Chaos Blinkeholican Camp #1

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Wednesday, 9 Jun 2004:

Rene / BBO Österreich:

Uaaah, got up at 5 am in the morning. Packed my stuff, fed my little jerboas (Cee-Phood and Tik-Tik), lugged ~35kg through whole of Austria and Germany (duration 12 hours incl. div. train-mishaps and delays) and finally arrived. Changed into short trousers, set up my tent, supported 1stein preparing the camp; smoked a packet of cigarettes; slept in my tent.

ST / BBO:

Around 2000 I drove to Kathe in Ulm. After a short night we packed our stuff into the Polo and drove towards Ruhrgebeat.

Thursday, 10 Jun 2004:

Rene:

Got up at 7 am. Set up C64; optimized software-emulation for C64Lights on 1 frame/10 seconds; installed NetBSD at a computer, which I borrowed from 1stein; smoked lots of cigarettes again; ate barbecued food till I dropped; hacked my own minihttpd for IP-telephony testscripting; further optimizing software-emulation on 3 frames/second; drank beer; slept inside the house, because of bad weather.

Kathe:

The alarm clock was ringing at 4 am and just before 6 am Stephan and me departed from Ulm. Besides the really bad state of the freeways, we actually drove without struggeling with lots of traffic, because no trucks are on the roads today. 1stein did a good job in describing the way to his home, so we found it at one go. Arrival: 10:11 am. until yet only Cavacs had set up his tent, but actually it is contrary weather. STephan had to run up his Cuba-flag first and after enjoying a coffea he started to set up his equipment in the party-cellar, our CBC-Hackcenter. Because I slept not well last night, I took my sleeping bag and lay down at the terrace until the POC-guys arrived. Then I put up my notebook somewhere to claim some space for myself.
Around afternoon 1stein became anxious, because he wanted to start building up ArcadeMaxi. So I (as former waldorf pupil) was entrust with wood work. First I had to draw lines for the grid on 4 MDF-boards. 1stein quickly hacked a Perl-script, which specified the distances accurate to a millimetre. Width of the window + bar, that is 28 mm + 10 mm + 28 mm + 10 mm ... or height of the window + bar is 65 mm + 10 mm + 65 mm + 10 mm. But I needed still some time to draw it. Martin and 1stein were sawing the bars to the right size. Then 1stein and me were drilling the holes for the lamps.
Kai and Ina were coming along to support us, too. Ina and me were gluing the grid on the wooden boards. 1steins cellar has plenty of space and all kinds of implements, which you may need. Until evening two of four grids were already glued. The boys were sitting in the room next to us and drilling and equiping the PCBs.
We had contrary weather, sometimes it was raining, then sunny again, at least warm enough to have a barbeque and sitting outside for supper. But it was no swimming-pool-weather at all *g*. Ina and Kai were driving home again this night, because they have to work / doing an obligatory practical course tomorrow. Sascha and me were enjoying some decant white wine and viewing photos. I didn't work in the Wiki tonight, I wasn't in the mood, because of being too tired. STephan and me already went to bed around midnight, but the others stayed awake a bit longer. We all found a place for our sleeping-bags inside the house, since no one liked to sleep in a tent while it was raining, not even Rene...

ST / BBO:

After 4 hours of driving we arrived shaken about at 1steins place. First we made a short tour through the house and then we sat down with coffee and cigarettes to relax a bit. Later on we brought our stuff inside and set up the hardware. Everything was thoroughly prepared by 1stein, Ethernet and Wireless LAN were running straightaway and without problems. But somehow my fileserver did not work properly after this road trip. The network performance was lousy. After we checked ACPI and Kernel on suspiciuos modifications without success, my last attempt was changing the network card and suddenly it worked well again. Our coalition partners from the Phone Operation Center did arrive in the meanwhile.
In the afternoon we started building-up ArcadeMaxi. Kathe and Ina were building the grids for 520 windows, Martin, Kai and me were drilling and soldering the PCBs. 1stein built the adapter PCB, which will be set on the ArcadeMini PCB and was coordinating the entire work. Because too many cooks spoil the broth and it was too much crowd in the ArcadeMaxi rooms, the others could devote themselves to their own projects. Rene was tinkering with his 8 bit project C64-Lights and infected an old computer of 1stein with BSD, Sascha was hacking his GroggyClock and Daniel experimented on IP-phones and found some new "features". around midnight 4 out of 8 PCBs were already equiped and half of the case was almost looking like Arcade.

sphaera:

