What To Do With 78 USB Drives Next Christmas? 381
ArfBrookwood writes "Every year, I write a Christmas Letter and send it to about 50 people, and every year, it's different. One year it was just the word blah blah blah over and over with keywords, one year I made papercraft wallets with full color cards and money in them, another year I created a Christmas Letter writing contest that instructed the recipients to create our Christmas Letter for us and we awarded prizes to winners, last year, I took a fake retro photo of my family, Inkscaped/GIMPed in a chemistry set and some wall art, printed it onto CD covers, and burned retro Christmas songs onto digital vinyl and sent everyone in the family what looked like a miniature Christmas album. Last week, I came into the possession of 78 2GB USB drives. I have already taken the time to wipe them clean and reflash the memory so they are blank slates." Now, Arf's looking for suggestions for how to best use all these drives; read on for more.
"My first inclination was to remove the USB drives from their careful packaging and plastic enclosures, dump them into a slurry of glue and rock dust, sandpaper the USB port to make it look ancient, and then make some videos or include some oddly formatted numbered/whatever text files to make them look like they cam from some dystopian wasteland fallout-3 type future and then package them in envelopes that looked like they were from some central futuristic government post office. The idea would be that in the future, incidents that happened this year would have had a profound affect on the future. I never tell anyone what the Christmas Letter will look like, and I have only one rule — I have to outdo whatever I did the last year."
Two things. (Score:5, Interesting)
1 - I would put a personalized "virtual advent calendar" (ha! the hard part is answering what that means) on them.
and
2 - I would decorate them as a Christmas ornament (if not put them inside an actual glass ornament with only the plug exposed) so they have a use beyond the first year.
Album, eh (Score:3, Interesting)
You paid for the rights to those songs, right? Using the relevant authority for licensing in question?
re: the USB dealies:
Trade them up until you get a house (like the craigslist guy a while back), then write a regular letter with cryptic clues (but not too cryptic) to find the place, the first person who reaches it gets the deed.
Nested .rar files (Score:0, Interesting)
Bury your newsletter in a series of nested .rar files, each consecutively passworded with the next word of your favorite christmas carol.
Put a (Score:5, Interesting)
USB Christmas Tree! (Score:5, Interesting)
Do the USB drives have usage lights?
1.Remove them from their casing, exposing their green PCB organs.
2.Buy a stack of USB hubs, and chain them together. Plug your usb drives into the hubs.
3.Arrange the usb drives in the form of a chrismas tree.
4.Set up a program to access the flash drives at random, causing their usage lights to flash.
Et Voila, flashing usb christmas tree!
Books (Score:5, Interesting)
I checked, Dickens' A Christmas Carol is on there
I'm sure they'd appreciate a donation if you do. They do a great job.
Install your favorite minimalist distro.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Use some Social Engineering (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd label each one "Do Not Use This Drive." I'd put a program on it labelled, "Do Not Open This Program." Create the program so that it causes their mail client to email you from their email account. See how many emails you get. This would be a good opportunity to teach them how they can protect themselves from data theft, trojans, etc.
Re:Two things. (Score:5, Interesting)
Virtual advent calendar: Pictures of your family for Christmas, home movies, etc, each encrypted with a different key you send to your recipients on each day in December leading to Christmas Day.
Secret Government OS (Score:1, Interesting)
If you're a programmer, I would suggest putting a bootable Linux distro on the OS, but change the entire environment so that it looks like a secret government operating system with secret data on it. Some of this data could point to a secret website that you could set up and make people feel like they're stumbling onto something they shouldn't have.
Re:Where's the fun ideas? (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a project that already does most of that:
http://sam.zoy.org/lmos/ [zoy.org]
although be sure to change the default included placeholder media.
Be useful. (Score:5, Interesting)
Do something actually useful. Donate'em to an inner city middle school.
Unusual Christmas Cards (Score:5, Interesting)
I never tell anyone what the Christmas Letter will look like, and I have only one rule â" I have to outdo whatever I did the last year.
