Gizmodo: tree

100,000-Pound Crane Smashes House in Half

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:40:00 EST

This 100,000-pound crane was removing a tree when the tree broke loose, sending the crane's massive boom down onto the owner's house, smashing it like a Play-Doh sculpture. Check out the carnage in the gallery below. [SFGate]

iPod Survives Falling Tree Accident, Is Not to Blame for Owner's Death

Dan Nosowitz — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:00:00 EDT

A Philadelphia jogger was killed yesterday by a falling tree when she failed to hear the warning signs of the impending crash over the music from her iPod. But let's not be hasty and blame the iPod.

What's especially chilling, and damning if you're the type to blame the inanimate gadget, is that the iPod was still playing music when the woman was discovered. It's an awful accident, but one we should take as a warning: Listening to music while jogging is essential (at least for someone who hates jogging as much as I do), but noise-cancelling or blocking headphones are a bad idea, since they eliminate ambient noises like traffic and, well, falling trees. And as much as that hot new Beyonce song sounds great when cranked super loud, volume moderation is probably warranted. Run safe, people. Run safe. [Philadelphia Inquirer via Cult of Mac]

Dutch Arcade Cabinet Carved From a Tree

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Looks like "boom" means "tree" in Dutch, rhyming with foam rather than broom, but this is still a pretty sweet art piece. Check out the "wiring" on the back after the jump. [Uitschot va BoingBoingGadgets]

Best Xmas Tree Ever Has All the Sci-Fi Decorations You Can Imagine

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:18:41 EST

Xmas nerdgasm! Earthlings, behold the best Xmas tree ever, decorated using every single sci-fi electronic figure in the Universe, as you'll see in the video. From Star Wars to Star Trek, the mind boggles.

Sci-Fi Xmas Tree: The Movie

Sci-Fi Xmas Tree: Bonus

All the ornaments

The tree belongs to own of our dearest commenters and his wife, and the first ever to hold a star in Gizmodo: Strider. Or like he wants to call himself in real life: Mike. As you can see, it's absolutely spectacular, even overwhelming with all that sound.

In 1997, when Hallmark started the light and sound Star Trek ornaments, my mom bought all my brothers and sisters (including my then-girlfriend) the original NCC-1701 Enterprise ornament. Every year since then my wife and I have tried (and I'm pretty sure succeeded) to collect them all, including the Star Wars ones, although I'm not actually sure how complete our collection is at the moment. We don't keep track, we just get the ones we want, which is usually all if not most of them.

I use eight individual strings of lights to spread out the electrical load of the light-powered ornaments. It takes at least a few hours to set the whole thing up. It's so worth it though. We're up to two of those large plastic bins of the ones that get put away. Every year we decide to keep a couple more of the battery operated ones out. -I want the big TIE fighter for my desk, personally.

[Big thanks for Mike and his wife, Melissa—who put the decorations up— for the amazing job of documenting the decoration of their tree for us]

Digital Photo Bauble Lets You Spice-Up Christmas Trees With Inappropriate Pics

Kit Eaton — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

This is a 21st Century Christmas tree bauble: There's a 1.4-inch screen in there, powered by AAA batteries and 8MB of USB-accessed storage, and it's capable of showing slideshows of your pictures. Out now for around $12 each. Which is cheap enough that you could have a bunch of them on the tree, among the innocent tinsel and candy canes, set to display the kind of photos that'd really freak out the mother-in-law when she visits. [Chinavision via 7Gadgets]

This is Way Better than a Treehouse

Sean Fallon — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:20:44 EST

No matter where you are on this planet, you will find throngs of people longing to get loaded—and they will often go to great lengths to do it. Case in point is this bar built inside a 72ft Baobab tree in Limpopo, South Africa. When Baobab trees reach 1,000 years old they begin to hollow naturally. This particular tree is around 6,000 years old and the hollow is big enough to hold 15 people comfortably (or 54 people very uncomfortably as they discovered a few years ago).

As you might imagine, the bar has attracted quite a bit of attention over the years despite its remote location. It now serves more than 7,000 visitors from all over the world annually. [Daily Mail via Neatorama]

Ornament Lets You "Blow" on Santa's "Magic Candle" to Turn Out Your Tree Lights

Sean Fallon — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:40:32 EST

When you wire this perverted Santa to your Christmas tree, you can turn out the lights with a simple blow on his "magic candle." When you want to turn the lights back on again, a push of the button on the chimney will get the job done. Sure, a device like this could be practical if you don't normally have the tree wired to a light switch, but you have to wonder whether all of the innuendo was lost on the distributor. Kind of like when your mom uses words like "erect." Available for $24.99. [Product Page via OhGizmo]

Recycled Xmas Decorations — May All Your Christmases Be Geek

AddyDugdale — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:50:47 EST

Are these the perfect tree decorations for green geeks? Possibly. Made from recycled CDs and circuit boards, they are heinously expensive (around $6 for a circuit-board dangler, $9 for the CD version. Or you can get a set of three for $16 or $21 respectively. Or you can not bother.

What do people who buy stuff like this put on the top of the tree, I wonder? [Nigel's Eco Store via Gadgets News]

The Pros and Cons of LED Christmas Lights

Brian Lam — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 12:00:45 EST

Consumer Reports writes about the pros and cons of LED Christmas tree lighting. In summary:

• Not surprisingly, LEDs womp all over incandescents for power saving, using ~3-33% less power, saving you up to $10 bucks every 300 hours.
• Not surprisingly, LEDs won the durability test, failing to burn out over 4,000 hours, with standards burning one or two out per strand before half that time.
• LEDs were not brighter, but ran cooler—Did you know 14 people a year are killed as a result of Christmas tree fires?
• Surprisingly, LEDs and incandescents tied for initial price, at about an average of 7 bulbs per buck.
No word on the pros and cons of candles vs LEDs in manorahs. What are your experiences? And know any sources for reliable LED tree lights? [Consumer Reports and christmaslights.com]

An Electronics Junk Christmas Tree

Travis Hudson — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 13:05:28 EST

All of you could be considered geeks in one form or another, so must of us have small or large amounts of electronic junk laying around.

"This tree was made (almost) completely from pre-existing stuff around my house. The foundation consists of modular wire shelf units connected with bailing wire. Plushies are stuffed into every conceivable space with a Hello Kitty angel at the top. The lights are LEDs and the icicles are black-light cold cathodes; the bottom ones being fluorescent. The top 5" tv plays snow and the bottom one plays the yule log.

It isn't the prettiest tree in town, but at least it is unique and gets the job done. – Travis Hudson

Photo Page [Via MAKE]

Real Christmas Tree...Poster

Brian Lam — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:13:20 EST

Think that Charlie Brown Christmas Tree is pathetic? That tree is the goddamn Rockefeller evergreen next to the Christmas Tree Poster. No more needles in my socks. No more sap on the caret. And no more dragging the damn thing through the house to toss it out on the street Jan. 1st. I'll just get this wall hanging, a pine air freshener, and string some lights up on it.

I bet it'll make a pretty good background for all those unboxing day photos, too.—Brian Lam

Christmas Tree Poster[Firebox]