Article 274 of cap.general.net: Newsgroups: cap.general.net From: bbouwsma@cap.gwu.edu (Barry Bouwsma) Subject: Re: Two cents' worth Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1993 15:51:19 GMT In a previous article, jmoore@cap.gwu.edu (John Moore) says: >By the way, how's is >your bike trip progressing, It has stopped raining for a couple days, and today is a nice sunny warm day. It's about time. I have made it to Kosice, in the eastern part of Slovakia. I have broken two spokes in my rear wheel (freewheel side), so I will spend the rest of this afternoon rebuilding this wheel. I have spent several days in Kosice, but I will get out this weekend to explore the area. The people are very friendly here, and surprised to see an American here. I will be doing some things at the computing center here, seeing how they are set up and such. It is quite interesting... > and who did you talk into letting you >log on @ U. of Zurich or wherever it is you said you were posting >from? Nobody. Unlike in the US, there is no NSFNET overseeing the Internet with the requirement that all users be identified, so it has been possible for me to go to most universities along the way and connect to my accounts. Some universities require users to have logins, but these are relatively few. I have only had to ask a few people for help, but in most cases the telnet programs being used are familiar to me and I need only start them. However, in Zuerich, I do have a friend with Internet access and he allowed me to use his computer from home to dial into a VAX. From the actual campus, I ran NCSA telnet on a Mac, and did not need to login to anyone else's account. People are quite interested in what I am doing, particularly here in eastern Europe. Other people find it amazing that I am on a bike tour of Europe from Amsterdam all over, and the fact that I am using computers is of additional interest. That's the scoop... -- -- Barry Bouwsma, on a bike tour of Europe through November, logged in from the Technicka Univerzita v Kosiciach, Kosice, Slovakia [MIME mail compatible] Article 309 of cap.general.net: From: bbouwsma@cap.gwu.edu (Barry Bouwsma) Subject: Re: Biking the Internet Reply-To: bbouwsma@cap.gwu.edu (Barry Bouwsma) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 09:00:36 GMT In a previous article, fleet@cap.gwu.edu (P.R. "Fleet" Teachout) says: >>> Tell us about your bike trip. >> You don't want to know. >Aaaah! But, yes we do want to know! Well, okay... I made a loop from Presov (just north of Kosice in Slovakia) south and west to Budapest, than headed northwest to Wien (Vienna) without too many difficulties, and then I returned to Kosice through Slovakia following the Hron river through some very scenic countryside, through Zvolen where there is a very tasty mineral spring, and over a big hill (which I had to walk) near Roznava to get back. I now have a broken kickstand, though I have rebuilt my rear wheel to cross-4 spoking on the freewheel side, and I have given up on a tire I had which was ripping apart, replacing it with a tire made here, and which is of good quality. The weather has been much drier, and the part of the Danube cycle path I tried a few weeks ago which was under almost 2 meters of water is now dry. Of course other things have gone wrong... >> When I find some computer resource of interest, I let people >>who keep track of such things know of it. >Can you let us in on some of these goodies?? These are mostly library systems, although I did get the gopher server operated here at the TU Kosice registered in the primary list of gophers. I have not found anything else. If you follow gopherspace to the list of libraries around the world maintained by Yale, you will see a number of contributions I have made. Of course, you won't know which ones they are, but... -- -- Barry Bouwsma, on a bike tour of Europe through November, logged in from the UVT Technicka Univerzita v Kosiciach, Kosice, Slovakia [MIME mail compatible] Article 310 of cap.general.net: From: bbouwsma@cap.gwu.edu (Barry Bouwsma) Subject: Re: Biking the Internet [was Re: Two cents' worth] Reply-To: bbouwsma@cap.gwu.edu (Barry Bouwsma) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 09:10:31 GMT In a previous article, cpaulus@cap.gwu.edu (Christopher Paulus) says: >They let you use univ computers as you bike around? The times I have had to ask, I have been allowed to telnet to my home systems. Sometimes I have not bothered to ask. I am not using the computer resources locally, except to make the connection to my home system. That's nice...I didn't think univs would let you. In the US, you would have to talk someone into allowing you to use her or his computer. Around Europe, there does not seem to be a problem. The people here are quite willing to share their resources, even to the point where I have been given an account here in Kosice which I have used for mail since getting mail