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Originally posted by R.Wreck

I found something you can do about it. Click on over and turn this guy's xmas lights off (between 1800 and 2200 Mountain Time).

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But instead of a live camera, komar.org is really showing off 32 high-resolution digital photographs, taken in four sets with different amounts of snow on the ground. A sophisticated computer program, which Mr. Komarnitsky wrote with input from a friend skilled in digital imaging, serves up a section of the appropriate photo, depending on actual weather conditions and what lights the online Web visitors expect to see.

For extra verisimilitude, sometimes the program digitally adds in passing cars. One in five pictures is generated with fake airplanes in the expansive Colorado sky. The human-shaped shadow occasionally seen walking past the ornament drawn in lights on the lawn? A digital apparition, nothing more. Occasionally the software shows the garage door up.

"I'll get e-mails saying, 'Hey, Alek, your garage door is open,'" he says.

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DaveW wrote:

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Originally posted by R.Wreck

I found something you can do about it. Click on over and turn this guy's xmas lights off (between 1800 and 2200 Mountain Time).
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CNN's crawler just announced that the Xmas lights web site was a hoax designed to "bring Christmas cheer."

According to The Wall Street Journal from yesterday,
But instead of a live camera, komar.org is really showing off 32 high-resolution digital photographs, taken in four sets with different amounts of snow on the ground. A sophisticated computer program, which Mr. Komarnitsky wrote with input from a friend skilled in digital imaging, serves up a section of the appropriate photo, depending on actual weather conditions and what lights the online Web visitors expect to see.

For extra verisimilitude, sometimes the program digitally adds in passing cars. One in five pictures is generated with fake airplanes in the expansive Colorado sky. The human-shaped shadow occasionally seen walking past the ornament drawn in lights on the lawn? A digital apparition, nothing more. Occasionally the software shows the garage door up.

"I'll get e-mails saying, 'Hey, Alek, your garage door is open,'" he says.
Apparently, the only time this guy's 22,000 lights switched on and off was when he got his wife to do so from inside the house while he rode in a TV station's helicopter while they did a story on his lights.

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