mattw.fn_blog()

Saturday morning, Bryan, Andy and I hopped in the suburban and headed out for Magnolia Park. We several sacks of gear, tables, a wallmart tarp tent, and some snacks. Bryan was dressed most un-ninja like which was good considering the locale. It turned out to be quite the family affair, and a steady stream of visitors stopped by throughout the day. Our wireless setup was fairly dialed, a Net4521, 16dbi Vagi Antenna, and a 6′ bogen light stand. It and the VOIP ATA/Phone could easily fit in a carry-on bag, but would likely get you stopped and strip searched by TSA.

We weren’t really sure who would show up or what to expect out of the other groups save perhaps some Internet connectivity. Magnolia Park, being on a hill, facing west seattle, with only a few houses visible is not the greatest source of free wireless, but we were confident that the Alki group could not only see the city and it’s in-exhaustible supply of free radiating internet, but they had the will to make it happen. We had plenty of snacks and alt-tab to make us not really care about the outcome either way. Our tent protected us from the angry birds’ poop and the fall leaves without threatening to blow away even once. When Troy showed up with Pizzas, our levels of Internet interest hit rock bottom. All we really wanted to do at that point was play in the Bouncy Castle next door.

After the Pizza settled, and the VOIP phone started ringing, we remembered our ‘emergency status’, and attempted communications with our neighbors to the south. They seemed rather anxious for us to adjust our equipment at times (which we did not do, it worked fine) and asked if we could see their flashing LED flashlights amidst the glow of the booming Alki neighborhood (they could see our laser). We joined the IRC server provided by extremeboredom, and offered them pictures of our setup and tried to explain the wonders of alt-tab’s context switching effects.

Towards the end of daylight, the Gasworks crew had given up on their scheme to traverse a network in the city, and instead moved to Elliot bay Marina, a park of sorts, to link up. Their OLSR routes converged, and they joined the IRC conversation.

Successful at connecting all three parties, it was unanimously declared that too cold to continue, we should all meet at Magnolia, and bask in Matt Wilson’s german portable heat device. Unfortunately, the Gasworks people did not show, so we could not offer them chips.

More pictures are available here, here, and here.

FieldDay is on Saturday, so HackNight was fairly straightforward in purpose. Final details are getting hashed out on #swn (efnet), but it looks like most of us know where we’re going and how we’re getting there at this point. The weather forecast shows a sun behind a cloud rather than rain, but Casey has worked out tents for alki and magnolia because it will rain just in case. My guess is Magnolia Park will be the hopping spot this time, but we won’t really know until it all goes off.
If you haven’t heard about Field Day yet, Eric sent out a nice mail to the lists, and Bryan predicts it will be the Best Saturday Ever.

We (Andy, Eric, Galan and I) went to Magnolia Park, in Magnolia. We set up a link with Ken and Bryan over at Alki ( Details ). It was foggy, cold, and we were surrounded by birds that wanted to pick our bones dry.

We had a net4521 running Pyramid acting as a point to point olsr adhoc link and access point. It also had a handytone ATA providing dialtone for our park phone. Everything was ball bungied to a 6 foot bogen lightstand. The soekris was powered off of a lithium pack, and the ATA and laptops at the table were hooked to an inverter and battery jumpstart pack. I’m pretty sure we could have powered the ATA off the lithium too. Getting the phones to work took a little longer than expected because neither of the ATAs that we were using had seen much use and nobody knew how they were configured or how to do IP to IP calls. It turns out the codec to use is G.729 as all the other ones led to horrible stuttering and weirdness. If we’re going to do any video conferencing on the real Field Day, we should probably figure out what codecs to use and any oddities in the software. No Internet means no google.

It appears that no dog walking Magnolia dwellers care if you set up a bunch of equipment on a picnic table and start ringing up old phones. This is really good to know.If it’s going to be this cold (or colder) on the 28th, we should really figure out *warm* food and beverages. Also, keeping dry may be a big deal. We need to prep for bad weather. By the end of the day, I really regretted not bringing gloves. Or one of these. If anyone has an outdoor propane heater, let me know. Video and art projects need to get figured out and tested ASAP. If you’ve got one, you’ve got 2 weeks til Field Day. What are your requirements? This is redundant, but we need to make sure any software we need is locally available and does not require Internet. Scans brought up a few APs, but we should not count on having access.

This week, we took a look at the sony ebook reader and marveled at the wonders of e-ink. Yes, 1984 was pre-loaded. Ah, the irony. Even though the book is chock full of DRM, free books load up fine.

We poked and prodded the Chumby, but without network access, it is very alarm-clock-like. I know there is some secret magic to turn on SSH, but I didn’t write it down and haven’t bothered to look in earnest yet. Lazyweb please help us!Casey showed Rob and Eric how to install his AI music composer, so they spent a bit of time getting all the pre-requisites together (amiga emulator, rexx, etc…)

We also decided that it was in our best interest to do some signal testing from Magnolia to Alki before the SeattleWireless Field Day, so we will be meeting up bright and early (noonish?) on Saturday to make the shot. So far, it looks like the plan is for Casey, Andy and Bryan to go to Magnolia, and Eric, Ken and I to be on Alki. If the weather holds up, it should be a beautiful day at the beach. If you’re interested in testing anything out before the 28th, let us know!

Last night I checked out 3ricJ’s public nerd space.  Very cool setup.   I burned out my green laser, we wrecked some aluminum, and I was told that the Chumby was not allowed in the building.

Oh, and there was fire.

Toorcon was a blast. I got to talk to some old friends, meet some new ones, find out the skinny on some fat (or should that be phat) happenings, and eat Brazilian Barbecue. Our workshop went well, and through no fault of my own, I am now the proud owner of a chumby. I’ll have to go into more detail on what exactly it’s all about later, but thanks go out to grey for the gifting and bunnie for explaining exactly what the alarm-clock looking muppet does.

As usual, I was running around with my camera. Highlights are here, but there’s some more under the toorcon tag. Matt Peterson also has some good ones here.