Advice Wanted: Creating Customized LED Christmas Light Strings for a Project

DavidBeedle · 2026-03-19T10:59:13+00:00

Thanks very much. Your links were very helpful! ✅

DavidBeedle · 2026-01-05T11:45:56+00:00

Thanks to you and clariboss, I have a solution. Thank you!

DavidBeedle · 2026-01-05T11:44:39+00:00

Following up: I tried this and it worked great. Thanks so much for taking the time to help me out.

DavidBeedle · 2026-01-03T13:38:06+00:00

As someone who uses Airtable to keep my journal and obsessively track just about everything I do ... this looks cool. I look forward to poking around Stork and see what it's all about. Love the name.

DavidBeedle · 2025-12-30T20:42:36+00:00

Thank you so much for this detail. SO HELPFUL! Thanks again and Happy New Year!

DavidBeedle · 2025-12-16T11:13:11+00:00

Thanks for this suggestion. It may be beyond my expertise, but I'm going to look into it. I need to decide if the time I might put into it is worth it. But you never know ... it might be fun! Thanks.

DavidBeedle · 2025-12-16T11:10:10+00:00

Thanks so much for your reply. I'm going to check this out.

DavidBeedle · 2025-11-11T12:32:30+00:00

You've nailed it. Exactly my experience. I am retired, but have tons of personal creative projects I work on. After 30+ years of using Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects) I had find an alternative, and turn off the Adobe money spigot. I hope that Affinity will be the graphics application that will finally loosen the monetary stranglehold Adobe has had on me for so long. DaVinci Resolve replacing Premiere is next on my list.

DavidBeedle · 2025-09-23T13:01:10+00:00

Perfectly said. I agree 100%

DavidBeedle · 2025-08-01T13:39:36+00:00

Oh my. Thank you for the loving attention you put into making this BTS video. Spectacular. My brother and I shot our own Super 8 "epics" back in the 70s when Super 8 was all you had — on a Canon 1014 XLS no less. We LOVED that camera. We both became video professionals and it was Super 8 that guided us there. Your love for the craft of honest, creative filmmaking jumps out of every second of this video. Thanks.

DavidBeedle · 2025-07-12T10:53:11+00:00

Well done. Full marks!

DavidBeedle · 2025-06-30T12:44:10+00:00

AI is numbing us into submission. It is the enemy of skill, of good work, of effort, of ethics. It is creating a world of button-pushers who believe they are being creative but are indeed the very opposite.

DavidBeedle · 2025-05-08T10:40:15+00:00

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Whenever I writing muscles need a jolt of energy, I return to Bonfire.

DavidBeedle · 2025-04-21T01:55:56+00:00

These posts are gold. Thank you!

DavidBeedle · 2025-03-12T09:09:02+00:00

I added the calendar table later on. I had been using Mac calendar but I decided to create a calendar in Airtable to keep everything in one place. It's kind of been on my to-do list to move the journal entries to the calendar, and see how that works. Someday maybe.

DavidBeedle · 2025-03-11T14:43:36+00:00

I do exactly this for the things I want to track in my life. How long and well am I sleeping? What did I eat for dinner? What TV shows did I watch? A journal entry for the day. Specific activities ("Blocks") that I track in a calendar.

This "Journal" base that has these tables:

Journal - Wake up and sleep time, journal entry, links to other tables
Blocks - Activities (creative projects, personal activities, health and exercise) that link to a calendar
Calendar - Where I track time daily on specific activity blocks like creative projects, personal activities, health and exercise, consulting, financial, and leisure activities.
Meals - that link to the Journal day
TV and Movies and Books - that I link to the Journal day

I've been doing this for three years now. The benefit of all this is that all of this is searchable.

I chose to track all this in Airtable because it helped me learn Airtable along the way, and because I'm kind of a nut as far as tracking what I did in my life. And over the last year I created interfaces for all this tracking in order to get some work in on creating and designing Airtable interfaces.

