England, Nineteen Eighty-Four

I stumbled upon this while reading news.bbc.co.uk:

Policeman's rape charge dropped
A police officer accused of rape has had the charge dropped.

Court proceedings against Sgt Carl Woodall were discontinued following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, Sussex Police said.

The 45-year-old officer had been on conditional bail ahead of a scheduled court hearing on 13 December.

Sgt Woodall was suspended from his post in Eastbourne pending the outcome of his case, but he is now believed to have been reinstated.

What the fuck does it mean?

Meeting The Lock man

Tomorrow I shall be meeting podcasting celebrity Scott Lockman. Scott's podcast, "Tokyo Calling", is one of the few podcasts I regularly listen to, and is probably my favourite. Listen to it now at www.TokyoCalling.org

As Scott is an American, I feel I must be on my best behaviour. Americans don't swear in normal conversation, and don't usually use sarcasm. Scientists believe that up to 95 % of what I say and write is sarcastic, and almost 1 in 3 words I utter are considered obscene by a typical member of society...

Bicycle Mark Interview

The second episode of the Karamoon podcast is finally here. It's much better than episode one as it consists almost entirely of someone else talking. Enjoy:
karamoon_episode002.mp3

Bicycle Mark's blog and podcast are here: www.CitizenReporter.org

More info on the Chaos Computer Club can be found here: http://events.ccc.de

Dengue Fever's website is here: www.denguefevermusic.com

Please comment on the podcast. Suggestions for future podcasts would be most welcome.

On My Hands And Knees

I spent a good chunk of the day on my hands and knees, scrubbing the floor of what will become my language school. The only scrubbing brush available was one designed for cleaning pots and pans. Such is the life of the entrepreneur...

Unsurprisingly, I have very little money and lots that must be bought. Somehow I have to obtain 6 ceiling-mounted spotlights, 17 folding chairs, six folding tables, a wireless intercom system, 3 desks, 2 sets of bookshelves and a filing cabinet in the next two weeks.

I am, of course, confident that by the end of the year the language school will be making enough money to pay for the printing of the first few issues of Tokyo Robotnik magazine, as well as pay my new hobby: the collection, cataloging and preservation of false moustaches.

Pulp Fiction

This morning I started reading the novel "Pompey" by Jonathan Meades. It quickly became clear that I am in no fit state to read such a mighty tome, so I read Patchwork Girl by Larry Niven instead. When I had finished that I started reading Pebble In The Sky by Isacc Asimov. I believe it was the great Bard himself who once wrote "There are many a reason to read sci-fi, all of them crap".

Hirsute You Sir!

The night bus arrived early, just before 6 am. It was amazing to walk around Shinjuku in the early hours of the morning. Shinjuku is the central business district of Tokyo, and its train station is the busiest in the world. At 6am it was a ghost town, and I was tempted to write my blog address in 12-foot letters on one of the buildings. I didn't, due to a lack of the requisite materials. Had I had a ladder, some paint and a paint brush, a better thing to write would have been:

"Yields falsehood when proceeded by its quotation" yields falsehood when proceeded by its quotation.

In the afternoon I got my hair cut for 980 Yen, which is jolly cheap indeed. Just over 4 quid, in fact. When I lived in Japan before I would always get my hair cut at a chain of barbers called QB-House. I think QB stands for "Quick Barber". It cost 1000 Yen and took 10 minutes. When the hair cut was finished the hairdresser would vacuum your head. It's the future, and resistance is futile.

Beached In Kochi

After weighing up many pros and cons, and several hours of debate, we decided to stay another night in Kochi. [Surely you just couldn't be arsed to leave... -Ed]

Kochi castle is similar to all the other castles in Japan, of which there are 400. Only 12 of the castles in Japan are original, most of the others were built in the 1960s. Coming from the UK, I find it very hard to get my head round the fact that almost nothing here is over 100 years old. Japanese castles were built of wood, so they often got burnt down several times before finally being built from concrete in the sixties. In the UK, however, we still have stone castles, stone houses, stone computers and even stone people. Everything is built to last, except for stuff you actually want, which tends to break after a few days.

In the afternoon we took the bus to Katsura-Hama beach. Like most beaches in Japan, it sucked. The beaches in Japan are pebble, not sand, and it's usually unwise to swim, either because of dangerous undercurrents, as is the case with Katsura-Hama, or because of pollution. We managed to catch a bit of the sunset, and we saw a Japanese girl practising the tuba, which was fucking hilarious so, in the end, going to the beach was time well spent.

We had an hour to kill before we could get the bus back to Kochi so we bought some Japanese chocolate from a tiny convenience store. Like most chocolate in Japan, it sucked.

The Ryugado Caves

Visited a large cave called Ryugado, near the city of Kochi. I doubt the name means anything special, probably something like "sponsored by Disney", or "no dry-cleaning facilities available here". The part that is open to the public is about 1 km long. I've been to hundreds of caves all over Europe, but Ryugado was still very impressive. The only bad thing about the cave was that every 10 metres or so you would come to a Japanese woman sitting on a stool who would shout a bunch of crap in Japanese. This was utterly pointless because everything they said about that particular part of the cave was written in the leaflet anyway.

