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24C3 Diary of the BlinkenArea

Tag -1 (25.12.2007)

ST:

This year, everything should be very relaxed - at least for me as I decided. The organisers of the congress did not answer any emails containing offers to help, ideas for designing and project conceptions. Thus, there were nothing to prepare in the run-up to the congress - excepting ten blue fluorescent lamps (BlinkenArea Blog - in German) which we were allowed to contribute. Niob and I brought them into the bcc at 1530, checked and stored them in a corner of the hackcenter temporarily. stefan and sphaera had already arrived as well and we threw a glance at the room A04 together, which will be turned into the Hardware Hacking Room during the next days.

Apart from that, we got to see nothing interesting. Some carpet lay in the middle of the room which is called engine room and here and there a few sofas were standing around in the bcc. The upper floors looked the same. Only the POC was built up completely and ready. Business as usual. ;-)

Finally, we cleaned out our cars and started to unpack cased cables, lamps, blinking stuff and our BlinkenArea server. Tomorrow, we will get three special tables for soldering work and we can arrange our room on ourselves. We went home around 0130.

Tag 00 (26.12.2007)

ST:

We arrived at bcc at about 1100. It is a weary atmosphere which does not give the impression of a huge conference which takes part in here tomorrow. We wanted to contribute to the light installation at the hackcenter area but unfortunatley, we did not find anybody responsible for design and light. No coulored foil was available to cover the ceiling lamps and our blue fluorescent lamps had not been moved at all.

Hence, we attend to the BlinkenArea. We arranged tables and chairs, but we did not get any tables to solder on. Furthermore, we installed current and ethernet, decorated the room with different lamps, the "Pesthörnchen" flag and some other light foo.

Dauti and cavac arrived from Austria. The Blink-O-Mat was built up quickly and cavac worked on BlinkenSisters again. Niob, Stefan and I built up ArcadeMaxi, Littlelights, BlinkenLEDs and the BlinkenArea server. Furthermore, we registered our DECT phones at the POC. Towards evening, Arne arrived as well as some people of Das Labor and the Discordian Chaos Lab with a lot of beautyful projects. I am going to report about them within the next days.

Tag 01 (27.12.2007)

ST:

Today, I am very lazy to write. Tables to do soldering work on them are still missing and will not come probably. Some orange lamps have been arranged at Hackcenter and our blue lamps disappeared, but are not in use anywhere.

Some seats are located in the middle of the Art & Beauty area which shall be "the bridge", I think. A few old lamp shades were fixed in the corners and something that looks like a machine was built up as well. It is very hard to interpret the message of all that stuff and to get the connection to the congress theme "Full steam ahead".

A pipe system made of paperbord was placed between some counterwindows in Level B which looks very lifelike but also semi-finished and poor, because it is not enough and no light has been installed. Thus, it does not come into one's own. Additionally, a great part of it is covered by a really ugly banner from the Indymedia people which I would avoid, if I had worked on that decoration for days.

Tag 02 (28.12.2007)

Niob:

The second try to attend a lecture just failed. Now, people are sitting around and listening to the lecture "Absurde Mathemathik" from Anoushirvan Dehghani by a livestream. Unfortunatly, I forgot to bring some headphones and I take advantage of the situation to write down some lines into our logfiles.

Since yesterday, some radical changes took place at the cafeteria - compared with the remaining atmosphere of a railway station all around at bcc. Three (!) green spotlights were added to the orange lamps a slide-projector shows a octopus. Nice. In the meantime, one can feel like part of the crew on a submarine waiting for the end to come, because the submarine is not able to come up anymore an on its front window, the octupus settled down. It is very hard to notice something about Full steam ahead!, although the current political situation got explosive and calls for self-engagement since our Federal President Horst Köhler signed the law which enables data retention in Germany without having any reservations related to the constitutional law.

ST:

A few minutes ago, a Netwatcher editor visited the BlinkenArea. Netwatcher is a variety radioshow at Vienna's free radio station Orange 94.0. Wir unterhielten uns sehr nett und machten ein kurzes Interview. Zum wiederholten Male hören wir, dass es als schade empfunden wird, dass wir unten sind und nicht oben im Art & Beauty: "Warum hat man euch denn in den Keller geperrt?" Inzwischen finde ich auch, dass dies eine sehr schlechte Entscheidung war. Nicht, weil es hier unten unbehaglich, sondern weil es oben echt lame ist. Es ist überhaupt nicht gemütlich, es gibt keine schöne Beleuchtung, keine spannenden Projekte, die Deko sieht halbfertig aus, es ist irgendwie kalt und unmotivierend.