Like Giz reader Brian, who had this sweet post-xmas story to tell us about his dad:

I went back to MI to my parent’s place this year for Christmas. My dad’s gift this year was a new 10 mega pixel digital camera with all the bells and whistles.

While helping him figure out his new gadget I thought it would be fun to put pictures on the nice Kodak digital photo frame that I gave them for Christmas last year. So I ask my dad, “where is your digital frame”? Imagine my confusion when he points the frame out to me. See attached files.

God bless them. Reminds me of my beloved mother-in-law, who refers to her MacBook as “the television”.

Do you have any funny stories with your parents or grandparents you would like to share? Send them our way. [Thanks Brian]

1. Grin and Bear it
The polite thing to do when you get a gift that you want nothing to do with is to smile, thank the person who gave it to you, then toss the crappy gadget in the back of your closet forever. This essentially forfeits the gift to uselessness in the name of manners, which is nice, I guess.

2. Regift
If you still want to get some value out of your crappy gift, simply give it to someone else. Then they’ll have to figure out some way to make an electronic thesaurus useful, and you won’t have to spend the money on another present. It’s the circle of life.

3. Return it
If the person who gave you your gift won’t be offended, you can always just ask for the receipt and then go swap it out for something you actually want. On the upside, they’ll learn that you don’t like gifts like that, but on the downside, you’ll probably hurt their feelings.

4. eBay
If you’re too polite to ask for the receipt but still want to turn your crappy gift into cash, eBay is the way to go. Just make sure you take nice looking pictures and put some time into making the listing look good, as that’s as important as anything when it comes to getting a good price for your crappy gadget.

5. Hack it
When aunts hand you lemons, make lemonade. Why not open up that MP3 player and see if you can’t make it a bit more interesting? Bust out that soldering iron and cement yourself as being the biggest geek in the family once more.

6. Destroy it
Destroying a piece of technology can be very satisfying. If all else fails, you might as well wreck your crappy gift. Blow it up, run it over with your car, light it on fire or toss it off the roof of your office building. It may just be the only way to make a 64MB USB thumb drive fun.

Overcoming Your Physical Limitations:

HAL Exoskeleton: First thing is first. In order to outwit your opponent and score the last minute deals you desire, you are going to need a strength and speed advantage. Renting a Hal Exoskeleton from Cyberdine will increase your strength up to 10x the norm—making it easy to lift heavy gifts and intimidate the weak. Sure, a rental costs about $US2,200—but you have to ask yourself: how bad do I want to win? [Cyberdine via Link]

iShoes: As mentioned, speed will also be a key to victory. These self-propelled shoes will help you travel the store at a whopping 21.7kph. [iShoes via Link]

Secure Your Prize:

Sonic Alarm Grenade: Once you have located your prize, you will need to secure it from the grubby hands of the holiday horde. Wearing a set of earplugs and pulling the pin on this sonic grenade should buy you a little breathing room. It packs an ear-splitting high decibel blast that can cut through a crowd like a knife. [Firebox via Link]

R/C Skunk: Speaking of cutting a path through a crowd, sending this realistic looking radio-controlled skunk down the store aisles should help clear the way. It even has a flickable tail to strike fear in the heart of your enemies. [TYNKE]

Security Briefs: These dummy skid-marked briefs are intended to be a secure place to hide your valuables, but placing them on top of the HDTV you want while you shop elsewhere works well too. [Baron Bob]

Cyber Clean: Like the security briefs, Cyber Clean goo can be repurposed for holiday horde fighting. Under normal use, the substance helps clean your keyboard. But sneezing and throwing it discreetly on the product you desire should help you secure it. Licking it and / or putting it down your pants is also effective. [Expert Verdict]

Misdirection:

Excuse Me, I’m a Reporter with a Camera: People will do anything for someone with a camera. Picking up an old shoulder-mount VHS camcorder and a cheap mic from eBay will give you free reign of the store. Posing as a local reporter covering the last minute holiday shopping crowds will help you cut through lines and grab the items you need with no resistance. You can even add a microphone flag for added authenticity. Sure, a VHS camcorder is a poor substitute for a modern, professional video camera—but amidst all of the chaos and the thrill of being on television, people are unlikely to notice. [eBay]

