A Damp Bank Holiday Monday

Listened to a bunch of HOPE talks. The audio of all the talks is available at
www.hope.net The streaming doesn't work well so it's best to download the talks.

Went swimming in the evening. As usual, my time at the pool was mainly spent in the steam room, the sauna and the jacuzzi.

Train Back From London

At about 7 am I decided it was time to get a bit of sleep. There were a couple of people asleep on sofas in the living room, I was lucky enough to have one of the bedrooms and was thus able to get good quality sleep on a very comfortable double bed.

I had set the alarm on my mobile to wake me up at 10:30 am. When I woke up, my watch said 3 pm. After almost a minute of panic (I had to get a train at 1:30 pm or pay 40 quid+ for another ticket) I realised that my watch actually said 9 am.

I left while Ed was still asleep and made my way to London Liverpool Street station. Slept on the train home.

Part-Time Party People

Got into London at 10:30 am. My friend Makiko was waiting for me in the station. We took a gentle walk into central London, talking and enjoying the quiet streets.

Makiko and I had lunch in an Indian restaurant. The food was very good, but the cost bought tears to my eyes. London is double-fucking expensive. And crap.

When Makiko went home, I walked back to Covent Garden to sit in a church courtyard, and read a book on codebreking.

Shortly after 6:30 pm I traveled by Tube to Tooting Bec in order to attend Dr Edward Bearskin's leaving party.

I had been slightly apprehensive about going to an all-night party where I would only know 2 people out of 30. My worry turned out to be unnecessary as everyone was very friendly and I had some fascinating conversations. The food at the party was very good. There was nothing exotic, but everything was good quality and very tasty.

Old Friends, New Friends, Dead Friends

Had lunch with my friend Andrew. We discussed many things, mostly centred around corporate culture.

Bumped into my friend Akira in the city centre. It was good to catch up with eachother.

Good Norwich 2600 meetings are now becoming the norm. There was a new person at the meeting, and we had a lot of tech stuff to play with.

Chatted on SDF. Managed to make several people leave the chat room, mainly by talking about cable-ties:)

Wondered how many of my friends are now dead. All of them?

Cisco Disco

Spent the afternoon reading and studying in the library. Went for a drink with Richard at a coffee shop. The coffee shop was so bad that I felt pain in my spine. I managed to leave before my eyes started bleeding.

Richard and I went to my house where we played with a Cisco router that he recently bought off eBay. I sometimes wish I had more friends, and was happy.

Clear Yer Desk, You're Out!

Spent a big chunk of the day tidying my desk at work. It was quite theraputic...

On the way home from work I stopped at the library to borrow "Security Engineering" by Ross Anderson. Read some of it on the way home. The book has a reputation for being about the best text book on security ever written. From what I read, the reputation is justified.

Back At Work

Spent all my spare time reading about cryptography on Wikipedia and websites of leading cryptographers. Will Karamoon quit his job soon? Only time will tell. And maybe a blog post saying I've quit my job.

Tat Down

I can still smell camp in my hair, on my jacket and on my bag. I'm starting to unpack but I really don't want to because it reminds me that I'm not at camp anymore.

"Tat down" is a term used to describe the process of taking down camp and packing everything up and leaving. I left the camp before Tat Down, whcih was probably a wise move.

Spent the day sorting out my stuff from camp, and trying to remember how you live in a house.

Homeward Bound

Woke up at 7 am and took down the tent. Left camp shortly after 8 am.

Went to the Centre For Alternative Technology. There was a distinct lack of alternative technology but it was still a pleasant place to be. Most of my time was spent eating various plants. I hope that my friend Gemma feeding me plants knew what she was doing.

Lunch was very, very expensive. When I was told the total cost of the handful of food on my plate, I had to use all my self-control in an effort not to destroy the world. The food was ok, but not great.

Spent many hours on the train with Helen, John and Gemma. Finally got home and went straight to sleep.

Thursday At The Gathering

Gate shift this morning was really fun. Sat on a sofa with my friends from 4 am to 8 am, making new friends and talking about everything.

Ran a personal awareness workshop in the morning. There were about 14 people there, and everyone seemed to enjoy what I taught them

Attended the daily Morning Meeting. The atmosphere was fantastic, about 50 of us together in a marquee discussing the camp. Being in tents with good people, sitting on strawbales and feeling good are all things I will try to do more often.

Went to a workshop on the Faslane 365 campaign which aims to close down the Faslane nuclear weapons base in Scotland for a whole year. After a few minutes it became evident that I knew as much, if not more, about the campaign as the two women running the workshop.

