AK's weblog

Mate is heavy. It's at least as strong as coffee, if not stronger (at least the brand that I have, "Nobleza Gaucha"). Yesterday I had "only" two gourds of it, the last one at around 7 pm, and I'm still kinda doped (around 11 am). This is really the first time that I experience caffeine as such a heavy drug.

Mate rocks. No, I don't refer to the iced tea version of it. I mean real Yerba Mate. Yesterday I got a wonderful mate (the gourd where you drink the mate out of), a bombilla (the metal straw) and a package of yerba mate, straight out of Argentina. Drinking mate is really a great pleasure, as it's tasty (even while you don't add any sugar like you do with normal tea here), it makes you awake and less hungry, and it got all the positive effects of coffee without the negative side effects of it (my heartbeat rapidly increases when I drink coffee, and I get a bit shaky and nervous - not so with mate).

Yesterday I started learning Spanish, using the book "Spanisch lernen in 30 Tagen" by Langenscheidt (does anybody remind this of "Brain surgery in 20 easy steps"? . I already completed the first lection, and so far, it's not yet difficult. But today I encountered one big issue when trying to write Spanish text with a German keyboard layout: some characters such as Ñ, ñ, ¡ or ¿ can't be typed on a German keyboard layout. That's why I created a custom keyboard layout using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (as you can see, I'm currently bound to Windows :-/), so that ñ can be typed using AltGr-n, Ñ can be typed using AltGr-Shift-n, ¡ can be typed using AltGr-Shift-1 (i.e. AltGr-!) and ¿ can be typed using AltGr-Shift-ß (i.e. AltGr-?). If you're also in desparate need of this keyboard layout, you can find the msi installer for Windows here. And below you can see a screenshot of the keyboard layout.

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present the successor to the infamous Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software: Pretty Good Double ROT13 Privacy, or short, PG2ROT13P. It is based on the latest research from the #mum cryptolabs, and will revolutionize the world of IT security. A demo version that both support encryption and decryption can be downloaded from here.



Propz go out to oli`, psychoKen, mik, f1r3, nulpie, herp, terrorgrl and all the other 24/7 hardcore idlers of the #mum cryptolab crew.

Today I ported an OpenSSL-based application over to GNU TLS (which implements SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0), just to see how easily it can be done and how GNU TLS is different from OpenSSL. Well, first of all, GNU TLS is a bit simpler to program than OpenSSL. While you still need a lot of function calls to get SSL established, it's a lot less than in OpenSSL, and - most importantly - all library calls are lower case. Regarding key and certificate files, GNU TLS is perfectly compatible with OpenSSL. So applications that already have some kind of abstraction layer to make it easier to use OpenSSL or to make the use of SSL optional can be ported within an hour.



But still, GNU TLS has some issues: what is most annoying is that the SSL handshake takes almost infinitely long (around 5 to 10 seconds), while OpenSSL does that within a second (in my test scenario, it was always OpenSSL on the client side and OpenSSL and GNU TLS on the server side). When a had a look at GNU TLS using strace(1), I immediately saw what the problem was: GNU TLS continously polls the PID, the current time and some resource usage stuff. This is absolutely not necessary, and should be improved.



Another annoying thing was that GNU TLS has major issues with certain rlimits set. For example, when you limit the maximum CPU time using setrlimit(2), the SSL handshake is likely to fail with too few CPU time set (with OpenSSL, I experienced no problems so far). GNU TLS also gets problems when you set the maximum number of open files too low. The symptom: SSL handshake issues. GNU TLS needs to have more than 32 open files at the same time. I don't exactly know how many, but 64 work. On the contrary, OpenSSL works with less than 16 open files.

First of all, the performances themselves at Aerodrome were really great, and I really enjoyed the concert part of this festival. But nevertheless there were many things that made Aerodrome festival just mediocre.



One problem that I recognized when I arrived was that there was hardly any information what was exactly going on, what to do, how everything's organized, etc. The only way to get useful information was to ask the security personal standing in front of the entry gates. But not even they were fully informed. Then, after some asking, I found out what actually the caravan area and what the camping area is, and that we'd have to get into the camping area by trading in our ticket for wristbands. After we did that, we were checked at the entrance. Then, I immediately realized what would be one of the main problems at Aerodrome: garbage. It was only the second day on which camping was allowed, and the first day where concerts took place, and everything was already totally full of garbage - everywhere. Afterwards we also had big issues to find our way to the tents of our friends who went to Aerodrome the day before. We didn't even know whether we entered through the south gate or the north gate (it was the south gate, as we learned later). So, orientation in the camping area was really difficult.



The next thing I have to criticize was the totally unregulated "music" and noise everywhere. It was impossible to find a place where to rest for just a few hours and to have a silent a calm place. Absolutely no chance. And that is especially annoying in the night, i.e. after 12 pm. And it is even more annoying when the music goes until around 5 in the morning, when everybody wants to sleep. Fortunately, I was able to put some tissues into my ears, and so I fell asleep around 3:30, but I woke up again at 5:22. That was really horrible! The first day was already exhausting enough (travelling from Linz to Wr. Neustadt, attending several concerts, standing around all the time), and so I just wanted to sleep and rest my legs which were extremely hurting.



Another thing I strongly have to criticize is the food and water supply: the normal water was hardly drinkable (IMHO), and more drinkable mineral or soda water was extremely expensive: a 1.5 liter bottle of Voeslauer mineral water was as much as EUR 4,50! These prices reminded me of Woodstock 1999, where a bottle of water was US-$ 5, and where riots started because of this. The food supply was also really bad: all the food you could buy on the area was totally overpriced (who wants to pay EUR 5 for a Kebab, or EUR 3,50 for a slice of pizza?!). Another thing, and that was the worst thing of the whole food and water supply issue, was that you were not allowed to bring your own drinks from the camping area to the concert area! That means you have 3 options when you're getting thirsty:

• stay thirsty
• go back to the camping area, drink something, and return to the concert area, which would take you at least 15 minutes
• buy the totally overpriced drinks at the booths in the concert area, with high prices like EUR 3 for 0.4 liter of Coke, beer, Sprite or Almdudler and EUR 2 for a mere 0.3 liter of soda water!

Totally unacceptable was also the sanitary situation: the toilets were ugly, dirty, stinky and mostly unusable. Not only that, but the stinky smell was over huge parts of the camp several times, especially on the second day. Fortunately, it was quite windy, and so we weren't annoyed for too long. The showers were unusable, too: first of all, you cannot really take a shower when there are way too few showers around. Second, you cannot get clean when you are being welcomed by 10 centimeters of dirty water. And third, nobody really wants to take a shower with cold water only. Actually, cold showers are only good for torturing prisoners and for keeping people away from taking a shower.



So I hope that Aerodrome was a total disaster for the organizers, and that it won't repeat. Interestingly enough, the organizers of Aerodrome are the same who also organize festivals like Forestglade, so they should actually know how to do festivals. As I showed above, they don't.