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What to do on a Sunday without the kids/wifey...


JeffF

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I'm going for a "Silver and Gold"(and red) theme for 2008. I figure white for silver will work just fine. I bought about 8,000 extra white/silver lights for some special designs. And I also bought about 2,000 blue lights just to do one of my favorite songs... Blue Christmas by Elvis.

Really can't wait for October 2008 since that's when I'm planning on having most of my lights up to do sequencing. ;)

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I am working on a new idea for a star, it will be an additional 1500 lights to my current display. I am also working on an old idea (new for me ) arches, another 6000 lights. I plan to complete a few other items that I never finished for this past year ( just did not have the weather for it, roof of my house was ice for most of Dec.). That should put me at about 30,000 lights for this coming year. I also hope to double my LOR channels to 128. I think that's realistically a good amount of time and $ that I will be able to dedicate to my 2008 display and accomplish. Oh! I almost forgot, if I can't do a better job of videoing it this time around I am going to hire some one for 2008, my camera has way too many buttons. I think I could learn to fly a jet quicker.:?

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I am assembling six 3 foot 2 color mini trees at the moment. Then make a sign out of chicken wire, then build a stable, then build a roof grid. Sometime in there I will attempt to assemble 2 PC Solder Kit Complete Package and an fm transmitter. Also sequencing!

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Lawn lights like a roof grid? I am not sure what you are talking about. It is funny though that you say that because my wife and I were talking about something like that.



It would be cool if you came home during christmas. Then I could meet the legendary Jeff Millard!

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I love the way lights look under the snow. We had 30 candy canes this year and with all the snow we had early, they got covered pretty quickly. The lights up on the roof also were covered and the kids and I would just stand out front staring at them. Absolutely beautiful! (we used non-animated multicolor lights on the house this year btw)

My 7yr old son saw me testing the mini-trees this past week and he had a very concerned look on his face. He saw me going through them one color at a time and he didn't like it at all. He said he will miss all the color... :(

So... I think I am going to add blue to the list of colors I'm framing the house with for 2008. I was just going to have silver, gold and red, but I guess it'll be blue too. Good thing I snagged the last 20 boxes of blue from Lowes during clearance time. ;)

I'm thinking I will have a "sequence" where the house just cycles through the four colors. I'll have multiple colors, chasing colors, and all the basic effects that those cheapo multicolor "motion" lights have. If my 7yr old son likes the basics... I'm sure loads of other people will appreciate them too.

BTW, back on topic for a second... I'm have all the materials for the next 8 mini-trees so this weekend is going to be another wrap-fest. ;)

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I too made my own "lawn lights". After seeing what people were saying on PC I decided to take that route. The look was great especiall with the snow. I used a set of c-7's (I know power hogs but that is all I had to work with at the time) I did the same thing you did jeff. With the exception, I used spt cable and put 4 feet between bulbs using tap splices. I didn't want them to close together. Like I said the effect looked great, it was a last minute add to my display.

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Wifey just left with the kiddos again to visit with her Mother and Father... she actually told me to stay home and finish the mini-trees since she saw how happy it made me last weekend. God bless this woman. :P

(however, she still can't believe I spent all that money on 5 PC controllers during "The Sale") :?

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Jeff,

I will try to get you a picture of them. It's funny last year was my first and I didn't even get any pictures or video of the display. everytime I took the camera out I found something else that needed tweaked of fixed.

greg

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Jeff Millard wrote:

My wife looked at the quality of the stuff I did get and asked if i would accept having a pro come and take next year's vids and pics as a Cristmas present... Talk about being married to the right one

Wow! And I thought mine was a keeper! up.gifthumbsup.gif
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I have heard from a guy with the last name of zimmerman that if you have the proper camera it should not be that hard. So is it harder that it seems? I have a video camera that is a Hi 8, so I do not think I will be able to take videos and post them on the net. So I am thinking of renting a camera this year, or find a friend who has 1.

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Jeff Millard wrote:


Thanks for sharing your video, inspite of what you thought it was lacking I would have been thrilled. My videos were such a disaster, I'd have been happier with a snapshot. Next year I will either rent a propper camera..., hire a proffessional (to expensive I am sure)..., or at least hope to acheive the know how to get some where closer to your crud.:D

.
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I was lucky in that I was able to borrow a video camera of decent quality to video my 2006 and 2007 displays.

However, both years I had to film the entire display twice. The first time for each one I was not happy with the results. No matter how good the camera you still have to tinker with the settings to get the best quality.

The number one thing to do is to take off the auto-focus. On my display I then zoomed in and focused on an object that was in the middle of the dislplay. This gave me the best chance possible for everything to turn out right.

Tripods are a must, as is playing with the filter settings of your camera. I'm not an expert, and couldn't begin to tell you what settings I used with the cameras I filmed with.

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