
If the page layout bothers you so much then stop criticizing and volunteer to help.
Re:All you negative people... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious what fund raising for celiac disease is truly needed. As someone with it, it's as simple as not eating gluten, and that's as simple as not eating grains (they're not good for you anyway). The only trouble is eating out or with otherwise unlabelled food.
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I knew someone who developed an allergy or celiac disease (can't remember which) in her 20s. The solution for her was just not to eat wheat, her life didn't seem impacted all that much otherwise. Hopefully all the money is going towards research and not his kids!
Anyways, as an aside, she had a reaction to HAM. They put wheat in EVERYTHING these days, geez ;) HAM people. We're all eating random frankenfoods.
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I'm curious what fund raising for celiac disease is truly needed. As someone with it, it's as simple as not eating gluten, and that's as simple as not eating grains (they're not good for you anyway). The only trouble is eating out or with otherwise unlabelled food.
My son has been on a Gluten Free diet for seven years now, if nothing else, the growing awareness (popularity, if you will) of GF during that time has made it much easier for us to find food for him (and now, me) - not sure if we're Celiac or not, he gets pretty seriously wigged out (mental fog) from gluten, as for me, I had some fairly annoying arthritis symptoms in the knees and wrists that go away if I stay off the gluten/grains. I really like the GF shelf tags that are starting to show up in our grocer
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I agree that an awareness campaign is a far better use of money than further research. The cure is so simple: stop eating grains! Sadly, many still think that it's a childhood disease only, so the question of a celiac diagnosis never even comes up. Furthermore, many cases of celiac are asymptomatic, or with symptoms that don't seem obviously connected to an autoimmune condition.
As celiac is hereditary, there's a very strong chance you have it as well. The arthritic symptoms can be the result of a leaky gut
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The first few months it took me a while to adapt. But knowing the cause of my symptoms and the pain involved, it simply hasn't been worth it to ever give into any kind of craving. Dining out is certainly the most troublesome area. Steak, fish, and salads are often the solution for me.
I do see your point about missing out on wonderful and interesting foods. I suppose I've gotten used to that, and simply not eating things unless I know what's in them. I'm inclined towards a more natural diet (foods that are e
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Celiac sufferer here too. It sucks. No, it really sucks. It seemed like it ruined my life at first, not so much now, but its not something you forget about on a daily basis.
Having said that, I can think of a dozen things I'd rather donate too. Save your money, use it elsewhere.
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So, I have celiac disease.
I eat at restaurants often, though what I can eat from the menu is often very limited.
Yes, I can eat at friends' houses. They known I can't have gluten, and never was there nothing I could eat.
I've never been to Asia, but much Asian cuisine is gluten free.
I cook about half my meals. Of the ones I don't, they're either at restaurants where I know the ingredients are safe, or meals that require no cooking (raw food).
I buy very little prepared food. It was never healthy in the first p
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Well, what's actually good about grains? You can eat boiled western skunk cabbage leaves, too, but I wouldn't want to.
Grains are cheap source of carbohydrate/energy. That's about all that's good about them. They are difficult for all to digest, have poor protein profiles, have toxic proteins, and mess with hormone balance (insulin in particular). They require complex preparation to make them non-toxic, such as soaking or cooking for extended periods. They're a survival food, nothing more. They're certainly
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"[Grains] are difficult for all to digest, have poor protein profiles, have toxic proteins, and mess with hormone balance (insulin in particular). They require complex preparation to make them non-toxic, such as soaking or cooking for extended periods. "
Can you provide pointers to scientific research that supports these statements? The only one that makes some sense is the first one, but then, most foods are difficult (for humans) to digest when raw; are you proposing to eat only fruits, milk, and raw meat
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You're right, many foods are difficult to digest raw, but it's a matter of severity. Eat enough legumes (the seeds/bean part) raw and there's a good chance of death. Even when soaked and cooked they're still toxic [wikipedia.org], but then again, so are mushrooms [nih.gov].
Meat is relatively easy to digest raw. I've already mentioned sashimi, but red meat is too. Cooking accomplishes three things: it increases the caloric content, it alters/improves the flavour, and, important to industrial agriculture, it kills pathogens. Cooking
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Yes, but the topic was grains.
This is an utterly ridiculous statement. In terms of dry mass, the Feed conversion ratio [wikipedia.org] of ruminants is about a factor 30 when going from grain to meat. So instead of not utilizing 1% of the grain, you throw away 97%.
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I have celiac's and I can't have dairy, corn, most meats, and I know PLENTY of other people who have seen ADDITIONAL food intolerances crop up over the years.
I think raising funding for it is a great idea. There are so many people out there who have no clue that, just as you said, grains really aren't good for any of us.
Celiac research (Score:2)
Well, for one thing, it's not quite as deterministic as "I have celiac, and all my progeny will have it, too".
I'm learning more about it, but it seems there is a combination of genetic and environmental factors that determine whether one will become celiac. What exactly are those factors? Wheat too early/too late? High-gluten wheat as a baby? Scientists don't quite know yet.
Also, there was some research in Australia whereby the body will be inhibiting from wigging out when encountering gluten. Such research
What? (Score:3)
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Ok... blinking-red-on-green mouseovers, a dynamic <TITLE> tag, and blinking green text in the text. I guess he gets a pass. Although, he'd've gotten extra super old-skool bonus points for a page that said "This page is a searchable index. Enter a search term: __."
(Tongue firmly planted in cheek, of course.)
My mother has celiac... (Score:1)
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That said, I haven't had as hard of a time finding gluten free foods as I thought I would. Sure I had to radically alter my diet, and I can't get a straight answer out of
Been visiting that site for years! (Score:2)
I've been visiting the site for years. And it's worth mentioning my own X10 setup that runs a few items in my house runs on a Thinkpad T20 that I bought new way back in 2001 or so. I've replaced a couple of hard drives since then, but other than that it's all original.
cursorboarding (Score:1)
the D'oh! cursor violates the Geneva Convention.
Can we check the code...for gluten? (Score:1)
**EPIC** (Score:1)
I have to wait 7 hours and 47 minutes until I can control the lights t