01/03/2024 Anthropomorphize
This short writeup is about an anthropomorphized bear and fascination with graphical displays found in science fiction movie cockpits, control panels, vehicle dashboards, and any kind of tft/lcd electronic displays. Anthropomorphized? A bear? What does any of this have to do with each other? Ha, let me explain.
Let me start by briefly describing my fascination with electronics, coding, and anything tech related. Many years ago, I obtained my amateur radio license which opened up a new world of hobby electronics. Early on, I mostly just tinkered with analog circuits. More recently I took some college courses in computer science and have applied computer programming to micro controllers and single board computers.
There is a certain visual aspect of all this that I enjoy, how beautiful and amazing an analog circuit board can look. Constructing an analog circuit Manhattan style on a copper plate is amazing to look at. All of the transistors, resistors, capacitors, and the rest look like a futuristic metropolis rising up! While learning to program C, I used a simple gfx graphics library to create simple bar graphs, animations, fractals, and many other fun visuals. While tinkering with micro-controllers and sbc’s, I always tend to lean towards the visual side of things by adding tft/lcd displays to graphical show what’s going on. The point I’m trying to make here is visual…electronics and electronic displays grab my visual attention. Let’s move on with what any of this has to do with a bear.
In 2000 Warner Brothers released the film Red Planet staring Val Kilmer who played the part of a spaceship mechanic who ends up stranded on the surface of the red planet. His only means of escape is to jerry-rig a Russian sample-and-return rocket to fly his way back to the orbital return vehicle. While he is attempting to fix various issues, he uses a built-in diagnostic terminal which is mounted on the side of the rocket to see if various systems are working. The graphical interface had an animated bear in a spacesuit that would either cross his arms if waiting for input, give a thumbs up if system was ok, or look distraught if something was wrong. I loved it! Ill never forget that movie because of that animated bear:)
You might find it strange by how much I liked that animation but I’m not alone in this. There are many who are obsessed with recreating displays from science fiction cockpits found in Star Wars, Star Trek, and others like The Last Starfighter. I never really had any thought that anybody else really cared about my animation until I stumbled across this website http://www.decodesystems.com/yetms/index.html. Turns out there is one other person in this world that also took notice of the terminal mounted on the Russian rocket! I don’t know who it is but they devoted an entire webpage to it with lots of cool information and pictures. The big take-away from it, I learned there is actually a name for the animated bear…Anthropomorphized avatar!
After looking up what anthropomorphize means, I found that it means “to attribute human form or personality to things not human.” Cool. Then I started wondering if the fact that it was a Russian bear had any meaning. Sure enough, I discovered the Russian folklore bear often appears semi-anthropomorphized as Mikhail Ivanovich, or as Mishka. Interesting note, Putin is sometimes referred to in coded conversations as ‘Mikhail Ivanovich.” Also, in the 2017 film Salyut-7 a plush toy of Mishka is used as a zero-g indicator by the Russian cosmonauts. I also had a stuffed bear as a child that had the name Marushka…Coincidence ha!
End of blog. Thank you for reading!
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