Protect Yourself:

Defender Hoodie: As we have learned from the horrific incident at Toys R Us this year, it is important to protect yourself from insane, gun-wielding shoppers. The Defender Hoodie is made from 2mm of Type IIA bulletproofing—enough to stop a 9mm full-metal-jacket round at a velocity of 1,090 feet-per-second. [Bladerunner via Link]

Umbuster Umbrella: Finally, as a last line of defence, the Umbuster knuckle-dusting umbrella will help you beat down mother nature and crazed holiday shoppers that would trample over their own grandmother to score a deal. [Sruli Recht via Link]

[Image via Zorpia]

Wired does not.

Like the Wizard of Oz, the workings are hidden behind a curtain. One thing we do know — there is either cheating or batteries involved. I’ve walked by a few times to see nobody on the bikes, but the lights still blazing.

Perhaps the tree is powered by Christmas spirit? [Wired]

We managed to catch up with Michael about his masterpiece:

Giz AU: How long have you been Xmas lights for?

Michael Sallaway: This is actually my first year — after we drove around looking at
Christmas lights last year, my other half suggested that we put up “a
few Christmas lights next year”.

I’ve also been really interested in a lot of the American houses that do
animated Xmas lights that I’ve seen on YouTube in previous years; after
I saw that, I figured “I can do something like that!” So I started in
about December last year — took pretty much all year to plan, prepare,
build, synchronise, etc….

Giz AU: Roughly how much cash have you dropped setting all this up?

MS: I don’t know, and I’m too scared to total it all up. :-(

Because I designed and built everything from scratch (designed my own
PCBs, put them all together, built the boxes they go in, built all the
props from spare materials) I saved a bit of money. Also, instead of
buying a heap of lights from retail stores, I cut out the middleman and
imported about 1500m of rope light and 600 sets of fairy lights direct
from manufacturers in china. It was almost an order of magnitude cheaper
than buying retail.

All up, I would hazard a guess that it’s about 5 figures, maybe more,
maybe less.

Giz AU: I noticed there are a few different vids on YouTube… Have you got different
songs playing on rotation? How many? Do you get sick of hearing the same
tunes?

MS: I have 5 different songs that I’ve synchronised; I was hoping for more,
but it takes about 10 hours per minute of audio to sync (because there’s
~300 channels, and because it’s so precise with the timing). Plus the
introduction/voiceover I did, it runs about 16 minutes all up. I have
the “show” (a fixed order of the songs) running in a loop from 6:30 to
every night.

Am I sick of it? yes and no. I listened to each song probably about 500 -
1000 times in the process of synchronising it and preparing it, so I
definitely got sick of them then — but now, I can actually go outside
and watch the fruit of my efforts on display, so I can tolerate them
some more.

Giz AU: What do you do when you’re not programming awesome Xmas light displays?

MS: I work as a software engineer, with embedded Linux network devices (for
Secure Computing — well, now McAfee, since we were bought out). I’ve
also got experience with electronics, embedded development, etc. which
is why I was keen on this.

I’ve also been a muso for a while, so that helped with the
synchronisation and just getting the “feel” of it right.

Giz AU: How long will you leave the lights up for?

MS: Definitely until Christmas, and probably until the end of the year –
depends when people stop coming (or when I get sick of it).

The house is located on Childs Street in Rochedale South up in Brisbane. If you’re anywhere near the area, make sure you check it out.

However, constructing the tree was done at the expense of a thorough DoD level wipe, so this innocent little project may contain enough sensitive company data to make Trigger’s bosses go Grinch on his arse this year. [Make]

You can check the rest of the gingerbread houses collection at You Bent My Wookie, and gain two pounds just by looking at their huge gallery. [You Bent My Wookie via Geekologie]