Imagine if it was your job to hang strands of lights on your Christmas tree. Sure, you could have purchased an artificial tree with the lights already installed, but you're old fashioned enough where you want to have the maximum control over where the lights are positioned on the tree.
Now imagine if your control issues extend beyond where the lights are strung up on your tree. Suppose you could control when each individual light on your tree turns on and turns off. What if you could also control their color?
Better still, what if you could turn your Christmas tree into the equivalent of a Fourth of July aerial drone show?
Matt Parker wondered what it would take to pull all that off and did it. Here's the video proof:
Near the end of the 24-minute video, Matt offered to let his viewers code their own Christmas light display on his tree. That followup video featuring him running the viewer submitted, untested code on his Christmas tree became perhaps his most popular video ever, accumulating over 10.7 million views nearly four years later. The 45-minute long video is strangely cathartic, especially since his presentation is very much like that of a professor evaluating student coding projects:
At this writing, Christmas Eve is just two short weeks away. There's plenty of time left to step up your Xmas tree light display game this year!
Labels: math, technology
Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:
ironman at politicalcalculations
Thanks in advance!
Closing values for previous trading day.
This site is primarily powered by:
CSS Validation
RSS Site Feed
JavaScript
The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.
Other Cool Resources
Blog Roll
