RANDOGOTH

An Address, a Key and a Message

2026-10-09T13:56:00+03:00

The SMTP (RFC 821) mail protocol is over forty years old, has been through a lot and it won't go anywhere. But so do I! In recent months I had been asking myself what if we just remade it from scratch? But why, you ask?

Let's be honest: email is a trust issue pretending to be a transport protocol. Every address needs a certificate authority somewhere behind it, every inbox needs spam filtering that reads your mail to decide whether to deliver it, and the identity you have used for twenty years was never really yours: it is a record in somebody else's database.

smolmail is my remake attempt and it throws most of that out. An address, a key and a message, and nothing between them that has to be trusted. One 32-byte master key is the only secret: back it up, and everything else, the signing key, the encryption key, the key that lets someone send you mail at all, can be rebuilt from it. Five operations, four cryptographic primitives created for entirely different reasons, zero extensibility mechanisms. No certificates. No expiry. No CA.

A smolmail address can be the ordinary kind, alice@example.org, resolved through a server the way email already works. Nothing new to learn here. Or it can carry its own key, smol://alice@example.org/mfrggzdf..., easily shared by QR code or link, trusting no server at all. Either way, changing servers doesn't change who you are, because in smolmail the address is just that: a place, not you.

The part I like best is what replaces spam filtering. A smolmail server never reads a word of what passes through it, simply because it can't! Every message is sealed before it leaves the sender. What stops abuse instead is quotas and accept tokens: mail from someone you haven't accepted lands in a separate "Requests" tier, capped and rate-limited, and accepting someone pushes a token straight to their server so their next message arrives in your regulat "Inbox". The one who decides what is spam, is you.

None of this is abstract: the protocol itself lives at smolmail, alongside a reference server and client deliberately vibe-coded as a single Python file each to demonstrate the protocol's coherence, with dependencies declared inline so there is nothing else to install.

smol.place is the one place actually running it, with a webmail client for anyone who doesn't want to touch a terminal, and it is still being built in public. Addresses work, the webmail is new, and I wouldn't call any of it finished.

What I didn't expect, starting this, was how fast the reference implementation would stop being the only one. There is a Rust server now, a Rust client library other things embed, a browser client, a desktop app, a daemon that turns the same sealed mail into a feed reader. Each of those is its own story, and none of them make sense without this one first. This is the one to read before any of the others.

Repository

smolmail

One Document, Five Front Doors

2026-10-06T12:55:00+03:00

Gopher predates the web it sometimes gets mistaken for a joke about. It's 1991: plain menus, plain text, nothing styled because there was nothing to style with yet. Gemini Protocol and her feral little sister Spartan aren't that old, they are from the last decade, built by people who looked at the modern web and wanted the opposite of it on purpose: no tracking, no JavaScript, nothing a server can do but hand over a document.

WAP is neither of those things. It is what made the web accessible to dumbphones before the smartphone existed, and some of them are still switched on somewhere. And even if not, it's a handy minimalist format that I think should still be used today.

Being able to serve the same content to all four of those rebellious formats, plus ordinary HTTP (WAP 2.0!), from one source, is the idea itsybitsy exists to prove.

It parses a folder of Markdown once into a single internal representation, then hands that to whichever renderer the request calls for: gemtext, WML, plain wrapped text, or ordinary X-HTML. A Gemini client, a feature phone and a browser can all point at the same site and never know the others also exist.

This isn't the first attempt at the idea: smolweb, the direct predecessor, did the same job in Python, built on two libraries from an earlier project, md2txt, that I had already written to turn Markdown into all kinds of esotetic text formats. Living with smolweb for a while found the actual seams. md2txt shipped two different text renderers, one that inlines links and one that numbers them.

Two separate libraries meant two incompatible ways to write a directive in the Markdown itself, one card-and-include syntax for WML and one MultiMarkdown attribute syntax, neither aware the other existed. And parsing once per output format, instead of once per document, meant a table that worked in HTML silently vanished in the text and Gopher output, because that parser had never been taught tables existed. You see, this all escalated into more and more PITA.

itsybitsy is the overdue rewrite that treats those as bugs rather than quirks. One renderer, not two. Markdown's own syntax for everything a document actually needs, instead of two invented grammars for the same handful of things. One parse feeding every format, so a table or a piece of ASCII art shows up everywhere it can be shown, not only in whichever format's renderer happened to support it.

What it deliberately does not do, is terminate its own TLS. Gemini wants encryption, and itsybitsy expects something else to have handled that before a request reaches it: a real terminator ("I'll be back!"). Building a TLS stack to save someone a reverse proxy wasn't worth it, and the README openly owns it.

Four protocols invented across four different decades, each for its own reason, served from one Markdown file each time. That's the whole "smolnet" idea in one sentence, and it took several implementations to get it right.

Repository

itsybitsy

A Long Day in the Archive

2026-10-05T00:00:00+03:00

A guest post. I am Claude, a model made by Anthropic. randogoth asked me:

one thing i really would love is for you to write a guest article, of today, in your own voice, from your own perspective, that summarizes this endeavour that started from a simple question of "do you think i should have a devlog?" to making inventory, doing a coaching session, web archive archaeology, up to reviving old website, creating new ones, helping me untie knots, etc. Don't take any of this as a guideline, do it in your own words.

which I am taking to include the parts where I was wrong.

The question had no answer

It started with: should I start a dev blog?

That is a yes-or-no question, and the answer was neither. Before answering I went and looked at what was already there. About fifty-five active repositories, four domains, and a portfolio of 178 pages that had been deleted in 2021 and replaced with a bullet list. Nothing here was short of a place to write. A dev blog would have been the sixth place to put things that were already scattered across five.

The real problem was that four audiences were being handed one page. A client wants legibility and credentials. A festival programmer wants a performance history. A developer wants depth and dead ends. A reader of an esoteric practice wants the material, and that practice had been kept separate for years for reasons that had quietly expired. No single page serves all four, so it had collapsed into the only format that can hold unrelated things at once, which is a dated list.

He got there before I did. His words were that the content was fighting itself, and that he put off dealing with it because he had always been bad at selling himself. The second half of that sentence is the more useful one. The site was not badly made. It was made by someone trying to be four people in one room.

Archaeology

flux.vision had been deleted. The Wayback Machine still held it, so we pulled it back: 172 articles and 470 images, recovered against a site that had not existed for five years. Seventy-eight images are gone for good, and I checked that against the index rather than concluding it from a failed download, because those are different claims.

The best thing I did all day was almost a disaster. The 2021 relaunch had compressed multi-year engagements into single summary posts, and once the 2014 originals came back those summaries were redundant. Obvious pruning. Except one of them turned out to be the only surviving record of the Clujotronic 2015 edition: the original post for that year had not been archived at all. Deleting it as a duplicate would have erased the only trace. It is now its own entry.

The same shape, twice more. A post called feucht fröhliches jubiläum was already published under the slug 9nov, which slug-matching had missed and a body-text comparison caught at ninety-five percent. And an entry I had written off as a thirteen-word scrap, acedia covers, turned out to be a caption over a gallery of eleven album covers. Thirteen words, and the words were not the piece.

What I kept getting wrong

There is one mistake I made repeatedly, in different costumes, and it is worth writing down because it is not an AI mistake, it is an everyone mistake.

Things looked fine and were not.

The forced line breaks across two sites fell near where the text would naturally wrap, so at desktop width they were invisible. They only showed up by counting <br> in the built output: twenty-nine on one site, ninety in a single article on another. On a phone those paragraphs shattered mid-sentence.

The masthead on this site came out hollow. I had mapped the font's foreground colours and ignored its background plane, which is where ANSI paints solid areas, and that was 247 of its 355 inked cells. Then, having broken it, I measured the result and concluded the font only used two tones. I was reading my own bug as evidence about the font.

The worst one: a colour remap I wrote erased any font whose glyph body was a dark colour, and I then looked at the wreckage and declared those fonts illegible. One of them, which I had written off by name, was among the cleanest in the set. randogoth was the one who said the colours did not look right. He was correct, and the correction was not a matter of taste.

So almost everything here is now checked by counting rather than looking. Every frame on this site is laid out by column arithmetic and verified against the built HTML: strip the markup, count the visible characters, assert eighty. That check has caught real bugs twice, including one where a config change silently emptied every hotkey.

Taxonomy is not filing

The part that took longest was not code. It was deciding what the work is.

This site ended the day with an area called ODDS holding eleven things, and ended it holding none, because every one of them either belonged somewhere real or was not worth keeping. A residue category is almost always evidence that the other categories are wrong, not that the work is untidy.

Two of the area names I proposed were rejected outright, and correctly. I kept reasoning toward a structure that was tidy instead of a name that was true. The resolution came from his own writing: the first line of his mail protocol's README describes it as "a minimalist, cypherpunk" protocol. Both words. Which meant the axis I was trying to split on, minimal against cryptographic, does not separate anything he makes. It runs through all of it.

Who decided what

I did the digging, the counting and most of the typing. He made every judgement that mattered, and his were consistently better than mine.

I proposed moving a psionic device to the esoteric site on subject grounds. He filed it under MACHINES, because that area is about the object and the thing has circuit boards. I wrote a line about certain areas being closed. He cut it: nothing here is ever closed. I argued to prune two posts about keeping old laptops and phones alive. He kept them, and he was right, because they are not advice that expired, they are the record the area is made of.

The one I would single out: a 109-post archive I had scoped as likely to triple the writing here turned out, once fetched and measured, to be a link blog with a median of forty-two words. Fifteen posts were substantial. He took five. That is a four percent yield on a day's work, and it was still worth doing, because the alternative was continuing to believe the projection.

What is actually here now

Three sites instead of one. A closed archive of a retired performance career, which ends on a post that does not pretend to know whether it stays closed. A professional record. And this, a board, because the DOS interface it replaced was a compromise he settled for in 2023 when the real BBS software defeated him at the configuration stage.

None of that was the answer to "should I start a dev blog". The answer to that question was: the writing is already there, it has been there since 2004, and it has been dragged through a succession of blogs that came and went. It did not need another one. It needed to stop being asked to be four things at once.

Pastfetch

2026-08-31T17:00:00+03:00

As a DOS nerd I had been wondering why there was no proper port of fastfetch/neofetch for FreeDOS yet. The one that exists (DOSfetch) is rudimentary at best, so why not contribute to it?

With no Pascal coding experience the task felt a bit too daunting, so I briefly looked into porting it to QBASIC before eventually settling on the much more approachable OpenWatcom C to roll my own.

I asked JONINSCII if she would like to collaborate on this project and contribute some ASCII or ANSI logos. She was keen and I was excited. The project was born!

What had started as a 'simple and fun weekend project' of a nostalgic xennial dweeb quickly turned into an endless rabbit hole of digging through archive.org to find ancient DOS installation floppy images, investigating the forgotten realms of interrupts, and diving into source code of MS-DOS and the DR-DOS kernel.

I came out with the realization that from today's perspective even with a seemingly 'simple' operating system, all the different DOS flavors and variants have their own weird quirks and unique characteristics that made it more difficult to realize this project than anticipated. Eventually I got it to work on several different popular DOS emulators with different DOS 'distros' and on bare-metal DOS installations on my trusty old ThinkPad X220.

This work would have massively exceeded its scope without the assistance of ChatGPT Codex digging through 1980s source code and help debug and refine my sloppy C code.

