Monthly Archives: July 2010

My admission to the Rocket Poppeteers Astronaut Program

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This is an update to a post I originally wrote about a little tidbit I discovered through /film back in May. It’s a pretty cool “viral marketing” campaign for an upcoming movie. This one just happens to feature North Dakota. It all started with this movie teaser trailer:

At the end of the trailer there’s a flicker of film leader that someone took still images of to get the words “SCARIEST THING I EVER SAW.” From there they decided to visit the website “scariestthingieversaw.com.” On that website was a simulator for a PDP-11, an old mainframe computer like the ones I used to get in trouble on in the 80s. It displayed a timer, and once the timer counted down certain features were enabled. One of those was to print these two images:

Click to view/download: Image 1 – Image 2

When you print them out, they appear to be newspaper pages from the 1940s that have some hidden features. One of the not-so-hidden features is an ad for Rocket Poppeteers, a popsicle-like treat. JJ Abrams is known to put fictitious foods in his movies and mention them by name, but this one’s getting some prominent treatment. (Yes, there’s a rocketpoppeteers.com website, but it doesn’t do anything…yet.) The ad contains a form to mail in to “Become a Rocket Poppeteer and Join the Race to Outer Space!” Where do you send it? Minot, North Dakota.

Naturally, being the curious sort, I filled out one of these forms to see what might happen. So far, nothing has been mailed back to me. No MIBs have showed up at my house, even ones posing as census workers. If that changes, I’ll let you know.

Why does Minot tie into this? Well, the teaser trailer seems to center around Area 51 and UFOs & aliens. UFO believers have reports of UFO activity around United States nuclear weapons facilities going back for decades, so it makes sense that the movie would include a reference to North Dakota…a somewhat remote, maybe even mysterious to some, place with lots of nukes. The X-Files featured an episode where a UFO was hidden in a hollowed-out nuclear missile silo in North Dakota, so why not take the idea to feature film?

Being familiar with central North Dakota, the presence of Air Force bases and nuclear weapons in our great state, and the whole UFO conspiracy theory subculture to a degree, I got a kick out of this viral campaign. While I’m not one of the UFO conspiracy theorists, I find them entertaining to watch. It’ll be interesting to see where and how far this movie takes this campaign and how heavily it features our great state.

—————————— UPDATE ———————————-
 

Here’s where the new stuff starts: I got a letter in the mail from Rocket Poppeteers yesterday. Enclosed is a congratulatory letter, in 1940s-era typewriter font, with my name handwritten in a blank salutation.

As you can see, the letter has the Minot PO Box return address and a legitimate Minot, ND postmark. Whoever is checking the post office box, filling out the letters, and mailing them out is presumably from the Minot area.

This is the text of the letter, although there’s more on the page. The letter mentions a ‘Captain “Coop” Cooper’ a couple of times, so I suppose he’ll be featured in the movie. There’s no official information available at this time, at least none that I found.

Since the letter asks, “Are you ready to begin?” I can only hope that this is the start of a continued Rocket Poppeteers adventure – and that North Dakota may feature heavily in the upcoming Super8 movie. If I receive any additional mail or details, I’ll post it here!

Put me in, coach! Put me in

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If one could feel a sense of pity for an inanimate object, it would likely happen during a sight like this. With an ample harvest approaching in the verdant field ahead, this poor broken down piece of equipment is reduced to spectator status. Its glory days have passed and it has been relegated to being an ornament, a placeholder on a hill. It will now be forced to watch as newer, larger machines – machines with closed, air conditioned cabs and GPS receivers – perform the duties it once enjoyed. See? Kinda sad, isn’t it?

How to know where you stand with your combine: googly eyes

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This sight during the Mandan parade on July 4th made me laugh. It immediately reminded me of a certain Saturday Night Live skit featuring Christopher Walken. I haven’t actually watched Saturday Night Live in many, many years (is Dana Carvey still on the cast?) but someone told me about this particular skit. It was hilarious. It is one of the few things on SNL that isn’t vulgar, so I invite you to watch:

After seeing this, I put googly eyes on the cactus in our office, since it was literally poking up a ceiling tile above it. At least now I know where I stand with it. After all, cacti have pricklers…

Room with a view

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A lot of the old familiar abandoned farmsteads I’ve photographed since picking up my photography hobby are now lying in shambles. After all, a building leaning at a 45 degree angle can only do it for so long, right? So it’s time to search out some new ones.

This one is my new favorite, I think…an ornate home, large for its time, which was at one time lined with brick outside. This front window overlooks a particularly scenic little valley. I noticed the remnants of an old chair parked by the front picture window. The drab and delapidated interior is an amazing contrast to the colorful glory of the valley outside and the summer sky.

