Hey here's a tip. Next time you have to do something you're mildly phobic about, such as dentistry or an exam (or in my case a barrage of vaccinations), a good way to reduce the fear response is to make the whole process as much of an absolute freaking hassle as possible.

First I had to walk across town to Sanidad Exterior to get information about Rabies and Hepatitis B jabs for this trip. They couldn't do the Rabies shots there so directed me to Trinidad on Calle Sevilla, other side of town. After a week of trying to ring those guys over Christmas I eventually figured out the number on their site is wrong, got the right one, they said 'why come all the way over town? Go to Salud Victoria, it's closer.'
At Victoria I was advised that they'd be too expensive as I don't have social security in Spain, and I should go to the Hospital Pascual where they could jab me for sure. At least, I thought, this is spiralling progressively closer to my house. However Pascual was all 'we're a private hospital, what are you doing here? Go to Calle Sevilla.'
Not close to my house. Not at all. There I waited twenty minutes in line to be directed two floors up, where the guy informed me that they only prepare the Rabies vaccine there, I would need to have it sent to my local medico. Also to pay (tho on the bright side it was only €40, Exterior told me 90) I had to go to a bank, pay there, then bring back the receipt. That queue also taking twenty minutes.

Fear of needles? About this point I'd have quite happily let them stab me repeatedly with a screwdriver if it would just get this whole shag-around moving faster.

But today, finally, I managed to get at least the first of the three shot course put in me. Tho, in my time honoured tradition of not making things easy for myself, I showed up at the place without the paperwork or my identification. It took the poor woman half an hour to sort it all out.
Damn, people down here are so nice and patient. They really are.

As for the needles themselves, the first was so slight I barely felt it, the second something more like an aggravated assault. At one point I even gasped '¿Como?', which is as close to What the Fuck?! as I can manage in Spanish.

Funny things. Squats.
On the plus side, you can knock holes in the walls and no one really seems to mind, on the other hand they do tend to be little beacons for absolute-batshit-crazy.

Kesselburg as a case in point. They had really nicely kitted wood and metal workshops, and a couple people there were super proactive and productive, making all kinds of stuff and trying their best to improve the place. Whereas the other two thirds were still, after years, living under tarpaulins in the woods and the only work being done on the existing buildings (it's an old Stassi training facility) was in making them worse.
This I found really surprising. I'm used to communities in New Zealand, where the first thing you do is build some kind of amazing house for yourself.

It seems a common thread in these types of places, and the problem seems to be openness. Basically, if you are somewhere that anyone and everyone can stay, you end up with all the people who have nowhere else to go. And of course junkies and the profoundly mentally ill need as much as anyone somewhere to live, but you don't necessarily want to be the poor bastard who has to deal with them.

It was the same at the Open University squat in Berlin. It was set up a while ago as a free space for learning and art, and for the first couple years it was, but then the government started shutting down support for the mentally ill, and a lot of them ended up there because it was nearby and no one had the heart to physically throw them out. As more came in the originals got fed up and left, now the place is basically uninhabitable.

Kesselburg wasn't anywhere near so far gone, in fact it was mostly pretty sweet, but there was definitely a fair bit of crazy going on.
I had a good time, nonetheless.

And now I'm in another squat, in Malaga. La Casa del los Monos.
But this isn't an open squat. You can't just walk in and find yourself a corner to sleep in, it's more like a normal flat. I'm here because two of the originals passed through Kesselburg and invited me.
So the place is a lot less crazy, and generally more proactive.

Funny things communities; that the only way to make a space where people want to live is to prevent most of them from living there.

Ever since reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I've wanted a portable Somebody Else's Problem field. The practical advantages of unobtrusive invisibility for someone who does a lot of sneaking around and pitching tents where he shouldn't are fairly obvious.

If only I'd known all these years about the inherent irony of High Visibility.
The effect is identical to an SEP field, people can see you, they don't trip over you or anything, they just assume if you're wearing any kind of flourescent green vest that whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, you're meant to be doing it.
I've walked into festivals, directed traffic, painted over billboards, and just the other day; stole a bike.

I say stole. The way the solarflower is shaping up, the majority of materials are coming from old bikes. And usually this is a good thing as they can be found just about anywhere. But not really in Malaga. In fact the only one I managed to locate was an obviously abandoned and half missing scrap of a thing securely locked to a fence on a busy street by the university. So, day before last, round noon, I grabbed my hacksaw and an old cycling green hi-viz vest, and cut the bastard loose.

At least fifty people saw me do it. No one batted an eye. They were probably glad the council was finally removing the thing.



And there's even a version for my tent:

I've been spoiled, these last two months. I knew it at the time, but a couple weeks in Malaga has really driven the point home. It wasn't the workshops so much, (tho they were awesome), it was the access to scrap. Both Christiania and Kesselburg had magnificent scrap piles, and, frankly, I miss them awfully.

The main problem in Malaga is that you can make money by collecting metal, so all the existing skips and construction sites etc have been picked clean by the homeless. Which is, y'know, great for them and all, but it's leaving me utterly short of materials.
And it's ridiculous how basic I'm talking. Like; two bits of pipe and something flat. I even went to the extent of catching a train out into the industrial sprawl in the city's west on the off chance that I'd stumble across something, but if there's an actual scrap yard within a hundred k's of here I can't find any trace of the bloody thing and the only events of that day worth noting was almost being forcibly dragged off the road by two prostitutes.

