It's About Time!
Welcome to your August 2007 edition of the
PlanetChristmas newsletter! It is published regularly and covers
relative topics for the Christmas decorating enthusiast. For the
record, there were no June or July editions because everyone was focused
on PLUS2007.
Here's what you can read about in this August 2007 newsletter:
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Decorating for Christmas is so much fun and just think about the
memories we make for others! What viewers don't comprehend is the
huge amount of effort required to build our incredible Christmas
displays. As you start getting ready to roll out the 2007 display,
here are a few of my favorite gadgets that can save a lot of time.
Kill-A-Watt
Meter. This amazing tool tells you exactly how much electricity an
item is consuming. When I buy a new type of Christmas light, I
immediately plug it into this device to figure out how many watts it
uses. You'll be amazed how often the manufacturers tag on the end
of a string of lights is wrong. This meter is easy to use and is
helpful year round. Plug your computer into this thing and you'll
see it is consuming a few watts of electricity even when it is turned
off... same for your TV set. Don't get me started about all those
little wall warts (the low voltage transformers used to charge your cell
phone, power your answering machine or make your amplified speakers
work) scattered all over my house and constantly consuming electricity
whether I'm using them or not. Urrrrgggggg. Kill-A-Watt
costs $20-40. Do an Internet search for "kill-a-watt meter"
Professional
Light Tester. This is a magical device if you have a lot of
incandescent mini-light strings. Let's face it, there are just
light strings that defy working no matter how many times you say "when
one bulb goes out the rest stay on." Plug the non-working string
of lights into this gizmo and press the big red button. If the
string doesn't light right away, you'll hear a buzzing sound pointing
you to exactly where the problem is occurring. How does this thing
work? It shoots a stream of very high voltage but low current down
the string of lights. Many times this will fuse that special shunt
in a burned out bulb allowing the rest of the lights to work. The
other times the high voltage will start arcing across a broken wire/bulb
socket showing exactly where the problem is. Because of this
device I'm still using strings of minis that are 20 years old (remember
when they had the skinny wire???). This light tester is $150-$200
but think of it as a long term investment. I've paid for mine many
times over by being able to rescue strings destined for the trash.
Check the PlanetChristmas vendor page to find a place to buy this
thing.
Looks
like a stubby screwdriver in the picture to the right, doesn't it?
Well, that's because it is. I've been known to keep this in my
pocket at all times while working outdoors with incandescent
mini-lights. If you have a bulb acting odd, remove it and insert
the blade of this screwdriver. It will temporarily short out the
socket and provide power to the rest of the lights in the string, which
tells you everything else is working fine. Do not use this trick
on C-7 or C-9 strings because each socket is wired in parallel and
you'll experience unplanned fireworks that will not be healthy to your
power panel or your body. How is a typical mini-light string
wired? See
http://www.planetchristmas.com/Minis.htm.
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Here's an excerpt from the final PLUS2007 newsletter:
Did everyone have a great time at PLUS2007?
Judging from the response sheets it was a success. Thanks to 'Dale
W' you can see some pictures of the event at
http://www.mississippichristmas.com/picturesfromplus2007.html.
Other pictures can be found in our chatroom beginning at
http://planetchristmas.mywowbb.com/forum31/15099.html. I'll
admit to aging about a year during the six days I was in Gatlinburg for
the event but to see the smiles and meet so many new and old friends, it
was great.
Behind
the scenes, your Steering Committee invaded the Gatlinburg Convention
Center Tuesday so the group could get a feel of the layout. I knew
PLUS was going to be fun when people started gathering outside the main
doors Wednesday afternoon 30 minutes before we opened early
registration... it's like we couldn't wait to get started. That
night at the Glenstone Lodge was such fun as we started figuring out who
was a PLUS person and talking Christmas. I'll admit to not
anticipating people decorating their balconies of the hotel and property
management later told me they got a lot of calls questioning what was
going on... but we were just being Christmas fanatics. The one
thing I couldn't figure out was if people actually slept. I would
walk through the Glenstone lobby late at night heading for bed and
people would be sitting around talking Christmas. I'm an early
riser and when going back through the lobby at 7:00am I would see people
still talking about Christmas... and it was August .)
There are so many wonderful memories about our
gathering. During our opening ceremony I challenged everyone to
hunt me down to tell me about your display and many of you took me up on
my offer. Such great ideas you have implemented... of which
several will probably show up in a future PlanetChristmas display.
See the rest of this story at
http://www.plus2007.com/NL081807.htm.
What are the details on the next PLUS? Stay
tuned!
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Is this the year you computerize some or all of your display?
Get started now! Synchronizing lights to music can be more
addictive than playing video games and possibly more time consuming.
For every minute of your animated show, allocate 1-8 hours to program
the lights, depending on how many light channels you have. Set up
and area where you can start playing with the sequencing concepts now.
Connect a string of mini-lights to each channel of your controller, pick
a song and start sequencing. Keep a clock handy and make an effort
to look at it every now and then. You'll be amazed how time flies
and you forget to go to bed.
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This is a new addition to the PlanetChristmas newsletter. Got
any juicy bits of gossip you want to share with the PlanetChristmas
community? Send a tip to
csmith@PlanetChristmas.com
__________
Many of us have become very creative with our
unique signature automatically added to the end of each post we make in
the PlanetChristmas Forums (My Account/Edit Profile/Signature).
You can have pictures, links, colored text and just all kinds of cool
attention grabbers... but let's be careful. As we enter the busy
Christmas season, the bigger/flashier your signature, the more
irritating it becomes to others. Let's keep it simple and refrain
from blatant advertising. My PlanetChristmas Forums signature is
below as an example.
Chuck Smith
at http://www.PlanetChristmas.com
Don't forget our three
PlanetChristmas rules: [color=red][b]Positive, family friendly and
Christmas centric[/b][/color]
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The PlanetChristmas community has experienced
tremendous growth. Our three fundamental rules of family friendly,
positive and Christmas centric guide what we say and do. The real
key to our community is a willingness to exchange information so others
can have better displays. Come join us!
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Talking about a gold mine of information, this is
the place! If you haven't found it yet, go to
http://www.planetchristmas.com/talk.htm. We've recently added
more forums and made it a little easier to get around. Once you're
a member, feel free to change the look and feel of the forums by going
to "My Account/Preferences/Board Theme." Don't forget to update
your profile so others can learn about your display. Also remember
the part of the forums you can see when not logged in is indexed by the
Internet search engines, but once you're a registered member, many new
forums open up but are invisible to the search engines.
PlanetChristmas believes strongly in protecting your privacy.
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The PlanetChristmas radio station is still on-line
and available to anyone with a fast Internet connection to tap into.
Christmas music 24x7... even in the middle of Summer. How can you
go wrong? Find the details at
http://www.planetchristmas.com/PCRadio2007.htm
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Have a suggestion for a main topic or want to write
an article for a future PlanetChristmas newsletter? Send me an
email: csmith@planetchristmas.com
If you know someone that really should subscribe to your newsletter,
send them to
http://planetchristmas.com/lists/?p=subscribe
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Next time: look forward to more Christmas
decorating tips.
Chuck Smith of
PlanetChristmas
