Welcome to Amsterdam of the Future!

Date: 1st Jan 2016

A quick 6 hour train ride took us from Hamburg to Amsterdam. In hindsight, given the lack of airport security, boarding, etc. it probably wasn't that much longer than flying.

Our hosts were great and we had no problems navigating the Amsterdam public transport system.

I've yet to go actually explore Amsterdam and see the sights etc, but I shall Endevour to do something that resembles tourist activity before I go. That said I do return through Amsterdam on my bus tour.

New Years Eve was, as expected, loud and colourful. Even though I was safely bunkered down at a house party, I didn't lack for a view of an enormous amount of fireworks. TV revealed the city centre as been an entire exploding ball of fireworks that went on for minutes. It was like a collapsing star repeatedly imploding and exploding as it attempts to work out if it's going nova, or dwarf.

A brief forray into the outside world this afternoon has revealed what's left of the night. A few kids wandering around letting off crackers, some house pets tentatively making their way outside, coloured paper scatter all over the street. 

The Dutch it seems generally try to tidy up most things as this pile was the "worst" I could find in a most photogenic sense. Do remember we weren't near the city centre, and there was certainly lots of red paper around (the wrap around the fireworks)

CCC Day 4

The intense pace is starting to take its toll, along with the promise/threat of an upcoming long train journey and NYE.

This afternoon things are starting to be packed up. Empty space and marked mats are all that's left to remind you of the awesome that stood there not long ago. I suppose by tomorrow this place will look like a ghost town, with a few residents packing up the remainders, sweeping out the remaining rubbish.

On that note, I'm not sure if it's really good cleaning staff, good mannered hackers, or just German nature, but there isn't much rubbish. The bottle drops are occasionally overflowing with returned bottles, but that's really a good thing.

But back to the content, there are still stands that show no sign of disappearing. I suppose they will sneak out later, like a thief in the middle of the night.

I plan to attend the infrastructure talk in an hour, to get an idea how they managed to pull this scale off. 

At some point I'll return to the hotel for a few hours sleep, uplift the pack, and board a train on my journey to Amsterdam.

Time: 1658h

Temperature: 5°C

Location: Rest Area, level 3, CCC, CCH, Hamburg, Germany, Earth, Sol System, Western Arm of the Milkyway Galaxy

CCC hour 2072

This conference is really amazing. Not for the talks (I'm sure they're great, but I've not been to a single one), but for everything else. The "hallway track" is the conference. The talks are there if you're bored (which you'd have to be pretty jaded to be), or if you're exhausted but want to pretend you're doing stuff.

I've met many interesting people from many places. So far I'm the only Kiwi I've met here. 

I've worked out more on how to take photos whilst respecting the rules (see previous post), so I include some more here.

Forgive me if I repeat myself as its pretty exhausting. I've spoken to people who made autonomous robots that self navigate both indoors and outdoors using a laser sweep on the front to detect and avoid obstacles. A guy who makes art out of what amounts to toilet rolls, grease paper, a TV and a camera. I've spoken to physicists about time travel and drunken a slushie drink that's basically caffeine, alcohol and tea.

I honestly can't remember everyone I've spoken to, but everyone has been awesome (well, let's ignore yesterday's rant).

A functional (at least movement wise) GLaDOS. She doesn't yet try and test people with the promise of cake, but I'm assured that is next on the agenda.

Pretty lights

A cocktail mixing robot - this thing makes cocktails - and they aren't bad. It's not quite Tom Cruise in Kokomo, but it's not a bad start.

Yes, the phone works. Yes, it's bigger on the inside.

Pixels. No really.

The Lounge last night. It's intense, and awesome.

Wow, I keep getting "interrupted" by interesting people sitting down next to me. Clearly I need to get up and keep exploring.

Also this place is like hogworts. It keeps changing. I swear there are new escalators today.

CCC

Wow, I've not written anything for a few days. So I'm in Hamburg at CCC (Chaos Communications Congress), which is one of the largest conferences of its kind in the world. They reckon it's around 12,000 attendees this year, maxing out the largest convention centre in Germany, coincidentally named CCH (and on that note - CCH is closing for renovations in 2 years, so people are scratching their heads as to where it should go).

Anyway, enough of a half-ass Wikipedia article - what am I doing here and how did I get here?

Well, from Tankavaara it was a bus trip to Ivalo (pronounced Eee-Va-Low), then a flight to Helsinki. Overnighting in Helsinki then a flight to Hamburg via Frankfurt (thanks Lufthansa). That was yesterday.

Eventually I made my way to the hotel where I'm staying for the duration of CCC, about 5 minutes walk away.

CCC is a hacker conference so in that spirit it opens each day at 11am, and goes till around 1am, though from another point of view, it just never closes till the end, with hackers here all night (please note; hackers as in people who do technology stuff, not people who break into computers).

It's pretty full on. I did almost zero research on what to expect and what I was confronted with I could not have possibly imagined. 

Here is where I normally would include lots of photos of what I've seen so far, showing a glimpse of the extravaganza of sight, but photography is a bit frowned upon. You can take photos but you must make sure everyone in the photos agrees to it. This makes wide shots somewhat difficult and the general feeling is to avoid it entirely except where the background is walls, etc.

Even the official camera crew go out of their way to avoid inadvently capturing unknowing attendees.

But a post wouldn't really be complete without at least a photo of a sandpit with a projector and a kinect; 

That's sand you can sculpt that has the contour map projected on to it.

My view from a hammock as I lie here posting this blog.

Temperature: 8°C

Location: Hammock with big ferns in it, CCH, Hamburg, Germany

Oh sheet

Europeans don't do in top sheets. It's just bottom sheet and duvet. 

That's all I wanted to say.

Location: Airport Holiday Inn, Helsinki

Temperature: -4°C

Fun

Been rather busy with lots of stuff. After Xmas dinner I sat down with the owners, and a gentleman who bore a striking resemblance to a certain recently seen figure. Marko there showed me an interesting vessel I've never seen before:

It's for sipping whiskey. To me, it looks like a whiskey bong, but that's just my imagination.

Slept in for Xmas day (remember Xmas Eve is the big day for Europe). I think this was the first day I slept in till midday. This of course meant that there was only a few hours of sunlight left.

Xmas Day evening was spent at a traditional Sami dinner with song and story in a Kota (traditional hut). This was a great experience and we had Elk for dinner (something not Reindeer!).

After that we joined a couple playing chess and shortly after were joined by one of the owners, Marko. The games went on for hours until it was Marko and me, mano-a-mano, but he had the advantage in he kept supplying me whiskey until I lost.

Today is the journey to, eventually, Hamburg. We waited for about 20 minutes for the bus outside the village  on the road. This wouldn't have been much of a problem except it was -6°C, and the snow was ankle deep. Fortunately the bus did arrive and we're now on our way to Ivalo. Wow, spoke too soon, we just had to change bus. NOW we are on our way.

Addendum: When I say the snow was ankle deep, that's what the snow was from the last fall. The snow not plowed was waist deep, but we kept out of that, mostly.

Temperature: -4°C

Location: Kakslauttanen, Lapland, Finland

Joulupukki!

He arrived!

Looking very splendid, the Finnish Santa is free of CocaCola sponsorship :-)