Curse of the verbal chameleon

[hirez]

Engaged in this, so listening to English spoken by a variety of non-natives. (Mind, I'd be buggered if trying to transliterate Geordie, so...)

I shall start speaking in fractured sentences again, just like last time.

Neil thinks we should have our own hacker-camp. I, um, wouldn't know where to start.

The transcription process is somewhat clunky because PeeCee video clients are all a bit fragile, but there we are. I'm sure if I don't like it I can hack the source myself.

Wandered out to Woodchester Mansion earlier, which was very nice indeed. Wear a Whitby t-shirt and you're sure to be recognised.Had to bunk off a bit early due to a late night (previous bout of transcription) followed by an early morning. I'm sure the nice guides would not have been pleased to find a scruffy hacker-type akip in the tastefully-lit stone bath.

No ghosts. Not even a scouse gobshite one trying to thieve the spectral wireless.

However. I now really want to live in a big house with many staircases and more rooms than one might find immediately useful. There could be the video room, the room with nothing in it but a screwdriver, the room faced with mattresses for moshpit practice, the room with the large folding doors for working on vehicles indoors, the soundproof attic room at the far end of the long wing for those afflicted with snoring, the room where everything is nailed to the ceiling, the Scalextric hillclimb staircase...

Comments

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

The padded room with large constructs for climbing and wriggling through, the small room at the top with lots of windows that's only accessible via a tiny twisting little steep staircase behind the hidden door, the pneumatic tube transport system...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

... The underwater dodgem room, the airship hangar, the room done out like a dodgy pub, the Ames room, the toast library, the palace of swords reversed, the model village room...

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Toast library... you reminded me - the model trains carrying food to and from the kitchens, though not your typical trains, no, these are model Brennan Gyro-Monorails. Or maybe maglevs.

[figg.livejournal.com]

quite a few of the uk type people are in #ohc on freenode

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Um. I fear I'm not an IRC-type.

What's that in English?

[figg.livejournal.com]

Some of the other WTH attendees from the United kingdom were also interested in running a hack-camp.

They are on the channel #ohc and on the irc server irc.freenode.info

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Aha.

I think.

[FX: fiddling]

Yes.

[aeia.livejournal.com]

You're talking about Ricards house? :)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Sort of. Closer to Toddington Manor rebuilt by surrealist hackers.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

From my own scant experience, it's the kind of thing that takes time and persistence to get together.

Best make a start soon.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Suddenly, I feel so . . . Continental . . .

[hirez.livejournal.com]

In the 'taking up space' sense or the...

[FX: Spots apposite typo]

Oh, wait. Never mind.

The chap out of Spray (A Peelband) calls himself Ricardo Autobahn. I wonder if he has an island where all your synthpop-related dreams come true, at the expense of some personal discovery? It's probably a traffic island somewhere on the A34 and handy for a Little Chef.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

He does. Everybody there dresses like Gary Numan. Whenever a car goes by, the PA system plays the hit of the same name.

Of course, that happens every fifteen seconds on the A34, so it never gets past the intro. The endlessly-frustrated anticipation has given all the inhabitants swollen adrenal glands and a terrible attention-deficit disorder.

The only meals they serve there are tapas and dim sum, because they simply don't have the patience to eat an entire pie made of the same stuff.

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

When we (http://www.parasoc.org) did our investigation for Most Haunted, the "medium" that MH supplied managed to thrill us all by "seeing" a ghostly figure in the second floor window.

Of course we hadn't the heart to explain that the second floor was never completed, and that nobody had ever been at that window since no-one had bothered to build a floor for them to stand upon.

There was also the classic "marching army" accoustics heard near the lake where a bunch of US WW2 soldiers drowned practising with APCs on pontoon bridges (not funny) which turned out to be the thump of the water pump windmill on the nearby ridge (funny).

As for your room with only a screwdriver, in my experience even if you had a strict 1:1 tool:room ratio, one's spouse would still remove it and leave it somewhere else (typically, in the bathroom or, just to be that little bit more inaccessible, at their place of work or friend's house some 13 miles hence). I've taken to supplying a drawer full of fake tools (Poundland sell a variety of jokeshop tools made, seemingly, from soft metals which bend amusingly when employed with any degree of vigour) and then placing my real tools either under a pile of discarded sharp-edged computer components or locked in the boot of my car. Unfortunately this means I can't find them either.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

Neil thinks we should have our own hacker-camp. I, um, wouldn't know where to start.

I think we start by hiring a field and a generator, telling the world and see what happens, these things are best left unorganised because that suits the people who attend, give them the tools and they'll make their own camp, they'll take on a life of their own.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

You are entirely correct.

http://barcamp.org.uk/

I think it's a bit too bloggy and therefore doomed. They're talking about doing it indoors and sending out for food. Slackers.

Field, power, bandwith, bogs. Either send out a call for papers, or do the Barcamp thing and make being able to run a session a condition of entry. And the EuroBSD and CCC mobs. Humppa!

A youth hostel somewhere begins to sound ideal.