The time quickly approaches for the third annual Santa Tracker!
When:
Test messages including Christmas songs and poems begin at 3:00 PM MST on this Thursday, December 23 and will be sent every hour on the hour. The first will be Clement C. Moore's "The Night Before Christmas".
Tracking is expected to begin approximately 3:00 AM MST on Christmas Eve morning (Friday), per Santa's usual liftoff schedule. On average, we expect to release reports every 10 - 15 minutes dependent upon many watchful eyes around the globe.
Tracking is expected to finish approximately 4:00 AM MST on Christmas morning (Saturday).
Tune in as early as you can to print as many tracking updates as you can from around the world even while you sleep-- the 12-hour test message window is there in an attempt to allow as many people from all timezones to tune in ahead of liftoff and catch up on reports after they wake up.
How:
As you would with the regular ITTY service, use an audio streamer like VLC or most modern browsers to stream http://tty.nerdology.org:8000/santatrack (this URL will result in a 404 error until a few hours before the broadcast) and pipe the audio to your TU for printing on heavy metal or even on glass (using software like flgidi) for all to enjoy.
I keep promising an USOS-friendly broadcast (unshift-on-space), but I can never find the time to work out the timing bug to address that. Sorry. Next year? If you have USOS, it's recommended to either disable the functionality or use a non-USOS machine, though having it enabled will not greatly impact the broadcast.
This is best suited for those equipped with autostart/motor control, but as we expect to send reports on average every 10 - 15 minutes, those without autostart could still catch some of the updates easily without having their machines running for ~24 hours straight.
For extra fun, have a good, old fashioned globe or world map nearby for those who wish to follow along geographically.