Blinkenlights Library Update

Here‘s for the crazy ones.

Sven has updated the Blinkenlights Library blib to version 1.0.2. It should now compile without problems on Mac OS X if you have glib2 installed (e.g. via fink). The download page contains the new version and all the other tools as well. Reports welcome.

What‘s new?

blib 1.0.2
----------
 - added support for the old-fashioned first version of the
   Blinkenlights network protocol
 - allow to disable build of modules
 - updated versions of automake/autoconf/libtool used to build the tarball

As promised before, the whole Blinkenlights thingie is about to take up steam in the coming days. You are free to guess what‘s coming.

Blinkenlights Update

A year ago, we have built a miniature version of Blinkenlights for the construction site of Haus des Lehrers (the building currently receives a general overhaul). The miniature version has been integrated into the construction sign standing in front of the building and has all the features of the original (you can even play Pong on it with you mobile phone).

To support the miniature version, Björn has updated our little authoring program BlinkenPaint to version 3. It now supports both the classic BLM format and the new XML-based BML format which we have developed to support last year‘s installation in Paris – Arcade. There is now a native version for Mac OS X as well (along with support for classic Mac OS and Windows)

Read the Blinkenlights News page for the full scoop. You find movies of the installation in the construction site there as well. Note that there is a RSS feed available as well. I am not going to spill the beans right now but I‘d recommend subscribing to the feed as there is something nifty coming soon.

20C3: Not A Number

nan-0.4.pngOn December 27th to 29th, the 20th Chaos Communication Congress is going to take place in Berlin, Germany. I finally managed to release the 20C3 web site to the general public. A bit late, as usual.

I know the web site has some serious CSS issues with Internet Explorer but it validates and renders fine on all the standards-compliant web browsers (on the Mac). I haven‘t had enough time to concentrate on eliminating these issues. As the rendering is quite terrible on IE, something must be done, I know. If you are capable of catching some of the rendering bugs and pointing me to proper CSS hacks that I could apply, I would be very pleased to receive hints on this as my testing abilities on Windows are zero: no Windows machine around. I am a Mac-head beyond remedy.

The design is simple and uses some of the more advanced features of CSS2, like position: fixed and position: absolute to have a non-scrolling navigation interface and a table-less layout with good accessibility. I wouldn‘t say the design is a big hit. It should be simple and easy to read. Nothing more. The logo looks a bit like the Nine Inch Nails logo, but that wasn‘t intentional.

But let‘s talk about the Congress a bit. For five years, the Congress took place at Haus Am Köllnischen Park but the venue has been closed down and the team moved over to the brand new Berliner Congress Center (BCC) – and the Congress now moves as well.

So we are going to meet old friends again: the BCC – formerly known as the „Kongresshalle“ – was housing our five-day exhibition XXCCC (the 20th anniversary of the Chaos Computer Club in 2001. And the building to the left of Kongresshalle – known as „Haus des Lehrers“ – was the home of Blinkenlights, our interactive light installation (the link might be dead – we are having trouble with the name servers right now. it will be fixed soon).

So this is going to be an all-new experience for everyone of us. The new location has been recently reconstructed and is a real beauty of the 60ies stuffed with brand new equipment of the 21st century. And it has a marvellous view on Alexanderplatz and the cool Berlin TV tower. Bringing the Chaos Communication Congress to the very heart of Berlin is a big chance for the us and be sure we are going to make sure nobody is going to miss this. Hint hint :-)

The motto of 20C3 is „Not A Number“ which is a play with both the mathematical term and its philosophical meaning which should be obvious. It is partly inspired by a TV series called „The Prisoner„. The protagonist is an agent of the British secret service. After he quits his job, he gets hijacked and finds himself locked into a Village where nobody has a name – just a number. Listen to the famous words: „I am not a number! I am a free man!

So much for now. I can only invite you to join. More news on the 20C3 in this blog in the coming days.

Help! XML:LibXML does not work on Panther

I have a problem and maybe the Blogosphere can come to my help. I just can‘t get XML::LibXML to work on Panther. I need it to make an important script running on the upcoming 20C3 web server. I tried many things but nothing helped. There are many open bugs on the web site but there is no update in sight so far.

Has anybody managed to make this module run successfully on Mac OS X 10.3?

Update: It‘s always the same. After having received the first „it works for me“ report I tried it again and have no problems now. The confusing part is I changed nothing. I will dig into this further. I guess I have to go for a complete reinstall sooner or later anyway. Thanks for the help so far :)

Running Linux on a DigiCam

By fiddling around with the USB interface of his iXus digital camera, a guy calling himself „uberhax0r“ actually managed to make a whole Linux system run on his device. Check out the photos, it is really cool.

Update: also quite crazy is the project MAMED! which brings the MAME arcade machine emulator and other games (like Doom) to digital cameras running the Digita operating system.

UPDATE: Seems as if I ran into an April Fool‘s joke. The whole Linux on the DigiCam thing is a hoax. I swear I will never recommend anything on the web before checking it :)

Digital Sundials

This is one of the coolest gadgets I have seen so far: digital sundials.

„In the true tradition of all sundials, the device is purely passive – it operates without electricity, and has no moving parts. Instead, the sunlight is cast through two cleverly designed masks in the shape of numbers that show the current time of day. The sundial is available in two versions, for use in either hemisphere. Placed on the inside of a south-facing window (north-facing in the southern hemisphere), the sundial can be read through the horizontal mirror. The display updates every 10 minutes, and gives a remarkably accurate record of the time during the daylight hours.“

Have a look at the videos. Simplicity to the max.

Six Apart‘s Strange Bug Fixing Method

Recently it became known that there is a bug in one of Movable Type‘s scripts allowing spammers to use it as an e-mail gateway. The good news is that the cude people at Six Apart have already released a modified version of the script fixing that hole.

The bad news is, that they chose to replace the script in the release 2.64 of Movable Type. Why don‘t they increase the version number? I mean, that‘s what version numbers are for. When somebody reads about this bug later and just checks that the latest release (which fixes the bug) is 2.64 and he looks at his installation and sees it is 2.64 as well, why should he bother re-installing „the same“ stuff again? I‘d like to see