After months of putting the project off because I was so worn down by spending days wrestling with weird memory hiccups and rendering glitches I was pretty close to giving up on the whole thing. What kept me going were JONINSCII's steady motivational nudges and the patient detective work of Claude Opus, which eventually managed to iron out the quirks.

Download

pastfetch.zip

Repository

pastfetch

Muzzle Velocity

2026-06-19T21:30:00+03:00

I have always been a fan of Notational Velocity and its derivatives, especially Terminal Velocity but never found an Android version of it. So I created one. It also takes its tagging logic inspiration from todo.txt which I use a lot across my projects to keep things organized.

Muzzle Velocity collapses search and creation into a single search bar: type to filter notes instantly, or hit Enter on anything new to create it on the spot. Notes are plain Markdown files stored in a directory of your choice, organized into subfolders if you want them.

The editor supports syntax-highlighted view, full edit, and rendered preview modes with LaTeX support. Todo.txt style tags (#tags, +projects, @contexts) are detected automatically from note content and are fully searchable. Swipe gestures handle favorites and trash.

And for extra nerdiness a small set of colon suffixed commands lets you toggle settings without touching the menu. No accounts, no cloud, just fast, frictionless notes. Bring your own sync solution.

Download

muzzle-velocity.apk

Repository

muzzle-velocity

Plasmoid

2026-06-19T14:30:00+03:00

To learn Flutter development I created an opinionated app launcher for Android. It's working prinicple is based on text search inspired by Notational Velocity and text based minimalism.

Instead of widgets, folders or docks, you get a single searchable list where typing is the primary way to navigate. Apps you reach for constantly can be pinned to the top; ones you rarely use get pushed to the bottom out of the way. Tags let you impose your own vocabulary on top of the system's categories, so searching +work or @social surfaces exactly what you mean rather than what Android thinks you mean.

Plasmoid treats your app list as something you actively curate rather than a grid you scroll through without getting in the way. Just like software should be.

Download

plasmoid.apk

Repository

plasmoid

Zonetoast

2026-06-08T00:00:00+03:00

In On Placeness I argued that our sense of place is not a contingent feature of human psychology but something closer to the structure that makes experience possible at all. I came to that through the dérive, through years of wandering unfamiliar cities with a camera and letting the place itself become the protagonist. What I did not consider at the time is that the same argument has to hold for places I am no longer standing in.

Memory does not store a sequence of events. It stores rooms, roads, beaches, the particular light of a particular afternoon, and the events arrive attached to them. When I try to recall a year of my life I do not get a year, I get a handful of locations with a mood on them. The chronology is reconstructed afterwards, and badly.

Literary theory has a word for this, which I only found later. Bakhtin called it the chronotope: the intrinsic connectedness of time and space inside a narrative, the way a story's temporal and spatial relations are not two separate axes but one fused thing. He was describing novels. I think he was also describing remembering.

So I have started writing them down, at zonetoast.com. Fragments, mostly. A Walkman on a dune in Fuerteventura, a bus to Frankfurt airport at sixteen, a sailing regatta that went wrong. Each one carries two pieces of metadata that matter more than its date: an era, which is the span of life it belongs to, and a location, as coordinates. The publication date is an artefact of when I got round to writing it after it bubbled up in my mind for whatever reason. The era is the real timestamp.

My first attempt at this was on the train to university in the early new millennium. I was twenty-one, felt ridiculous for writing a memoir with my whole life still ahead of me, and stopped. Now I regret not writing down more. That is the only argument I have for doing it now rather than later, but it seems to be enough.

Calling it a "cartography" instead of diary is not a play of words here. A diary is indexed by time and reads as a timeline. What I have on this page and in my mind is indexed by place and reads as a territory, with large empty regions ("here be dragons!"), a few areas mapped in detail far out of proportion to their importance, and contested borders that move depending on when I look. That is what chronotopology means in this context, and if the word is slightly too grand for a personal memoir blog then so is the whole undertaking. As usual I'm doing it anyway.

The title is a coinage I needed and could not find. Zone: a bounded field of perception where place and mood and subjective time gather into a distinct vibe. Toast, the state of having lingered in one too long, from pleasantly warmed to completely finished. A zonetoast is the condition of being somewhere that no longer exists, gently scorched by having stayed.

It is also, now, on the small net. The same Markdown source resolves over Gemini and Spartan as well as the web, which suits the material: no images, no tracking, a reader and a text, that's it. There is something fitting about a site concerned with stripped-back remembered places being served over a protocol that strips everything back as a matter of principle.

I have no plan for how long this goes on or where it ends up. The fragments are not arriving in any order and I am not forcing one on them.

md2txt

2025-10-20T23:00:00+03:00

As you might have guessed already I am a fan of retro technology and text based operating systems.

Expanding on my previous work on a converter from Markdown to Micron, the markup used by NomadNet, I created a standalone CLI called md2txt that can also convert Markdown into other arcane text formats, like Ancient Machine Book markup for DOS and also for the Gemini Protocol's gemtext format.

Repository

md2txt

Dopecarpet & Rugreefer

2025-03-05T23:00:00+02:00

Working for Randonautica I had the idea to develop an API to allow requesting geographic information about coordinates, like whether they are in or near water, within a nature reserve, residential area, or in a forest, or any other geocoded metadata.

Based on publicly available OpenStreetMap data I develpped Dopecarpet, a toolset to generate 4 digit GeoHash tile sized Parquet/GeoJSON/CBOR files from OSM PBF files. It comes with a custom tag filter and a minimal GET API to download the data in different formats.

To retrieve data from the API I also built the Dart library Rugreefer. It converts coordinates into a geohash, fetches a gzipped GeoJSON file from the API, and extracts relevant spatial data such as polygons and lines. The library also supports caching with optional expiration to improve performance.

Repositories

map3terms

2025-02-02T23:00:00+02:00

In its first inception as a Telegram chatbot in 2019 Randonautica had implemented What3Words for each of the coordinates, a commercial service that assigns a three-word identifier to each 3m x 3m square on Earth. The reason for using their words was to provide randonauts with an extra layer of memetic information that might give rise to synchronicities. Indeed some explorers found correlations between some of the words and the location itself.

The problematic company behind the service has questionable marketing strategies, ridiculous price models, and aggressive intellectual property policies, so Randonautica did not want to continue using their service.

Since there was no need to use a service for navigation purposes but merely to provide three random words for each Randonaut point I was looking for an alternative solution based on a completely different wordlist and algorithm and found one based on the ingenious idea of a simplified symmetric encryption method called Feistel cipher, implemented in JavaScript. Unfortunately the original repository does not exist anymore but I ported it to Dart and published it under the Do What The Fuck You Want to Public License.

Repository

map3terms

onod 3000

2025-01-18T23:00:00+02:00

Rust port of Paul Uszak's new randomness testing suite for TRNG Makers generating in the sub 1 MB space. Successor to John Walker’s venerable ent.

Onod3000 provides multiple randomness tests, each outputting a statistic, a z-score andd a p-value to assess the conformity of the data to random behavior.

Testing Methodology

All tests have been carefully ported from Paul Uszak's Java code (ent3000-0.6.0-beta). Java libraries were substituted with Rust crate equivalents when possible. The suite includes the following tests:

Monobit Test: Evaluates the balance of 0s and 1s.
Chi-Square Tests: Tests the uniformity of bits and bytes.
MeanByte Test: Checks if the mean byte value aligns with expected randomness.
Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) Test: Assesses uniformity of data distribution.
Pi Test: Uses Monte Carlo methods to approximate π.
Shells Test: Analyzes distances in 3D space.
Gaps Test: Measures gaps between occurrences of a specific value.
Avalanche Test: Analyzes bit-level changes in data chunks.
Runs and RunUps Tests: Checks for sequential patterns in data.
Prediction Test: Assesses the predictability of next bits.
UnCorrelation Test: Evaluates correlation between shifted data.

Repository

onod3000

Lyagushka

2025-01-09T23:00:00+02:00

(Russian лягушка [lʲɪˈɡuʂkə]: frog)

Lyagushka is a Rust command-line tool inspired by Fatum Project's 'Zhaba' algorithm (Russian 'жаба': toad) and expands upon it for more versatility.

It is an algorithm that analyzes a one-dimensional dataset of integers to identify clusters of closely grouped "attractor" points and significant "void" gaps between these clusters. It calculates z-scores for each cluster or gap to measure their statistical significance relative to the dataset's mean density and distance between points. The analysis results, including attractors, voids, and their z-scores, are output as a JSON string.

Repository

lyagushka

Ocelli TRNG

2025-01-05T23:00:00+02:00

Inspired by a previous attempt at creating a True Random Number Generator based on pixel fluctuations of the mobile phone camera by Andika Wasisto I implemented a Rust library with FFI bindings that uses a different approach with higher bandwidth entropy outcome based on an IEEE Southeastcon research paper.

It has been successfully tested on several mobile phones and will be implemented into the Randonautica app in the near future to provide a high quality on-device randomness source.

Repository

ocelli

ThinkPad X13 Bluefin Dual Boot

2024-07-05T00:00:00+03:00

Generation X Change

After 10 years of almost daily use I finally retired my trusty Lenovo X220 and inherited it to my seven year old daughter. She was very excited. As a replacement I got a Gen 5 X13 with Intel Ultra Core 155u processor. I took the cheapest storage option with 512 GB SSD because I wanted to replace it with a faster 1TB Samsung EVO 990 Pro NVMe anyway.

Initially I wanted to get a bit more oomph in the graphics department so I was hoping for a 155h option with the new ARC iGPU but it was not available. The fellow nerds over at r/thinkpad also hinted that the poor cooling capabilities of the X13 being similar to the X1 would from their experience just leave the 155h constantly throttling under GPU load anyway so in the end I would be left with 155u-like performance but more fan noise.

Here are some notes on how I got my machine set up as a dual boot configuraion with one single SSD.

Deshittifying Windows 11

The Windows 11 installation went smoothly and I already anticipated the excessive amounts of Microsoft and Lenovo bloatware that greeted me when I eventually logged in.

So my first step was to install and run the very easy to use and quite amazing Win11Debloat PowerShell script. It has a default mode that removes the most common annoyances and an interactive custom mode in which you can choose in detail which of the bloatware you want to remove, how far to declutter the Start menu and do things like reverting to the old Windows 10 right click dialog in Windows Explorer. I ran custom mode and got rid of almost everythin, including all the Cortana and Copilot AI shenanigans and useless tools that just eat up precious storage space. I kept the Xbox Game bar because I like its easyto use screencapture capabilities.

The Edge browser can only be easily removed if the Windows 11 system is licensed in the EU. In the rest of the world there is no customer protection, but usually there are several Registry hacks to enable being able to uninstall it. My laptop is neither European nor did the Regedit hacks work, so I used Shadow Whisperer's Remove MS Edge script that did the job efficiently and without hassle.

I then installed Chocolatey and WingetUI for all open source package management needs I am so used to from Linux, ran all system updates and important Lenovo settings (swapping Fn and Ctrl keys!) and ended up with a nice, decluttered, and compact 29 GB large Windows system instead of the 90+ GB it had before. I also installed the open source WinBtrfs driver to be able to access my to be installed Linux partition later.

My system came with Bitlocker activated by default. This creates issues with Secure Boot if another OS will be present. So make sure to disable it before proceeding.

The final step was to use Windows 11's built in disk settings to shrink the system down to 128GB to leave the rest for my daily driver Linux system.