Thursday, after the stressful phase of the move to Düsseldorf and the new beginning at the agency, at last I have a day off on which I don't have to go shopping. Even the boxes from the move stay packed as they are, because today is BLINKENDAY! I slept 2 hours longer than normal and get on my way to the CBC, a one hour trip by S-Bahn, train and bus. In my luggage is a Lights-string, because the Hackcenter should be made more cosy. I doubt wether I can use the water-guns for the poolfight in this weather, but as they are small I'll pack them anyways. We'll see, maybe the summersun will still come out!
I arrive in the afternoon, get down to the cellar and am already expectant of all the well known faces I'll see again. "Sascha's" Daniel is the only one I don't know as of yet. The "location" on the other hand I know only too well, as I'm together with 1stein for a few years already and many a party has been celebrated in that cellar. Only today it looks even more beautiful than normal, what with the "Pesthörnchen"-banner and all the blinking projects there. The ArcadeMini-Prototype had been collected at my address by 1stein a few days ago, so it is blinking already. But his Doublesized-ArcadeMini off course looks much nicer, very classy in my opinion. Rene's ProjectBlinky is set up on the cabinet and Sascha has installed his GroggyClock, which in my opinion looks pretty fabulous! Now to get it working.. :-), that would be something.
The event has been a few days ago now, so I have to try not to mix up the sequence in which things happened. What we did then, gave us some work: ArcadeMaxi. I was positively surprised, as 1stein had already bought most of the components - especially the wooden parts - pre-sawn-to-size. I am not a big fan of freehand sawing. But soldering I love to do, so Martin and I sat down and soldered some of the PCB's. In the end it would become 8 PCB's in total. Before that however I waited for Sascha to drill the PCB's holes. STephan eventually claimed the soldering-spot, so I went away to have a look at what the others are doing. Let's see what Sascha's Clock or Rene's C64Lights are doing!

Friday, 11 Jun 2004:

Rene:

Got up at 9 am; 10 am wide-awake; smoked a little less; continued installing NetBSD; continued programming minihttpd; Kai arrived and brought along the C64Lights PCB; barbeque; soldered 64 Leds + 64 resistors; drank beer, smoked a lot more after all; 05:30 am slept inside the house.

Kathe:

We slept until 10am when 1stein started his wake-up-action. We enjoyed a nice and warm shower, which was not really good for people showering later with cold water. We had coffee and rolls for breakfast and continued working on ArcadeMaxi. 1stein, Martin, Sascha and me were driving to the DIY Hornbach to buy sandpaper and metallic-varnish. After that we had to buy some food, huge masses of nudels, meat for barbeque and Pizza.
I abraded the grids with an oscillating sander, freed them thoroughly from dust and started varnishing. Because it was quite windy outside, we had to protect the terrace with newspapers and old blankets against silver-particles, which were flying around. 2 aerosol cans were not enough to cover the grids properly with varnish, but it is too expensive otherwise. At least it will reflect more than untreated wood. The guys were equipping the last PCBs.
After a very delicious lunch prepared by the POC-guys, I started to glue the last 2 grids. Ina and Kai came back in the early evening. Martin began to fit in and solder the lamps. Around 9pm Ina and me finished abrading, at the this time there was no wind anymore, so the varnish landed, where it was supposed to be. Myself indeed, was wrapped in a silver cloud glittering in the sunset. Later on I had to use a lot of thinner to get rid of the varnish on my skin.
Today also Daniel2 arrived, a fellow student of 1stein. Anyway, everyone was now concerned with equipping the grids with 130 lamps each and hooking them up to the PCB. A very protracted procedure, but they can write about that in detail by themselves. STephan was tuning the back light of his Polo by soldering in big red LEDs. Because I'am not good in soldering, I wasn't needed for the ArcadeMaxi Project at the moment. So I made myself useful by editing the Wiki, I completed file formats and started writing camp diary. Around 2:30 am STephan and me went to bed, the others stayed awake two hours longer.

ST / BBO:

Around 1100 I was almost responsive after coffee and cigarette. We were all very busy, sometimes working at ArcadeMaxi, sometimes at our own projects or editing the Wiki. I recorded a short video of BlinkstroemAdvanced and took pictures. At the end of the day the case was almost finished and all PCBs were equiped, so that we started to wire up the first quarter.

sphaera:

Contrary to the other CBC-participants I don't have a day off today, so I get up at 6 AM and drive back to Düsseldorf. Late in the evening I arrive back to see the great progress with the project and am even in time to get some of the BBQ'ed stuff, which is often served in these days (OK: daily!). I like to eat it and can't get enough of it. At least, not in a few days :-). If I'm not mistaken then woodworking is on the menu and I help with the wood-blocks, freeing them from dust and sawdust, so they can be glued in more easily and cleanly. Kathe already did a lot of pre-work in drawing in the positions they should be put, but it is still a tedious job. But it's already looking very nice, slowly one can make a picture for hisself of what the finished project will look like. Alas I'm tired pretty much from working today, so I turn in early.

