Thursday, April 17, 2008
hardhack partially too hard for me
I’m sort of chickening out of the upcoming hardhack event, at least on friday, tomorrow. Mainly because it’s Josi’s and mine anniversary and this is not the kind of pastime she likes to be dragged to, even if half of hardhack’s speakers are women (which certainly helps with the “I can’t do that” problem, but no inch with the “I’m not interested” fact).
Additionally, I like that hardhack sets its standards pretty high, very much unlike e.g. MAKE magazine, which I still love, but where I sometimes feel that they have very very basic projects that should annoy anybody who ever held a screwdriver before. But, coming back to hardhack and the interesting workshop on how to hack your wireless router and use OpenWRT on it, this might be a little too much for me. Opening the thing and soldering a serial port to it – no problem, can do this all day. Compiling your own firmware and knowing what to do if it doesn’t work – problem, at least for me. And it seems the wifi component in the T-Com router I have here is not supported yet, anyway.
So, if not tomorrow, I definitely plan to have a look around hardhack on Saturday and I’d love to participate in Sunday’s nerdtour of the pneumatic tube mail system (aka. Rohrpost) that once existed in (or rather under) Berlin.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Hacking/music in Berlin
Tonight in Berlin: Yamaha presents its new Tenori-On musical instrument at Berghain club (entrance free):
The TENORI-ON is a unique 16 x 16 LED button matrix performance instrument with a stunning visual display. For DJs & producers it is a unique performance tool enabling them to perform using MIDI and load the TENORI-ON with samples to jam and improvise within their set BPMs.
By operating and interacting with the LED buttons and the light they produce you gain access to the TENORI-ON’s numerous performance capabilities. The TENORI-ON provides six different performance and sound/light modes for broad performance versatility, and these modes can be combined and used simultaneously for rich, complex musical expression.
And from 18. – 20. April 2008 there will be a hands-on hacking workshop in Berlin-Mitte called hardhack. The preliminary schedule:
Friday, April 18th:
12:00 doors open
15-18 Room 1: wifi access point workshop with Stephanie LangeSaturday, April 19th:
10-13 Room 1: unzap workshop with fd0
10-13 Room 2: sound and motion triggered photos with Nadya Peek
13-15 lunch break
15-18 Room 1: microcontrollers and eeproms with Daniele Bianco
15-18 Room 2: white noise/RNG/high frequency sniffing with xxxxxSunday, April 20th: free day to do what you want.
There is a certain possibility of meeting me on those two occations.
