John's Journal

[KeithTarpley]

Greetings,,,

Love the flakes.  Now we need to see them in falling motion.  :-)

Keith

[wbuehler]

Nice John,

I agree the Blue Looks Good

Bill

[ThaiWay]

The best plans of mice and men...

I had hoped to have eight LE's built and running stuff for last year's show.  Alas, but time was not on my side.  I got only as far as 2 Lynx for the townhouse outline and a dumb little box for the snowflakes.

So with little really superior to share, I have only a crude cellphone video to show for 2008 and a couple of fun stills:

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This year I will have all I dreamed about for 2008:  falling snowflakes, more rope light, the nine 4-color mini trees, the four 9-channel leaping arches, the 128 channel mega-fan, the 25 strobes, the seven channel star, the six channel icicles, the starfruit tree wrap, the MR16's, the icicle line over the street, the speakers, the fm xmtr, the music(!), the sign, sequences!!!

OMG!  Look what I got myself into.

John

[WWNF911]

John I really like your snowflakes!

[KeithTarpley]

Greetings,,,

You're flakier than I, but in a good way.  Great work...

Keith

[wbuehler]

Nice Vids

Bill

[Ron]

John,

That looks great.  I have to go look at how you made your snowflakes again, they look fantastic.

Is there anything else like your display anywhere in Thailand?

Ron

[ThaiWay]

Leon, Keith, Bill, Ron... thanks for looking and appreciate your comments.  Other than the shopping centers which make a valiant effort to stimulate December sales with their mega trees, rope light wire sculptures and lots of LED's hanging from trees, I don't see any addicts like me.  But then I don't get out much either!  In 2007 I could look out my 3rd floor workshop window at the high-rise condo four blocks away and see a couple balconies decorated with lights, but none this past Christmas.

John

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[ThaiWay]

Twelve Feet (or ~4 meters for the dimensionally challenged) of Christmas 2008:

Remember that holey angle iron from the hardware shop?  Last November I felt like a kid playing with a giant erector set. 

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Having nothing but concrete walls and a wood fence to attach show elements to presented a challenge.  Let alone having no space available to put anything at ground level; even if I did, it would be hidden from view unless you were directly in front and then where does the car go?

Here's the fence section that fell down and took three days to repair.  I screwed uprights into it and built a platform over the front gate for three of the inflatables.  And added a bar to anchor the nine mini-trees.  You can almost make out their skeletons hanging to dry in the sun.  Below that another bar to attach the 4-color flat LED rope; it runs from the gate all the way along the fence to the front door on each side.

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Ready to hang vertical and horizontal sections of rope light now.  I also added a center bar.  It has hook eyes every 15cm.  The plan was to tie 32 LED strings to it to create a mega sail, but I ran out of time.  The 5-point star at the top will also have to wait for next Christmas.  That's ok... I have time now to continue building these things and get all the controllers built.

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Oh yeah,  the leaping arches too.  There's the PVC and I have the lights.  I guess I better get busy.

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John

[memphislights]

Ever thought about lighting up the gates to the driveway by following the design on the gates?

And, like the snowflakes.  I am going to try and make some based off of your design.

[OriginalHotrodder]

Hi John,
Great work!  You are very inspiring.  Have you thought of mounting your leaping arches on the front of your gate/fence arches?  From your picture it appears that your PVC is blue in color, is that right?

[Ron]

I love reading your posts John.  You have so many more challenges than most of us, it is just inspiring.

Ron

[PJNMCT]

John,

...WOW.

Just such a great job...can't say enough.

-Paul

[ThaiWay]

When you get to be as old as I am, it's good sometimes to reflect on where you've been.  Then again, when you're as old as I am, it's easy to forget - sometimes intentionally! - where you've been. 

Tonight though, in my time travels through old computer files, I stumbled across some "ancient" Christmas Light stuff from my former life in Hawaii.

This one is from 2002:

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I was using one of those tiny multi-function mini light controllers which I modded to switch four mechanical relays for the star.  No dimming hahaha!  The eight strings of 25-lt C7's just chased around the five points (with lots of audible clicking to boot.)  The three colors of C9's on the roof outline drew so many amps... I had to drive six 25A hockey puck SSR's (two circuits for each color) by plugging them into a commercial 4-track chase light controller.  Even so, I still ended up frying a few.  For me at that time it cost an arm and a leg to do that - let alone the electric bill on an island with the highest utility rates in the country!  And wow - the beginnings of a megaTree!... and a Snap-N-Glow sign!  I hear they went out of business :-(

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Below is a vid of 2001 recorded on my then 3-yr-old Sony Mavica.  It used floppy disks for media... yes, that was just seven years ago!  Ahhh... the full moon with the star sure is pretty.

I had to trash most of the icicle lights after that season because the humidity and rain just rotted the legs off those minis.  The megaTree pole (35 feet of 2" galvanized I cockaroached from an old house) was just a Star pole that year.... the post-Christmas sales at WalMart enabled what you see in the pic above. 

Man... we've come a long way baby!

John

[KeithTarpley]

Greetings,,,

Neat video.  Kind of an animated quality.  Got one of those old Mavica's around here.  Never had such a fun subject matter though.  :-)

Keith