Last night I was turning off my brain by engaging in a computer game that involves hunting for objects in various scenes to earn items that you need to escape from an island. (I didn't say it was intellectual...).
Imagine my surprise when I was in the gazebo and there was a Zeppelin in the background. Definitely a Zeppelin, with the signature blue nose lines and fins and off center gondola. However later in the game I was asked to find the 'blimp'....grrrr. Don't worry, I'll tell the guys at PopCap about it (they came up with Bejeweled, so you can imagine how addictive this puzzle game is.)
Matthew sends us this picture of the start of the helium draining process - we are now removing the helium from the ship, and replacing it with air, while cradling the ship with supports from below.
On our most recent trip to LA, we noticed something a bit different on our 2-hour studio tour.
The "Hollywood" sign had become, temporarily, "SAVE the PEAK".
The issue is that the 138 acre parcel behind and to the left of the sign, is on the market, and zoned for the development of 4 luxury homes.
A project is afoot to raise money between now and mid April to purchase the land from the private owners, and incorporate it into Griffith Park in order to preserve the current view of the sign.
With the annual inspection coming up, preparations are being made for one of the more exotic phases of the process -- the transfer of the helium from the ship, over to 3 helium storage bags.
To keep our helium storage bags out of the rafters we'll need 36 movable blocks of 400 pounds each -- that's 180 bags of Quikrete!
A rule of thumb is that 1 cubic meter of helium at sea level, provides 1 kilogram of lift. We'll have roughly 7000 cubic meters to store, and enough blocks to keep it all weighted down.
Our own Dustin Kimmel appeared in the Pontiac Daily Leader this weekend. You can take the boy out of Pontiac (IL), but you can't take Pontiac out of the boy.
I'm keeping track of the ship's progress from the office via our Tracking page, but we also regularly compile that data into a mapping file. So, for all the Google Earth enthusiasts out there, here's our transit from Moffett Field, CA, Long Beach, CA, to San Diego, CA as a KML file (right-click and "Save File As" to download)!
(And Download Google Earth here for free, if you don't already have the program.)
A blue patch of sky shows us a way and we spiral up to clear skies with fog below. Can't really do this scene justice. One of the passengers jokes that we're growing adventures aboard the Farmers Airship!
Thanks to the miracle workers at Signs America / Sign*O*Rama, Marty & Mike, we chopped up our precious vinyl in no time and had it ready to adhere to the ship. Here's what it looked like:
Last night I was turning off my brain by engaging in a computer game that involves hunting for objects in various scenes to earn items that you need to escape from an island. (I didn't say it was intellectual...).
Imagine my surprise when I was in the gazebo and there was a Zeppelin in the background. Definitely a Zeppelin, with the signature blue nose lines and fins and off center gondola. 
However later in the game I was asked to find the 'blimp'....grrrr. Don't worry, I'll tell the guys at PopCap about it (they came up with Bejeweled, so you can imagine how addictive this puzzle game is.)