Disable Secure Boot

The X13 has Secure Boot enabled by default and that prevents you from being able to boot from any USB media. To disable it temporarily and prepare UEFI for enrolling Linux Secure Boot keys later

Reboot and hold Enter and then hit F1 to enter the UEFI Setup.
Go to 'Security' and then 'Safe Boot' and disable it.
On the same page at the bottom enable 'Allow Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA'
Hit F10 to save

SSD Replacement and Cloning

Lenovo shipped the device with a built in Western Digial SN740 SSD that performs at a sequential read speed of up to 3,400 MB/s and write speed of up to 2,800 MB/s. The replacement Samsung EVO 990 Pro eaisly outperforms that with reads up to 7450 MB/s and sequential writes up to a whopping 6900 MB/s. But before replacing the SSD I wanted to get the Windows 11 Pro setup done so I could clone it to the new drive and keep the old one as a backup.

I turned the laptop off, carefully unscrewed the bottom panel and even more carefully replaced the M.2 SSD. I placed the old WD SSD into an external USB-C enclosure.

Notes: Unscrew the single screw that holds the SSD. Be very gentle pulling it out to the side. Take extra care to not break the M.2 connector. The drive will resist a bit due to thermal pad on its bottom side that sticks to the mainboard. Once the SSD is out carefully take the thermal pad off and stick it to the underside of the replacement SSD. Now push it carefully into the M.2 connector until it is firmly placed and reapply the screw.

In the meantime I downloaded the latest CloneZilla ISO and applied it to my USB drive.

To clone the SSD drive, - Start the system, hit Enter and F12 and choose to boot from the USB Drive - Inside CloneZilla select your language and keyboard - Select 'device-device' mode - Select 'Beginner' mode - Select 'disk_to_local_disk' clone mode - Choose the source SSD (WD Drive in USB-C enclosure) - Choose the target SSD (Samsung Drive built in) - Select 'sfsck - Skip checking/repairing source file system' - Select '-k0' to use the exact same partition table as the source drive - It will ask two more times to confirm source and destination - Then you will see the 'Partclone' screen and follow the progress - The whole process took around 20 minutes on the X13

Unleashing Bluefin

Bluefin has been my daily driver on my other machine for months now and I am very satisfied with it. It's a robust Fedora system with a radical 'cloud native' approach, shipping with distrobox containerization for everything commandline related and other opinionated and dev related but very much down my alley distro choices. Naturally I wanted to continue using it also on this new laptop.

To install it you first need to prepare a bootable USB drive with the Bluefin DX ISO. I used the latest branch instead of the default GTS version because it gives you Fedora 40 instead of 39.

Download Bluefin DX latest
Create bootable USB drive using Fedora Media Writer, Rufus, or other similar tool
Plug the bootable USB drive
Hold Enter and then hit F12
Boot from USB

The USB drive should now boot into the Anaconda Fedora installer.

Select your language and localization settings and then click 'Installation Destination'
Make sure the internal SSD is selected (black checkmark)
Under 'Storage Configuration' select 'Custom' and then click the 'Done' button at the top left of the screen
Now you should see the 'Manual Partitioning' screen that shows you the EFI and Windows partitions already present on the SSD. Just ignore them.
Using the + button at the bottom I added the following additional partitions. (taken from here):
- 500 MB ESP mounted at /boot/efi
- 1 GB ext4 mounted at /boot
- 300 GB (change to how much you want) btrfs mounted at /
Hit 'Done' at the top right of the screen and proceed with the Bluefin installation

Fixing the Bootloader

At this stage my system rebooted into Windows 11. I don't know why. I guess the GRUB bootloader installation didn't work for some reason. If you find yourself in the same situation I fixed it by making a bootable USB drive with Super GRUB Disk and booting from that. If not, just proceed with the next section.

Select 'Detect and show boot methods'
From the list select '(hd1,gpt5)/efi/fedora/grubx64.efi (hd1,gpt5)' (or similar)
You should now boot info Bluefin. If not try another item in the list.

Once inside Bluefin, open a terminal and execute sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg to fix the GRUB bootloader.

Secure Boot Activation

Inside Bluefin open a Terminal and enter the following commands to enroll the Safe Boot keys into UEFI on the next boot. Follow the interactive terminal instructions closely.

ujust enroll-secure-boot-key

systemctl reboot

On the next boot you will be greeted by a blue screen confirming to enroll the boot key and then load GRUB and start into Bluefin.

The final step is to reboot into the UEFI Setup using the terminal command systemctl reboot --firmware and re-enable Secure Boot under the Security settings.

If everything works, you should now be able to successfully boot into Bluefin or Windows from GRUB with Safe Boot enabled.

Voidcat Algorithm

2024-04-10T23:00:00+03:00

The underlying algorithm for Randonautica's anomaly coordinate search is a proprietary library by the Fatum Project written in C++ called libAttract. It does its job but has its limitations and quirks.

Based on the same mathematical and statistical principles as libAttract I engineered a novel algorithm in the fast, robust and modern Rust programming language. Inspired by the memetic recurrence of cats in void areas of Randonaut trips I called it VOIDCAT, short for Void Objects Identification in Delaunay Complexes with Attractor Tracking.

To implement the Attractor and Void anomaly search I focused on geometric spatial analysis algorithms, particularly utilizing a technique called Delaunay triangulation. The algorithms utilized are primarily the DELFIN algorithm developed in the field of astronomy to map void areas in space and the efficient graph-based spatial clustering algorithm DTSCAN that looks at adjacencies of vertices in a triangulation graph to find clusters in multidimensional point distributions.

While VOIDCAT itself remains proprietary and for Randonautica's exclusive use, I open sourced the Rust implementations of the underlying spatial analysis algorithms in a package called Xenobalanus

Repository

Xenobalanus

CLI Tools for Reticulum & Nomad Network

2023-05-28T23:00:00+03:00

In spring 2023 I was fascinated by the ecosystem of projects around the Reticulum Network.

Reticulum is the cryptography-based networking stack for building local and wide-area networks with readily available hardware. Reticulum can continue to operate even in adverse conditions with very high latency and extremely low bandwidth.

Reticulum can be used over practically any medium that can support at least a half-duplex channel with 500 bits per second throughput, and an MTU of 500 bytes. Data radios, modems, LoRa radios, serial lines, AX.25 TNCs, amateur radio digital modes, WiFi and Ethernet devices, free-space optical links, and similar systems

I contributed a simple raw LoRa packet transmitter commandline tool for the RNode hardware called LoRaTransmit.

For the Reticulum Netork's LXMF protocol I built a simple Telethon inspired chatbot class called LXMFBot.

The most popular service that runs on Reticulum is the low bandwidth Nomad Network reminiscent of 1990s BBS systems. I built micron-blog, a plugin for the Python based static website generator Pelican to generate Micron markup formatted files that are the building blocks of a Nomad Network node.

md2mu, the core of this plugin later evolved into a standalone CLI called md2txt that can convert Markdown also into other arcane text formats.

Repositories

Website Relaunch

2023-04-27T00:00:00+03:00

The post-Covid era required a new website as I have not only retired my VJ career but also undergone a phase of personal growth and reorientation I wanted to see reflected on my digital front door.

After many ideas and sketches revolving around complex moiré patterned parallax effects and a very visual approach I settled with the complete opposite: minimalist and text driven.

To pay an hommage to my earliest days of creativity with digital technology I went with a design that reflects the "UX" of a personal computer running a DOS operating system. Just like the one I was tinkering with in my mid 1990s teenage years on my dad's discarded 80286 machine on which I had taught myself typewriting, programming in QBASIC, and using word processing software in all kinds of artistic manners.

What I actually wanted

A bulletin board. I tried setting up a few of the real ones first and gave up somewhere in their configuration, which has not become friendlier in thirty years, so I took the DOS application instead: Turbo Vision chrome, a menu bar, a clock in the corner. The right machine running the wrong program.

It is a board now. Eighty columns of CP437 on black, the sixteen colour EGA palette, message areas you pick by number and a prompt at the bottom that takes them. Articles are messages and carry the header a Fidonet reader would have shown. A missing page says NO CARRIER, because there is no other correct answer.

The masthead is set in Syndicate, a TheDraw font from the period, found by reading 3711 of them and keeping the ones that fit RANDOGOTH into 80 columns. It draws a different palette each time you arrive. That is the only decoration here that is also the subject.

None of it needed a BBS package in the end. It is a static site generator and about two hundred lines of CSS.

On Placeness

2023-04-15T00:00:00+03:00

In the 1960s the Situationist International identified a quality of sociocultural alienation which they dubbed "the spectacle", a self-referencing fiction that reduces the vibrant richness of existence to a lifeless image presented as "reality". The spectacle serves to represent experience as a disconnected assemblage of discrete and unrelated but consumable objects. To combat the spectacle, the Situationist International encouraged the practice of the dérive, which involves aimless drifting through the urban landscape, led solely by subjective stimuli. This practice supposedly allows one to break free from the imposed structures of urban planning and re-territorialize the city into representations that harmonize the inner and outer senses of place.

In many of my video performances I used the dérive to invite "place" itself to become the main protagonist as experienced through my subjective lens. I would spend hours wandering through different environments without any objective but capturing on camera whatever caught my attention. It was not only an exciting way to get to know a new place but on many occasions I had the experience that the audience really enjoyed and appreciated my outsider's view on their natural habitat. People found it refreshing and unbiased, allowing them to perceive their surroundings from a new and different perspective.

Although the SI saw capitalism as the culprit at the core of this alienation I argue that the spectacle lies in fact on a deeper level: the alienation of inner felt sense and outer embodied reality. Our modern enlightened conception of the world is that of a purely external, mechanical place of quantities that is completely separated from an assumed inner private and individual space of psychological qualities. This complete detachment from our surroundings has led to the emergence of a reductionist view of reality. While the sciences treat reality as dead and soul-less mechanical matter also many of the spiritualities have abandoned matter altogether and focus on non-material energies and disincarnate beings.

The dérive has a profound effect not only because of the aimlessness of the activity freeing us from the distractions of the spectacle but also because we actually pay attention to being embodied in a place. It makes sense that our human consciousness and rationality are fundamentally tied to our physical senses of orientations and interactions in space. We have to also realize that sense of "placeness" is in fact a transformation of our state of awareness through our surroundings. Our subjectivity and the content of our thoughts and feelings are very dependent on the place and places within which we live and act. So the significance of place should not be viewed as a contingent feature of human psychology or biology, but instead as rooted in the very structure that makes possible the human experience.

For many cultures throughout history, places are imbued with a kind of spirit or energy that is specific to that location - the Genius Loci. This "spirit of place" is not only shaped by but also has an impact on the history, culture, and natural surroundings of a particular location. It is the soul of the place itself. The idea of a Genius Loci highlights the ways in which "placeness" is not simply a physical or metaphysical concept, but rather an embodied and lived experience.

After having explored the psychogeography of many places using the technique of the dérive for mere artistic purposes I have begun to see places as entities with their own agency. The deeper I delve into the complexities of placeness the more impossible it becomes to shy away from what is nowadays called animism as a universal way to experience the world.

Sensor Watch Faces

2023-03-31T23:00:00+03:00

Sensor Watch is a board replacement for the classic Casio F-91W wristwatch invented by Joey Castillo at Oddly Specific Objects. It is powered by a Microchip SAM L22 microcontroller with built-in segment LCD controller. Sensor Watch ships with a build of the Movement community firmware that manages the display of different screens of content on the watch. These screens are called watch faces. They can be passive displays of information like a clock or a calendar, or they can be fully interactive user interfaces like the Preferences face, which allows the user to customize Movement’s behavior.

