Sourcemap – Open Supply Chains

An incomplete Sourcemap for LPM 2009 in Rome, Italy.

Data is based on the artists list on the LPM site.

This Sourcemap was started as a Travel Map and saved, but when attempting to re-edit the map, the “passengers” have each been converted to 97kg of cargo. It would be nice if the map remembered that these were supposed to be human passengers (eg 1164kg is a bit mysterious!).

-spxl

Suffering from attachment. Attachment to the bag, which on days gone by traveled and journeyed with me to faraway places attached to my main backpack. Attachment to the jacket, which, while I didn’t really like it, served a purpose. Attachment to the stack of fliers I’d stickered and written on the night before, which I was going to give away of course, but had some intangible (and potential financial) value. Attachment to the £1.49 can opener that I’d bought last year in London, taken home to Sydney and brought back to Europe with me this year; on a few occasions it gave access to that basic necessity of food, and with that a small feeling of power and majesty. Attachment to the £3 mini tripod I’d bought for my camera at a computer fare off Tottenham Court Road; though I’d only used it a few times, it held so much potential. Attachment to the daggy emergency rain poncho that my mum had given to me as one of the many small items she thought I might need just before I left home for Europe last year. I drive her crazy sometimes, but in her own small ways she still tries to protect me. Attachment to the tiny bottle of Blink’n'Clean, which i don’t think I can reasonably leave home wearing contact lenses without, even though I often don’t use it while I’m out, and I knew I’d have to replace eventually. Attachment to the memories that are triggered by any and all of the physical objects that are now gone. In the bag was more than stuff, it was a connection to my past, to where I have been and to who I am. I’ve always been a hoarder, and I think I’ve just discovered why. I’m afraid of forgetting. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is an object worth? It is a picture, many pictures, and more.

It is a strange situation that the entire area of the carnival was teeming with police, but something basic like theft of personal belongings goes on regardless. I asked one of the several officers standing outside (some five or ten metres from the scene of the crime!) about reporting it and was given the location of an area designated for making reports, a few minutes’ walk away.

Before going there, I spoke to the manager at the bar and was surprised at how helpful he was. His opinion is that theft is really terrible, that taking other people’s things to sell for maybe a few pounds is really low. He took me up to the office to review the CCTV footage. Unfortunately, even though there was one camera facing that corner, it was too dark and far away to be able to reasonably make out details of who was there or what was going on. He took down my details, but I don’t think there’s anything more he can do.

I made a report at the special location then headed back towards the tube. The bar was just closing, so I had a quick look around inside to make sure my things weren’t on the floor somewhere – of course they weren’t, but it didn’t cost much to check. The main cost left was the fact that this fussing about meant that the tube had now closed and I had to find another way home. The P.C. who took my report called to let me know that he’d entered the report into the system, give me a reference number and ask for a couple of more details. The police here seem to be mostly polite and helpful where they can be.

There was a long queue in the Biegel shop in Brick Lane on my way home. All I wanted was a sausage roll, and I had to have an argument with the guy who’d jumped the queue in front of me. Somewhat by accident, perhaps, but his explaination to his friend that it was better I be let in front because I was angry (about the theft) belied the fact that he was the person who was being unreasonable in the first place.

Good news when I arrived home – I’d asked SCEEN Magazine about how to obtain a copy of issue #2 and they wrote back to me to say how (and that i can get it delivered to London). Yay! More good news that a Couchsurfer in Linz can host me for the duration of the Ars Electronica Festival next month. Double yay! I also have an email from Unity Selekta about some tracks to practice with for Mind! – even though it is ‘work’, it is still good news. Oh, and I left out that just the fact that my home is still here and it hasn’t been robbed is good news! My laptop is still here (typing on it now) and iPod, left on the table in my room, and I’m supposing everything in my pack, which is (unlike the day bag taken from the bar) locked and cable-attached to the wall… there seems to be a little bit of inconsistency in my managing of security!

-G.

In preparation for that, and for Mind!, I had a good session of being absorbed into my screen on Wednesday night, working on some new ideas and compositions for visuals and how to control them for a performance.

I’ve also decided to book some flights and make Ars Electronica happen. The part where I go to the Ars Electronica Festival, that is. The fifteen quid flight to Salzburg (with no taxes for some reason) had of course disappeared, but I found a cheaper flight back to London from Berlin, so it wasn’t all bad. I’ve also made a reservation for a festival pass. The wording in the confirmation email is a bit strange, with an incorrect date and words to the effect of “if you don’t collect your ticket at least an hour before the event, the reservation will be void”, so I’ve written to them asking what the deal is. Hopefully upon careful consideration they can sort out what they really meant to say, as “the” event isn’t so clear when there are many events on during the festival.

