EASF In Ipswich

Failed to go swimming this morning. Train problems today meant I had to take a bus for part of the journey. Finally arrived in Ipswich and found my way to the venue for East Anglia Social Forum.

We had bread and humus for lunch. I've been eating fruit to the exclusion of almost everything else recently, so the bread and humus tasted amazing. There was a workshop on using "Non-violent communication" during meetings. It wasn't very well received, which pleased me greatly. After that we talked for an hour or so about the future of EASF. Due to the fact that there were only ten of us there, we were able to have a worthwhile discussion.

I had the same crappy journey home that I had had on the way to Ipswich. I spent my time on the train and bus reading about different methods to subvert the Windows XP firewall, making the journey slightly easier to endure.

Cambridge EASF

Took the train to Cambridge with Richard and Rebecca. At the third stop a vicar got onto the train and sat behind Rebecca. The sky darkened.

We arrived in Cambridge early, and it was quite pleasant to kill some time on Mill Road, a vibrant street with some interesting independent shops. I bought a refreshing can of lycee juice at the Post Office/Arab supermarket.

Cambridge EASF was certainly the worst EASF there's been for a long time. It was good that only a few people attended; if a large number of people had come it would have mattered more. We started with a workshop on email encryption, which confused everybody, followed be a talk the Plane Stupid campaign by two girls who weren't sure what they were doing. There was a screen printing demonstration which was quite good and a talk on ID cards which was great.

I doubt I'll go to the Japanese exam tomorrow because I don't feel very well and the journey is going to be a nightmare. There are engineering works taking place so part of the journey has to be made by bus.

Spent a long time looking for some documentation for the Japanese exam. I couldn't find it, so if I decide to go to the exam tomorrow I have to arrive early to obtain an exam voucher. Fun.

Countdown To EASF

Transfered some films from my main PC to my Apple Powerbook to take along to EASF. Packed everything for EASF in a large rucksack.

My good friend Edward Pacman came over at 9 pm to lend me a tripod for tomorrow. We took tea in the garden and discussed the issues of the day.

Quickly made a Powerpoint presentation on Internet Data Mining. My presentation tomorrow may be my only chance to practise public speaking before my talk at HOPE in New York next month. Getting very nervous.

EASF In Ipswich

Met Suzi, Rumiko and Youth Section in the train station. We took the 11 am train. Rumiko was confused by Youth Section's name. The train journey was pleasant and not too long.

We eventually got to Citizens Advice Bureau where EASF was to be held. There were about 30 people, which seemed a lot because the room was quite small. There were several stalls around the room so I put out some copies of the Great Commotion and a load of Ubuntu CDROMS. My friend Louis told me that Ubuntu had come to the rescue in the morning when he realised that the laptop they were going to use for the presentations didn't have Microcrap Powerpoint installed. I had previously give Ipswich Anarchists some Ubutu discs, Loius used one of them to install Open Office, which is semi-compatible with Microcrap Office. We were therefore able to show the Powerpoint presentations that some of the speakers had made.

At every political event anyone organises, there is at least one disruptive person. Fortunately the disruptive man at Ipswich EASF was dealt with very competently by my friend Rebecca. When he started to rudely interrupt people, Rebecca just shouted at him to shut up. This happened a couple of times, but he got the message.

During one of the breaks there was an unpleasant incident involving some strawberries. Various people had provided food to share. Among the food provided were some strawberries. A particularly unpleasant woman complained that the strawberries were imported. The strawberries were not imported, and besides, the woman hadn't donated any fucking food, so she had no right to complain about anything anyway. Just as I was about to drag her out by her hair and smash her head in, I decided not to, and several people argued with the woman. I ate some cake and walked off.

The talks were very good. Most were about environmental issues such as nuclear power, community gardening, there were also talks on nuclear weapons, an independent school and the UK public sector pensions crisis. The talks were only 30 minutes long, which worked very well.

We spent the evening in a noisy pub. Smoke, noise, the smell of old beer, annoying people. What the fuck is the point of pubs?

At some expensive, bland noodles from an Asian restaurant/takeaway called Mizu. They sucked. Never again.

While hanging around in the waiting room at Ipswich train station, I gave a quick demonstration of phone hacking with a public phone. The train journey home was great. Rumiko had left earlier, but we were joined by Jan and Luzie. We had all had a great day, so we felt satisfied and enthused.

Went to Will and Ella's flat. Will lent me the Japanese anime series called "3x3 Eyes". I've seen a couple of episodes of 3x3 Eyes before, it used to be shown on TV
in the early hours in the morning, and was very surreal. Once my life calms down, I'll watch them all, hopefully over the period of a weekend.

Switching On To Ipswich

40 minutes from Norwich by train lies the town of Ipswich. It's really rather unpleasant. I had to brave the grimness of Ipswich in order to meet up with Simon and Louis to discuss the online presence of the East Anglia Social Forum. www.easf.org.uk We plan to redo everything in the near future. This will probably involve me having to learn php, mysql, css, apache administration and various other random things which I don't have time to think about.

I got up late and, as a result, had to take a later train. On the train I watched a 9-11 conspiracy documentary on my Apple Powerbook laptop.

Getting to Simon's house was not easy. He lives in new housing development which sis not marked on most maps and which even my taxi driver was unaware of. Fortunately, I had written myself some instructions using Google maps. I had also looked at some satellite photos of the area.

I hate Windoze. I say many negative things about Microcrap and their third-rate software. Despite all that, Internet Connection Sharing rocks. In about 10 seconds the three of us managed to get Simon's broadband connection shared between our three laptops. No playing around with routing, NAT, DHCP etc.

We got quite a lot done, although the EASF website administrator failed to answer his phone or appear online so we were limited in what we could do.

Karamoon's Christmas Address

Highlights of 2005:
Giving a talk on culture jamming at Norwich EASF
Getting a "Borders" bookshop in Norwich
Attending "What The Hack" in Holland
Attending "BrumCon", the UK's best hacker conference
Reading "Beneath The City Streets"
Going to Armenia
Being interviewed by the BBC four times!
Speaking to Tim Ireland on the phone
Making loads of amazing friends in Norwich

Aims for 2006:
Speak at a hacker conference
Pass lots of computer exams
Turn Norwich 2600 into a decent group
Publish Tokyo Robotnik Magazine