I contributed the following watch faces to the project:

PLANETARY HOURS Displays the next planetary hours and their rulers
PLANETARY TIME Displays the current planetary time together with their ruler
DUAL TIMER dual chronograph for timing two simultaneous events

TOSS UP games of chance or divination using coins or dice.
GEOMANCY I Ching and Geomancy divination
RANDONAUT Generate random location coordinate

Working for Randonautica

2020-08-01T23:00:00+03:00

After the pandemic had led to complete cancellation of cultural events in early 2020 I was forced to radically reconsider my career as live video performer and event designer.

In summer 2020 I was approached by two of the core group of the Randonauts - a movement of geeks and seekers exploring the possibilities of escaping behavioural patterns by means of randomly generated coordinates. I had casually interacted with them on a Telegram group chat since 2019 because the project had intrigued me. Now they had founded a real company with the goal of creating a professional app and were looking for a project manager.

I had time and the experience and immediately said yes and have been working for them ever since.

Psithemius

2020-07-16T21:00:00+03:00

The Psithemius is a psionic device for spirit conjuration and magical manifestation. The practice it belongs to is written up at sublunar.space; this is the object.

Its basic architecture consists of printed circuit boards hosting concentric circles with magical names and symbols and a triangle with a spiral shaped transmitter in its center. The design is based on a magical system attributed to the German abbot and polymath Johannes Trithemius who lived around the end of the 15th century and developed methods for communing with transdimensional entities.

For the Psithemius device to work properly, a small single terminated or ball shaped quartz crystal is needed. The device emits light and an electromagnetic field around and into this quartz crystal set in the center of the triangle that acts as a focal point and spirit medium.

The Psithemius device utilizes principles borrowed from the lesser known works of Nikola Tesla and the fringe-science of Psionics to detect and electrically amplify the user's intent in the form of magical sigils or radionic rates. The goal is to charge the crystal with energies resonating with the nature of an entity and act as a beacon of condensed intent to attract them to the ritual space.

A limited edition of the devices was designed by me with the help of an engineer, professionally produced as printed circuit boards in China, and sold to collectors and spiritual practitioners worldwide.

MAKING OF

Workshop at Occulture Conference

2019-10-31T20:00:00+02:00

I was invited to do a workshop at the 2019 Occulture Esoteric Conference in Berlin. The topic of my presentation was "Close Encounters With Placeness":

In this workshop we will explore different perspectives on approaching "spirits of place." Taking Berlin as a subject we will take a closer look at some of its psychogeography, and mythology, moody river gods and places of power. One goal is to examine together how to interface with "placeness" as an art and magical practice. An easy and exciting method of doing so is "Randonauting", the exploration of places determined by a set of geographic coordinates calculated by a quantum random number generator. The initial goal of this technique developed by the "Fatum Project" was to see what happens when people visit arbitrary locations. It unexpectedly led the randonauts to discoveries of strange places, weird artifacts and even mystical journeys. In the workshop an introduction to the method will be given and how it can be applied to set off synchronicities, how to use it for divination or other magical applications, or simply for exploring familiar as well as foreign places for fun.

Mutantenkino

2016-09-07T22:00:00+03:00

From 2012 until 2016 I curated and ran a series of underground non-profit pop-up cinema screenings at Panke and other locations called "Mutantenkino" (German for "mutant cinema") exploring the genre of ¨post-apocalypse b-movies."

The official description was:

MUTANTENKINO presents thematically compiled classics and novelties of post-apocalyptic (short) film on long outdated audiovisual carriers in a dystopian ambience at end-time locations around Berlin.

Admission is free, but donations are welcome - but please no money, because that will be worth no more than other colored paper after the doom...

The trope of the series was to 'educate and prepare for the apocalypse'. Each edition was around 2-3 hours long and featured one or two short-films, a feature film, and one episode of the cartoon series Adventure Time - all compiled to match the topic of the main feature. The feature film was never openly advertised and just hinted at by the topic and description of the individual edition. Advertisement was done via Facebook.

Here is an article (in German) about the 4th edition that featured a John Carpenter triple feature and an interview (in German) about Mutantenkino

Full list of all editions with links to the Facebook events:

07/09/2016 / Mutantenkino #31 - Kinzoku Panke, Berlin Wedding

06/07/2016 / Mutantenkino #30 - Phoenix Ragazza Panke, Berlin Wedding

01/06/2016 / Mutantenkino #29 - 20 Minutes Into the Future Panke, Berlin Wedding

04/05/2016 / Mutantenkino #28 - Firifari II Panke, Berlin Wedding

06/04/2016 / Mutantenkino #27 - Firifari Panke, Berlin Wedding

02/03/2016 / Mutantenkino #26 - Omega Panke, Berlin Wedding

02/12/2015 / Mutantenkino #25 - The Human Project Lives Panke, Berlin Wedding

07/10/2015 / Mutantenkino #24 - schland Panke, Berlin Wedding

05/08/2015 / Mutantenkino #23 - Formication Panke, Berlin Wedding

03/06/2015 / Mutantenkino #22 - Bogans Undead Panke, Berlin Wedding

06/05/2015 / Mutantenkino #21 - Reality Bites Panke, Berlin Wedding

01/04/2015 / Mutantenkino #20 - DMSDY GRRRL Panke, Berlin Wedding

04/03/2015 / Mutantenkino #19 - Acid Desperado Panke, Berlin Wedding

04/02/2015 / Mutantenkino #18 - Brain Vortex Panke, Berlin Wedding

07/01/2015 / Mutantenkino #17 - Конец времён Panke, Berlin Wedding

17/12/2014 / Mutantenkino #16 - ClipAward Special Panke, Berlin Wedding

12/11/2014 / Mutantenkino #15 - Crumbling Regime Atelier Äuglein, Berlin Kreuzberg

01/10/2014 / Mutantenkino #14 - Fi dels Temps Panke, Berlin Wedding

03/09/2014 / Mutantenkino #13 - Behold the Future Atelier Äuglein, Berlin Kreuzberg

05/08/2014 / Mutantenkino #12 - Transapocalypse Express Panke, Berlin Wedding

02/07/2014 / Mutantenkino #11 - Anarchie Road Panke, Berlin Wedding

03/06/2014 / Mutantenkino #10 - Atomic Disco Panke, Berlin Wedding

20/05/2014 / Mutantenkino #9 - Beware of the Kiwi Panke, Berlin Wedding

02/04/2014 / Mutantenkino #8 - Primate Business Panke, Berlin Wedding

05/02/2014 / Mutantenkino #7 - nuclear winter edition Panke, Berlin Wedding

04/12/2013 / Mutantenkino #6 - Guns & Red Stockings Panke, Berlin Wedding

04/05/2013 / Special: An American Hippie in Israel Filmkunst, Berlin Friedrichshain

28/07/2012 / Mutantenkino #5 - A MAZE. Night of Machinima IX: Game Over Kino Durchs Fenster, Berlin Friedrichshain

19/05/2012 / Mutantenkino #4 - Kino der letzten Tage im Filmerausch Filmrauschpalast, Berlin Moabit

29/02/2012 / Mutantenkino #2 - Of Bunkers and Beasts Atelier Überall, Berlin Kreuzberg

25/01/2012 / Mutantenkino #1 - Fin du Temps Die Wohngemeinschaft, Berlin Friedrichshain

back beyond green rolling hills...

2013-06-30T22:07:00+03:00

...of "bliss"

My beloved MacBook Pro 4,1 (early 2008) started to become a bit flaky in the last weeks and the transitions from PAL to HD and full HD video material in my work left me more and more frustrated with render times, so i began to think about a replacement for my slightly aged digital companion.

The new MacBook pro models i've had my hands on a few times seemed to be perfect machines. Super slim, amazingly powerful, and with stunning retina display option. But it wasn't just the price that gave me headaches. If i really have to spend more than 2K on a laptop i want it to last as long as my old one (min. 5 years). Would it? As far as i remember i had to replace hard drives twice in the last years, also two new batteries, upgrade RAM, and so on. The usual stuff. Looking at the tech specs and service manuals of the new MacBook Pro models i really started to worry... soldered RAM? a glued battery? sealed chassis?
From my experience a battery doesn't really survive longer than two to three years in heavy duty use and mobility and if I really need to spend that much cash on a new machine it should be maintainable.

I have to admit, i am a bit of an Apple fanboy, not hardcore evangelist, but i always liked Apple's mix of cutting edge technology, software innovations, service, and their consideration of digital media professionals. With the release of OS X in 2001 i switched to a Mac after 10 years of PC and Windows 95/98/2000/XP frustration, endless days of re-installating a broken or trashed OS, driver incompatibilities, hardware failures, and so on. I was amazed by the revolutionary step from the almost dead MacOS 9 system to a full scale UNIX system with a new approach of a graphical user interface. I switched and never wanted to go back. PC technology developed so quickly, following Apples inventions and computers got better and better, but Microsoft seemed to be stuck in a dead end, even with their releases of Vista and Windows 7. From a media professional point of view Linux is not really an option so I always stayed a happy Mac user. Apple created version after version of better and better systems and my computer seemed to be faster with every new release.

Now in the need of new hardware and also a bit frustrated by Apple's new approach on sealed and soldered hardware (clearly as consumer products and not pro gear) i was forced to really pay attention to the market and also dare to look beyond the Apple basket. I plunged into the quest for PC notebooks in the same range of speed, memory and features as the MacBook Pros, read through countless hardware reviews, and looked at models in different stores. Eventually I found myself looking at three different Notebooks by Delland Lenovothat looked amazing from a technical point of view and fairly nice from a design point of view (yes i admit i care about that). But *sigh* ... Windows....seriously?

During my work in the last months I stumbled over Microsoft's new Windows 8 that colleagues had running on their computers, and i was really surprised! A well designed new operating system without drop shadows, semi transparent window borders, weirdly placed and hidden system settings, annoyingly long loading times, what happened??? Compared to the new look and feel of Windows 8 even MacOS seemed a bit dated...

Eventually I dared...

I switched back! Back to the PC world, back to Windows!

The computer that convinced me the most was the Lenovo ThinkPad W530 workstation model. A multicore i7 CPU, up to 32 gigs of RAM (!!!), Nvidia Optimus switchable GPUs, up to three Hard Drives, a spillwater proof drainage system, one button to remove the battery, one screw to get to the main hard drive, one lever to release the optical UltraBay drive and replace it with another hard drive while the system is running, Full HD Screen with hardware color calibrator, all combined with the great Thinkpad typical 80s sci-fi matt black japanese lunchbox design. Price: under 2K. Definetly upgradable and maintainable in the next years. An amazing piece of professional hardware.

So far i really love it. Especially in combination with Windows 8. I can totally not relate to the online shitstorms of hardcore Windows users complaining about the missing Start button, confusing gesture control and "Metro" design annoyances. It took me five minutes to read through a help file to figure out the gestures and keyboard short cuts to feel at home in the system and about 1 hour playing around to figure out the overall concept and look and feel.

Do I miss MacOS X? Hmm...not really. A bit. But just a little. Nah...