Rather than repost updated travel plans in the “blogstream” (I just made that word up), I’ve created an Ars Electronica 2008 page that I’ll update with the latest info.

Other exciting news is that I noticed a piece of mail in the kitchen when I arrived home last night that says the power company is going to come to disconnect the service in the week starting… yesterday. Well that’s just great. I’ve only just moved in and already there are major problems! When I spoke to someone at the power company (EDC) about the outstanding bill (from before the time I moved in) I was assured that the power wasn’t going to be cut off any time soon, and I see the letter is dated three days after that conversation. I’m now not so confident.

-G.

Keep in mind that I’m putting on visuals at Mind! in Brixton on Wed 03/Sep and Wed 17/Sep (10pm-2am).

Investigations:

London (Brixton) to Linz on Thu 04/Sep

Note: a direct flight from London to Linz is not viable at this time.

London Buses N35 Brixton to Liverpool Street: ~25min.

Stansted Express (GBP24 return): dep 03:40/04:10, ~46min.

RyanAir FR304 (GBP15 and no taxes!): dep STN 06:30, arr SZG 09:25.

Oebb.at train (EUR20.70): Salzburg to Linz, ~135km.

Spend some days in Linz for the Ars Electronica festival! Need to find a CouchSurfing host or two.

Linz to Prague on Wed 10/Sep

Oebb.at train(s), as yet unkonwn. Perhaps ~EUR30. Linz to Prague: ~250km.

See discussion on Tripadvisor about trains from Linz to Prague.

Spend the weekend in Prague for the Czechsurfing Central Europe CouchSurfing meeting. Meeting Venues Map

Prague to Berlin on Mon 15/Sep

Bohemian Lines bus Praha to Berlin ZOB Am Funktum (CZK490 ~GBP16): dep 17:45, arr 22:45, ~350km.

Spend a couple of days in Berlin… though it isn’t a weekend, so should really find out in advance is anything is happening.

Berlin to London on Wed 17/Sep

easyJet Berlin Schoenefeld to London Luton ($47.19) dep SXF 09:45, arr LTN 10:35

Check Airfares to London from Berlin in September at Skyscanner.net for options.

Need to be on time to put on visuals for Mind! at the Dogstar in Brixton tonight!

-G.

I don’t know how someone managed to get hold of my details – it could have been from using my card in a shop, but I think I booked a bus ticket to Bristol using my credit card from an internet cafe in London, and maybe there was a keylogger installed or some other dodgy happening there, and that seems the most likely place (to me). My bank almost insisted that it was probably an unconnected someone out in the wild trying random credit card numbers… the fact that I was in London and the online gaming company was London based seems like too much of a coincidence to me.

In any case… however it happened, it happened. What I noticed today was something different – an index.html page on my webserver had mysteriously been replaced by a .phtml page, with an identical appearance but also a chunk of PHP script that had references to some dodgy-sounding porn domain. What the bleep is that about? And how did it happen? I immediately reverted the page to a regular .html file and removed the script, and sent a support query to my web host letting them know what I had discovered. I also asked if they could audit my logins and/or suggest an exploit in some installed PHP applications that might have been used. They, of course, recommended that I change my administration and FTP passwords (good idea!), and I while looking for the page to change the password noticed that there is a section in the administration panel that displays the IP addresses of your recent logins. All the recent logins were the same (I’ve been logging in from a hotspot in my hostel) except for one: an IP address belonging to a server in America: 209.67.214.58 (mariolet.servidorlatinoamerica.com). I wrote to servidorlatinoamerica.com and they replied:

thank you for your communication.
the server with hostname mariolet.servidorlatinoamerica.com
is not active, is a hostname that is not within our network server
However, find out the reason for your report

again, thanks for communicating and thank you communicate if you have more information on this subject

Si tienes alguna duda, solo háganoslo saber y responderemos en el mas breve tiempo.

Sin otro particular, quedamos a la espera de vuestra noticias y aprovechamos la ocasión para saludarlos.

Att

Strange. Maybe there’s a hacker inside their network? Maybe someone is able to fake their IP? Maybe the information from the administration panel is wrong?… Whatever the case, it’s bad. Bad I say! Bad in a way that is making me grumpy because it looks like I’m going to have to change ALL my passwords from accounts that I have used recently, and that is more than a little inconvenient.

A note to friends and contacts: if you see some strange, unexpected email, especially with some sort of unusual attachment, bin it. I don’t generally send programs and such – it just doesn’t make sense. Practice good email hygiene!

-G.

I had a vague idea to live in Europe for a year or so. I don’t really know for how long, or what I’d do, or where I’d be: so much unknown, so little actually planned!

