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Remote New Zealand Volcano Sees Dinosaur Alert?
Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing to a ChannelNewsAsia story discussing a 'dinosaur' sighting in webcam pictures of a remote New Zealand volcano. The latest live webcam picture shows the offending creature, with Geonet spokesperson John Callan saying: "Some wag has glued a [toy] pink dinosaur in front of our digital camera", even though "...most people do not go ashore on the uninhabited, rumbling" White Island, east of Auckland, where the webcam is located. Apparently, the dinosaur will stay for now, since authorities "are not planning on removing it, counting on the sulphur and high acid environment to deal to the creature."
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a story complete with picture in case of a Slashdotting.
This is a great hack. It has to be an inside job. How else would they know when the camera takes pictures, to avoid getting caught. Not to mention the exact location of the camera.
Too funny!
"Some wag" is a cop out. They did it and are afraid to admit it. Who else would have the necessary safety equipment to put the toy there, other than the people who put the web cam there, and who else would know exactly where the web cam was on an island that "people don't go on"? We're expected to believe "some wag" jusy happened along in that forbidding scenery and just happened to be carrying that particular toy, and happened to find that aprticular spot and know what the thing was attached to?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
... to go unnamed.
Actually, there IS no other news, which is why this made it to the front page.
Who has the time to go up a volcano to pull a global prank? Only a geek
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Slashdot points to BoingBoing points to ChannelNewsAsia points to a webcam pointing at New Zealand?
I think I'm getting dizzy..
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
This could create a new fad. Place object of choice in the field of these site cams.
Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing
Shouldn't that read BamBam?
Many plastics are fairly resistant to acidic environments and sulfur aren't they? Isn't this why toys like this last for hundreds of years? I realize that many plastics have different chemical characteristics, but aren't the majority pretty inert? Someone out there with some plastics chemistry knowledge like to weigh in?
After turning up the audio gain for the web cam, said dinosaur was heard to vocalize: "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh!!!"
That's not a dinosaur, it's Smaug! He's escaped from the set of Peter Jackon's The Hobbit and is trying to nest!
If they don't do something quickly, this could be even worse than the incident when all those orcs got loose during the Battle of Helm's Deep filming and slaughtered that busload of Japanese tourists!
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If you're ever setting up a webcam outside, position it so that the sun is always behind it, not shining directly into the camera for two or three hours every afternoon.
I learned this the hard way; my weathercam has exactly the same pattern of smokey lines across the sky now too..
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actually it's not that remote, it's a 40 min boat ride from where i live, tourists go there almost daily (yes i've been too) and it certainly is not fuckin east of auckland!
Agreed. I went there out of curiosity--to see the Dinosaur. When I saw "Dino" I almost blew a half a can of Mt. Dew at my laptop....LOL! That's classic!
And we get to watch Dino slowly melt into purple goo.
in bed.
Actually, white island isn't that remote. It is a fairly popular daytrip. I'd post photos from a holiday there, but there's no way my 128k DSL line can handle slashdot :-(
Here is a copy of the photo, as the site is S L O W at the moment
..in case of slashdotting. Mirror
...Until they see the picture and realise that Dino is a purple dinosaur.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
If plastics melt in this particular enviroment, what is the webcam made out of?
C:\earth\humans\del *.m0ronz
If it does slowly melt like the article implies, it would be rather neat to download and save the photo everyday and create a time-lapse video of it melting... If it actually does...
The real thing is that scientists are conducting experiments on the poor little thing by testing the limit that Dino can reach in an inhospitable environment. Please stop the insanity and save the dinosaur.
--This announcement is sponsored by PETA
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
the dinosaur _is_ there, I work at GNS and our internet is really slow thanks to you lot.
Gee, I'm not sure what I could have to back it up that would make you believe me. Yes, it was an inside job. No, I don't have proof.
Was there with some friends a few years ago. It was fun. Sail north for a couple hours, climb around the volcano for a few hours, and sail back. I've got tons of pictures of us climbing around the crater, sulpher pools, and factory ruins. They used to have factories built in it to process the sulphur, but after they were destroyed the third time, they never rebuilt.
It's actually fairly safe there. The volcano is quite well behaved. It throws out steam continuously, and only occasionally has hissy-fits where it throws out rocks the size of coffee-tables. Those come and go, so as long as you avoid it during particularily active times, you'll be fine.
As in the email I sent to the Inquirer in reply to this article, it appeared between 11am and Noon NZST on the 5th of may, as evidenced by these archived shots: 11am Noon. Given the positioning and angle, I suspect someone who has access to the camera and was able to make sure it was lined up correctly.
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
I've been studying this sauropod since thursday, and I believe that it is a plastic pen topper, one of a group of Flintstone pen toppers available on the web:
http://amres-pics.com/p_asp/a4091.asp
Here's the topo of the island:
http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/volcanoes/nz volcanoes/bookimages/Whit_fig1.gif
..and more stuff about it:
http://www.wi.co.nz/hazards.htm
The camera is actually located near the beach, about 3/4 kilometers from any active vents, so it's pretty safe and highly accessible by boat. Apparently groups of geology students are sent out there to study, and probably to maintain the camera too. I guess one of them had this fancy topper along, and was struct by sudden inspiration. Since there is likely a pen or pencil under Dino, it will be highly stable against disturbances.
There is a forum about White island, but in 3 years most posts seem to be blank submits from students "learning" about the island. There was one post a few days ago that mentioned the 'saur, but no other word before that.
A page on that now-slashdotted site showed the camera setup, and it looks like the camera is just above ground level, matching what's seen in the live image, so I doubt it's faked.
Compared to some other photos, the island seems fairly quiet right now.
Perennial student + Impractical joker + CSS junkie = Big John
The dinosaur is contravening OSH guidelines by not wearing a hard hat.
He's only purple in NTSC. Here in PAL world, the colour is much closer to pink.
Sorry, here on /. we can only see the male color palette. Female-visible color shades like lavender and fuscia are simply purple and pink, respectively.
There are quite a lot of active volcanoes in New Zealand, some of which are fairly frequently visited by trampers (hikers). In the case of White Island, the government funded Geological and Nuclear Sciences Institute (who incidentally part fund the webcam) have the a hazard advice booklet on the web for those who wish to visit White Island: Visitors to White Island should avoid steam/gas clouds, and watch for wind changes that could blow clouds in their direction. Gas masks with acid gas filters are advisable, to be work if gas becomes a problem. http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/volcanoes/nzvo lcanoes/whiteisprint.htm