Uncompatible Systems

Thu, 07 Sep 2006

Fun Things I did

Enough of the stupid burning man notes! Despite what you may think I really enjoyed myself. Each link under the picture is a video of the most fun things.

Flaming Lotus Girrrl's serpent	Riding on the back of Vector
Jesus kicking ass while being crucified	Plastic chimes with bling
Dust devils coming from the burning man

posted at: 22:49 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

More Burning Man Notes

The link in my last post was some criticism of the event. To elaborate, Black Rock City is a city, but it's only one because people pay an entrance fee upwards of $200 and truck the city over the Sierra Nevada mountains in a motor vehical. It's an experiment in community that depends on the state.

But once in the city, there are lots of thing you would expect. A post office, toilets, roads with street signs and lanterns, a visitors center, a store to buy ice and even a cafe. This is the adventure. Just walking around the city as one would in any other more perminant place. It's not a rock concert or art gallery or theater or rave or bar, it's all of these things.

Procuring a bike is easy. There's a community bike rack. There is also a person in Gerlach, the closest town that will reclaim bikes and sell them for very cheap the next year. The playa is terrible for bikes. If you bring a good one, expect to have to remove the front chain rings, rear cassette, derailleur, cranks and indexed shifters. If not there will be a fine corosive dust rubbing on the metal.

So what's it look like out there? I took two panoramas.

posted at: 22:08 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

Treehugger Sums Up My Feelings About Conservation At Burning Man

The devil's in the details. I noticed each point made in the article. The lack of solar and bulk of diesel generators was astounding. Fortunately, the LLC that runs the event is very transpearant about their finances.

posted at: 14:47 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 05 Sep 2006

It's Hot In The Desert

It was impossible to sleep past 10AM. The sun is directly pointed at my tent and there are no clouds to absorb the heat. There is zero moisture in the air. Yea! Leaving the tent makes it feel cooler but there's no shade, so walking around becomes extremely uncomfortable after a few minutes. Opening my eyes for more than a few seconds at a time was very painful due to the intense sun reflecting off the white playa. Take that eyelids! Goggles or polarized sunglasses are the only way to see for a prolonged time.

If you've ever met someone who's really into burning man, they will constantly rail on and on about The Playa. WTF is the playa, I wondered. Well, obviously it's a beach, but this version of "the playa" looks like white sand without a drop of water in sight. Turns out it's a real word for a type of alkali dust on a dry lake bed. The Playa is relentless. It will dry you and cover you in a white film at the slightest touch. I dropped my camera about 2 feet onto it and it took compressed air and a thin metal pick to get the lens to work again. If you touch water to playa, it becomes a dark yellow mud and drys almost instantly in the daytime.

I immediately began to think about survival in conditions like this. I wasn't officially camping with death guild, so I brought all my own supplies. Each drop of water need be accounted for, each ration and calorie is critical if you want to do more than sit in borrowed shade and piss off your neighbors. Pants, boots and even long sleeves can be very good if they are breathable. You'll get sweaty but whatever. The hippies with no clothes on must all go home hurting with sun burns on their ass, ankles and eyelids. A hat and goggles are required for any activity that involves looking around.

posted at: 17:36 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

Burning Man. The Event, Logistics and Orientation.

There were many moments of specialness but whatever, this isn't trying to be another stupid "oh, burning man was so great, you'll never understand" story. I'll try and illustrate what made it special for me in a series of smaller posts in place of one big one.

From San Francisco the drive took about 6 hours. It's a straight shot over the Sierra Nevada mountains to Reno, then it's a spooky trek for another hour and a half through dusty desert roads with cattle crossing signs.

Arriving at night is very disorienting. The entrance is just a dusty road with some wooden lamp posts. The only sign telling you where to go is a spray painted piece of plywood. Nothing professional looking. The camp ground is a big circle with roads along the vertexes. The radial lines follow clock positions (12:00, 3:00, 6:00, 9:00) and the diameter lines are words (fear, anxious, hope, eager). The center of the circle is the man and his platform. The ring closest to the center is called the esplanade and is where I camped.

Since it was 1AM when we parked, there wasn't much activity and it was very dark. I walked out onto the esplanade and shot a 360 degree video to get my bearings.

I was astounded at the amount of electricity people bring with them. This is the middle of the desert with no public utilities or telephone service. There is some solar but the bulk of the power is from diesel tanks and generators. The smart people run their generators during the day to charge batteries to use at night.

I drank a few beers at the camp bar and went to bed, not really knowing what will happen in the morning.

posted at: 16:00 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

About

I work with communications, open source software, sound and video. I'm the most happy when I work on all of these things at once. Sounds, Systems, Robots, Rocking Tigers.

CV?
(.doc | .odt | .pdf)

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