Freight Elevator April Fools

April Fools' Day can be downright terrible sometimes - can't say I'm a fan of mean pranks that ruin someone's day or make them feel miserable or small. BUT, I appreciate ridiculousness and hilarity as much as the next person - maybe even a bit more.

For the past three years, we have taken an hour out of our April 1st workday at my science museum - which is located within our local library - to inhabit the staff freight elevator and serve treats, dress up in costume, and in general have fun. This is all thanks to a brilliant inspiration from my former coworker Evan, and we've carried on the tradition to make it an annual thing. This elevator is only usable by building staff from a variety of organizations in our complex, though maybe someday we'll be allowed to expand into the public-serving elevators...

In 2023, we had an "Alice in Wonderland" theme, wherein I dressed up as the Mad Hatter, and coworkers also wore appropriate tea-time attire. We served hot tea, English biscuits baked by my wife, and read sections of "Alice in Wonderland" to freight elevator riders. 

Last year, my coworker Caitlin and I chose to host a one-off session of our spoof podcast Carrot Chat in the elevator, reading bad AI haiku about carrots and "interviewing" riders on their carrot preferences. We served carrot cake and coffee, and decorated the elevator with our "carrotphernelia". Carrot Chat was a COVID-induced experimental podcast pushing the boundaries of all things carrot-related. More on that in a future post.

This year, we decided to up our game and theme the elevator ride around Roald Dahl's book, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I dressed as Willy Wonka, and rigged a Raspberry Pi computer to trigger this final scene on an in-elevator projector from the original Gene Wilder Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film. It was fun to 3D print and recreate the button from the film and learn how to get a Raspberry Pi to play a section of an .mp4 on a button press. We served Wonka candies, and encouraged all elevator riders to "Take a Ride on the Wonkavator". We even had some library staff print out their digital Golden Ticket invitation to our prank!

Willy Wonka and Augustus Gloop

All in all, this has been a worthwhile exercise in hilarity and levity - something we all need in the current world we live in. 

New Beginnings

Sunset at Mt. Takao in Japan, spring 2024

I'm not sure how to start this post, so I'll just jump right into it: I'm sick of social media and short-form content that adds nothing to our understanding. A few years ago, I mostly gave up social media interactions because it was only making me miserable. With the state of the U.S. and how toxic Facebook had become, it just wasn't for me. I still keep my Meta accounts to engage with work, and use Facebook Marketplace because it is marginally better than craigslist, but otherwise don't want to watch AI bots fight with each other or see a bunch of garbage ads rather than the photos and posts of people that I love.

I used to blog pretty regularly when living in France and spending a lot of time writing for Universe Today in the mid aughts. It would have been easy to just restart anew with another blog since the last post here was in 2008. But, I already restarted this blog from a prior iteration. So, in the interest of keeping things all in one place, I just combined the very old one (To the Extent that it's Absurd) into this one, and will reboot things once again. If you want to see how dumb I was in my 20s, simply scroll down and you won't be disappointed! 

Not everyone needs some sort of digital presence to be important or anything, but I have missed sharing about my life and interesting things that I've been up to, and connections to friends and family that are far-flung. Several friends have actually told me that they miss my posts on Facebook or Instagram about my life, so my intent here is to post roughly every week and share projects, ideas, photos, etc. I know that blogs are a bit more "one-way" in terms of interaction and engagement than other forms of social media, but I'm okay with that - I don't need everyone's "take" on every single bit of my life that I choose to share anyways. Who does?

This blog has no other theme or express purpose other than being a place where I can share things I find interesting with people who might also have interest, and a creative outlet for things I get up to during my work and leisure time. As a recovering English major, long-form content is something that I deeply enjoy both creating and consuming. I make no commitment to any sort of "upload schedule" and will take a page out of the Quaker philosophy of sharing when I feel motivated to do so.

I know the feeling...

From xkcd:

Wow

From Cassini. Wow. Just freaking wow.

Go and Ask

Cosmic Variance is currently taking questions about Quantum Theory so as to explain it in a way that is easily understandable. I urge you to go and ask all of your burning questions about said theory. I doubt they'd appreciate stuff like, "What the F*^K does it all mean, anyway?" but maybe more specific things like "Why was Schroedinger all obsessed with killing cats?"

Pictures

I just got all my pictures from my tour developed onto some CDs. I'll post a little journal with them here sometime in the near or not-so-near future, but if you do the stupid Facebook thingy, I have a lot of them over there. Here's one that turned out really well, though, for your viewing pleasure.

UT: Canada to Build Worlds' First Asteroid-Hunting Satellite

Just yesterday (June 30th) was the 100-year anniversary of the Tunguska event, when a small piece of ice or rock created a huge blast crater near the Podkammenaya Tungus river in Siberia, flattening trees and scaring the heck out of people in the surrounding area. Thankfully, the blast didn't happen in a populated area and nobody was killed, but there are many more pieces of debris floating around out there in space. If we want to do something about an asteroid headed our way, or keep astronauts safe from space debris, knowing is half the battle. Thanks to a new microsatellite being built by the Canadian Space Agency, we will soon have a better map of the objects surrounding the Earth's orbit. More...