Leaving Sydney on Monday 9 July 2007, I passed through Vietnam and Paris on the way to Rome, went to Venice on the way to Rototom Sunsplash and later ended up in Bavaria, Germany. And now: ich bin Berliner! Well, I was for a couple of weekends. Went to Hamburg for a day to visit a CouchSurfer on my way to Denmark. Spent a week or so in Ringsted then caught the night train to Munich to visit friends met in Sydney. Stayed just over a week then got a ride in a BMW to Cologne, nearby to Essen where I went to the Love Parade (Sat 25/Aug/2007). After a few more days in Cologne I took a bus to Amsterdam.

There was an opportunity to meet the Funcken brothers (of Funckarma) at a small festival in a forest in Souest, about an hour from Amsterdam, but I had some last minute plans to make for going to Portugal, and spent too long researching my options, making bookings etc to make it.

Instead of the forest festival, I caught a party in the catacombs beneath a church in the city, which was pretty good (though could seriously do with more ventilation).

Leaving Amsterdam I was 5-10 minutes late for checkin at the airport – bad news! There was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, flights were rebooked – with a small window to transfer in London – and of course the flight in to London was then 15 minutes late to land, causing near-exponential panic at the prospect of then missing checkin for the not-really-connecting flight to Faro, especially as I had to go through customs, collect bags and go back through security!

Miraculously, my bag was one of the first few out on the carousel, and I’d spoken to a guy at one of the luggage desks who’d called ahead to the checkin desk – they said they couldn’t hold checkin open, even if they knew I was coming, but the guy encouraged me to run, and I did make it. Just.

The weekend after arriving in London I went to Waveform Project, a festival in Exeter, a few hundred km west-ish of London. MegaTrain advance-booking tickets were about 13 punds each way, but missing the return train meant buying a ticket back to London on the day, at a ludicrous price close to 70 pounds. You’d think after the fiasco with flights from Amsterdam to Portugal I’d have learned my lesson, but I didn’t know just how vicious train pricing is. I’ll know next time!

After that, nothing much doing in London for a couple of months. Apparently September is the worst time of year to be house hunting, as all the uni students descend on all available forms of housing at any sort of reasonable (escalating to unreasonable) price. I heard that people would grab the Loot newspaper around 1am or something when it was delivered to newsagents, etc, and start making calls early in the morning, or people checking Gumtree all day at work with places being taken within half an hour or so of ads being posted. Crazy

I went to Denmark again, this time to celebrate my mate’s 30th birthday. Now, according to tradition, if a man turns 30 before he is wed, then a pepper grinder is placed out the front of his house. I think it has something to do with saying that people might be allergic to him or something like sneezing from pepper. In any case, there was a story of a ‘pepper grinder’ so big that it had a car sitting on top of it, and my mate was worried as to what monstrosity was going to be out the front of his flat on the big day… No pepper grinder, but his mates “found” a caravan, which they tastefully decorated and parked out the front. (Note: tastefully, where that might not imply good taste, and somehow accidentally with flat tyres.) Much fun was had by all. I think. I’m not sure, I don’t remember some of it. The Danes do like to drink, and who was I to say no?

With the cold weather closing in, job hunting not started and being frustrated by the housing market, it became glaringly obvious that going back to Sydney for warm weather, friends, Christmas, and a bit of a general regroup and further preparation was A Really Good Idea. One of the original ideas about going to Europe was to be settled in before winter: I’m not a massive fan of hot weather, but I really don’t like the cold! And so the next available flight back to Sydney was booked. That was a good three weeks away, so I had to wait.

Then came some exciting news – an offer to put on visuals for one of the warm up acts at an Amon Tobin gig. Woah! Hang on a second… that date… is the day before my flight out of here. Argh! Call the airline… “When is the next available flight after the one I have booked?” – Another week away. Er, I think I’ve had enough of London now, so write to the artist, asking how serious this is. The recommendation was to keep my travel plans, which is what I did. The next couple of days drove me crazy wondering what might have come of such a gig, supposing it went through, and had to stop thinking about it. The decision was made. I didn’t find out in the end if he did the warmup; maybe it’s better if I never know.

Just before leaving Europe I managed to get over to Austria to see my favourite Austrian, T (see earlier travels below), and had a really nice few days. She reckons the weather wasn’t good – and it wasn’t, really – but I thought it was charming, if a little cold, as the first snow for the season came. Ate good food, watched some movies, listened to music from a few years back with great memories of fun times, and met with some friends. So much more welcoming and warm than London had been for the weeks that seemed to drag on.