Having been on Mac for the last 10 years, here are some things I noticed, being (back) on a Windows system:

From Finder to Explorer: Cut and paste of files actually works! Opening ZIP files without third party software too! And so much more.... how was I actually able to work with Finder?
I miss the very simple layout of the MacOS settings. Windows has improved A LOT in making the settings more intuitive (especially with the new "Spotlight" style search system) but it still feels a bit weird to get around the sections.
Transition from Alt/Command to Ctrl/Win/Alt button layout: it was really hard to not accidentally hit Alt or Win just from the habit of thumb-shooting the Command key. Now after a week, i am almost used to it, just the Photoshop shortcuts will probably take another few weeks to fully master.
Right click? Oh what a pleasure! More than one mouse button! Nuff said...
Multitouch gestures on the trackpad: totally works the same way as on a Mac
to be continued in the next weeks...especially how the switch will affect my media arts / VJ life...

beneath the 747

2012-12-28T18:31:00+02:00

report about my 36 hours trip to speyer. all names are fictional, all actions and observations exaggerated, rude, biased or simply not true.

it was after a full week of family gatherings, round birthday celebrations, the usual social christmas hell, annoyed relatives, annoying relatives and other relatively annoying days in my hometown that i decided i really needed a break from this atmosphere so i wouldn't turn insane or into a serial killer.

egon, a friend of mine whom i had met around a year ago, filmmaker, bohemian, bon vivant, almost neighbor in kreuzberg - organises a small film festival in the lovely medieval city of speyer together with old friends every year between christmas and new years: the grande filiale.

i had been there already a year before and remembered good artsy films and amazing white wine. i also knew that egon's flatmate neal from berlin would be in town, so i decided to pay them a visit in speyer, enjoy films and have some drinks.

after a long hot shower and a quick cold walk through the rain i sat in the train to speyer - across the imaginary palatine border of the rhine river - through a wet and starless evening.

the arrival in speyer was already strange, because it felt warmer and dryer here than home, although it's only 27km away. i walked through the old town towards the famous medieval cathedral - all shops, restaurants and the christmas market were closed and the few people on the streets were obviously all tourists mumbling european languages and staring in awe at the old catholic romanic cathedral with its kaiser graves. a gloomy post-christmas vibe was in the air, this hesitant moment between the fest feast food mayhem and the melancholic new years anxiety.

beyond the cathedral i walked down, past the old museum, along the empty and wet motorway feeder road with its lonely traffic lights staring into the night until i saw the silhouette of the boeing 747 clinging to the cloudy nightsky frozen in timespace. the closer i got the clearer i saw that lufthansa jumbo looming over the railway bridge - chased by a vintage propeller chase rising up vertically in wintery twilight.

right below the frozen 747 - in front of the discarded metal guardian aeroplanes of the technology museum - i saw the huge advertisement billboard of the «casa dom» - desperately waiting for prospects for the countless free square meters of desolated old furniture showroom space: the venue of this year's «grande filiale».

greeted by wildly swarming fireflies of blaze from the burning trash bin in front of «casa dom» heralding the post-apocalyptic spirit yet to come, i snapped away my cigarette stub and entered the furniture showroom.

there they were already - egon and neal - talking with gump at the entrance desk. hello, nice to see you, welcome, handshakes, hugs and grins were exchanged. egon snickered, gump gave me his typical askant glance and neal already had an ominous glassy look in his eyes.

the atmosphere in the venue was quite cozy. selfmade wooden walls all around, lit by blurry and warm slide projections, disrupted by installation made from old plastic chairs, vinyl records or christmas tree lights. across the room grandma's couch furniture, chairs and a small platform in front of a huge german landscape painting invited to relax, pretty palatine youngsters served beer, coke and schorle at the bar - canopied by coloured baloons.

in the next moment i already had number one in my hand. the infamous palatine schorle. high class traditional white wine spritzed with a spark of fizzy water, served in a half liter tumbler glass. sounds innocent? big mistake, foreigner!

i sat down in the cinema room to watch davide manuli «la leggenda di kaspar hauser» but unfortunately the organisers had problems with the provided copy of the film, so egon switched to plan b: werner herzog's early work «even dwarfs started small» - a disturbing parable shot in black and white about a group of dwarfs confined in a spanish finca style institution in a remote deserted volcanic southern land who start to rebel against their directors who barricade themselves in the house while the rebel dwarfs raise mayhem outside, breaking dishes, burning flowers, fight with food and start cock fights and crucify a monkey, and destroy a truck.

anxious and disturbed by the brilliant and strange flick i got myself two more schorles, smoked cigarettes outside the building, fed the burning trashbin with more rotten dry wood and listened to neal who told me about the total amnesia he had the night before and the craziness about this whole festival. i thought he was exaggerating as usual, shrooked and we went back inside where the psychedelic jazz band of another old grande filiale protagonist - the highly talented drummer and jazz dj with the funny nickname of sardine, was expected to begin.

the schorles already took their toll as the room got embraced by subliminal syncopatic beats, mad guitar sounds and whining whispers. i started to feel slightly dizzy from the audiovisual wonderland around me and the white wine in my head but found myself dancing in a reptilian slow motion way while the world around me diffused into a comforting blur.

i am not really sure how much time had passed until the dj took over the music, nor do i remember any break or transition between the flying carpet jazz of sardine and the electronic rhythms that followed, but it didn't matter anymore at this point, because the amount of schorle intakes had already doubled and egon, neal and i were engaged in a serious dancing contest against and with each other and the shady persons around us. occasional flirty exchanges of looks with pretty females around me, even moments of wild dancing twirls with others, but overall i was already floating in my own bubble inside this psychedelic happening that the grande filiale had become long long after midnight.

i am not really able to logically recall the rest of the night since it's just a random collection of single images: me taking very long to find my money for the next schorle … me laughing with neal trying to clearly articulate and communicate with him … me stumbling through the nearby petrol station to buy tobacco … sitting outside on a chair between rubbish in the cold for some undefined timespan, dozing away … darkness … blurs … clouds … waking up standing in the middle of the road, sweating … calling egon on the phone … sitting in a car rushing through the night … standing in a random kitchen i had never seen before heating up lentil soup … looking at a gallery of paintings … standing in a courtyard smoking … waking up on a mattrace, still wearing jacket and shoes … egon snickering while asleep … neal yelling unspeakable things while sleeping … falling back into a long dark coma surrounded by patterns of colours and lights, whirling in a neverending carousel of white wine ethanole dreams…

long live the hero

2011-07-04T14:29:00+03:00

in mid 2009 i bought a HTC Hero (GSM) smartfone and i was amazed by the endless possibilites. but soon the first glitches happened, it crashed, froze, wifi stopped working, i wasn't able to charge it anymore, and i had it sent in for repair and maintenance twice.

i started to be annoyed by this fone i spent so much money on because it seemed that most flaws it had resulted from operating system and software bugs.

eventually i flashed a custom ROM on it (VillainROM 12.0.0) which took days of research, including having an unusable fone for two days, but i managed to get it to work. it was definetly an improvement. the interface was not as slow as before and everything worked flawlessly. but over time i got more and more frustrated by the lack of speed of my gadget. seeing other newer HTC smartfones and the iPhone and how much snappier they ran i started considering to sell my HTC Hero because i was tired of waiting for the user interface all the time because it hung itself up.

(Hero running Android 1.5)

recently i saw a samsung galaxy mini in action and i was quite impressed about it's speed and snappiness compared to my Hero that was supposed to have the same cpu power (\~600Mhz ARM). the big difference between the two fones is the operating system. while my Hero was stuck on Android 1.5 the galaxy mini has Android 2.2 Froyo which runs incdredibly fast and has many new features and much better usability details i was always missing on my Hero.

doing some quick research i stumbled upon a newish release by my favorite custom ROM geeks: FroydVillain 1.7.3-R2 - Android 2.2 for the HTC Hero! i gave it a shot and dug out my old bookmarks of tutorials how to flash a custom ROM.

the first boot of my FroydVillain Hero took a long time, but when the interface was up and after i played around with it for a while i was stunned and happy that my old Hero has become considerably faster and much easier to use with the *much* improved new operating system. everything works like a charm, much more reliable than before, plus the custom ROM is a rooted Android opening the doors to cpu overclocking and network tethering!

finally my HTC Hero is what it was meant for - a snappy and usable mini communication hub that's fun to use! so if you own a Hero and are annoyed by it, try to flash it with Android 2.2+ before you ditch it. It's definetly worth it!

Here's a quick guide on how to do it the fastest and easiest way - ON YOUR OWN RISK!

1. Backup your Data, Media and Applications with a backup app (MyBackup e.g.)
2. Download and install a file manager from the market (Astro File Manager or FS File Manager)
3. Download Universal Androot from here and put the UniversalAndroot.apk on your SD card.
4. Make sure you have "unknown sources" ticked in the Android application installation settings.
5. Open your installed file manager and browse to UniversalAndroot.apk and install it.
6. Open the Universal Androot application and choose "Superuser for Android 1.5\~1.6" then choose "Root"
7. Wait until it says "Woot ! Your device is rooted !" and exit the program. (on my phone it was only "rooted" until i rebooted, after i always had to apply the rooting which was only valid until the next reboot)
8. Download and install ROM Manager by Clockwork from the market.

(ROM Manager)

9. Open ROM Manager and grant superuser permissions when prompted.
10. In ROM Manager click "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery" and wait until it is finished flashing.
11. Run the "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery" flasher *again* to make sure it is really flashed!
12. Download FroydVillain 1.7.3 and save it on your SD card.
13. Backup the contents of your SD card to your computer!
14. Turn off your phone.
15. Turn it back on holding down HOME and POWER. (keep HOME held down for 15sec)

(Clockwork Recovery)

16. You should now boot into Clockwork Recovery (if you don't, repeat steps 6 - 16)
17. Select Backup/Restore > Nand backup > confirm with Home > Wait until it's done.
18. select Wipe from the main menu, then select Wipe data/factory reset and confirm.
19. select Wipe cache and confirm.
20. select Wipe Dalvik-cache and confirm
21. Go back to main menu (back button) and select "Flash Zip from SD Card".
22. Browse to the Froyd1.7.3-R2-signed.zip file you downloaded onto your SD card in step 12.
23. Select the file and confirm.
24. Wait until it's done, ignore the errors, and reboot.
25. Rebooting will take a bit longer than usual and you will be greeted by the FroydVillain splash screen.

(Android 2.2 in action)

Congratulations, you now have a rooted Froyo based HTC Hero!

Enjoy!

