Manolis Glezos über die Schulden der Deutschen

Letzten Sonntag (25. März) war der griechische Unabhängigkeitstag, an dem die in der Revolution von 1821 erlangte Unabhängigkeit von der türkischen Herrschaft gefeiert wird. Ich habe schon in früheren Jahren von diesem Tag berichtet, doch so richtig war das Datum für mich nie. Dieses Jahr war anders, aus zwei Gründen. Einerseits hatte die traditionelle Parade im Zentrum von Athen einen speziellen Character angenommen (später mehr dazu), andererseits hatte uns Panos nach Markopoulos eingeladen, wo Manolis Glezos im Rathaus eine Rede hielt. Manolis Glezos ist ein lebendiger Zeuge und Held der griechischen Geschichte. Was also hatte er uns zu sagen?

A Glimpse into the Matrix

The Unix shell is the closest thing we have to working with the very structure of the Matrix surrounding us. It's as close to the bare metal as we can get. (Sure, there are people trying to sell you a debugger for that, but what does their debugger run in? Right, thought so.)

Now the OpenBSD ports tree contains a tool that lets you see the Matrix right in your shell window. It's called cmatrix and you can grab it from packages right away. (If your OS doesn't have it in their package manager, you might get it from the one who made it.)

Obviously it shows the Matrix in its encrypted version. It's up to you to see the world in there or whatever you want. Figure it out and you might become someone important... like an actor.

CTF coming up at hackerspace.gr

Yesterday evening I went to the hackfest10 at the hackerspace. There were only two lightning talks, but very good ones. First we learned about the "green hack" window gardens that are being built at a window in the backside room of the hackerspace. The plan is to grow some strawberries there.

The other talk was about the upcoming 24h Capture The Flag competition on April 21st 2012. Lots of preparations went into this, there are some tickets to be won and fun to be had. Unfortunately I won't be there, for two simple reasons: First, I'll likely be out of town and second, I have no clue whatsoever in these things :-)

Coming to a Networked Naxos

This is it, I'm in Naxos again now. Feels good to be out of the big city for a while. Tuesday/Wednesday the sailor's unions were on strike (with good reason, as the criminal state has stolen their pension funds). Since it's also Easter time here in Greece, for Thursday and Friday no tickets were to be found. So we traveled on Easter Saturday, when most people are already in their villages.

It was a good thing, as the ship was really, really empty. The picture shows all of the people getting off at Naxos. And I'm talking about a big ship, Blue Star Ferries got this new toy, the "Delos", which is a lot bigger than the "Naxos" and "Paros" that we usually traveled on. We had tons of seats to choose from, while the staff told us that the two days before every single seat was taken.

In other news, there is now an ADSL connection in the house we're staying in. After many times being here with a mobile connection, this is incredible. What's more (and I didn't really expect this), it actually works and has good ping times. They have this thing here for vacation houses where you can get a phone line that is active for the summer months, for one month around Easter and one month around Christmas. Well, they added an ADSL option to that, 2Mbit, but that's good enough. It will make working here for me a lot easier.

It's Spring

So, the ADSL works really well here. It's only 2Mbit, but what's more important for my work style, the ping times are good. Also there seems to be no hidden congestion somewhere uplink. Biggest grief is that somewhere in my setup with my wifi repeater upstairs, DNS lookups sometimes take a long time... but only sometimes. Not annoying or often enough to make me track it down.

What else? It's spring here. The island is green. I mean, really green. When we arrived, we got a good gush of heavy rain (I managed to get under cover just in time). Then we had some sunny stretches. This morning it was so warm, it almost felt like summer. There was no wind either, which changed around noon, when the wind started. Now for some hours it's really storming. Windows and shutters slamming, it feels like the wind will tear things off. Well, it has calmed down a bit again the last hour or so, so no worries.

When we arrived, the wonderful bakery in Naxos town was out of bread. We got bread from a "normal" bakery, which got boring real fast. This morning we went to town and got the real thing, what a difference. Combine this with some thick-skinned local oranges and dairy products... I'm happy.

Stormy Weather

Tuesday evening there was a major storm here on Naxos. The storm warning was for 7 beaufort with peaks of 8 beaufort. On Wednesday a neighbor told us, that the peaks had been at 11 beaufort. I hadn't slept very well that night. The wind was shoving and banging things around the house all the time. Constantly I was wondering: "Is that just the usual shutter banging against the frame, or has the wind finally pried the window open?" What's even worse for wanting to sleep: the roaring of the wind gets the adrenaline level up, puts me into some kind of primal alertness mode. Not good for getting sweet dreams.

The next morning there was a tree broken and leaning on a power line. There were lots of pieces of wood broken down too. More to the point, look at the picture. This tree has been broken by the storm, ok. But the stump of the root, where the tree used to grow is nowhere near to the place where we found the tree over the footpath. In fact I couldn't spot that tree stump nowhere around. The little tree has been broken off and carried on by the wind, till it got stuck on the relatively protected spot by the path. Impressive.

The next day the wind calmed down, and by now it's still windy, but nowhere near to where it was. The sun is also back out and it feels like spring again.

Orangen aus Naxos

Dieser Winter war nicht wirklich die tolle Orangensaison. Kann auch dran gelegen sein, dass ich nicht auf dem Wochenmarkt eingekauft habe und nicht mehr neben dem Laden mit der tollen Früchteauswahl wohne. Im Supermarkt gabs nur Orangen mit dünner Schale und mässigem Geschmack.

Hier auf Naxos ist das anders: Im "Supermarkt" gibt es Orangen aus Naxos, die haben die richtige, dicke Schale und wirklich guten Geschmack. Die Saison ist ja fast schon komplett vorbei, aber diese Orangen sind noch da.

First Swim 2012

It was last Sunday that I had my first swim this year. After many colder days and that storm on last Tuesday, it had gotten a bit warmer. The sun was out and it felt much more like spring, with a tiny little bit of summer. Still, we went to this little cove, where we were protected from the wind on 3 sides. It was beautiful.

Basically I had my first sunbath and a little dip into the water or two. The water was still too cold for my taste. Well, refreshing, if you like. Looking back through the years on this blog, there were some years when my first swim was late in the year, sometimes even in mid-July. A bit like the other extreme, being early this year.

The Lumix had its first bath in the sea as well. It held up well. Some of the pictures look good, but since underwater pictures are in a large part a matter of luck, no comparisons can be made to the Pentax. In any case, I didn't take it into the water for long.