Captains Log

Friday evening brought big fun, as suddenly there was lots of noise coming from the Art & Beauty hall. I wasn't in the mood to get into this noise. The rest of my fellow campers made a trip to the hall, thou, and came back being exited: Imagine a DJ standing infront of his audience, playing somewhat monotone music. Now, the audience has drum sticks and several tables are set up, equipped with everything that makes noise when being hit: Snare drums, drums, metal parts.
Thing is: Everyone of the crowd gets into his or her own mood, playing around with the sticks as he or she likes. The noise is amazing, you've the feeling it'll blow away your ears. Some high pitched beeping noise is kind of a present, too. ;-)
As they came back telling their story I couldn't help myself but try it, too. And it was big fun! The hall was crowded with people, many who where just watching. Many photographers and camera teams kept me from starting right away. After all, it sounds odd to do so.
But from a pagan point of view this is a kind of shamanic experience, get into the trance of your own sound, be influenced by the people around you, and just let go.
It's damn amazing, and I can recommend to you all heading over the website gottseisgetrommelt.de.
If you've ever the chance of being part of gottseisgetrommelt, take your chance, grab the sticks and let go!

Afterwards there was a damn cool party going on, with lots of electronic music, techno mainly. We enjoyed dancing, but soon I went to bed.
Well, soon is really misleading here. I don't have any feeling about time anymore. I get up at about 7:30 in the morning, have breakfast around 10:00. Lunch is after 15:00, and dinner not before 21:00.
So I left the Art & Beauty hall, intending to prep for the night. So I went into the public bathroom, and had no water. Now hold on a second, give me a break? No water? And the text of a sign at the door came to my mind: No water between 4am and 5am. Looked at my mobiles clock: 4:15am. Okay, time to go to bed.
Guess what: I was awake at 7:30 this morning...

Zusammenfassung:
Freitag abend wurde es lustig: Meine Mitcamper gingen in die Art & Beauty-Halle, aus der nicht zu überhörender Lärm drang. Als sie später wieder kamen erzählten sie mir, die Halle wäre voll mit allem möglichen Percussions-Kram, und jeder könne sich Drumsticks nehmen und da wahllos, bzw. nach eigenem Gutdünken, drauf einhacken.
Das mußte ich dann doch selber sehen, obwohl mir eher nach Ruhe zumute war. Ich gesellte mich also zu den Zuhörern und -schauern des Spektakels. Einige Photographen und Kameraleute hielten mich zuerst davon ab, selbst aktiv zu werden.
Aber es war genial. :) Aus heidnischer Sicht würde ich das quasi als schamanische Erfahrung bezeichnen: Die unheimliche Lautstärke, das Trommeln nach eigenem Willen, das aus sich herausgehen. Wahnsinn, war echt gut. :)
Schaut Euch mal gottseisgetrommelt.de, das tuts. Und wenn Ihr mal über diese Aktion stolpert, macht auf jeden Fall mit!

Danach gabs noch eine richtig gute Elektroparty, mit starken Trance-Einfluß und leichter Anlehnung an Drum&Bass. Irgendwie paßt diese Musik zum Camp, auch wenn ich sonst eher auf die härteren Klamotten stehe.

Ich machte mich als erster auf den Weg ins Bett, natürlich mit Zwischenstopp Badezimmer. Da gab es dann kein Wasser, und meine kleinen grauen Zellen projezierten mir das Bild eines Schildes vor das innere Auge. Darauf stand: "Kein Wasser zwischen 4:00 und 5:00 Uhr." Doch schon so spät...
Das Camp hat mein Zeitgefühl voll durcheinander gebracht, gegen 7:30 Uhr bin ich wach, Frühstück gibts gegen 10:00 Uhr, Mittagessen gegen 15:00 Uhr, und Abendessen dann so gegen 22:00 Uhr. Ungefähr, mal mehr, mal weniger. Ich komme also seit Tagen mit drei bis fünf Stunden Schlaf aus.

Sorry for not updating my Blog yesterday. It seems that there was a problem with my server or the internet connection at home. I couldn't reach the machine to setup the ssh-tunnel. No tunnel, no encryption, no updates.
Yesterday was an interesting day in terms of lectures. I had several talks taking place in both hangars at the same time, so I didn't know where to go.

Hardware hacking with C-Base
I ended up with the folks from C-Base. They offered an USB FM-Transmitter Workshop. The goal was to solder a small device that can be powered by USB. Using the output of an analogous sound device one can set up a small "radio station". The hardware is a design from piradio.de (german).
The workshop was well visited, in fact there where many people interested in soldering the device than there where devices available. They hope to get a bunch for the weekend, so check the URL above if you're interested in visiting another (possible) workshop on sunday.
From my point of view there was some organisation missing. The people attending the workshop were nearly left alone with the task of soldering it, instead of several people overlooking progress and watching out for errors. For my table I took this job, offered some advice here and there, and gave several introductions into soldering. Three people where using the wrong kind of tin-solder. The material was dedicated to higher temperatures, so the elements weren't connected to the layer correctly.
what made assembling the kit more complicated was the fact that the board lacks holes where the transistors, resistors and capacitors are inserted. So it became some kind of SMD technology, but there wasn't any glue to fix the elements onto the board.
There was no antenna cable available. When I'm planning a workshop and want the people to actually use the devices, I would bring some.
It was fun anyway, no offense ment.