08.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:08 am by Administrator
Well, today I recieved my Tracer Jr. and went promptly to work tracing my characters for the display on my new coroplast. They look great! Now it’s on to installing the lights. I finished Suzy Snowflake today. I spent the better part of today working on her. She’s 750 lights strong. punching 750 holes in a Coroplast board earned me a nasty blister on my right thumb. I’ll need to come up with a different way to punch those holes. I added a new page on the website outlining the progress of my Coroplast.
Other new things that are happening… New Purchases! I bought a Galvanized pole for the Mega-tree and set it up just to see how it looks. Wow! That tree is going to be huge! And also bought 250 feet of 16-2 Lamp wire. So my expendature of extension cords this year should be way down!
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08.23.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:24 am by Administrator
Well, One of my plans for the front yard are large animated displays using Coroplast. One of the more difficult things to do when planning this is just buying the Coro. I called around to local sign shops and none we willing to sell any. Then I got a bright idea and e-mailed Plastics 2000 on Mchenry Ave in Modesto. They had just what I needed and I rushed down to purchase it. Now that I have it, I can begin building these props in earnest.
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08.22.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:56 am by Administrator
I just got back from vacation. Most of my efforts were directed toward that for the last month or so. Now, I am in full fabrication mode. I finished the Tree topper by adding the star today. I’ll be looking around the local sign shops for some coroplast for my faces. Once I have secured that, I will be making the faces. I can’t wait! Laura plans to go to Texas next month and I have high hopes to get most of my sequencing done then.
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07.27.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:34 am by Administrator
Checked out my showtime computer today. Everything was in working order. I then rearranged the wiring to work better in the cabinet and hooked the computer up to the internet to verify that I had all the necessary upgrades to the system. (not many since MS is no longer supporting Windows ME) I connected a wireless access point on the showtime computer, so now I can pass files from my main system and my showtime system making adjustments to the show much easier. I used to use a USB drive.
I spent a hour or so this evening testing my LOR units. I really ran them throught the ringer. I tested each channel individually then tested shimmer and sparkle as well as the fades. Then I fired up the sequence editor and ran the lights through Wizards in Winter. Not a problem with any of them. Before putting away the equiptment I assigned each a hardware number and then wrapped it up.
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07.26.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:48 am by Administrator
Went out today and bought all that I will need to build a new topper for the Mini-Mega Tree. I built it out of PVC this time because the wooden one was trashed after only one year. I added a new page with pics on the main website. I’m almost tempted to set up the megatree just to see what it’ll look like. I’ll be moving my speakers around on the house as well. That will give me a better stereo separation for the THX intro. It will add to the display as well. Now the sound will be centered over the display instead of off the side of it.
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07.23.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:06 pm by Administrator
I’ve not been doing much for the Christmas lights lately. I’ve been working a great deal, getting ready for our vacation. But not actively working does not mean that I haven’t been thinking about things. Last week I had a terrible nightmare. I dreamt that I decorated the wrong house and when I had discovered my error I also realized that the date was Dec 6th and I needed to have everything up and running that night! Gahhhh!
I’ve come to some decisions about the Disney Character Topiaries. Everyone loves these additions to the yard but the mini lights are beginning to burnout or dim. So they need to be redone. I’d like to do them in LED but if I do the same thing I did with the incandescent bulbs, it will cost me a fortune. So here’s my new plans for the topiaries. I’ll strip the incandescents from them. Then I will light them all with one color LED (probably start with white) I’m also only going to light the fronts of the characters. That will make the more expensive LED’s go a long way. I’ll also use green zip ties so the topiaries will look better during the day. Next year I will probably add another color to them and make then white and blue. Then they will have two channels each and can add to the light show. In the third year I will add red and then be done with them.
Check out the website closely. You will see that I’ve added an new page! Yes, I LOR order came in yesterday and I have assembled two of the boxes. I have two more to go.