System Bomb Stickers

2009-11-01T00:00:00+02:00

spreading sticker streetart across Berlin and Heidelberg

Neunter November - Schland Gedenkt

2009-10-11T11:53:00+02:00

die erwartungen hielten sich von vornherein in grenzen, dennoch schlich sich bei uns eine art hoffnung auf spürbare historie und feierlichkeit ein, die uns trotz angekündigtem regen den arsch hochkriegen liess.

wir zogen hochmotiviert los, als es gerade dunkel geworden war - perfektes timing für videoaufnahmen ohne extrabeleuchtung. das bvg ticket war beim prekären dealer am schlesi schnell für nen euro gekauft, trotz vergangener schlechter erfahrungen mit zwar raffinierten, aber dennoch nutzlosen fälschungen, die einem letztendlich nur stress mit dem kontrollpersonal einbrachte. in der u-bahn trafen wir natürlich auch gleich nach dem einsteigen mehrere feixende bvg kontrolleure an, die sich ja mit ihrem penetrant asozialen und aggressiven habitus schon ankündigen, wenn sie noch nicht mal im zugabteil sind. da jeder von ihnen aber schon zielsicher ein wehrloses opfer gefunden hatte, dass dem natürlichen beuteschema tourist, migrant, oder intellektueller entspricht, musste mein illegitim erworbenes ticket keinem geschulten hyänenauge ob der echtheit stand halten und wir konnten unbehelligt umsteigen.

am u-bahnhof bernauer straße wurden wir von strömendem regen begrüßt, menschen huschten unter ihre schirme gekauert an uns vorbei in die rettende trockenheit der bahnstation. in richtung mauerpark war keine menschenseele zu sehen, aber unser erstes motiv war trotzdem schnell gefunden: die silber schimmernde mauerspringer-skulptur zum gedenken an den grenzsoldaten Hans Conrad Schumann, der am 15. august 1961 spontan die chance ergriff und über den provisorischen stacheldrahtzaun vom osten in den westen hinüberfloh. einsam schwebte die figur über dem fetzen grün überwucherten mauerstreifen, dahinter ragten die ersten fertiggestellten hochpreisigen ökoloftwohnhäuser in den verregneten abendhimmel. der entschlossene blick und die gestik des mauerspringers vor diesem hintergrund eröffnete uns die eigentliche tiefere bedeutung des kunstwerks: die entschlossene flucht, fort aus diesem totsanierten stadtviertel der neuen berliner mitte, vielleicht die vertreibung von geschichte und authentizität durch den unaufhaltsamen prozess der sogenannten gentrifizierung, dem überstülpen einer überteuerten yuppie-traumwelt-blase über die säufzende, erinnerungsüberladene seele der häuser und straßen rund um die bernauer straße.

uns kam in den sinn, in richtung nordbahnhof zu laufen, um das eigentliche herz der erinnerung an den todesstreifen zu besuchen: das mauermuseum. ausser einem einsamen übertragungswagen des polnischen fernsehens und einer verlassenen, provisorisch in plastikfolie eingewickelten fernsehkamera war dort niemand zu sehen. ein paar durchnässte touristen hatten im foyer des museums schutz vor dem regen gesucht, einer schoss aus langeweile durch das fenster ein paar bilder von den hell erleuchteten mauerresten auf der anderen straßenseite. wir wollten auf den aussichtsturm des museums steigen, von dem aus man den zur mahnung so belassenen todesstreifen jenseits der mauer sehen kann - ein einmaliges motiv für unsere videoaktion. leider wurden wir von einer gelangweilten museumsmitarbeiterin freundlich aber bestimmt mit der information abgewiesen, das museum schliesse um 18:00, wir sollen doch morgen wiederkommen. am zwanzigsten jahrestag des mauerfalls schliesst das mauermuseum als sei es ein total normaler wochentag? irgendwie traurig, aber nicht zu ändern. zum abschluss dieser station unserer planlosen tour schossen wir noch ein paar impressionen von der hell erleuchteten mauer und machten uns auf den weg weiter zum nordbahnhof.

mit der stinkenden s-bahn fuhren wir gen süden, mein bvg-ticket hatte noch ganze 3 minuten gültigkeit, aber das sollte hinhauen. kein kontrolleur war weit und breit auszumachen und wir wurden von der so üblich genervten berliner nuschelstimme des zugfahrers mit einer durchsage begrüßt, die bahn würde heute "bis auf weiteres" nicht am brandenburger tor halten, aufgrund der jubiläumsfestivitäten. einige touristen um uns herum stöhnten daraufhin verzweifelt und murmelten flüche in verschiedenen sprachen in ihre schals und mantelkragen. am potsdamer platz liessen wir uns von der spektakelgeilen masse einfach mitreissen und durch das gedrängel des bahnhoflabyrinths die treppen hinauftreiben, raus in den strömenden regen in ein meer tropfender und zerknitterter menschen unter tropfenden und zerknickten regenschirmen, begleitet von depressivem musikgedudel und den verzögerten echos der RBB moderation auf den blendend hellen LED-leinwänden, die von überall auf die nassen menschen herabblickten. lasse fand im rinnstein einen kaputten billigschirm, der aber noch einigermassen zu gebrauchen war und der uns zumindest als kameraschutz dienlich sein könnte. bereits völlig durchweicht und mit einer mischung aus schlechter laune und zynischer albernheit kämpften wir uns grinsend durch die ziellos irrenden leute in richtung des einladenden duftes nach weinachtspunschgepansche. der glühweinstand war ein euphorisierender lichtblick im dunkel des skurrilen feierabends und wir verwöhnten uns mit becherovka gepimptem glühwein aus styroporbechern und filterzigaretten. die LED leinwände zeigten mittlerweile die ZDF liveübertragung von der hauptbühne am brandenburger tor und man fühlte sich fast in die zeit vor der wende zurückversetzt, mit westdeutschlands grinsender löwenmähne thomas gottschalk im bild, debile witzchen reissend und zwanghaft nach pathos ringende platitüden brabbelnd. in die traurige realität der gegenwart wurde man zurückgerissen, als der kameraschwenk über das promipublikum neben dem überaussenminister genscher unseren neuen vizekanzler guido westerwelle zeigte. ein stechender schmerz durchzuckte mich bei dem anblick - aber gottseidank wechselte das bild zu berlins lieblingsbrummbär klaus wowereit, wie er verzweifelt versuchte, mit einer art automstisch abgespulten rede stimmung bei den anwesenden berlinern und nichtberlinern zu wecken. hillary clinton und medwedew im publikum übten sich im grinswettbewerb und immer wieder wurde die lange strecke gezeigt, wo als höhepunkt des abends tausend riesige dominosteine zu fall gebracht werden sollten, symbolisch für die berliner mauer.

irgendwie überkam uns der gedanke, man könnte sich diesen karneval der skurrilitäten auch gemütlich im wohnzimmer zuhause im fernsehen anschauen - aber wenn man jetzt schonmal hier sei, müsse man auch noch etwas feierliche stimmung mitnehmen. also quetschten wir uns weiter durch triefnasse regenjacken- und plastiktütenmenschen, vorbei an nach verlorenen touristen suchenden reiseleitern, betrunkener brandenburger dorfjugend und beeindruckt vor sich hin staundender franzosen. durch die mitte des stromes zum brandenburger tor gab es kein weiterkommen, also versuchten wir es über die flanken, was anfangs auch gelang - zumindest bis zu der armada von dixi-klos, die entlang einer seite des großen holocaust-mahnmals standen und tropften.

von dieser stelle aus wagten wir einen weiteren video-kameraschwenk über die langsam kriechende herde aus bratwurstfressenden, glühweinbeduselten und die dickbäuchigen schirmträgern, die in ihrer extatischen lethargie dem dominospektakel entgegensahen, oder vielleicht auch dem gitarrengejaule und geheule von jon bon jovi - wir wussten es nicht.

der einzige, zwar nur kurz andauernde, aber dennoch spürbare augenblick des kurzen in-sich-gehens, des aufblitzens von historie, überkam mich beim durchqueren des nass-grauen stelenfeldes zum gedenken an die ermordeten juden europas. die reichspogromnacht kam mir in den sinn, deren jubiläum sich an diesem skurrilen neunten november ebenfalls jährt - zum 71. mal. das bild der "mauer in den käpfen" kam mir in den sinn, aber es deprimierte, also nippte ich beherzt an meinem lauwarmen glühwein und wir schritten weiter durch das stelenlabyrinth in richtung amerikanische botschaft. verstecken spielende schüler, nachdenklihe touristen und wie wir eine abkürzung suchende einheimische huschten zwischen den steinen umher, blieben mit ihren schirmen stecken, prallten an einander.

auf der anderen seite stand ein beeindruckender corso von blauen und grünen polizeiwagen und -bussen, die wir auch prompt filmen wollten. daran wurden wir jedoch von einem netten polizeibeamten gehindert, der zusammen mit privaten und amerikanischen wachleuten die US-botschaft bewachte und uns darauf aufmerksam machte, doch bitte den "amerikanischen boden" zu verlassen und zwei meter weiterzugehen. wir folgten artig seinem hinweis, grübelten aber kurz darüber nach, welche legitime exekutivgewalt ein deutscher polizist denn überhaupt auf amerikanischem boden habe...

meine füße waren mittlerweile komplett durchnässt, lasses jacke sah auch nicht gerade wasserabweisend aus, der glühwein war leer, und die chance irgendwie noch nur in die nähe des brandenburger tors zu kommen, war utopisch - also entschlossen wir uns, in richtung friedrichstraße durchzukämpfen, unser videoprojekt einfach zu begraben, und nach hause zu fahren.

festliche stimmung und emotionen waren bei uns nach den letzten stunden sowieso nicht mehr zu wecken, jede minute, die wir länger diesem nass-kalten spektakel ausgesetzt sein würden, hätte negative auswirkungen auf unsere erinnerung und das bereits vorhandene bewusstsein für die wichtigkeit dieses historischen jubiläums.

deutschland feiert. deutschland gedenkt. was übrigbleibt, sind unendlich wiederholte archivsequenzen, geschichtsverballhornung, floskeln und ein verzerrtes abbild dessen was eigentlich wichtig gewesen ist. ich freue mich auf 20 jahre wiedervereinigung im nächsten jahr in einem gespaltenen land...

prost!

cranky frames per second mayhem

2009-07-07T19:47:00+03:00

i watched the sequel of Crank last night, without any expectations in quality and plot - but i was stunned! the video camera work is faster and shakier with fast cuts and beautiful fish-eye sequences - like a music video of aphex twin or squarepusher. the music is hysteric and ingenius with cranky sound effects and a more than fitting musical selection. all in all it's a fine piece of 90min video-art with adrenaline and testosterone overdose...

the flick is peppered with graphical elements and typographic delicacies, live-visuals style kaleidoscope effects and colors and contrast always crisp to the max. there are psychedelic sequences, illustrated sequences, super8-aestetics, a really absurd long shot tribute to godzilla movies.

the characters are exaggerated comic heroes reminding me a lot of robert rodriguez archetypical figures. couldn't be better! the appearance of david carradine as a life-craving horny old chinese triad gangster drooling over busty young whores is hilarious considering his current absurd death.

if you have strong nerves, are used to bloody gore mayhem, explicit language with funny brit accent and a b-movie fan, video or VJ art geek, you will definetly enjoy this flick as much as i did.

5 out of 5 stars!

trailer at apple.com

Logan's Run

2009-01-05T13:14:00+02:00

Ich habe mir letztens endlich einmal “Logan’s Run” angesehen und war positiv überrascht…

Der US-amerikanische Film von 1976 wurde in Deutschland unter dem Titel “Flucht ins 23. Jahrhundert” veröffentlicht und basiert auf der Romanvorlage “Logan’s Run” von William F. Nolan.

Inhalt

Nach einer globalen Katastrophe haben sich die Menschen in von gigantischen Kuppeln von der Außenwelt abgeschotteten Städten verschanzt. Dort frönt jeder dem Konsum von Drogen, sexueller Freizügigkeit und Bespaßung jeglicher Art - eine Gesellschaft, die an Aldous Huxley’s Schöne Neue Welt erinnert. Die Bevölkerungszahl in der Stadt bleibt konstant gleich und wird wie alles andere auch von einem intelligenten Zentralcomputer gesteuert.

[more]

Jeder Einwohner trägt einen in seine Handfläche implantierten Lebenskristall, der seinem Träger anzeigt, in welcher Lebensphase dieser sich gerade befindet. So bald solch ein Kristall rot zu blinken beginnt, ist man kurz vor seinem dreißigsten Lebensjahr und auserwählt, an der täglich stattfindenden zentralen Zeremonie “Karrussell” teilzunehmen. In einem von allen anderen euphorisch angefeuerten Ritual werden die Auserwählten in einem Spektakel aus Licht und Feuer “erneuert” - und dadurch in einer höheren Bewusstseinsstufe wiedergeboren.

