So you thought that finally the rain was over? Nope, not in Bergen. The nice glimpses of sun we experienced the day before are already faint memories, and the rain and wind of november are again ruling the streets. The Piksel people are starting to sneeze and cough alarmingly - I guess the "Piksel virus warning" is in place by this time.

Livido discussions are raging, and are now implemented in the daily schedule of the "code room" on the 3rd floor. It seems Tom is opting out for the moment, while Jaromil, Niels and Kentaro are still at it with Andraz following tightly by email. I will try to make an interview with some of the group at the end of the week, if or if not they manage to pop a bottle of champagne toghether and declare a public v.1.0 release at Landmark.

Workshops were held by Lluis (pidipVJ) and Salsaman (LiVes), between lunch and dinner. Again I have only been able to follow them by webcam, but I guess these workshops constitute the core of what Piksel is all about from a programming point of view. I've heard som complaints in the corners about the tight program and that there is not enough time and space for hard coding, although I think people are used to these kind of working conditions so I am not worrying too much.. This is something we at the Piksel crew will discuss for next years event, so please don't hesitate to post your opinions on the wiki or at the mailinglist.

The evening started well after schedule (as usual), and first out was the Gollum presentation by Lluis and Tatiana. The software is a remarkable piece of work; a fresh breath of political context. Briefly, Gollum is a cross-platform multi-user interface (java) for mixing streams of video and audio between locations all over the world. Although the interface is pretty complex, the user interaction is pretty simple and straightforward - a necessity if you want participation from people who are not particularly into coding or tech lingo. The application is already working, and was nicely demonstrated with a.o. Rama participating from his London exile. Gisle and I logged in too. Gollum represents a democratisation of media which is, and will continue to be a very important issue in our media-saturated world. The connection to Indymedia is an obvious one, which also means that both form (media formats) and content (media files or streams) is up working. The next step is to establish connections to countries in Africa - Morocco being the first node since it is close to Spain and has a resonable technological infrastructure. Very impressing!! Next out was Martin and Jonathan presenting their ap0201 devices. Definitely very different from Gollum, but again a very nice presentation (in human-readable language!) about their task to build and set out weatherproof hardware modules in a remote part of the Mojave desert in California. The project contains all the elements (and missing links) to make it a beautiful piece of art, containing enough little mysteries to ponder upon for us - not to speak about those who happen to find these little thingies out there in the desert! Last, but not least, this evening ended with a brilliant showoff by Gabriel aka Salsaman with the help of Eleonora and Maurizio tapping into the colourful and flashy features of LiVES on two screens, playing along the great music by Anders G. Lots of videoclips worthy a huge rave with lots of sweaty dancing people.

The evening ended at Ugla (the owl) for more beer and an encounter with the Bulgarian cover band playing evergreens from the best/most wacky part of the seventies and eighties along with the AA Bergen crowd. The Piksel people blended in remarkably well after a while, with Federico playing air guitar and Salsaman *almost* managing to convince a tall blonde to share bed with him (at least they were "looking at the rain" together - very romantic!!). Some people went on to get more beverages and then to Siljes home, where some stayed to check out her stack of old Hammond Organs!! I left quietly while Niels was rehearsing some old dutch children folk songs with a rhumba beat to it.. (btw: met Thomas next day at BEK, he hadn't been sleeping at all). Way to go!!