Notacon 6 writeup (since everyone else beat me to it)
Thursday:
Was spent in an absolutely mad rush to get ready, I wound up backing up my laptop while we ran errands, and compiling Fraqtive literally while on the road, since Ubuntu 8.04LTS apparently lacks packages for it. Good thing I'm an old Slackware hand and know my way around tar and make. My brother completely failed at the routing, a sense of urgency, or telling me that he had several stops to make en route as a result, even though we detoured around the traffic jam on the Turnpike, we still wound up late for our teaser talk.
Then we had some fun with changing display resolution to make the laptop presentation work. After that, I met my first member of the European demoscene, and had a nice long conversation about it. A late, overpriced dinner in the hotel bar followed.
strangeoneandie finally arrived around midnight after a very trying day of her own. It was good to reunite with her.
Somehow, I wound up staying up far too late into Friday morning. I wound up finally going to sleep at 0700 after hanging out with dopey, Lucky, schuyler, DOSman and a few others I don't really recall now. For awhile, I talked guns and CCW law with krnlpanik as the Block Party lounge took shape.
Friday:
After waking up at 10:00am, or so, I finally got ready to head down to the Notacon floors about 11:30am after setting up a wireless network in our room and eating breakfast from the food supplies we brought. Little did I know that I would not sleep until after Block Party had wound down. As I said elsewhere, my goals were working on the talk, completing our demo, getting my Icom IC-F3S VHF radio on the air in the ham radio room, and hanging out with Andie, not necessarily in that order. As a result, I totally blew off all of the talks except mine, and most of the rest of Notacon. Oh well, it can't have been that much different from years past.
On Friday, afternoon, Stormgren, pjustice and I finally got around to programming some useful frequencies in to the Icom HT. After so many people had derided its "limited" 32 channel memory, we actually had a bit of trouble coming up with 32 useful amateur frequencies to program into it. Fortunately, they seem to all work for the most part and I was up and running on the 2-meter simplex Notacon talkaround frequency. As that was completed, some hackers interested in ham radio wandered into the N6C room and I wound up teaching a lesson on Ohm's Law to the prospective hams in the room. Then, Shredder, Andie and I decided to head out for dinner. Originally, we planned on the Winking Lizard, but they were too busy, so we wound up at a different bar across the street instead. On the walk back to the hotel, my sharp hunter's eyes spied some technology in the underbrush of a tree lined area; this turned out to be an Auto/AC adapter for a Lenovo Thinkpad T60 (my model of laptop) with a shredded DC cable on it. I haven't mended it yet, but I suspect it'll work just fine once the bad section of cable is removed.
Later on that night, I finally got the power cables I needed and moved my Athlon64 demobox into the Block Party Suite, after some finagling of space, etc. Then, disaster struck, the hardware problems which had plagued me for weeks and delayed the demo coding returned in full force, the wireless card refused to function properly at all. (Later, nuintari, muchomas and I determined that I had the bad luck to put my computer directly opposite the Ubiquiti Nanostation AP on the other side of the wall, my Wi-Fi card was being desensed by the very AP it was trying to connect to.) Eventually, a Cat-6 cable to a switch on the opposite side of the Block Party Suite solved this problem, mostly.
By early Saturday morning, I was sort of raster burned, so I spent a couple of hours in the NOC talking to AmishOne and ne0nra1n about assorted topics, until I felt I could return to the text editor and the code.
Saturday:
Was mostly a blur of activity, working (increasingly fruitlessly) on the demo and preparing for the talk at 2pm. We got the talk prepped just in time, then realized that the Windows partition on my laptop had hosed itself. The solution was to rapidly download the talk and the demos we were planning on showing into Andie's laptop, and use it for the talk instead. This worked in the nick of time, but the "Powerpoint" presentation decided to eat itself halfway through the talk and one of the demos didn't want to run. Oh well, we were talking abou Chaos Theory. Overall, I think the talk went about as well as I could have hoped, even with the randomness included.