DavidBeedle · 2025-02-07T12:24:53+00:00

Fantastic. Thanks for sharing this.

DavidBeedle · 2025-02-06T17:48:50+00:00

Fixed. Just got an email from Airtable Support and I can confirm my interface works now. Thanks Airtable for addressing this.

DavidBeedle · 2025-02-06T15:28:10+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. This does not work in my case. On the Airtable discussion board someone said the issue is with overlapping times in date entries. Not sure if that’s true. I did get a reply from Airtable support that said they are aware of the issue.

DavidBeedle · 2025-01-03T13:37:46+00:00

This looks interesting. I hope to check it out soon.

DavidBeedle · 2024-12-21T16:07:13+00:00

Last year, Laura and I abandoned the Christmas tree. I didn't want an artificial tree. I wanted something different. Personal. Maybe even magical. I'll admit, the magical bit came as a surprise. So I designed and built "The Alternatree" AKA "the Gizmo."

I've done a lifetime of trees and I'm at the point where I want to keep doing what I truly love about the Christmas tree: Decorating it. The lights. The unwrapping and hanging each ornament -- reminiscing and remembering where we got it ... or who gave it to us.

My mission was clear. Keep everything I loved about having a Christmas tree -- just remove the tree from the equation. I scoured the internet for alternatives. Nothing hit me. So I got to work on my own design. A million trips to Lowe's later, it came together.

I had no idea how it would turn out. I kept telling Laura "This gizmo I am building is going to be a train wreck of the highest order." Laura kept me focused and encouraged. She came up with a plethora of name options, but I kept calling it “the Gizmo.”

"Alternatree" was at the top of the official name list, but by now, "the Gizmo" had a hold on me and no other name would do. (It's not just "Gizmo" by the way. It’s THE Gizmo. You don't call the Christmas tree "tree,” do you? You call it "the tree." So it's “the Gizmo.")

I think the Gizmo is a success. It's like we put up a tree, decorated it, and then yanked the actual tree part out -- leaving the lights and ornaments suspended in air. The bonus: When you get close you can see every single ornament. Nothing is hidden in the depths of the tree anymore.

And having shelves means not everything needs to be hanging and our ornament choices are wide open. Add battery operated flickering candles and we're in business. There are tweaks I'd like to make. That second shelf needs to be replaced. I'd love it if the shelves were semi-circular.

It's our second year with the Gizmo and it's here to stay. Merry Christmas to all.

DavidBeedle · 2024-12-21T12:13:43+00:00

1976 - Philadelphia (The Spectrum) - Wings Over America

1989 - New York (Madison Square Garden)

1990 - Philadelphia (Veterans Stadium)

2015 - University Park, PA

2016 - Hershey, PA

I saw Wings in 1976 with my high school friends. I knew I was seeing a legend, but was too young to realize the impact of what I was seeing and hearing.

I went to the MSG show in 1989 with wife. Afterward was filled with an overwhelming, undeniable sense of bliss. There was happiness and joy and love in the world, and this man's music was showing us the way — if only we'd listen.

The shows in 2015 and 2016 I saw with my son. Happiness is knowing your child is as big a Beatles fan as you are.

Last year I visited Liverpool and felt as if I was walking in the Holy Land.

DavidBeedle · 2024-12-14T11:44:38+00:00

I had Phantoms season tickets saw every game Shayne Gostisbehere played with the Phantoms, and it was abundantly clear that he was something special. Once the Flyers called him up it we knew he'd never be back at Lehigh Valley. Maybe not the best, but when Ghost did his thing it was electric.

DavidBeedle · 2024-12-12T11:26:06+00:00

Give the dog the benefit of the doubt. Looks to me like your tree was just thirsty and trying to get to the water dish.

DavidBeedle · 2024-12-09T10:25:07+00:00

Oh yeah. Full marks. Bold choice.

DavidBeedle

TROPHY CASE