from my US accounts over international links can be somewhat of a problem. The link from here in Kosice to the Internet is over a 14.4k line to another university in Banska Bystrica (this line is shared by two universities in Kosice), which is connected by a 19.2k line to Praha and a 14.4k line to Bratislava, both of which connect to Austria. Considering all the traffic (mail, ftp, telnet, and such) that goes over these lines, it's no wonder that it may take a while for me to read my mail over a telnet session. -- -- Barry Bouwsma, on a bike tour of Europe through November, logged in from the UVT Technicka Univerzita v Kosiciach, Kosice, Slovakia [MIME mail compatible] Article 342 of cap.general.net: From: bbouwsma@cap.gwu.edu (Barry Bouwsma) Subject: *Real* hackers don't need sleep Reply-To: barryb@vsz.vszbr.cz Organization: The National Capital Area Public Access Network Here's a report on my travels which I had composed and sent out Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1993 16:24:18 GMT as part of a series of electronic postcards. I thought perhaps it might contain something of interest to the readers of these newsgroups -- WITTY because it is information from my travels through the world (remember that's World of Information...), and the group on CapAccess discussing the Internet, where my previous messages have appeared. I guess that some people really do want to know what I'm up to... And yes, I am keeping in touch through the Internet as I help to develop it in other countries. -=++***++=- From: Barry Bouwsma Subject: *Real* hackers don't need sleep Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1993 03:24:00 +0200 I want to apologize to everyone. When I started my trip, I expected that I would be sending these messages describing the things I was seeing and telling what I was doing. I did not intend for nearly every message to be a description of my latest disaster. It seems that whenever I have something interesting to say, I do something stupid like wipe out the message I was composing, or get disconnected and lose all my work when I am nearly done. I can imagine what it has sounded like reading the messages I've sent, and it wasn't supposed to be that way. I'm sorry. I have made it to Brno to do the computer installation. All you administrator types can breathe more easily; I did not learn much from the work that was done -- it was all too fast for me. I wasn't able to be much help, but I did wind up rewiring the electrical distribution system, which was not only not quite wired as it should have been, but actually created a hazard both to users and the equipment. But this is what I have done back in the US too. It's interesting to do this work here -- the principles are the same, but the conventions vary somewhat (different colors for the wires, and different connectors). I learned a bit in case I ever decide to become an electrician installing computers in eastern Europe. I hate to admit it but I'm pretty satisfied with the work I did here. Jim and a couple others of you who remember me from my radio station days, I finally had a chance to do wiring the way I would like to have back then -- not rushed, and having time to do a good job. And having what I needed available to me. Best of all, they are feeding me pastries. That's part of the reason I don't need sleep. Sugar. Yum. But you administrators should not rest too easily, since there are still some bugs that need to be shaken out of the system, and since the others have left, I am here alone with root access and a task to accomplish. I think I have fixed the problem with routing (someone from outside couldn't connect to these machines except for the main server which acts as a gateway for the others, and likewise the machines here could not reach the outside world), which was the major concern. These 18 hours should be a good learning experience for me, unless I conk out first. I have resumed the cycle of sleep deprivation of last winter when I was working on computers back in the states. Don't ask me why I am doing this over here in beautiful Moravia. I think I need to be examined. The Internet in the Czech Republic is somewhat more developed than it appears in Slovakia. There are more universities connected, and speeds are higher -- I have a 64kbit/sec link from here in Brno to the central hub in Praha, which is connected to the rest of the world by a 64k link to Linz in Austria. The universities are better supplied with equipment too. Of course this all will change when I get finished installing the sloppy-writing fonts on all the displays. I was very happy to get Hebrew to show up, and correctly, though I seem to have a problem getting Kermit to reliably pass on the 8-bit data it receives. Since NCSA Telnet (actually Clarkston Univ) is rather popular here, I will probably take a look at the source code and see how it should be changed for 8-bit