Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease

My friend found this on Gizmodo and I really don't have words for this website/house/event, so I am posting the article from the 12/6/07 posting on Gizmodo.

Web-Controllable Holiday Lights Setup is Christmas Spirit Overload
10:00 AM ON THU DEC 6 2007
BY ADAM FRUCCI

It's the Christmas season, so you know what that means: completely insane, over-the-top lighting displays. Yes, they get crazier every year as front-yard hobbyists figure out how to put more and more tech into their shows to make them even more impressive. One of my personal favorites is "Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease," so named because they exist as a fundraiser for Celiac disease research and because you can actually control the entire setup via the Internet.

Yes, starting at 5pm MST every afternoon, Alek's entire setup becomes controllable via his website. You can turn specific sets of lights on and off, and you can inflate or deflate giant characters, such as Christmas classics Santa, Homer Simpson and Elmo. You can also type text messages in to be displayed on a monitor in "Santa's Workshop," which has its own cam.

The entire setup runs on 17 different circuits, has 17,100 lights, and uses 65 amps of power. Before you start ranting and raving about this hurting the environment, you should know that the whole shebang runs on wind power. In addition, Alek purchased a carbon offset to double the environmental friendliness of the setup. And as soon as they get cheaper (hopefully by next year), he plans to start using energy-efficient LED lights.

And it's all for a good cause! Both his sons have Celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder. So if you get some kicks out of playing with these lights, the least you could do would be to toss a few bucks to the U of Maryland in his name if you have the means. It's the season of giving, after all.

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Alex's website is really quite a trip. I wasn't sure what I was looking at, where my cursor was, or when MST really starts so I can turn on the lights on his house. Anyway, here is the link and the a little blurb from his website:

http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/christmas_webcam

Use the three christmas webcams to view live images of 17,000 christmas lights and also CONTROL them - heck, you can even inflate (or deflate) the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! The webcams are online 7x24 from Thanksgiving to January 1st and you annoy the neighbors by turning stuff on & off from 1700 to 2200 MST (GMT-7). Plus you can send "Instant Messages via Webcam" for everyone to see. HO HO HO! ;-)