Saturday, 12 Jun 2004:

Rene:

got up at 12:00; finished C64Lights, took pictures of all my project for the Wiki; assisted building-up ArcadeMaxi; smoked too little; had a barbeque; drank beer; hacked greyscales for C64Lights; smoked; went to sleep at 03:30 am inside the house.

Kathe:

This morning we only had breakfast in the kitchen, because we didn't want to wake up the others still sleeping. But STephan couldn't resist the temptation and yelled at Rene until he was awake. There was no work for me, because the guys were still soldering the lamps. So I translated my first camp-report into English already. Then I helped to file the holes for the D-Sub sockets. We took the last quarter to do piece work. Sascha isolated the cables, I was blanching them. STephan and Ina soldered the cables onto the lamps and Kai hooked them up to the PCB. Then Ina and me were fiddling out the coloured data cable, which Kai connected with the D-Sub sockets.
In the meanwhile in the room next to us the first tests were running with the finished quarters. There were still some problems, we found a little mistake at the boards, which were not well etched at one point. But at this stage we had already vacated half a PCB from its components to measure everything. Anyway, for a more detailed error description you have to ask the debugging team personally.
Sascha and me had prepared pizza for lunch. STephan uploaded always all the photos from the digicam on his fileserver. I edited and renamed them. STephan and Cavac took short videos of KippenLights and LogoLights for the project pages. I was working a little bit on the Wiki this evening, we went to bed around 2:30 am again.

ST / BBO:

We finished hooking up the last quarters and started debugging. We have forgotten some soldering points, which could be found quite easily. One or two contorsions of the datacable were detected and on four boards there were little bridges between operating voltage and earth. The failure was measurable, but we couldn't find it even with a magnifier. After half an hour swearing, hawk-eyed Martin saw the mistake. Probably the etching template got dirty and thats why the basis material was not optimally etched. That happens sometimes. We went on working until late at night and then all lamps were properly blinking.

Sunday, 13 Jun 2004:

Rene:

got up at 10:40 am; smoked a cigarette; had a barbeque by way of variety, talked about data for the new server; smoked; tinkering with C64Lights and Blinky; packed my stuff; got on the train at 18:52.

Kathe:

We ate an extensive breakfast together. The others were instructed to clear out the living room, as 1stein's parents are expected back this afternoon, while 1stein quickly went to the ballots which I already taken care of by mail-vote.
Martin and I started to work the backplates, sawing and grinding holes for the D-sub connectors. Then Kai came to join us and we glued on the sides and fixed them with screws. Then we glued in some wood-blocks which would support the backplate. For lunch we again ate some barbequed meat and some french fries, because it wasn't all eaten up yesterday evening. We'll leave 1stein to eat 2,5 kg's of noodles tomorrow *g*.
The last phase of work was to saw the Plexiglass windows to size and to paste on the light diffusing paper on them. So Sascha, Martin and myself taped on those little bits of paper with Tesa, I started getting fed up and the time began to press. I went for a quick smoke with Kai but couldn't prevent from having to glue on the last quarter. The light diffusing paper is only a temporary solution, STephan really wants to arrange some hue foil. Apart from that the housing will be painted black.
1stein brought Rene to the train-station at 19:00 hrs, as he has 14 hours of train travel to Graz ahead of him. The plexiglass has been screwed to the boxes and then we put up all 4 parts and connected them. It really looked marvellous, although you need a bit of distance, but that wasn't different with the original ARCADE. After we had all awed enough and made some videos we started packing. We cleaned up the cellar and swept up the cables and sawdust. The packing of the electronics took a little while. We originally wanted to be on the road at 20:00 hrs, but it took a little longer, so we were on the road just before 21:00 hrs heading home. We arrived at Ulm at 2:30 AM.

ST / BBO:

ArcadeMaxi was completly assembled ( as Kathe already described in detail) and so we could watch some Blinkenmovies in the afternoon. After 1stein and me ran Rene to the station, Kathe and me started packing all of our stuff and drove towards Ulm.

Monday, 14 Jun 2004:

Rene:

After ~14:30 hours driving by train I arrived in Graz; chatted; showered; went to sleep.

ST / BBO:

After a short night and an hour of freeway-racing in the morning I was sitting on time at 1045 in the lecture.

END

-- KatharinaMueller - 16 Jul 2004
-- ThomasCouperus - 12 Nov 2004