yes, i now have dsl in my (dorm) cell here after a couple weeks of scouting, sneaking, stringing and stuffing. i’ve been plugging into the internet in a little tiny box of a room downstairs here in the library. i ran that wire down into that box soon after i got here, but there are just way too many things that get in the way of really being able to use that space for this work.
so i started working on an escape. think “great escape” or other wwii prisoner of war movie. flying a bit under the radar here so that a good and harmless idea didn’t get nixed before it got properly tried. just like those old movies, this adventure was high drama, at least it seemed that way in the unusual quiet of both the Center and my own mind. seemed i would always be discovered, right up to the last moment when all i need to do was crimp one plug on the end of one wire, up in the office. then, when i went up to scout it out, i end up in a conversaton with the house manager about how being a little too eager on something totally unrelated messed it up. much as i wanted to move quick to that last wire, i took her inadvertant counsel and waited until the coast was really clear.
when it was all done, i’d run about 150 feet of wire through existing clamps and holes, over other wires and pipes, out of the office, through a ceiling cabinet, around the stairwell, out the small roof door, across the roof, into the cell block, down the hall, through the one hole in my cell wall where the electricity comes in, and all that done, had exactly two feet of slack at the one end and one foot at the other. then i had to find a crimping tool, which i got the shop owner to rent me rather than sell me… because everything in london costs at least twice as much as you’d think it should.
after two or more weeks of sleuthing this out, and stuffing this wire through every little hole i could find in this 140-year-old building, nobody was more surprised than me when the first pages loaded. leave it to chris corrigan to point out that i’m the only guy he knows who tunnels into my cell. i found a sawhorse, a scrap shelf, and some bar clamps in the basement (dungeon workshop) that have fit together in a brilliant and perfectly laptop- and cell-sized desk. what’s maybe even funnier is that i now finally feel like i have the freedom i need to do all of my work… at the center and here online. look to scnn for the first benefits of that.
this ties in directly with what i’ve been writing a bit about limits and shapes of mind