I fear I've fallen into that trap too, last year I made some edge lit christmas cards [evilmadscientist.com] but instead of using coin batteries I included twisted white wire with a soldered USB plug so the card will never run out of power (unless you switch your PC off). Just about everyone who received one loved it.
:)
This year I'm planning on doing another edge lit card but with several layers, powered by a SMD PICAXE chip embedded into the card for animation, flashing, sequencing or whatever I decide.
The year after next I may do yet another USB powered edge lit card but include a flash drive for a christmas video or something *shrug* hopefully I'll get some good ideas from this topic
Remastersys (Score:3, Interesting)
Along those lines, let me add these tips:
1. Take an unused PC (or virtual machine) and install Ubuntu on it just the way you want to send it out.
2. You must decide if your distribution will include any home directories, or otherwise will be a 'proper distribution'. You need to know this to continue your setup. If you include a home directory, you can setup themes, firefox extensions, everything in-advance really.
3. Install and use Remastersys, which will create a large .iso file for the next step. : http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/remastersystool.html [geekconnection.org]
4. In Ubuntu, select System > Adminsitration > Create a USB startup stick
5, you need to allocate how much space to to give this new USB PC. Slide it MOST of the way to the right (to create space for the user files) but not all the way (to leave some space for the OS, patches and new application installs in the future, etc.); I *think* this is technically accurate, YMMV.
6. Answer as per your setup decisions made on Step 2.
7. Send a whole bunch of free software out on USB sticks using some postal services.
8. Profit!!!!
- - - - -
Now having done this, I wonder how severe the implications are of breaking whatever laws cover the following:
Applications like Google Earth 5.0 require a user to agree to Google's non-transferable licensing terms, (although I can install Google earth 4.3 without entering into an agreement during the install, but never-mind). It SEEMS like I could setup apps like Google Earth 5 in advance for my mother and not risk too much trouble with the law, even though she lives in the US, while I'm now in Europe. But what about doing the same thing for a relatively small Christmas card list of close personal friends who I trust not to rat me out to Google? What about sending them Skype also? (But note that SIP-based Ekiga still gets my strong support over Skype wherever possible)
Re:Be useful. (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is the answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Some ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
Fill the USB drives with DOSBox and some DOS Shareware games so they can remember what gaming was like in the 1980's when PC clones running MS-DOS were all the craze.
Put in some family videos in AVI files on the USB drives, make them Christmas themed or if you recorded prior Christmas days of kids opening up presents you can use those videos.
Fill it full of PNG and JPEG Christmas photos.
That CD you made, convert the songs to MP3 format and put them on the USB drive so they can load them onto their iPods, Zunes, iPhones, Blackberries, etc.
Don't listen to the people telling you to put viruses and email programs on the USB drives, that is not what Christmas is all about.
Re:Two things. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would use password-based cryptography, instead of sending them actual cryptographic keys by e-mail. Not only is it easier for the recipients, but you could choose fairly weak, Christmas-themed passwords (e.g., "snowflake," "cookie," "Santa," etc.). That way, the "peekers" in the family could try to guess the passwords in advance!
And I agree whole-heartily with the GP: make the USB drives into some sort of ornament. You could even use coloured pipe cleaners and those goofy stick-on eyes to make the USB keys look like reindeer. That way, the drives don't go to waste.
A Family Treasure Chest (Score:3, Interesting)
One possibility would be to create a family "treasure chest" of sorts. Well in advance of the holiday season, ask everyone in the family to contribute something (according to a theme). Then, you collect all the submissions and put them (along with your letter) on each USB drive.
As a concrete example of a theme, one year an aunt of mine asked everyone in the family to contribute their favourite recipe. Then, she typed all of them up and sent everyone a collected-effort recipe book. It was such a simple thing, but everyone in the family loved it.
You could do this with any number of themes: recipes, old photographs, favourite stories from the past, etc. Then, put your Christmas letter along with this treasure chest on the USB drives.
