BoingBoing reader Vidiot works at a television news network. He points us to his photoblog -- a collection of snapshots in and around the RNC site, from a media worker's POV. "So far, I've got some pix up of RNC preps at Madison Square Garden, some of the media compound, and some of the media party last night." Shown here: media trailers along 33rd Street in Manhattan. Link

Previous BB posts about RNC-NYC: Barlow's dance protests. DIY coverage. Sterling's prediction. Nationwide scream 09/02. Robocops. Rooftop protest messages. Brooklyn Orgiastic Politics Collective. Bikes Against Bush arrest. First Amendment read-ins. C-SPAN protest video feeds.

Photographer Timothy Archibald's portraits of garage-geek inventors -- and users -- of large-scale sex machines. The aesthetic of the images is not prurient; it's clinical, clean, and removed. That distance lends the images a compelling twist, given the topic at hand. I hatehatehate the site's 1.5MB gorilla Flash interface, which prevents my pasting some of the project notes for you to read here. But the images and the subject matter they detail (online communities that connect people who imagine, build, and use these machines) are fascinating. At left: "Scott at his kitchen table, Sex Machines Unlimited," which made me laugh out loud. Link (NSFW). (Thanks, alfie)

I was trying to buy a one-way ticket from Brussels to London in September, and I ran into the weirdest, dumbest thing: British Airways won't sell you a ticket over the Web if your credit-card isn't billed in the same country the flight originates in (Er, hello? You're an airline -- that means you deal with people who are traveling, sometimes to countries other than the one that they reside in).

So I called BA and was told that the same ticket would cost 400 percent more if bought over the phone. So I went to a BA counter in Boston and was quoted a fare that was 200 percent more than the Web-fare.

I tried booking through Expedia, but they wanted to mail me a paper ticket. Since I rarely touch down in any city for more than a couple days, intersecting with a postal-delivery system for time-sensitive materials is pretty tricky.

Then I gave up on the Web and went to SN Brussels Air, a little carrier whose website has never ever worked for me. I called the London reservations desk and booked a ticket for exactly what BA charges via its website.

That's no surprise: as it turns out, the flight is operated by British Airways. It's the same goddamned plane.

So that's the point of this post: if ever you want to book a ticket on BA from Brussels to London, book it through SN Brussels Air (by phone -- the website will probably remain busted for all eternity), and you can circumvent BA's dumbass ecommerce policies and extorionate phone/counter prices. Link

BoingBoing reader Cheeken says, "Just thought people might like to know that CSPAN TV is showing live, uneditied feeds of the protestors marching around NYC. I've spent the last three hours just reading all of the signs!" Link to CSPAN website with video streams.

A post on an indymedia website says activist Joshua Kinberg -- inventor of a wireless, bike-mounted, dot-matrix printer for spraying protest messages in the street -- was arrested yesterday at the RNC in NYC. At the time, he was reportedly being interviewed by Ron Reagan, covering the convention for MNSBC.

Kinberg's invention allows users to spray messages transmitted to the bike-printer by way of the 'Net or SMS. They're painted in a water-soluble chalk solution that washes away with water (not spray-paint, as misreported elsewhere). Link to indymedia post, Link to previous BB post about Bikes Against Bush, Link to August 02 Wired News story with background on Kinberg's invention, Link to yesterday's NYT piece on Bikes Against Bush, and link to a torrent identified as video coverage of the incident, via DV Guide. (Thanks, Patricia and el norm)

Update: BoingBoing reader Paul says, "It seems he didn't even get a chance to use his invention, save the demonstration for MSNBC which resulted in his arrest. Snip from report: "When Kinberg showed the police sergeant how the bicycle used a non-permanent spray chalk, the sergeant seemed to agree that it wasn't defacement, at which point Kinberg asked, 'Am I free to go?' After conferring about it, officers decided to call superiors, then came back moments later to place Kinberg under arrest and confiscate the bicycle."

And BB reader yatta says, "Joshua was released at 11:00 AM Sunday morning after being charged with vandalism. His bicycle, laptop, and cell phone have all been confiscated and are being held until his court hearing. A lawyer from the National Lawyer Guild believes that the case is a clear violation of the first amendment (Houston v. Hill). In the meantime, the likelihood of his getting the bike back to use during the RNC is pretty much nil. (The court date has been set for Friday, 9/3, after the RNC ends.) Link to details."

Reader Mike Harris says, "The New York Post is reporting that it was spray paint, instead of a water-soluble chalk mixture. Users might want to ask that they correct their reporting. The online edition/news editor's name is Chris Shaw, at cshaw@nypost.com."

