Happy Solstice

Click to blow… [Update: this was supposed to be better!]

Sorry! - Your browser doesn't support Graphics Canvas objects. If it did, you would have seen some psuedo-randomly flickering candles.

Yes, I created this.

No, it's not based on any physical models of flames; it's based on:

• Empirical observations (photos) of a candle flame in stationary and moving air.
• A half-assed attempt at matching the shapes of the flames using a family of cubic Bézier curves.
• Getting the flame colours. (This was more difficult than it sounds. Simply copying the RGB values from the photos didn't look right.)
• Some shit I totally made up to sort of make it look like there was a burst of air. (You did try clicking on them, didn't you?) [Update: I debugged the shit out of the thing, and it totally worked, but it looks like blogger.com doesn't let your javascript get/process the mouse-click events. At least, that's my theory. Which totally sucks, because three quarters of the time I spent working on the fucking thing was getting the blowing to work.]
• The state of delirium one experiences when one is seriously short on sleep, and the consequent delusional feeling that javascript is worth learning.

No, it has nothing to do with any religious bullshit. It's a celebration of the Sun-Earth geometric configuration known as the solstice. If you live in the top half of the globe, then it's the winter solstice, and it's dark, hence the candles.

There's a chance this isn't working on your browser/computer. I tested it on Safari and Chrome. If it's not working for you, get a real computer. [Update: mouse-clicking doesn't work, but the flames should be flickering.]

I verified the time of the solstice, 2011‑12‑22T05:30Z (you do know ISO 8601, right?), from several sources, including the United States Naval Observatory. (No, I don't trust wikipedia. Not for important shit like this.)

So, happy solstice.