Coming home in the evening, after half a day of walking around, I found exactly what I needed sticking half out of a bin directly in front of the house.

I like to humour my life, bless her, she thinks she's funny.

I've left Kesselburg and Germany for the south of Spain, where apparently there is a squat in which I can stay and sunlight through December in which I can do the final tuning of the device.

Just for the pure hedonism of it I hooked through Edinburgh on the way and performed in another Samhuinn (Celtic halloween) festival.
Here's me being all scary and stuff.





Last year we made oak flatbows and several of our friends were hunted, murdered, and eaten.
Good times.

It looks somewhat rediculous, but this little fella's the result of over a month's work, trying to come up with a simple, easily constructed, completely water tight and low resistance sealed couple for the system.
It actually works very well. Not sure how it would hold up in a higher torque/rev situation, but for this application it's perfect.

The rest of the setup is the basic frame and gearing for the device: Worm drive - down gear - universal. The last being just a section of washing machine hose, which being light, easily sourced and only flexible along it's length (while very resistant to twisting) is again, perfect.

Click and drag ^^

This panorama is not quite as good quality as the first two, being snapped quickly while I was leaving Kesselberg.

Arrived in Berlin, walked past massive squatted space with iron sculptures on way to place to stay. Back next day talked to crazy painter, directed me down the road to a squat in the university grounds. There Lilly gave me lunch and told about squat around the corner from where I'm staying. Gone now to offer help make free food and attend some kind of gig. Heard of community just out of town where people make things. Heading out early tomorrow and hoping for the best.

I really think there's something wrong with me.
My relationship to reality is that of a deranged toddler constantly followed around by a long suffering nanny, cleaning up messes and trying to keep me out of traffic.
Reality says; Daniel you can't just show up in an unknown city, in some strange country, and expect everyone to just happily give you everything you need-
by which time I'm already joyfully wandering into the nearest bus lane.
My audacity of expectation, if only in retrospect, shocks even myself.

Things I got in Copenhagen for free:

Three days staying with a very nice couchsurfing.com couple called Marlies and Kristen.

Free reign of workshop space at Christiania for six weeks.
I turned up at Christiania unannounced, went into the first cafe I saw and asked to talk to someone who lives there. They pointed me towards the main office, which was closed for the weekend but dude there said if it was regarding solar, talk to Alfred. Alfred was all like, sure, come back tomorrow and here's a key to the workshop, indicating a corner; 'you can stay here'.
I thought it was a bit weird to offer a workshop floor to sleep on, but a nice offer nonetheless. Next morning when Alfred comes in at 8am to find me asleep under the bench it turned out he meant 'stay' as in, stay to work.
That was a bit uncomfortable.

But then after some emergency Couchsurfing request sending, facing the prospect of having to pitch tent in a very dodgy looking but nearby park, ended up four days with another CSer called Rikke who not only gave up her entire room for me (with computer) but then managed to get me my room on the Illutron barge, where she's resident.
Then she gave me a bike.

The barge, populated by mad and gifted artists, had another workshop and my room a computer.

Almost all my building materials were pulled out of Christiania's various skips and recycling facilities.

There's a vegetarian restaurant near the workshop which gives you any unsold food if you help clean up. Between this and a nearby supermarket with a pretty good dumpster I got all my food for free.
Plus had the amusement of watching them debate exactly how much work they could ask before feeling they were exploiting me. I don't speak Danish at all, but sentiments such as 'don't be crazy, you can't make him wash the floor!' and 'course we can, look how much food we're giving him!' tend to transcend language.
It was really good food.


Things in Copenhagen that I paid for:

Staying on the barge came to about €7 a day for bills and stuff.

Some of my materials, if I couldn't scrap them.

The occasional falafel.

_Finally_ managed to come up with a sealing option that should work. I went through a couple, some of which actually kind of worked ok, but this one's the winner.

Completely sealed, very low resistance. Just a previs at the moment, I'll get some video of it working when I can.

Update

Got the boiler stuck down with impressively adhesive double sided flooring tape, is now just about mirror perfect and doesn't seem to bubble.

The new boiler is literally twice as good as the prototype (which I was fairly happy with anyway) and gets the ethanol boiling from warm in under three minutes.

The wheel is still leaking, despite my unloading half a reel of teflon tape on the damn thing. I think the vaseline grease gasket approach just isn't going to work, so I'm back to the drawing board on that one.
Membrane, I think.

Update on the update: have developed a new form of sealed eccentric rotational couple. I'll see if it actually works when this wind dies down and I can make it to Christiania without being blown into the Teglværkshavnen.

This is the turbine / wheel thing which comprises the majority of the tracking system, and is getting close to being finished. It's made from a paint tin, aluminium cans, the bearing out of an old bike wheel and, I shit you not, a kitchen sponge.

Ten minutes after I filmed this however the back started leaking, either the thread on the shaft or the slight water pressure or both seems enough to agitate the petroleum jelly fluid gasket I've packed the shaft housing with. I'm going to take to it with a roll of Teflon tape (and if necessary something heavy and blunt) until it stops.