FurCon geek report
2004-01-26 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearEvery con report from a geek should have a geek addendum. Here's mine.
The desktop was KDE, with a customized login screen that told you how to make yourself an account: log in as "guest" (password "guest"); this gets you to a simple script that prompts you for a username and password. Then you log back in as you. Short and sweet. They had
I used a terminal a few times on Friday, when I came back on Saturday I brought my laptop. DHCP was running as you'd expect.
The first time you made an HTTP request, and again after a longish timeout, the hotel's proxy pointed you to an advertising page instead. It may keep doing it until you enable cookies; I didn't experiment much. Pretty innocuous for casual browsing, and irrelevant if you're using
From there it was a simple matter to sort the pages into piles by theme, re-arrange each pile to get good variety, then restack them into a set.
The "Internet Room"
I have "internet room" in quotes because they used NCD X-terms arranged in groups of three on round tables in the hallway across from the small function rooms; this is the hallway where Baycon usually puts the fan tables. Each table also had a power strip and a couple of loose CAT-5 cables for laptop users. I never saw the server, but I didn't look too hard, either.The desktop was KDE, with a customized login screen that told you how to make yourself an account: log in as "guest" (password "guest"); this gets you to a simple script that prompts you for a username and password. Then you log back in as you. Short and sweet. They had
mozilla and MozillaFirebird available, and of course xterm and ssh.I used a terminal a few times on Friday, when I came back on Saturday I brought my laptop. DHCP was running as you'd expect.
Wireless Access
After plugging in once, I decided to see whether the hotel or the con was providing wireless access. I was delighted to discover that, not only was the hotel providing an open access point, but that RH9 silently configured everything at boot time. Just boot and it latches on to the nearest access point, waves its hand for a DHCP server, and off you go.The first time you made an HTTP request, and again after a longish timeout, the hotel's proxy pointed you to an advertising page instead. It may keep doing it until you enable cookies; I didn't experiment much. Pretty innocuous for casual browsing, and irrelevant if you're using
ssh. It does cause trouble for non-browser clients like blogging clients, however. Luckily lj-update, the Emacs-based LJ client, appears able to handle it. Blinkenlights
Lots of LED blinkies, as usual. I saw one person wearing a strand of electroluminescent wire of the sort used by PC case-modders. Little if any tech on the costumes, though I understand some of the fur-suit heads have fans in them. I should hope so.Paper-shuffling for set-list design
Folks like me who work for copier or printer companies will be amused to learn that I used paper, rather than software, to plan the set-list for my concert. (That's not to say that software wouldn't work for it, and in fact I plan to write some.) First I used the back of an envelope (literally -- it was conveniently to hand in the recycle bag) to brainstorm a batch of songs, and then to time them. I pulled the appropriate pages from my songbook, and (here's the new part) made dummy pages for the songs by other people that I haven't transcribed.From there it was a simple matter to sort the pages into piles by theme, re-arrange each pile to get good variety, then restack them into a set.