Katrina: Radio Free NOLA; Joel and Jake continued

Jacob Appelbaum blogs from Algiers, Louisiana:

Today one of the better adhoc hacks I've seen came into town.

Behold the glory of a lunch pail made into a low power FM station.

I've been told that this radio station is planned for 94.5 FM.

Jake also blogs details of a visit from Naomi Klein, and a load of supplies that arrived from Austin.


[This man] interrupted [Naomi Klein's interview with Malik Rahim] to speak at length about how Malik basically saved his life and the life of the community with no outside help.

He talked about the hell of the Superdome and how it was suicide to go inside.

He actually took over the interview with his emotional response but everyone was listening to him. Cameras were rolling.

Joel Johnson blogs:

This afternoon, right before a visit from Naomi Klein & crew, we lost our Verizon uplink. That sucked a lot–not only did we lose internet for ourselves and our immediate neighbors, we had another EVDO card coming in from another worker today that would be useless. Jake and I scrambled to find an alternate uplink before the curfew, but even though we had power back we couldn't dial up. I called a few people to see if they'd help me blog a few short things, but we resigned ourselves to going through the nearby affluent neighborhood to see if anyone would let us piggyback off their DSL or cable modems.

Fortunately, we regained connectivity just a couple of hours ago, so we're back in business. Tomorrow we can wire the medical center and begin helping the low-power FM station get online. I scavanged some materials from the street that I should be able to rig into an antenna tower for all our transmissions. I'm looking forward to building that tomorrow.

It's finally starting to come together and there's tons more work to be done. I'm sorry this isn't very interesting writing, but I'm just too brain dead to do more than journal our progress right now.

We're starting to get a little snippy with each other, but a lot of that was when the internet was down. Never get two geeks into a place with no internet.

Previously:

Katrina: Strange fruit

Wardriving occupied New Orleans on 9/11

Bloggers Joel and Jake visit NOLA for geek aid

Blackwater gets carte blanche

Katrina account of Malik Rahim: "This is criminal…. genocide."