Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Somehow Christmas seems to have leaked over into the Japanese celebrations – this has got to be blatant commercialism. They seem to have taken a whole collection of bad bits and wrapped it up into their own festival.

Theres the screaming kids, the rush of people through the shops, the cheap tat, the irritating songs, the acapella festivals with pop-open christmas trees containing singing fish.

But at least there is flashing lights. As seems to be the way over the last couple of months, I bought a USB christmas tree. Thats gonna have to do for decorations this year. Sadly I didn’t get the driver disk so it just flashes in its preprogrammed sequence – not sure you can actually do much even with the drivers though.


8 comments

    • Re: USB tree

      I have no idea – all the writing is in English, but that doesn’t mean they’ll actually make it to the UK. Its more ‘cheap tat’ than cool, but thats never stopped me before, has it? Could send some over if you can’t find any.

        • Re: USB tree

          Since I’m guessing it probably actually only uses the power line, I suspect USB 1.0 will do the job. It seems to run even when my computer is turned off as long as the hub is powered.

          • Anonymous

            Re: USB tree

            Can’t you just attach a power line to noddy ? Just use USB to control power output and live electrode position.

            Sorry getting carried away hoo haha ha.

  1. Anonymous

    Re: USB tree

    Live the idea of torturing Noddy Holder (sorry Neil nearly used initials) he’s far too popular as a poor quality sound chip. USB trees don’t come with this kind of crud by default do they?

    • Re: USB tree

      No Noddy here, just six colour ‘changes every second’ LED tackiness, though I hear that has been throwing sacks of hammers down stone steps, so we can look forward to some more interesting soundtracks soon – assuming we can figure out a way to get decent bass out of a three and a half inch piece of moulded clear plastic.

  2. Re: USB tree

    On a range of one to cool, I’d buy one. Not that that says anything about its coolness in particular since I bought the tacky USB one anyway, but hell you only need a few stupid geeks like me and suddenly you got yourself a business plan.

    Perhaps a little less of the Noddy Holder though.

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