On my way back to Sydney I had a few days stopover in Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City. Such a different place to really anywhere else I know (mind you, I don’t know that many places). First day in Vietnam, just a few days from home, is when I was relieved of my camera and my phone. Crap, crap, crap! And double-crap that with the camera went the photos from the nice time in Austria that I’d not yet transferred to my PC. Grrr! I suppose it could have been worse – I still had my laptop, my passport, drivers licence, credit card, etc. But still… grrr! Made the hours spent walking around taking photos of nearby traffic and building and stuff that first day seem like such a massive waste, too. So I didn’t do much the second day, nursing a hangover and sulking over the loss, but went on day trips to see some interesting stuff the last two days.

A day trip to the Mekong Delta, a visit to the Ku Chi Tunnels, and a ceremony (prayer session?) at the Cao Dai Temple – architecturally/decoratively quite trippy, with things like the “divine eye” in windows.

Of course, with a flight to catch in the evening after coming back from a day trip, there was a massive traffic jam, and we were held up for something like an hour… an hour I didn’t have to burn. Stress.. level.. rising… Talk of perhaps getting off the bus and finding a motorbike taxi to take me back to my hotel – something that scared me just a bit more than a little. In the end a mad rush for the airport – the hotel staff had collected my things together for me in preparation and arranged a taxi. That taxi ride to the airport was the wildest ride I can think of: I almost couldn’t look as we thread our way through crazy amounts of traffic – sometimes oncoming! – at a speed that I could not in all conscience recommend as safe for the conditions. This is normal, apparently, in Ho Chi Minh. What was important is that I did, against the odds, make my flight, and I was on my way home.

Arrived back in Sydney on Sun 18 November. Just over four months away. Not too shabby!

Photo updates from my European adventure are posted in my photo gallery.

-G.

I flew over from London early Friday morning with S&J, and we caught a ride with T&M from Salzburg to Leiben. Today I am in Salzburg, returning to London late this evening. Photos to be posted soon. :o)

-G.

I’ve reminded myself also that I’d really like to see Kruder & Dorfmeister at the Playground Weekender festival early next month. Anyone already planning on, or interested in, going?

-G.

Rome, Vatican City, Venice, Osoppo (near Udine)… places I have been, if only for a short while, in Italy.

I’ve just made the last of my Europe photos (London since the birthday visit to Denmark) available in my Gallery. Unfortunately I have nothing from my visit to Austria or the stopover in Vietnam, thanks to my camera being stolen!

Anyhow, Italy was the starting point for my trip to Europe. Having only spent about a day and a half in each of Rome and Venice, though, the experience was a little glossed over! No matter, it seems a nice enough place to want to go back to. I’d like to visit Pompeii some day as well.

The food was pretty good in Italy. I’d eat some more of that! :o)

-G.

Anyways… Firefox uninstalled, codecs uninstalled (ACE Mega CoDecS Pack, recently tried XP Codec Pack, DivX, Xvid, blah), and making a ‘fresh’ start. Firefox is back on its feet, and it seems the Facebook photo loader loads now. Yay! Now what was I going to upload?.. Oh, yeah, maybe a photo with me in it some place from my travels last year. Fire up Picasa and start looking… As per usual, looking at photos very quickly leads to distraction. So many things to look at! I start photos with me in it, which leads to tagging some friends, adding captions, renaming video clips (I try to give them a descriptive name ‘coz clips are harder to quickly browse than stills, besides which I need a name for playing with them later as visuals), etc. I soon come across images shot in Abbey Road, outside the famous Abbey Road recording studios in London. This was probably one of the few touristy things I did during my stay. I don’t have a picture of myself doing the famous crossing (or do I?.. the others were taking pictures, and I might have a copy!), but do have a couple of photos of the others, as well as a Beatles Crossing video on YouTube.

Before that I’d spotted a (possible?) Banksy piece, and, having seen something about Banksy on TV in the past few days, decided to tag (ha!) some graffiti shots in Picasa as well. Now is it ‘graf’ or ‘graff’? I supposed it could be either, and had a quick peek to see what comes up in a search for ‘graff’ – of course stuff about Banksy, but also ‘GRAFF‘, a neat little web comic about graffiti.

From there I was led on to a couple of other sites, and found a new world of light graffiti… well, a new name for light painting, anyhow. Check out Lichtfaktor on MySpace for some great light painting photos, and the Graffiti Research Lab – these guys have made a projection system that you can use to ‘paint’ on buildings, etc, with a laser pointer. They’ve also done some neat bullet-time type shots with light painting around people. Anyhoo… just spent some time diving back in to the image archive and found the Banksy shots I was looking for. Tagged! Here they be:

Check out this interesting article about Banksy and the Israeli security wall from September 2005. I imagine that’s a fairly scary place to be making political statements – especially as a western foreigner!

By the way… Neon is currently even more ‘broken’ than when I started – now I can’t play the vast majority of the clips I usually use! Something has to be done about this…

-G.