There are 10 kinds of people…those who can read binary and those who can’t

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I spotted this “leetmobile” in a parking lot a while back and had to nab a quick cell phone shot of it. I couldn’t actually tell you if the binary code thereon means anything, since I haven’t remembered how to read binary code since the 1980s. While I’ve blurred out the license plate, I can tell you that it’s a ham radio operator plate. That means the owner of this car is likely quite tech-savvy, even beyond spraying ones and zeros across the hood of his little Ford.

Here’s a little more information about binary code. It’s basically a way of breaking down letters and numbers to the simplest form, combinations of ones and zeros. “10” means 2, which is why I made the joke in the title.

I actually spent way more of my time as an old Apple II geek using hexadecimal numbers and can still convert it to regular numbers in my head (although not quite as quickly as I could back during the Reagan era). It’s commonly used to program website colors, which is why I like the joke “Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base, are belong to you.” That’s also only funny if you get the corny 80s video game reference.

Okay, now I’ve illustrated my geekdom. No, it’s not my car. 🙂

Milky Way Morning

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One of the primary reasons I got into photography was astrophotography, or photographing the night sky. I’ve always been a big stargazer and have quite the equipment for doing so (even down to an iTunes playlist, which I will share soon). I got my first camera to take pictures of Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) in particular, and even got a few shots before the sunspots responsible for them fizzled. Since then we’ve been in a solar minimum, one with an in explicable lack of sunspots. I have been blaming myself and my camera purchase, of course.

Then I got my new camera and have had a very hard time finding some night skies. Usually when they were clear, the moon would pollute the scene with unwanted light. That or I just wasn’t able to break away at night to try for some cool shots. This weekend I did get a chance to hang out with the new camera and some other gear. One of the reasons I wanted to upgrade my camera was for the new one’s better performance in low light, and I was not disappointed.

This is one of my new favorite stargazing nooks, and as I grow accustomed to the features of the new camera I’m sure you’ll see more of this lone tree or the hidden rural road featured in the first photo above. I was only out for a short time, but my friend and I saw LOTS of shooting stars and satellites. The Milky Way was quite visible until the moon started to rise on the east horizon. It was also getting cold and late, so we called it quits for the time being. Hopefully I will have plenty of stargazing photos to add to these over the rest of the summer!

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. — Psalm 19:1

Excellent turnout

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I haven’t seen a crowd like this at the capitol Independence Day celebration in recent memory! It was a very uplifting sight. Just about everybody rose and stood at attention for the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The performance of this grand hymn was the most amazing one I’ve ever heard, with all the verses about Christ intact, and it was a breathtaking experience. The fact that thousands of my fellow North Dakotans stood to take it in as well made it even more special.

Dakota Roads revisited

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This isn’t the same stretch of road as my original Dakota Roads post from 2006, but if my memory serves me right I believe they may both be Highway 1.

A beautiful black road like this is not a common site in North Dakota, since various transportation and road departments have a chip-seal fetish that I can’t explain. Actually, as a motorcyclist, I resent it. It seems a shame to cover a beautifully smooth, sticky stretch of blacktop with a damaging abrasive, one especially hazardous when it’s first applied and left to sit for a week or two. As a result, a nice black road like this one is particularly noticeable and wonderful to me.

So how do those letters and numbers appear in the capitol windows every July 4th, Christmas, and New Year’s Day?

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Sunday night some of these windows will be lit up with “4TH” as part of the Independence Day celebration on the front steps of the capitol. Every year the celebration features the music of the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra and finishes with a dramatic fireworks finale. Have you ever found yourself wondering how those numbers or colored Christmas tree shapes appear in the capitol building’s windows every July and December?

That’s where Bill comes in. He works for the Facility Management Division up at the state capitol, and it’s Bill and his crew who oversee the window shade pulling (and opening) to make sure it’s done right.

While Bill can pretty much do this by habit now, he does have an interesting aid: a diagram of the capitol with the relevant squares (the ones to be lit) highlighted. Facility Management and Bill were kind enough to let me tag along for this year’s window shade operation.

Bill has his custodial crew of around thirty people close all the shades on the front of the capitol as well as the east and west sides. The idea is to have the sides completely blacked out for the celebration, with the “4TH” visible only on the front. Once the crew closed all the shades on those three sides, Bill and I roamed the necessary floors and pulled open the shades forming the text.

Some windows are in spacious offices, and some are in pretty tight spots such as narrow supply rooms. Some are in such tough spots that I got to lend my lanky arms to Bill’s aid in order to snag & pull the cord. Because of that, I can lay claim to part of the 4 and (I think) the H!

The whole process took about a half hour, and I don’t think I held up Bill at all. This was an easy one; the letters were small and compact, and only one side is lit. During Christmas there is the complication of colored shades and two sides to do. For New Year’s there are four sides of the building to do. Also, for displays that are left up for more than one night, it’s important to stay on top of things to make sure the right shades are up and down and lights left on.