Then it was back to the Block Party lounge for a final push on the demos. At this point, I was listening to Notacon radio over the LAN, and even popped into their room for a bit to discuss foreign policy with Ech0 and Zach. Then, as pressure mounted, it seemed like everyone I knew kept popping into the Block Party lounge to see if I needed something or knew more about dinner plans, etc. It was all I could do to keep from blowing my stack. The demo code refused to compile properly, despite my best efforts. We wound up submitting to the music and the photography compos, which wasn't that bad of a consolation prize. Though, this process, coupled with other people's incessant demands on me (keep in mind that I'd been up for basically two days straight at this point, with only 3 hours of sleep from another multi-day hacking run under my belt, and I was running on ADD meds and Rock Star Zero Carb energy drink...not a pretty picture) I nearly lost it. After getting our entries turned in, I recall spending lots of quiet time with Andie, until we decided to finally have a very late dinner at the Winking Lizard. Then it was time for Block Party, and my epic partying.
Some of the partying was unintentional, as the bartender on the 2nd floor had a very, very heavy hand with the gin on my gin and tonics, I gave him two drink coupons and probably walked away with the equivalent of 6 drinks, unwittingly. Thus, it began. Eventually, I got severely drunk, more drunk than I had anticipated for. I recall being in the NYC room party (and not drinking) after Block Party, talking with Andie, and her leading me back to the room where I passed out.
Sunday:
I awoke with the feeling of nuclear war taking place inside my head. I was exhausted, hung over, and felt horrible. The elevators were a particular trial with their non-linear acceleration curves. After packing, we went down to closing ceremonies, but I felt too awful to stay there, so I went back to the room. Eventually, Shredder and I pulled the demobox out of the Block Party lounge, which was eerie, primarily because it was empty, and yet all of the lights and music were still playing.
After some finagling with the hotel staff, we finally got everything loaded, and I walked Andie to her car, where getting it out of the parking garage and back to the hotel became an adventure in itself. We then drove across Cleveland near to the neighborhood she'll be living in this summer, and ate a very late, very satisfying breakfast at an IHOP. Then it was time to say our farewells, and get on the road.
Needless to say, I slept on the way home...and for the next two days as well.
Was spent in an absolutely mad rush to get ready, I wound up backing up my laptop while we ran errands, and compiling Fraqtive literally while on the road, since Ubuntu 8.04LTS apparently lacks packages for it. Good thing I'm an old Slackware hand and know my way around tar and make. My brother completely failed at the routing, a sense of urgency, or telling me that he had several stops to make en route as a result, even though we detoured around the traffic jam on the Turnpike, we still wound up late for our teaser talk.
Then we had some fun with changing display resolution to make the laptop presentation work. After that, I met my first member of the European demoscene, and had a nice long conversation about it. A late, overpriced dinner in the hotel bar followed.
strangeoneandie finally arrived around midnight after a very trying day of her own. It was good to reunite with her.
Somehow, I wound up staying up far too late into Friday morning. I wound up finally going to sleep at 0700 after hanging out with dopey, Lucky, schuyler, DOSman and a few others I don't really recall now. For awhile, I talked guns and CCW law with krnlpanik as the Block Party lounge took shape.
Friday:
After waking up at 10:00am, or so, I finally got ready to head down to the Notacon floors about 11:30am after setting up a wireless network in our room and eating breakfast from the food supplies we brought. Little did I know that I would not sleep until after Block Party had wound down. As I said elsewhere, my goals were working on the talk, completing our demo, getting my Icom IC-F3S VHF radio on the air in the ham radio room, and hanging out with Andie, not necessarily in that order. As a result, I totally blew off all of the talks except mine, and most of the rest of Notacon. Oh well, it can't have been that much different from years past.
