17,000 Christmas lights controlled by Perl routine

WAY BACK at Halloween time, the INQ wrote a story about a bonkers chap who had installed a webcam controllable set of festive lights on his house, resplendent in its spooky kooky oeuvre, and including a light up Incredible Hulk.

Well, Christmas is here and Alek Komarnitsky dropped us a line to let us know that his Christmas party proper has started, and you can take a look at it here. The setup, Alek told the INQ, includes 17,000 lights. That's down from the 22,000 he had in 2002 but a disasterous burn-out in 2003 means that Alek is playing it safe. Or at least as safe as 17,000 Christmas lights gets.

The Christmas lights are operational from 1800-2200 Mountain time, so feel free, Alek says, to log on and fiddle. It's a fantastic way to spend an hour.

He also reassures us that the Incredible Hulk will be back for the election run in 2008. He beat Bush this year, but could Hilary be his nemesis?

On a technical note, the website front end is pretty impressive. Using a custom mod_perl module, all the modules to display the page get loaded at once, and Alek has been able to increase performance of the webcam from 4 connections a second up to 20 with only minor code alteration. Pretty impressive stuff.

The INQ remembers the age old ritual of checking Christmas lights for duff bulbs each year, and really doesn't envy this poor chap. µ