Although the Nukewatch workshop was run by one of the women who had run the Faslane workshop, it was much better. After the workshop I talked with the woman, Anna, for 2 hours straight about the future of activism in the UK.

Gemma moved into my tent because the friend she was sharing a tent with was planning to stay up quite late each night. Suddenly my tent seems quite a bit smaller, but it's lovely to have some company.

Journey To Camp

Woke up at 6 am and traveled to the train station. I slept for almost all of the two-hour journey to London. When I arrived at Liverpool Street Station I took a tube to Euston Square and walked to Euston station. After 15 minutes my four friends arrived and we started the epic journey to Wales.

When we arrived in Wales we took a bus to the village where we would be spending the next five days. The bus dropped us 5 minutes from the camp. Someone gave out a yell when they glimpsed some tents in the distance, which was very funny.

We reached the site at about 6 pm. Rebecca and her friend Kirsty had been there for a day already and had put up their tents in the quiet area. I got my tent pitched while the others were debating whether they too wanted to be in the quiet area. In the end they decided that they did, and I tried not to laugh. There was loads of room in my 2.5 person tent with only me and my huge rucksack! I ate some bagels for dinner, and realised how hungry I had been for most of the day.

Found that I was running a workshop at 9:15 am the next day.

Decided to do the 4 am to 8 am gate shift with my friends.

A Very Bleak Day

Things were very grim today. I shan't go into details. Off to Wales tomorrow for a few days camping. The weather forecast says I have 4 days of rain to look forward to. See you on the other side...

Visiting Brideshead Revisited

Watched an episode of Brideshead Revisitied. If/when I drag myself out of poverty I would very much like to visit Castle Howard in Yorkshire, where Brideshead Revisited was filmed.

Karamoon's Big Day Out

My Big Day Out consisted of staying in all day. I listened to music, watched DVDs and used the Internet.

Most of my time on the Internet was spent reading about various people in Wikipedia, including but not limited to:
Peaches, a Canadian electroclash musician.
Iggy Pop, a musician who is rapidly becoming more interesting and important to me.
Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, a group I don't know much about.

Couldn't go out to the convenience store because it was raining, and also the store doesn't stay open very late. (so not very fucking convenient) I stayed inside and became bitter. This is both sad and inevitable.

Hackers In The Rain

Another decent Norwich 2600 meeting. Three of us met in heavy rain and walked to a vegetarian cafe. Still no wireless, but the level of discussion was high, so overall it was time well spent. We talked about radio communications, satellite, working in call centres and various other tech-related topics.

Thursday meal

Went to Rebecca's house for dinner. Rebecca is one of the best cooks I've met recently, and she is a vegan so it was great to eat food that was as healthy as it was delicious. We talked for hours about many things.

Tickets Please

Finally ordered my train tickets for the Earth First Summer Gathering. Trains in the UK are simply crap. Looking forward to the gathering, but slightly concerned about the weather. I'm also getting concerned about money, as I have none.

A New Star In The Sky

A friend of mine has moved from London to Norwich. One cannot overstate how wonderful this is for me, and the people of Norwich as a whole. I can feel things getting better already.

Lost And Found

Surprisingly, I was able to find my NI card and my NHS card after a few minutes of searching. I needed the cards for a police check so I can work with children. I was expecting at least 5 hours of searching because the number of potential places the cards could have been was almost without limit. Finding them so easily made me almost happy. This sort of thing doesn't usually happen to me...

TV is dead, long live the Net! I'm really getting in to watching stuff on GoogleVideo and YouTube. I found something called MomentEye, an Internet TV show from Hong Kong mainly made by British ex-pats.

Sick As A Dog

Feeling very unwell. Had the day off work, spent most of it trying not to be sick. Slept a bit, did some study, drank lots of water. Maybe my days will end like this. Maybe the end is closer than the beginning.

I saw this on the website of an artist/designer.

When I was younger, I pretended to be a ninja.
In my heart, I was an astronaut.
So, I told my mother that I was going to be an architect
and went to school to study psychotherapy.
Finally, I realized that I was never happier than
when I would draw on the walls with my crayons.

Never happier, I became an artist.

Norwich now has free wireless Internet access. I haven't tried it out yet, will do on Friday at the Norwich 2600 meeting.

Watched part of "Dead Man's Shoes" on TV. A very bleak and disturbing film. Don't watch it if you ever intend being happy again.

Sleeping On The Job

Another empty day at work.

Fell asleep in the library while trying to study. This event may have been connected with the fact that I went to bed at 4 am this morning. Can't seem to beat the jetlag at the moment.

Continued listening to "Goodbye Horses" on repeat. Highly recommended.