The cave was discovered about 70 years ago. The people who discovered it decided to leave a vase under a stalactite to see if, over a period of many years, it would become completely covered with limestone. The rather obvious answer to this question is yes, things do get covered in limestone if you leave them for 70 years under a stream of dissolved limestone. Fuckwits.

Hiroshima-bound

Decided to take the night bus to Hiroshima. The journey is 12 hours and likely to be very uncomfortable. The ticket is only about 40 quid and at least the passengers of the night bus a young, unlike the high speed Shinkansen train which tends to be full of old people, the kind I hate...

I've never been to Hiroshima, and am looking forward to it as my good friend Megumi lives there. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of being irradiated; I have seen no mention of Hiroshima's background radiation levels in any guidebook etc., presumably the radiation level is still higher than average.

Very Brief Update On Karamoon

1. I've arrived safely in Japan.
2. I've got Internet access at my house.
3. I'm going to be traveling for the next 3 or 4 weeks, and won't have much Internet access on the road.
4. Blog updates will appear as and when, as will podcasts...
5. In October look out for an interview I did with Bicycle Mark at the CCC camp.
6. In the meantime, check out Bicycle Mark's great podcast: www.CitizenRepoter.org
7. Please comment if you are reading this!

Chaos Communication Camp 2007, Day 4

There was a brief rain shower in the morning. Although Chichan and I were outside eating when the rain came, we were able to get in to a bunker being used as the "Art And Beauty Area" before getting too wet. While we waited for the rain to stop we played virtual air hockey on a multitouch screen. It was sufficiently interesting that I shall describe the set up below.

Air hockey is a game that was popular before my time. It consists of a table with hundreds of hole drilled in, through which come jets of air. A small plastic disc floats on the air, and two players each use a larger plastic disc to knock the small disc into each other's goal, located at either end of the table.

Multitouch screens are touch screens which can recognise several points or even sets of points at the same time. They typically work by using a camera to see where the points(eg. your fingers) are, and a projector to provide the display.

After a few games of virtual air hockey we went to the hackcentre, where we found Mitch Altman catching up with his emails. Mitch kindly said he would get one of his "Brain Machines" for us to try out. We tried it. It rocked.

Mitch Altman's Brain Machine consists of a pair of glasses with an LED mounted in each eyepiece, and a pair of headphones which plugs into a small circuit board on the side of the glasses. The Brain Machine runs a 14 minute program of flashing lights and strange sounds. The lights and sounds are emitted at brain wave frequencies. Your brain syncs up to the light and sound, but as the brain waves are external it doesn't know what to do, so you can get some very nice hallucinations...

Chaos Communication Camp 2007, Day 3

Woke up at 8 am, full of energy and ready for a full day and night of hacker fun. Foolishly I went back to sleep and woke up again at 11:10 am, missing the start of the first talk and feeling very tired.

I bumped into Mitch Altman and asked him about someone I saw yesterday who seemed to have become ill from using the meditation mask that Mitch has been showing people at the camp. It seems that the guy had epilepsy but thought it would be ok because his last seizure had been a year ago. It must have worried Mitch a lot at the time, but the guy was ok in the end.

Chichan and I met up with Richard and the three of us decided to walk to the town to eat brunch and go to the supermarket. We got some take away Chinese food and then bought lots of water and Haribo at the supermarket.

In the evening we attended a live talk show-style presentation given by Monochrome, an Austrian artist collective. The presentation consisted of interviews with three guests, a couple of presentations, a film, a music performance and a bunch of other random things.

Chaos Communication Camp 2007, Day 2

Managed to get to the first talk of the day called "21 st Century Digital Bikes". It was essentially a talk on battery-powered bikes. Good, but not great.

Attended a very dry talk on Signaling System 7, the most common telephone system in the developed world. I struggled to follow it, partly because SS7 is a very complex set of protocols and partly because the speaker's English was hard to understand.

In the evening we went to a talk called "Life And Complexity" which was about how emergent complexity and the relationships between complexity, energy and information.
Got a free book from the Bookcrossing village for Chichan to read. Almost all of the books available were in German so our choice was extremely limited.

I may try to do some interviews tomorrow for my podcast. People I'd like to interview at the camp include Mitch Altman, Emmanuel Goldstein, Jacob Appelbaum, Bicycle Mark, Dan Kaminsky, English Glen, Tim Pritlove, Rop Gonggrijp and BigM000. Even if I just interview one or two of them it would be very cool.

Chaos Communication Camp 2007, Day 1

At 11 am Chichan and I attended the opening ceremony. CCC ceremonies are always very moving because there is a deep shared culture among hackers, particularly those in Europe.

Chichan and I had lunch with Mitch Altman, inventor of the TV-Be-Gone. We discussed the effects of television on the human psyche and how deeply TV invades every aspect of our lives. Mitch claims that the average person in the western world spends 13 years watching TV, a very frightening statistic.

