The Manic Mechanic

A couple weeks ago I bought a few strands of rather expensive "programmable" LED Holiday Xmas Christmas lights, but have yet to put them up, mostly because of it being windy enough to knock my already unsteady self off the ladder and general blase attitude this year. Still, I thought these would make for some impressive displays for a clever hacker. Well, I went looking around on YouTube, and I was right. Take someone who has a love for hardware hacking, video games, and over-the-top light displays, and you get these two incredible examples. The choice of music on the second makes it that much better.

This user also had a very impressive Halloween display as well. Naturally, YouTube is filled with videos from all over of people outdoing one another in light displays, most often to various Trans-Siberian Orchestra tunes. Geeks, hackers, creative types. I love my kind.

Sunday Jeff, me and our buds Rich and Tim took in a nice little Christmas concert. Yes, it was a bit early in the season, but this is no ordinary holiday musical performance either:



Trans-Siberian Orchestra is da shit. There are many reasons why I love this band as well as the music. My love for hard rock as well as classical music goes back to when I was a wee child (and only added to my problems in elementary school relating to others!). These guys, born out of a band called Savatage, combine traditional classical and Christmas music and amp it up way past 11. The first time I heard their big hit, "Christmas Eve Sarajevo", I was on my way to work. I had the radio playing and caught the beginnings of the song. I turned it up. Incredible. I ended up with the stereo in the truck so loud I could smell the voice coils burning. I never found out who did the song, since they apparently announced it before playing. I figured I'd never hear the song again, since mostly the station would play xmas ditties like "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" a bazillion times. Luckily it caught on and I found out who did it. I had to have it. A few years back, Jeff and I saw the in Baltimore at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. We were blown away. The studio albums have nowhere near the impact of a live show. This was performance art for me. The light show was unlike anything I have seen. It's a show I insist people see.

This time we saw them at the Giant Center in Hershey. The light show is ten times what it was before. Unfortunately, our seats, though close to the stage, were too high up and on one side. That didnt diminish our enjoyment. Rich and Tim did not know what to expect, but they loved it. I snuck a couple quick videos from my little Canon SD230 that could not even begin to capture the intensity, but here is a little exerpt to give y'all an idea:

Beethoven, from the album Beethoven's Last Night.
(9.5MB Windows Media file because I need to pay to unlock all my better codecs in Pinnacle Studio)

Trans-Siberian Orchestra is coming to Baltimore on Dec. 29th. I think some near front row seats are in order this time.