20C3 Log

26.12.2003

After Sphaera and I arrived in the afternoon, we first set up our computer and connected the TROIA-Prototype. As the prototype was supplied with a local stream, we started to wire the local network. Using bl_proxy the stream of LittleLights was also sent to the telnet streams and to the TROIA-Prototype. Because the TROIA-Prototype was only visible from outside, we placed BlinkenMini facing inwards at the back of the prototype. It was connected to the same computer and thanks to another instance of bl_proxy showed the same stream, so that it was possible to see from inside what is currently shown on the prototype.

27.12.2003

Most time of this day, I tried to get the BlinkenArea connected to the internet. Sadly, this was not successful until the evening, because the DHCP server did not want to supply us with an IP address. Asking the NOC several times for the reason resulted in a big chaos due to the fact that one half of the NOC wanted to use another cabling strategy as the other half. (This is my subjective impression of the situation and shall not question the networking and communication competences in the NOC in any case.) At 18:00 a major part of the BlinkenArea met in the workshop room, where the topic was BlinkenLights. After a detailed introduction of the big Blinkenlights' technology, some of us showed their clone projects. Blinkenpaper and ArcadeMini were live at the presenation. Finally, at 22:00 we managed to get our internet connection. According to the NOC we had net all the time, but were too stupid to use it. After receiving our configuration data of our connection, the internet access succeeded immediately and we could provide the web cams and telnet streams in the internet. I then tried to remove the annoyances with the NOC and their helpers using a small Mate donation, but it's unclear to me if this was successful.

28.12.2003

The first task this day was to replace a defect LED in BlinkenMini. This situation was not new and was practiced often before, so it did not last long, until all 144 pixels were connected to the stream again. Second, the compact flash of ArcadeMini was filled with new data in a way that the current time was shown in binary, BCD and decimal between every two films. I changed the existing clock to show the time for 8 seconds in every mode and exit afterwards. This new clock placed multiple times between the films resulted quickly in the desired effect. In the afternoon, I tried to help a little bit with the installation of blib & co. But we could not install the new ISDN interface, because the CAPI driver did not want to work with a standard kernel. We did not want to compile a new kernel on this slow box, because this might have resulted in the display staying dark for a long time. For the rest of the day, I helped Kai with his Linux installation on his notebook and managed to motivate myself to write the blog articles for the last threee days.

29.12.2003

This morning, Tim asked me if it would be possible to show the stream of the Haus des Lehrers with the grayscale movies live on the prototype and on BlinkenMini. Because there was no (for me locatable) documentation of the dynamic extension of the MCUF protocol, I decided to take a look at the newest blib and the newest blinkensim and to reverse engineer the protocol of which I only had a rough verbal description. It didn't last long, until I had done the neccessary adaptions in Bl_proxy. Since noon the original stream of the Haus des Lehrers is running on the prototype and on BlinkenMini. In the afternoon I tried a few thing to get Kai's X server to work and did nothing else related to Blinkenlights. After we all attended the Hacker Jeopardy and the final presentation, we quickly started to uninstall the BlinkenArea. Dut to good planning we were done almost half an hour before the deadline. When we tried to place the three prototype parts into the cars, we got a little problem: all our cars were a few centimeters too narrow. But we succeded at last by placing the prototype into Kai's car and everything else of Kai's stuff into the other two cars. In the rush, a mishap occured: we forgot to put the diffusion foil of the prototype into a car and also were not able to find it the next day.

-- StefanSchuermans - 05 Jun 2004