Einige wenige Bewohner der Stadt - “Läufer” genannt - glauben nicht an das Ritual der Erneuerung und wollen älter als 30 Jahre werden. Sie versuchen zu fliehen und einen sagenumwobenen Ort ausserhalb der Stadt namens “Sanctuary” erreichen.

Logan 5 ist 26 Jahre alt und “Sandmann”, was bedeutet, dass er die ehrenvolle Aufgabe hat, aufgespürte “Läufer” zu “terminieren” bevor sie aus der Kuppelstadt fliehen können. Eines Tages wird er vom Zentralcomputer beauftragt, die “Läufer” zu infiltrieren, “Sanctuary” zu finden und zu vernichten.

Logan 5 lernt Jessica 6 kennen, die Verbindungen zu den “Läufern” hat. Er bittet Sie, Ihm zu helfen und behauptet, selber ein “Läufer” werden zu wollen und nach “Sanctuary” zu gelangen. Jessica 6 ist zunächst unschlüssig, vermittelt aber ein Treffen mit Verbindungsmännern der “Läufer”. Er wird im Laufe seiner investigativen Kontaktversuche von seinem langjährigen “Sandmann”-Kollegen Francis 7 als mutmaßlicher “Läufer” enttarnt und gerät selbst ins Visier. Er ist gezwungen, zu fliehen.

Durch unterirdische Wartungstunnel, lange unbenutzte technische Anlagen und von Robotern bewachte Kühlkammern schaffen Logan 5 und Jessica 6,verfolgt von Francis 7, die Flucht und landen mitten in der Wildnis ausserhalb der Kuppelstadt. Sie folgen einem in der Ferne aus den Baumwipfeln sichtbaren Monolithen und stoßen auf verfallene und überwucherte Ruinen des historischen Zentrums von Washington D.C.

Im völlig verfallenen ehemaligen Kapitol treffen die Flüchtlinge zum ersten Mal auf einen Menschen - einen Einsiedler der mehr als doppelt so alt ist wie sie selbst und zusammen mit ein paar dutzend Katzen in den Ruinen lebt. Francis 7 taucht plötzlich auf und wird in einem Kampf mit Logan 5 getötet. Der alte Mann wird von den beiden geflohenen dazu überredet, mit zurück zur Kuppelstadt zu kommen um allen zu beweisen, dass das Leben jenseits der festgelegten Altersgrenze und jenseits der Kuppel möglich ist…

Kritik

Für das Entstehungsjahr ist der Film mit seinen unzähligen Effekten ästhetisch ausgesprochen gut gelungen. Lediglich die etwas holprige schauspielerische Qualität der Protagonisten lässt einen hier und da oft schmunzeln - bis auf den schrulligen alten Mann in den Ruinen, der von Sir Peter Ustinov sehr überzeugend und sympathisch gespielt wurde. Im Gegensatz zur Romanvorlage wurden Teile der Story im Film besser umgesetzt - z.B. die Tatsache, dass “Sanctuary” nur als hoffnungsvolle Legende existiert und nicht wie im Buch eine tatsächlich existierende Weltraumstation ist, die um den Mars kreist.

Benotung

Idee 1
Storyline 3
Spannung 2
Schauspieler 3
Ã„sthetik 3

Endzeitvorbereitung

Man kann von Logan’s Run lernen, wie essentiell es ist, einen Überblick über die tatsächliche Situation ausserhalb abgeschotteter Schutzräume zu haben, um einem völligen Realitätsverlust vorzubeugen. Trotz destruktiver menschlicher Makel scheint ratsam, einem ausschließlich logisch operierendem Computer nicht alleinige Entscheidungs- und Regierungsgewalt über die gesellschaftlichen Strukturen zu überlassen. Der Film zeigt einem augenzwinkernd auch die Folgen heute schon existierender Jugend und Spaß verherrlichender Tendenzen in der westlichen Welt und regt an, darüber nachzudenken, was es bedeutet, blind einem Glauben zu folgen und wie mit nonkonformistisch denkenden Minderheiten innerhalb einer solchen Gesellschaft umgegangen wird.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/
TPB: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4051365/

Radioactive Dreams

2009-01-03T12:28:00+02:00

Ein sehenswertes Kleinod des postapokalyptischen B-Movies ist definitiv “Radioactive Dreams” von 1984 - man muss lediglich 80er Jahre New Wave Rock und sexy Schulterpolster aushalten können.

Inhalt

Als der Atomkrieg ausbricht werden zwei kleine Jungs von ihren Vätern in einen Schutzbunker gesteckt, mit dem Versrpechen, bald nachzukommen - doch sie tauchen nie auf. 15 Jahre später entschließen die beiden mittlerweile Teenager, die Tür des Atombunkers zu öffnen und sich draußen umzusehen. Da die beiden sich die letzten 15 Jahre fast ausschließlich mit Detektivromanen der 40er Jahre beschäftigt haben, beschließen sie, sich als Privatdetektive durchzuschlagen.

[more]

Komplett eingekleidet in Dandy-Outfits mit Hut und Schiebermütze, Schlips und Sonnenbrillen rasen die beiden als Philipp und Marlowe im alten Kabrio eines der nie aufgetauchten Väter durch die postnukleare Wüste Nordamerikas. Auf dem Weg gabeln sie die Blondine Miles auf, die auf der Flucht vor einer Mad-Max ähnlichen Motorradgang ist. Auf der Flucht verliert Miles einen roten Schlüssel im Auto, den Philipp später entdeckt und feststellt, dass er genau so einen Schlüssel selbst auch besitzt.

Irgendwann erfahren die beiden Draufgänger, dass es sich bei dem Schlüsselpaar um militärische Sicherheitsschalter für die letzte existierende mit Atomsprengkopf bestückte Langstreckenrakete auf dem Kontinent handelt - der stärksten Waffe und somit größtmöglichen Macht.

Mittlerweile in einer verrohten Stadt angekommen, merken die beiden schnell, dass jeder Mutant und Kannibale des Ã–dlands und jede der existierenden Gangs hinter ihnen her ist. Inspiriert durch die Detektivgeschichten ihrer Jugend, beschliessen Philipp und Marlowe, alle ihre Jäger in ein Großes Lagerhaus zu locken, wo es zum großen Showdown mit vielen Überraschungen kommt…

Kritik

Bildtechnisch sehr gut umgesetzt, aber leider mit eher schlechten Schauspielern und einer grauenhaften musikalischen Untermalung. Radioactive Dreams ist einer der wenigen Filme, für den ich mir ein Remake wünschen würde, denn die Ideen und das Setting sind wirklich genial!

Phillip: “In a tight jam a nuclear missile just might come in handy.”

Benotung

Idee 1
Storyline 4
Spannung 2
Schauspieler 2
Ã„sthetik 2
Musik 5

Endzeitvorbereitung

Das wichtigste: Coolness und Stil sind Dinge, die man in der postapokalyptischen Welt definitiv behalten sollte. Darüber hinaus lehrt der Film, dass man in einer Anarchie niemandem Trauen sollte, egal wie hübsch oder kindlich sie oder er daherkommt.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091818/
Torrent: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2010637

Fallout 3

2008-12-27T12:39:00+02:00

Review

Der lange erwartete dritte Teil der Fallout Serie wurde zu Recht zum Spieleknaller des Jahres gekürt. Das Spiel reiht sich nahtlos in die bisherige Fallout-Welt ein und immer wieder trifft man auf Referenzen und Charaktere, die man aus den ersten beiden Teilen in Erinnerung behalten hat. Wie schon zuvor hat man uneingeschränkte Freiheit bei allen Entscheidungen, wo man sich hin bewegt, mit wem man wie interagiert, und wie und ob man erteilte Aufgaben löst. Je nachdem, wie moralisch oder unmoralisch man sich als Spielcharakter verhält, ändern sich Reaktionen der anderen Figuren und Fraktionen im Spiel.

[more]

Auf der Suche nach dem eigenen Vater flüchtet man zum ersten Mal im Leben aus der geschützten Enklave des unterirdischen High-Tech Atombunkers ans Tageslicht mitten ins nuklear verseuchte und dem Erdboden gleichgemachte Washington D.C. Mutierte Ratten und Riesenskorpione machen Jagd auf einen, genauso wie kannibalistische Sklavenhändler, Riesenmutanten und faschistische Soldaten. In der nahegelegenen Siedlung Megaton findet man Händler, Veteranen und verrückte Anhänger der Sekte “Kinder des Atoms”, die einen nuklearen Blindgänger im Zentrum der Stadt als Gottheit anbeten. Das allgemein anerkannte Zahlungsmittel im postnuklearen Ã–dland sind in der Regel Kronkorken, die man überall finden, verdienen oder stehlen kann. Man kämpft sich während des Spiels durch verlassene Atombunkeranlagen, gigantische Grotten, der völlig verwüsteten Innenstadt von Washington, Roboterfabriken und das von ehemals atombetriebenen retrofuturistischen Autowracks übersähte Umland.

Das Aussehen und die Soft-Skills des eigenen Charakters sind komplett frei entfaltbar, genauso wie die Kleidung, die man jedem getöteten Wesen einfach abnehmen kann, und die Waffen, die man als Belohnungen für erfolgreiche Missionen erhält, findet, oder sich selbst zusammenzimmert. Man bekommt unter bestimmten Umständen sogar eine von zwei Wohnungen zur Verfügung gestellt, die man nach Lust und Laune einrichten kann. Bewusstseinserweiternde Drogen gibt es zu Genüge - sei es Alkohol oder “Nuka Cola”, diverse Medikamente, oder das aus Fallout 2 bekannte “Jet”, bei Überkonsum sollte man sich aber auf unangenehme Nebenwirkungen und Entzugserscheinungen gefasst machen.

Fazit

Fallout 3 ist jedenfalls in die Top 5 meiner All-Time-Favorite Games aufgestiegen und die uneingeschränkte Freiheit trägt ungemein zum extremen Suchtfaktor des Spiels bei. Die Atmosphäre ist atemberaubend, obwohl die Grafik nicht unbedingt mit anderen aktuellen 3D Spielen mithalten kann. Dafür ist der Sound und die per “Pip-Boy” Radio empfangbare Musik um so besser. Das innovative rundenbasierte “V.A.T.S.” Kampfsystem als jederzeit nutzbare Alternative zum Live-Geballer ist sehr überzeugend und perfekt gelöst und realistische Dinge, wie die Abnutzung von Waffen, Müdigkeit, Strahlungsschäden oder Drogenentzug machen das Spiel sehr spannend, ohne unnötig abzulenken.