We went to a talk on Sputnik, an open RFID platform. Although the speaker spoke good English, it was hard to understand because he spoke quickly and not very clearly. I got the impression that he spoke his native language in the same way. The Sputnik project is very popular at the CCC. At the conferences and this camp you can buy a Sputnik RFID badge which you register online, allowing people to track your location at the camp.

We took a "Power Nap", as my good friend Edward Pacman would say, and then went to a fantastic talk called "Dungeons And Hyperlinks" which was all about interactive fiction and text-based adventure games. One of the speakers has written a text adventure based around the Chaos Communication Camp called "Reconnaissance at Finowfurt" You can download the game here. Please play it and post some comments here.

We spent some time looking at all the beautiful lights of the camp, and saw some people releasing homemade hot-air balloons, which was truly magical.

At around 1 am we brushed the fairy dust out of our hair and went to bed, leaving at least half of the camp wide awake.

One Day Of Waiting

The Chaos Communication Camp officially starts tomorrow, but already loads is going on and there are a couple of thousand people here. I've almost got to the point where I can ignore the Migs and other aircraft that are scattered around the site...

Chichan and I happened to be present when Hackers On A Plane arrived, a group of 38 people from the USA who had traveled to the camp together from DefCon, a commercial con in Las Vegas. The Americans looked really funny; it was obvious that many of them had never been outside before. When I organise a hacker camp in Japan there will be exercise sessions each morning and no doughnuts...

Arrival At The Chaos Communication Camp

Chichan and I checked out of our industrial hostel at 9:50 am and went in search of fuel for my camping stove. It was only at the third shop that we managed to find some. We also got some spare tent pegs and a collapsible water carrier.

At around 5 pm we got on the train to Eberswalde, the nearest train station to the camp. There were no seats on the train but the journey was less than one hour so it wasn't too uncomfortable. After quite a bit if delay we managed to get on the correct bus to the camp. The walk from the bus stop to the camp is about 4 km, so we were very lucky to get picked up by a couple of hackers who were traveling to the camp by car.

The camp site is actually an aviation museum on the site of a Russian military airbase. There is an airfield next to the site with light aircraft taking off and landing during daylight hours. Five large aircraft hangers are being used for the camp, two of them are for talks, one is the hackcentre, one is the art and beauty area and one if for the Chaos Emergency Response team which provides firefighting and medical services for the camp. The hangers are about 40 foot high, and although they are above ground they are covered in several feet of earth so they are cool in the day and warm at night, a lot like Earthships.

When the sun starts to set the lights start to come on at the camp. Many people have decorated their tents with coloured rope lights, there are search lights on top of the hangers and coloured neon lights lining the roads. Most impressive of all is the glitter ball hanging in a tree...

A Man Walks Into A Pet Shop

A man walks into a pet shop and says to the girl behind the counter "I'm very lonely, and I have a small apartment. Can you recommend a pet that would be suitable for me?". The girl replied "We have a cute hamster which would be perfect for you!". So the man bought the hamster and a cage and took it home.

The hamster certainly was cute, and the man spent a very pleasant evening feeding and stroking the hamster, knowing he would never be lonely again.

When the man woke up the next morning he was shocked to see that the hamster had died. He took the dead hamster back to the girl at the pet shop after work and asked for a replacement. The girl said that they had no more hamsters but that they would order another one for him. "It will take a few days to arrive. While you are waiting, just pop the dead hamster in a blender, and spread the blended mixture over your garden." The man thought that this was a very strange suggestion, but he followed the girls instructions.

The next day the man went downstairs and checked his garden. To his surprise the garden was full of beautiful yellow flowers. The man rushed to the pet shop to tell the girl what had happened.

"I did what you told me to, and now my garden is full of the most beautiful daffodils I've ever seen!" The girl stared at him in disbelief. "Daffodils! Daffodils! That's very strange! You usually get tulips from hamster-jam."

The Karamoon Podcast Has Arrived

After what seems like an eternity, the first episode of the Karamoon Podcast is finally here. You will, I promise, be disappointed. Things will improve very soon though. The link to episode one is here Right click and choose "Save target as" or something similar.

Please post comments!

You can subscribe to the podcast by putting http://feeds.feedburner.com/karamoon into iTunes or whatever podcatching software you are using. I'll sort out a subscribe button soon.

Departure To The Continent

Chichan and I got up at 5 am and took the train to the port of Harwich, a journey of 1 hour 30 minutes. We got on the ferry to Holland without any hassle at all. No customs, no immigration control.

On the ferry I recorded quite a bit of material for my podcast using the Edirol R-09 mp3 recorded. It will be posted soon.

When we arrived in The Netherlands we took the train to Amsterdam. The walk to our guest house seemed really far because of our heavy bags. After dumping our stuff we went out in search of food and found a good Indonesian restaurant.

In Fairy Dust We Trust

Every few years a spaceship called The Heart Of Gold lands somewhere in Germany. The arrival of the ship is usually announced quite a few months in advance, and therefore there is always a large group of people to welcome the ship. Hackers, phreaks and geeks cluster around the landing site and organise talks, workshops, parties, film screenings and meetings in celebration. This is known as The Chaos Communication Camp.

Tomorrow Chichan and I begin our journey to welcome The Heart Of Gold.