transparency. Oh, Marie-Christine, while I am thinking of it, the default latin1 setting for less as I used it has resulted in the escape character from the ESC sequences for highlighting text show up as a flashing ^[. Not exactly what I had in mind. Still got some wrinkles to iron out. I'm thinking of sitting down sometime when I have the time and writing a more complete description of how the universities are stocked, and how they're connected, for those of you who would have an interest in learning about this. The weather has cleared up somewhat, but it is still somewhat cool. After I made the plea that I would have preferred rain to losing my wallet in my last message, not only did it start to rain heavily for a few days, but I had a bitterly strong headwind and it got quite cold (cold, that is, by my standards). Plus I had a spate of flat tires, so I chose to upgrade my rear to the fattest I can get. And Jeannine, those two books I had, the brand new ones for the Danube, and the Czech and Slovak Republics, they got soaked. I should have given the one to you to remember your time over here and then picked up another copy for myself later. Rain, wind, cold, and flats. That's how I spent my summer vacation. And my summer vocation was as an electrician in a computer room. For some unexplainable reason, I just don't seem to take the same sorts of vacations that other people do. Can't quite figure out why. I think I need a vacation from vacations. Eric, don't be cutting down the Trabant. I have seen smiles on the faces of many a Trabant owner while pushing the beloved marvel of engineering along the road. And besides, the Trabant conserves gasoline. It runs on oil. If anyone cares about my general health, my butt has been healing because I have not been riding for several days. And I even had three (count 'em) hot showers -- my first in almost two months, and again my last for a while. I have taken some 10cm out of the waist of my shorts, so they aren't about to fall down, but now there's a big hole in the seat on one side. Fortunately fall seems to have arrived (the trees have been turning color where I was riding) so it's a bit cool for shorts. Unfortunately I'll be camping out again in the freezing cold mornings soon. Perhaps I should comment how beuatiful the Tatras are with their snow-covered peaks, in spite of the fact that I was seeing them right after losing my wallet. And I did find some folklore music with traditional costumes, dancing and singing in a couple towns I passed through. I guess that can make up for the loud contemporary gospel concert in front of the K-Mart in Bratislava -- which, over the course of two weeks, had mutated from its original 1960's style Prior appearance to a K-Mart just like you'd find in the states. Complete with brightly colored plastic toys -- "Quality merchandise from the US" or whatever it had said in Slovak. Here in Brno the K-Mart is in the process of undergoing the same conversion. As much "fun" as hacking here can be, I think I should try to resist the temptation and get out, back on the road, and see the beautiful country here, before it gets too cold, and before I have to rush back to the airport. What I'm doing here I could also do after I get back, when I return to a damp windowless room with an ethernet cable and workstation, to once again lose my tan and the muscles I've built up in my legs so that I'll be prepared if I should forget about how miserable I was and get the desire to return, heaven forbid. I suspect school has started again for many of you with the accompanying headaches, although here time no longer has any meaning for me. So I shall sign off, to file another report sometime in the coming days or weeks, well, sometime, and I hope from a different Internet access point. Right now it's 3:30 in the morning here, so I had better return to my hacking. Keep them cards and letters, folks, although bear in mind that some coming mailers don't query the DNS for domains such as .sk and .cz and may result in bounced mail -- in that case, use .cs for my addresses here... ********** I had written this at 3:30 this morning with the intent of sending it out when the typical network problems cropped up, so it's a bit delayed. Autumn has started, and it is cold and cloudy and rainy, but I'm camped out in the computer center, with two hours of sleep... The problem was solved, and it was in the configuration of the NOS (KA9Q) program which is used as a router here. It's a good thing that I have familiarized myself with this and so many of the other programs I have run across which are in use here. So I guess you sysadmins can relax; I haven't had to rebuild Unix from scratch. Yet. It is evening, I have a bag of sweet rolls here and a 2-liter bottle of carbonated caffeine, so I'm ready for another night of hacking. If I keep accumulating accounts like this, I'm going to need to be able to post more than a 4-line .sig file... --