On Friday, afternoon, Stormgren, pjustice and I finally got around to programming some useful frequencies in to the Icom HT. After so many people had derided its "limited" 32 channel memory, we actually had a bit of trouble coming up with 32 useful amateur frequencies to program into it. Fortunately, they seem to all work for the most part and I was up and running on the 2-meter simplex Notacon talkaround frequency. As that was completed, some hackers interested in ham radio wandered into the N6C room and I wound up teaching a lesson on Ohm's Law to the prospective hams in the room. Then, Shredder, Andie and I decided to head out for dinner. Originally, we planned on the Winking Lizard, but they were too busy, so we wound up at a different bar across the street instead. On the walk back to the hotel, my sharp hunter's eyes spied some technology in the underbrush of a tree lined area; this turned out to be an Auto/AC adapter for a Lenovo Thinkpad T60 (my model of laptop) with a shredded DC cable on it. I haven't mended it yet, but I suspect it'll work just fine once the bad section of cable is removed.
Later on that night, I finally got the power cables I needed and moved my Athlon64 demobox into the Block Party Suite, after some finagling of space, etc. Then, disaster struck, the hardware problems which had plagued me for weeks and delayed the demo coding returned in full force, the wireless card refused to function properly at all. (Later, nuintari, muchomas and I determined that I had the bad luck to put my computer directly opposite the Ubiquiti Nanostation AP on the other side of the wall, my Wi-Fi card was being desensed by the very AP it was trying to connect to.) Eventually, a Cat-6 cable to a switch on the opposite side of the Block Party Suite solved this problem, mostly.
By early Saturday morning, I was sort of raster burned, so I spent a couple of hours in the NOC talking to AmishOne and ne0nra1n about assorted topics, until I felt I could return to the text editor and the code.
Saturday:
Was mostly a blur of activity, working (increasingly fruitlessly) on the demo and preparing for the talk at 2pm. We got the talk prepped just in time, then realized that the Windows partition on my laptop had hosed itself. The solution was to rapidly download the talk and the demos we were planning on showing into Andie's laptop, and use it for the talk instead. This worked in the nick of time, but the "Powerpoint" presentation decided to eat itself halfway through the talk and one of the demos didn't want to run. Oh well, we were talking abou Chaos Theory. Overall, I think the talk went about as well as I could have hoped, even with the randomness included.
Then it was back to the Block Party lounge for a final push on the demos. At this point, I was listening to Notacon radio over the LAN, and even popped into their room for a bit to discuss foreign policy with Ech0 and Zach. Then, as pressure mounted, it seemed like everyone I knew kept popping into the Block Party lounge to see if I needed something or knew more about dinner plans, etc. It was all I could do to keep from blowing my stack. The demo code refused to compile properly, despite my best efforts. We wound up submitting to the music and the photography compos, which wasn't that bad of a consolation prize. Though, this process, coupled with other people's incessant demands on me (keep in mind that I'd been up for basically two days straight at this point, with only 3 hours of sleep from another multi-day hacking run under my belt, and I was running on ADD meds and Rock Star Zero Carb energy drink...not a pretty picture) I nearly lost it. After getting our entries turned in, I recall spending lots of quiet time with Andie, until we decided to finally have a very late dinner at the Winking Lizard. Then it was time for Block Party, and my epic partying.
Some of the partying was unintentional, as the bartender on the 2nd floor had a very, very heavy hand with the gin on my gin and tonics, I gave him two drink coupons and probably walked away with the equivalent of 6 drinks, unwittingly. Thus, it began. Eventually, I got severely drunk, more drunk than I had anticipated for. I recall being in the NYC room party (and not drinking) after Block Party, talking with Andie, and her leading me back to the room where I passed out.
Sunday:
I awoke with the feeling of nuclear war taking place inside my head. I was exhausted, hung over, and felt horrible. The elevators were a particular trial with their non-linear acceleration curves. After packing, we went down to closing ceremonies, but I felt too awful to stay there, so I went back to the room. Eventually, Shredder and I pulled the demobox out of the Block Party lounge, which was eerie, primarily because it was empty, and yet all of the lights and music were still playing.
After some finagling with the hotel staff, we finally got everything loaded, and I walked Andie to her car, where getting it out of the parking garage and back to the hotel became an adventure in itself. We then drove across Cleveland near to the neighborhood she'll be living in this summer, and ate a very late, very satisfying breakfast at an IHOP. Then it was time to say our farewells, and get on the road.
Needless to say, I slept on the way home...and for the next two days as well.