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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!
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?
You can propably get there without any safety equipment. You can locate the web cam by looking at the pictures...
If the dino appered suddenly (as the article suggest), then it propably was by some outsider.
- These characters were randomly selected.
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..
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
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!
"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
What tells you there isn't the horribly burnt, decomposing cadaver of the tourist prankster down on the ground, out of the camera's field of view?
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.
White Island isn't a dangerous, lava-covered island. It's actually relatively safe so long as you don't stay there too long and, on bad days, where a mask. Tourist boats go out there all the time, it's just that most of them don't stop off to let people wander around due to the liability problems of having un-educated people wandering around a live volcano spewing out noxious fumes. If you're careful, you can easily get on, attach a Dino, and get off again.
White Island's not that far from shore - certainly within reach of any of the local sea-going pleasure boats - from memory people actually used to mine sulphur there in years gone by - but it's also somewhere that's particularly expected to let loose one day soon so it's not reccomended
Here is a copy of the photo, as the site is S L O W at the moment
Not any more. Most companies have learned the lesson that they are too inert and they are not getting enough turnover. As a result modern toy and household plastics have under 5 years of life and become brittle and break due to decomposition and loss of plastifiers. Some plastics are even more short lived (plastic bags have under 6 months of life). So that dino is not going to be there for very long.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
..in case of slashdotting. Mirror
If plastics melt in this particular enviroment, what is the webcam made out of?
C:\earth\humans\del *.m0ronz
the dinosaur _is_ there, I work at GNS and our internet is really slow thanks to you lot.
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.
wow, but that guy is all over the forum!
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.