Mystery (Score:5, Interesting)
Create a puzzle that will require the cooperation of all the recipients to complete. The contents of each drive should be tailored to the individual. Computer-savvy people could have an encrypted document or image on their drive; computer dunces could have a simple text file that says "Call Joe at 870-555-1234 and tell him to give the password on his drive to Mark at 901-555-4567." Put hints on some drives, and images, and text files, and passwords, and instructions that, if all are followed, will result in the final unveiling of something cool.
The "something cool"? I don't know. If you have some money laying around, it could result in uncovering a bunch of $10 iTunes gift certificate codes on some web site somewhere. (But it'd have to be done in such a way that each person involved can claim exactly one certificate.)
Ideally, build some redundancy into the puzzle so that even if 10 or 20 people don't participate, the remainder can still get something cool in the end.
If you choose to do this (and I must say I think my idea is pretty awesome), keep me posted on what you do. My contact info is on my /. profile.
Re:Fill Them With Random Data (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm also wondering if "dd if=/dev/zero of=(usb sticks)" could be trusted...
We have a use for them (Score:4, Interesting)
Gregory Kearney
Manager - Accessible Media
Association for the Blind of Western Australia
61 Kitchener Avenue, PO Box 101
Victoria Park 6979, WA Australia
Telephone: +61 (08) 9311 8202
Telephone: +1 (307) 224 4022 (North America)
Fax: +61 (08) 9361 8696
Toll free: 1800 658 388 (Australia only)
Email: gkearney@gmail.com
Re:Be useful. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Use some Social Engineering (Score:1, Interesting)
Create the program so that it causes their mail client to email you from their email account.
That's actually not such a bad idea. Not the "teach them about computer security" bullshit. Rather, use it to actually find out how many of the people bother to look at your Christmas card, and how many trash your card on receipt, saying "Oh, God. Not another "creative" Christmas card from that asshole ArfBrookwood. Remember when that idiot sent us the card with nothing but "blah blah blah" repeated? What a douchebag."
Because they're not going to say it to your face. If you ask them "What did you think of my Christmas card this year?" they're going to reply "Oh, yes, very ... inventive. I bet it took you a while to come up with that," all while laughing at your harebrained idea with the other 49 people on the list.
Re:Be useful. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the same spirit ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wedding invitations (Score:2, Interesting)
My (now) wife and I wanted to be a little different with our wedding invitations, to do something a little nerdy (got married in December too, so practically last Christmas). We ended up getting something like 40 512MB USB drives for cheap from Overstock.com, put leather cording and metal heart charms on them, and put our wedding invitations on those (done in Flash CS3 with Atari 2600-ish graphics and animation, fakey scan lines, animated blocky snow, Commodore 64-ish music, etc.
Definitely got better responses than what I'd imagine we'd get doing mail-in cards alone, and helped further identify all the geeks in our families. Made a social gathering all the more entertaining for a couple who otherwise loathes social gatherings on a pseudo-grand scale. =P
Re:Send them to me. (Score:5, Interesting)
I see. Strangely enough, I like getting Christmas letters from my friends who I don't often see, just to let me know a bit about what's been happening in their lives. Sure, it's a bit impersonal and we should probably make an effort to stay in better contact through the year, but when you have a busy work life and kids, sometimes it's difficult to find the time.
I guess I'm just strange, enjoying hearing from friends.
Re:Send them to me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not at all, I have plenty of actual friends from whom I don't get letters because I see them every week. This is from people I was at uni with eight years ago, we're all busy workers with families and kids and, apart from an occasional IM chat, we don't see each other or get to spend proper lengths of time talking about the kids etc. Doesn't mean I no longer regard these people as friends, they are just distant these days but I'm interested in hearing how their lives are going.
Re:The world's best christmas cards? (Score:2, Interesting)
Beowulf killed my mother, you insensitve clod!
Re:Targets! (Score:1, Interesting)
OK, I give up. I'm posting AC because, well, I'm embarrassed. Check Mate on the womprat roundabout.
That said, I think there should be a new law. We'll call it the Gungan Law. It's similar to Godwin's law.
When someone posts to a thread and it brings even a hint sympathy for the Gungans (no matter how funny), the thread is over and said poster should be subject to re-education in the form of an unmodified original 1977 cut of Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange style.
That is all.