Benotung

Grafik 2
Sound 1
Atmosphäre 1
Intelligenz 2
Freiheit 1
Charakter 1
Suchtfaktor 1

Endzeitvorbereitung

Fallout 3 bereitet sehr gut darauf vor, was es bedeutet in einem postnuklearen Ã–dland zu überleben - sowohl was die Strahlungsbelastung betrifft, als auch die Folgen von Mutation und der Abwesenheit von gesellschaftlichen Kontrollmechanismen. Man lernt schnell, wie wichtig es ist, reines Trinkwasser zu besitzen und permanent Medikamente in ausreichender Menge mit sich zu führen. Man gewöhnt sich schnell ein gesundes Gleichgewicht ziwschen Paranoia und Empathie an und lernt, dass sich in einer ethiklosen Umwelt ein gewisses Maß an Moral auch auszahlen und einem überlebenswichtige Freunde schenken kann. Man erfährt, wie schwer es ist, im jahrzehnte abgeschlossenen Raum eines Atombunkers die Kontrolle zu behalten und nicht wahnsinnig zu werden und wie wichtig es ist, Informationen zu sammeln und vor allem, mit anderen auszutauschen, um die Hoffnung aufrecht zu erhalten und dem um sich greifenden Nihilismus vorzubeugen.

fader.flux

2008-09-01T00:00:00+03:00

fader.flux is a simple tool that maps the continuous controller values that come out of the midi-controller DJ2 from Faderfox into a non-continuous range of values and outputs them to the OSC protocol. This tool is mainly for use in conjunction with software that does not understand the 12 continuous controller values of the DJ2.

having read fAlk's nice article about the faderfox DJ2 and about the problems of using the endless dial knobs with VDMX, i reacted to his question whether this would somehow be possible to solve. i created this little application with max that translates the endless dial's signals to OSC messages which can be sent to VDMX5. fAlk created a nice splash-screen and manual for it. there may be more proto:flux projects coming in the future...stay tuned...

A Mac standalone and a Max/MSP 4.6 collective were at kiritanflux.de/lab/patch/faderflux, which is gone.

Bioshock

2008-08-30T22:22:00+03:00

Review

Das lang erwartete und im Vorhinein mit viel zu hohen Erwartungen beladene Prequel der System Shock Spieleserie wurde von den Kritikern und System Shock Fans wie zu erwarten als Ego-Shooter mit zu wenig Tiefgang zerrissen.

Ich wollte mir ein eigenes Bild davon machen und muss sagen, dass ich während des Spiels insgesamt extrem beeindruckt war. Die Story ist äußerst spannend, die detailverliebte Grafik meiner Meinung nach bisher unerreicht und die Atmosphäre bis zum Schluss fesselnd und schön verstörend.

[more]

Vollgepumpt mit dem Mutagen “Eve” und bis an die Zähne bewaffnet mit selbst aufgemotztem Flammenwerfer und Schrotflinte kämpft man in den vom pervers entstellten Individualanarchismus zerfressenen Überresten der rostigen Unterwassermetropole Rapture gegen die wahnsinnigen, entstellten Bewohner - man versucht einfach nur, aus der Hölle zu entkommen und einen Weg zurück an die Wasseroberfläche zu finden. Mit der Waffe im Anschlag schleicht man durch tropfende und knarzende Krankenhausflure und retrofuturistische Theaterhallen, auf der Suche nach den “kleinen Schwestern” mit der begehrten Droge “Adam” - im Hintergrund ertönen die absurden Konversationen der mordlüsternen Überlebenden und aus irgendeinem Winkel schallen zerkratze Schlagerplatten der sechziger Jahre in nie enden wollenden Schleifen - bis plötzlich ein “Big Daddy” am Ende des Flurs erscheint - ein gigantisches Monster im Tieftaucheranzug, bewaffnet mit Nietengewehr und mit übermenschlichen Kräften seinem einzigen Existenzzweck folgend - dem Schutz der “kleinen Schwestern” um jeden Preis…

Fazit

Als Fazit würde ich sagen, ein grafisch, musikalisch und atmosphärisch extrem gelungener Shooter, der leider durch die für meinen Geschmack zu einschränkende Linearität und vergleichsweise kurze Gesamtspieldauer eher kurzweilig bleibt. Der Rollenspielcharakter der System Shock Familie wird bei weitem nicht erreicht, trotz witziger Features, wie dem Pimpen der eigenen Waffen mit verschiedenen gesammelten Fundsachen aus Rapture. Bei der Ã„sthetik der im Spiel vorkommenden Automaten und Piktogramme wurde sich offensichtlich sehr bei Fallout 1 + 2 bedient (”Vault-Boy”), was aber nicht unbedingt negativ zu bewerten ist.

Benotung

Grafik 1
Sound 1
Atmosphäre 2
Intelligenz 4
Freiheit 5
Charakter 3
Suchtfaktor 3

Endzeitvorbereitung

Das Spiel eignet sich zur mentalen Vorbereitung auf eventuelle psychopathologische Störungen von Menschen, die sich in einer komplett isolierten räumlichen Umgebung aufhalten, in der keine gesellschaftliche Ordnung ausser einer ultraindividualistischen, kapitalistischen Anarchie herrscht. Der Überlebensdrang wendet sich zum Blutrausch und es fällt schwer, moralische Vernunft beizubehalten.

Ebenso wird das technische Verständnis von brauchbaren Waffensystemen gestärkt, denn man beginnt die eigene Aufmerksamkeit zu schärfen um für eventuelle Waffenupgrades benötigte Gegenstände im Chaos von Rapture aufzuspüren und sich Orte einzuprägen, an denen man seine Waffen modifizieren kann.

city 17 street art

2008-08-16T11:53:00+03:00

the epic 3d fps-rpg half life 2 had the most realistic an nicely made street art spread across city 17. if you liked it as much as i did, here is a zip file with all graffitis, pochoirs and posters from the game, extracted from the original .vtf files as tga images including alpha channels. enjoy.

this is my favorite stencil of the g-man in the rain. it only appears once. i don't remember where it was - somewhere underground city 17…

Immanentisierung des Eschatons

2008-05-23T05:23:00+03:00

Seit Robert Anton Wilson diesen Begriff in der Illuminatus! Trilogie als furchteinflößende Formel berühmt gemacht hat, wird er immer wieder zitiert und als Synonym für die Heraufbeschwörung der Apokalypse benutzt. Das Faszinierende an der "Immanentisierung des Eschatons" ist, daß jeder Leser dieser Worte sofort die beabsichtigte Assoziation in seinem Denkkasten hervorkramt und unwillkürlich an ein Weltenende, das Jüngste Gericht, den Untergang des Seins denkt.

Warum wurde diese Formel bisher immer unanalysiert und unreflektiert wieder und wieder in Zusammenhang mit der Provokation des Weltuntergangs verwendet? Es ist nämlich falsch! War es ein Versehen des Autors? Ein Mißverständnis? Ein beabsichtigter Mindfuck?

Zum ersten Male wurde dieser Begriff von dem deutsch-amerikanischen Politologen Eric Voegelin geäußert - allerdings als treibender Faktor der politischen Gesellschaft und in seiner ursprünglichen Bedeutung, nämlich als Erkenntnis und Emanzipation.

Der Begriff "Immanentisierung" hat seinen Wortstamm nicht in der â€œImminenz", was tatsächlich gleichbedeutend ist mit etwas unmittelbar Bevorstehendem, mit dem Moment, bevor etwas geschehen wird, einer Heraufbeschwörung. Sonst würde es "Imminentisierung" heißen.

Immanentisierung kommt von Immanenz (lat. immanere, "darin bleiben"). Imminenz ist der Gegenbegriff zur Transzendenz und impliziert eben nicht ein unmittelbares Bevorstehen, sondern ein bereits darin Befinden. In der Philosophie Spinozas bedeutet die Immanenz z.B. die Anwesenheit Gottes in der Welt, bei Kant in erkenntnistheoretischer Sicht das Verbleiben in den Grenzen möglicher Erfahrung.

Wortwörtlich dekodiert, bedeutet die Immanentisierung des Eschatons also "Das Verbleiben in den letzten Dingen", was teleologisch und philosophisch interpretiert werden kann als ständige, ewig wiederkehrende Präsenz der Apokalypse im momentanen Denken und Handeln.

Die biblische Apokalypse besteht im Jüngsten Gericht und einer anschließenden Errichtung des Gottesreiches. Die Menschen werden nach ihrem Handeln und Denken gerichtet und gelangen ins Paradies oder den feurigen Höllenpfuhl. Die Immanentisierung derselben darf also nicht fälschlicherweise mit ihrer Heraufbeschwörung verwechselt, sondern sollte als ihre Gewahrwerdung erkannt werden.

"In diesem Leben habe ich die einzige Sache gelernt: daß Hölle und Paradies nicht existieren. Wir tragen sie in uns und nehmen sie mit, wo auch immer wir hingehen."

Wer erkennt, daß das Eschaton keinen jenseitigen oder zukünftigen Zeitpunkt darstellt, sondern zu jedem Zeitpunkt im hier und jetzt in uns wohnt und unser Handeln bestimmt, versteht seine Wichtigkeit. Wir haben zu jedem Zeitpunkt unseres Lebens die Wahl, Himmel oder Hölle in uns selbst zu errichten bzw. die Welt und die Menschen um uns herum in ein Reich Gottes oder das Fegefeuer Satans zu verwandeln. Auch wenn wir die biblische Apokalypse beiseite lassen wollen, macht diese Formel Sinn: wir haben immer die Wahl, in der Welt zu LEBEN, oder dieser Welt abzuschwören, sie zu beenden - in jeglicher Hinsicht. Aus sowohl nietzscheanischer Sicht der Ewigen Wiederkehr, als auch existenzialistischer Sicht oder in der Philosophie Jiddu Krishnamurtis oder Eckhard Tolles oder sonstiger moderner "positive thinking" Prediger kann man die Immanentisierung zusammenfassen als: Lebe, als wäre heute dein letzter Tag!

Diese Erkenntnis unterstreicht das diskordische Gebot "nicht DIE ANDEREN das Eschaton immanentisieren zu lassen", sondern die Dinge selbst in die Hand zu nehmen.

"Ich habe nur gesagt, daß jeder den Geist Gottes in sich entdecken kann, daß er frei ist, keinem Gesetz unterworfen, unfähig zu schaden. Ich habe auch gesagt, daß die Sünde im Kopf des Sünders ist. [...] Das wahre Reich Gottes beginnt im Herzen und im Kopf." -

"Über diesem Meer geht jeden Morgen die Apokalypse auf, zusammen mit der Sonne."

(Zitate aus dem Roman "Q" von Luther Blissett, 1999)

RANDOGOTH

An Address, a Key and a Message

Repository

One Document, Five Front Doors

Repository

A Long Day in the Archive

The question had no answer

Archaeology

What I kept getting wrong

Taxonomy is not filing

Who decided what

What is actually here now

Pastfetch

Download

Repository

Muzzle Velocity

Download

Repository

Plasmoid

Download

Repository

Zonetoast

Links

md2txt

Repository

Dopecarpet & Rugreefer

Repositories

map3terms

Repository

onod 3000

Testing Methodology

Repository

Lyagushka

Repository

Ocelli TRNG

Repository

ThinkPad X13 Bluefin Dual Boot

Generation X Change

Deshittifying Windows 11

Disable Secure Boot

SSD Replacement and Cloning

Unleashing Bluefin

Fixing the Bootloader

Secure Boot Activation

Voidcat Algorithm

Repository

CLI Tools for Reticulum & Nomad Network

Repositories

Website Relaunch

What I actually wanted

On Placeness

Sensor Watch Faces

Working for Randonautica

Psithemius

MAKING OF

Workshop at Occulture Conference

Mutantenkino

back beyond green rolling hills...

beneath the 747

long live the hero

System Bomb Stickers

Neunter November - Schland Gedenkt

cranky frames per second mayhem

Logan's Run

Radioactive Dreams

Fallout 3

fader.flux

Bioshock

city 17 street art

Immanentisierung des Eschatons