Category: Family

(This one’s for AW)

Uncommonly, the broadcast signals of television or radio stations have been hijacked by people. When this happens, the hijackers are able to replace the signal (the picture and sound) with one of their own. It hasn’t happened frequently, especially in developed countries, and is a crime in most western nations. When it does happen, the substitute signal is usually some sort of protest (for instance a Christian group hijacker Playboy TV in 1987 and replaced the picture with a protest statement).

One of the most unusual cases of broadcast hijacking occured in Chicago America on November 22, 1987. During a three hour window, a hijacker was able to hijack the signal of two separate televison stations and broadcast his own signal. The first incident was early in the evening during a newscast, when the normal signal of WGN-TV was replaced by video of a man wearing a Max Headroom mask swaying in front of a moving sheet of corrugated iron (used to resemble the standard Max Headroom background). It lasted about 30 seconds and there was no sound.

Later that evening, at around 11:15pm, a screening of Doctor Who (specifically The Horror Of Fang Rock) on PBS was replaced by a similar picture, this time with audio. What follows was one of the most bizarre uses of signal hijacking ever recorded.

Rather than describe it, why not watch it in it’s entirety:

What followed were numerous (criminal) investigations, court filings and a plea for community assistance that never amounted to anything.

The perpetrator(s) were never caught or exposed, and to this day remain unknown.

Last Thursday Jim, KLS and myself took a drive down to visit Bronx Zoo. I’d never been there before and for some reason was a bit wary. It turned out it was a world-class zoo and a very entertaining trip!

The above shows the ground hog enclosure, which includes ‘portholes’ so you can get a close-up look at the little beasts. This was a highlight for me.

Most of the enclosures were beautifully landscaped and very large. The above two are such examples. In the front right of the second photo you can see a waterfall that was part of that particular enclosure.

Three random shots. The red panda (leftmost shot) was charming, sleeping as he was in a patch of sun.

The middle shot was taken in the wonderful butterfly garden, a large greenhouse full of plants and hundreds of butterflies flying freely. The rightmost shot is of a Prevost’s Squirrel (sp?). We also saw a couple of black squirrels roaming freely in the (large and wooded) zoo.

< What is this?

Not sure what the above is a photo of, but I hope it’s a degu!

< 22nd century tech

Another highlight was the monorail that surrounded a bunch of large animal exhibits (elephant, rhino etc.) The cars were sideways and faced the exhibits. The train ran a long closed loop so everyone got a good look at the animals while enjoying a respite from the endless walking in the hot sun.

My camera broke during the trip (the CCD failed). This is the second of it’s type to break! Anyway I had the HD camcorder with me and ended up shooting a lot of video. One thing led to another and, well….

Here’s a bit of an experimental video of some of the things we saw at the zoo

Making videos is fun… I should do more of it 🙂