Color me jaded, but this call for citywide deployment of orgone cloudbuster machines to induce a "quivering saturnalia" inside the RNC walls sounds more like parody, and less like actual protest. But, hey, what do I know about Reichian energetics? Fleshbot says,

If the skies are dark over New York City next week during the Republican National Convention, it may be due to the cloudbusting efforts of the Brooklyn Orgastic Politics Collective, who plan to combat the "Deadly Orgone Energy (DOR)" of Dubya and company with ... uh, something based on the theories of Wilhelm Reich ("Metaphorically speaking, our September 2nd project will be an attempt to give the sky a blowjob... Imagine the Republican delegates so consumed in fucking and sucking that they forget to nominate Bush.")

Link. Don't forget to wear your tinfoil beanie thong.

BoingBoing reader Dave says,

Reverend Billy [from the Church of Stop Shopping] leads the faithful in rousing choruses of the First Amendment. A Quicktime clip shows one chorus and the hallelujahs leaving St Marks church in the East Village, New York, a center for organizing this week's demonstrations. (more clips from the street today will be posted this evening). Rev. Billy has been staging public readings of the First Amendment in smart mobs at Ground Zero and other locations, exercising the rights to free assembly and speech.

Link to Dave's blog post, more on Smart Mobs. The read-ins with Reverend Billy continue today.

BoingBoing reader Jim says:

"According to this article in Fleet Owner, UPS has deployed three fuel cell-powered trucks, a first in the US. "Our test programs showed the on-road reliability of fuel cells is excellent, equivalent to our current fleet," said Chris Mahoney, UPS senior VP of global transportation services in a press release. "But what's truly exciting is how fast the technology is progressing."

Link

BoingBoing reader Rod says,

In the UK, Rupert Murdoch's "The Sun" tabloid -- famous for it's topless models on Page 3 -- has decided that merely displaying a couple of boobs to increase circulation is not enough. Now, accompanying the lady proudly displaying her knockers, is a small snippet of right-wing Murdoch-approved propoganda, purporting to be the opinion of the Page 3 Girl. Tim Ireland's gathered together some prime examples from the last 8 months.

Link

Joi Ito stumbled on a website of the US government's "National Reconnaissance Office" designed for kids. Snip from NRO website copy:

The NRO designs, builds and operates the nation's reconnaissance satellites. NRO products, provided to an expanding list of customers like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DoD), can warn of potential trouble spots around the world, help plan military operations, and monitor the environment. As part of the 14-member Intelligence Community, the NRO plays a primary role in achieving information superiority for the U. S. Government and Armed Forces.

Joi asks:

So what is NROjr? It's a "A fun site to engage children in the wonders of science, math and space in a fun and interactive manner," brought to you by the NRO. (Make sure you have your sound turned on to enjoy the full experience. And all this time I thought Ernie actually worked for Sesame Street... although I guess he was recently heard singing Orkutworld.)

Link to Joi's blog post

Becky sez, "The Justice Dept. blacked out (censored) the part of a Supreme Court decision that calls into question the willy-nilly use of the vague notion of 'domestic security' to suppress dissent. Oy."

Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

Link (Thanks, Becky!)

General John Perry Barlow continues to plan his mad protest of the RNC in which hundreds of secret agents dressed like civilians will converge on a public, off-limits-to-protestors space, turn on a boom box, and DANCE LIKE HELL:

2. TEXT MESSAGE COORDINATION

I have created a text-message "loop" for us on the Ruckus site. It's called "dancemob." This will enable all of us to receive cell phone text messages from one another, noting current platoon location, likely eruption zones, police movements and temperament, etc. In order to participate, you will need to do the following:

-- Send the text "join dancemob" to 8762.

-- Once you are joined, you can send messages up to about 150 characters to your loop by texting dancemob: [your message here]" to 8762. For instance, if there were a loop named "PeaceMakers", you would text "PeaceMakers: meet now at 32nd and 6th".

In addition, I recommend that at least some of you in each platoon register your phone to receive bulletins from Ruckus with breaking news and logistical updates from the streets of New York City during the RNC.

Link

Metafilter Matt has written a great roundup of DIY coverage of the RNC event in New York:

all Flickr photos tagged with rnc, rncwatch.typepad.com, Technorati search for New York City ("rnc" was too short to search), Buzznet's No RNC photostream, rnc convention bloggers, WeSeeRNC moblog, Indymedia's RNC coverage, and Google News search for rnc.

Link

What to do with all that extra, network-based storage that comes with your Gmail account? If you're using Linux, you can turn it into a mountable filesystem with GmailFS.

GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. GmailFS is a Python application and uses the FUSE userland filesystem infrastructure to help provide the filesystem, and libgmail to communicate with Gmail.

GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename. This means that you can use all your favourite unix command line tools to operate on files stored on Gmail (e.g. cp, ls, mv, rm, ln, grep etc. etc.).

Link (via Waxy)

French company LaFraise.com sells some very fun riot nrrrd t-shirts, including this "T-pod" design, screeprinted with a pair of iPod earbuds. Link