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07.15.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:57 am by Administrator
Progress goes slowly when in the synchronizing phase. I’m about 40% done with Mr. Heatmiser. The lip-synching is giving me a headache. My fear is that while it looks good on the LOR Visualizer (hardly much more than a lite-brite) it may not look so good in real life. I’ll need to hook it up once I have the faces done and see how they really look. Someone on the LOR Forums gave me a very funny idea for a short synchronization. I downloaded the .mp3 of the THX theater credits (the one where the sound malfunctions in the middle of the tone) and synchronized my lights for it. It looks great! Of course that short diversion put me behind schedule for Mr. Heatmiser but what the heck!
California Christmas Lights Community (CCLC) has had it’s first meeting for the future Workshop & Expo. I was able to be a part of it which is pretty exciting for me. So far, there’s mostly planning and the homework was a simple as updating our signatures on our forums to reflect the upcomming workshop. I was proud to have attracted a LOR forum regular to our site within a few days.
I lit up my disney characters for the first time since Christmas: Mickey is looking pretty bad. Although I have no plans for them this year, I do need to update the topiaries so Mickey will be the first that I tackle.
My first plans for this year’s decorations called for Flame lights to light up the eves of my house, but I had difficulty planning exactly how to pull that one off. My great idea was to buy some stiff wire mesh and shape the lights into flames using the mesh as a frame. However as I view all of the things that I will need to get done in one short month, I came to the conclusion that I will not be able to accomplish this goal. I then decided to simply use Red Icicles to simulate the flames. Not perfect but workable. but now I have a new idea! I think that I will zip tie the icicles to
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07.02.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:41 am by Administrator
Just returned from the CCLC picnic last month. We had some great talks on decorating and I learned a lot that will save me money this year. During my first animated year, I had just 16 channels. That required me to spend over $200 in extension cords alone! So at the picnic I found out that there was a outdoor rated lamp-style electrical cable (spt2) that utilizes vampire plugs for a quick, easy and cheap way to run electricity out to the lights. I’m in heaven! Having increased my channels to 80 this year I was desperate for a better solution than I had before. Now I have it. I just finished synchronizing my first piece “Suzy Snowflake” by Rosemary Clooney. I need to have all synchronizing done by September because the Christmas lights start selling in October and I’ll need to start building my displays afterward. I sketched out a quick plan shortly after Christmas last year. That gave me the number of channels needed to bring my vision to fruition. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the LOR sale. Since that time my plans have undergone a number of revisions. But I have finally arrived at a satisfactory plan. See the diagram on my website under 2008 Planning.
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07.01.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:09 pm by Administrator
Well, for me the Christmas decorating season has officially started. Actually, I’ve been playing with a few ideas since the first of the year. However I recently made my first purchase of the decorating season when I purchased my 4 LOR boxes with will increase the number of channels on my display to 80. For those of you who don’t know what channels are… Think of each channel as a fancy light switch that can turn on/off, dim on or dim off or flash quickly. Enough of these channels/switches coupled with music will create a light show. Well, I’ve got the channels that I need now, I’ve got to start synchronizing the music.
I just finished synchronizing Suzy Snowflake by Rosemary Clooney. I’m pretty happy with it. Now I’m starting Mr. Heat Miser by Big Bad Voodoo daddy. I need to get all six of my peices done by September in order to start building everything that I will need to build.
I’ve also started a new webpage. Hopefully, you got to this blog via that webpage. If not, then you can check it out at www.cereschristmastreelane.com
For those of you who live on my street and are checking my site out… Let me tell you that I really don’t think that my house is the only house on the street. PLEASE, contact me and give me permission and I will place pictures of your house on the website as well. I picked out the broad name for my site because 1) It was available and sounded good. 2) I always have a heck of a time thinking of a good website name. (I always hated the name of my last one “synchadventure.com”
That’s it for now. As soon as I have some news, I’ll be sure to post it here.
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