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Monday, May 16, 2005

Carriage of War


[click photo for gallery]

Back in the day, before the internet provided plenty of computers to talk to; hackers would find find computers to connect to by wardialing. Wardialing is getting your computer with a modem to dial every number... 555 5551, 555 5552, 555 5553, 555 5554 etc. until it would find a computer on the other end to connect to. From there you could try various ways of getting into that system. Now with the internet, theres millions of machines that are an internet address away and theres no need to dial...

But the name and idea of wardialing has been used with the newer form of networking computers - Wireless networking (WiFi). You can find wireless networks by driving down your street with your laptop looking for and logging down all the wireless networks in range. This is wardriving. There's also been warflying is small airplanes etc etc. And also warwalking... just walking down the street with your pocketpc or more awkwardly, a laptop.

So I made the Carriage of War... its a baby-carriage with the payload of
A) my iBook
B) a USB WiFi adaptor
C) a car battery
D) a power inverter (for turning the 12V car battery into a 115V AC supply)
E) a boombox

Now the iBook and the USB WiFi adaptor are for finding networks, but why the car battery, power inverter and boombox? Well because the wifi sniffing software I use called Kismac has an awesome feature that it can play a noise when it finds a network, and it can also speak the info about what network it found using the Macintalk text-to-speech. So car battery and power inverter is for powering the boombox which would amplify Kismac's sound output for all to enjoy :D

So anyhow I brought it to the last midmeet of toronto 2600 and we walked it around the neighborhood which happened to be full of technology and media companies... [Google Map] It was tonnes of fun... there were lots of networks and the sound of Ralph (a mac voice) and the fight club soundtrack in the background got people to stick their heads out of their offices.



The next thing I want to do is rig up my tricycle as the tricycle of war... with like an extra seat in the back and a Yagi on a turret... That would ROCK.

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5 pillowblog: Carriage of War [click photo for gallery] Back in the day, before the internet provided plenty of computers to talk to; hackers would find find computers to...

2 comments:

Michael Fuller said...

Sweet idea with the boombox. You look quite hilarious pushing a baby carriage around. Nice hat too

Anonymous said...

Belkin makes one with the software support.

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