March 13th, 2010. Posted in General. 1 reply.
The solar power equipment arrived today!
Woke up today (well, yesterday, technically) to find a KI message from the transport guy, sent in the middle of the night. Guess he’s on a different sleeping rhythm than I am. Rushed my way to the cavern, had to find the obscure ‘hood where he would apparently be most of the day. I ran into Modi halfway through the city, who spontaneously joined me. We found our way to the guy pretty quickly and got the equipment from him. We linked it to my Relto in two parts.
Once there we set up the installation together. To be clear, the equipment consists of a ‘PowerFilm’ solar panel, a battery pack and a special adaptor. The solar panel is pretty cool, it’s really foldable and light. We put it up on the roof of the hut, facing the sun, and connected it to the battery pack sitting inside the hut. For every 10 hours it charges, it returns about 3 hours of laptop-time. So, about 7 hours per day. Quite alright, I’d say.
Of course, for the all-important internet I still need to go into the cavern. Until someone figures out how to do inter-Age lattice-IP communication, that is. So I think I’ll mostly be leaving the laptop off and charging while I sleep, then take it into the ‘hood fully charged.
I’m quite satisfied about the business with the transport guy, it went smooth and so far the equipment seems really good. Certainly a thing to remember for the future. If anyone else is interested in contacting him, just ask and I’ll give you his details.
March 6th, 2010. Posted in General. No replies.
Met up with the transport guy yesterday. Took some effort to get to him, apparently he’s afraid that the DRC would have problems with his actions so he prefers to stay unknown. I don’t know for sure if they would, but I understand his decision. We talked about the kind of things that he can deliver, prices, etc. He gets the solar-panel stuff from a company called Modern Outpost. Seems pretty reliable, but they’re expensive… Add to that the compensation for his efforts. It’s going to take a pretty large bite out of my savings, but I think it will be worth it. I sure wish now that I had a lighter laptop though, power-consumption-wise.
Apparently he’s going to Link the stuff over. Normally it would take two weeks to get the stuff down here, so that’s good. Still, he says the process can take anywhere between 3 days and a week. Guess I’ll be hanging around in Tom’s hood some more until then.
March 2nd, 2010. Posted in Culture. 2 replies.
Here’s the footage from the D’ni Musicological Research ‘hood that I promised. The opportunity: the inauguration of the neighbourhood. Turjan Aylahn (the main guy on the D’ni music scene) had hooked up his equipment to the sound system in the community room, using it to play recordings of his pieces. The piece that I witnessed (and recorded) is called rehlehmok reveelai (‘the ink of the soul’). The recording quality isn’t great, my apologies for that, I’ll try to fiddle with the settings on my camera before I use it again.
Here’s some links about D’ni music research, for those interested. There’s a lot of French, but also cool music, pictures and info.
D’ni Musicological Research – Instruments, documents and music.
D’ni Musicological Society – Basically more of the above.
D’marnah – D’ni-focused musical group. Site also contains 30-year-old footage of D’ni.
Cool stuff! Keep it up, D’ni music people!
March 2nd, 2010. Posted in General. No replies.
Hey all,
Sorry for taking so long to post again, it took some effort to get to some power/internet. I’m in Tom’s hood right now (he says hi). He’s got a charger set up here, he gets power from the Er’cana factory or something. He’s pretty good with this stuff; he copied the DRC’s methods of using the lattice for internet. I don’t know how he does it…
Anyway, it’s really good to be back. When I got to Relto I just put down my bag and relaxed… It felt like coming home after a long time. Everything was still there, just as I had left it.
After unpacking a bit I thought I’d look for some people with similar sleeping rhythms, so I started making my way to the Dutch neighbourhood. On my way there I came through the D’ni Musicological Research ‘hood, where a demonstration of D’ni music was going on! It’s great to see that explorers are still researching on such a wide spectrum of subjects. Although I only came in for the final piece, I took some footage of it which I’ll be posting soon (uploading to YouTube from here is taking FOR EVER).
After the demonstration had ended, I went on to find my fellow countrypeople, chatting in the ‘hood when I arrived. It was a great reunion. We talked about old times, new people…
When our group dispersed I met Tess, Tom and Umgenni at the pub, where we had a few drinks (too many?), courtesy of Tom’s smuggling skills. I was informed that there’s a guy who imports stuff from the surface at a small price, and apparently he’s done some laptop power set-ups before. I’ll have to try and seek him out, see what the details are.
As for today, I’ve mostly been reacquainting myself with the cavern, finding out who’s distributing food, and so on. Hopefully I’ll get a permanent power/internet source soon, and then I can start thinking about Writing.
March 1st, 2010. Posted in General. 1 reply.
Almost ready, going to pack my laptop just after posting this and then I’ll link. Hope to post again soon.
See you on the flip-side! :)