Woke up today (well, yesterday, technically) to find a KI message from the transport guy, sent in the middle of the night. Guess he’s on a different sleeping rhythm than I am. Rushed my way to the cavern, had to find the obscure ‘hood where he would apparently be most of the day. I ran into Modi halfway through the city, who spontaneously joined me. We found our way to the guy pretty quickly and got the equipment from him. We linked it to my Relto in two parts.

 
 
 
 
Once there we set up the installation together. To be clear, the equipment consists of a ‘PowerFilm’ solar panel, a battery pack and a special adaptor. The solar panel is pretty cool, it’s really foldable and light. We put it up on the roof of the hut, facing the sun, and connected it to the battery pack sitting inside the hut. For every 10 hours it charges, it returns about 3 hours of laptop-time. So, about 7 hours per day. Quite alright, I’d say.

 
 
 
Of course, for the all-important internet I still need to go into the cavern. Until someone figures out how to do inter-Age lattice-IP communication, that is. So I think I’ll mostly be leaving the laptop off and charging while I sleep, then take it into the ‘hood fully charged.

I’m quite satisfied about the business with the transport guy, it went smooth and so far the equipment seems really good. Certainly a thing to remember for the future. If anyone else is interested in contacting him, just ask and I’ll give you his details.

Apparently he’s going to Link the stuff over. Normally it would take two weeks to get the stuff down here, so that’s good. Still, he says the process can take anywhere between 3 days and a week. Guess I’ll be hanging around in Tom’s hood some more until then.

Here’s the footage from the D’ni Musicological Research ‘hood that I promised. The opportunity: the inauguration of the neighbourhood. Turjan Aylahn (the main guy on the D’ni music scene) had hooked up his equipment to the sound system in the community room, using it to play recordings of his pieces. The piece that I witnessed (and recorded) is called rehlehmok reveelai (‘the ink of the soul’). The recording quality isn’t great, my apologies for that, I’ll try to fiddle with the settings on my camera before I use it again.

Here’s some links about D’ni music research, for those interested. There’s a lot of French, but also cool music, pictures and info.

Cool stuff! Keep it up, D’ni music people!

Sorry for taking so long to post again, it took some effort to get to some power/internet. I’m in Tom’s hood right now (he says hi). He’s got a charger set up here, he gets power from the Er’cana factory or something. He’s pretty good with this stuff; he copied the DRC’s methods of using the lattice for internet. I don’t know how he does it…

Anyway, it’s really good to be back. When I got to Relto I just put down my bag and relaxed… It felt like coming home after a long time. Everything was still there, just as I had left it.

After unpacking a bit I thought I’d look for some people with similar sleeping rhythms, so I started making my way to the Dutch neighbourhood. On my way there I came through the D’ni Musicological Research ‘hood, where a demonstration of D’ni music was going on! It’s great to see that explorers are still researching on such a wide spectrum of subjects. Although I only came in for the final piece, I took some footage of it which I’ll be posting soon (uploading to YouTube from here is taking FOR EVER).

After the demonstration had ended, I went on to find my fellow countrypeople, chatting in the ‘hood when I arrived. It was a great reunion. We talked about old times, new people…

When our group dispersed I met Tess, Tom and Umgenni at the pub, where we had a few drinks (too many?), courtesy of Tom’s smuggling skills. I was informed that there’s a guy who imports stuff from the surface at a small price, and apparently he’s done some laptop power set-ups before. I’ll have to try and seek him out, see what the details are.

As for today, I’ve mostly been reacquainting myself with the cavern, finding out who’s distributing food, and so on. Hopefully I’ll get a permanent power/internet source soon, and then I can start thinking about Writing.

See you on the flip-side! :)

It’s been almost two years since I last visited the cavern. Since then I’ve occupied myself mostly with my studies on the surface, though I kept in touch with cavern acquaintances. Apparently, there’s been a recent return/influx of explorers to the cavern after reports from the DRC about a security device having been set off… I’m taking this is a sign that I should heed the Call again, too, and see what’s going on down there. In any case it will be nice to meet old friends again.

Since this will be already my third era of cavern exploration, I decided to make things interesting (and my repeated absence from my surface-dwelling friends and family a bit more bearable :) ) by creating this site to document my adventures. I’ll try to post here frequently with pictures, experiences, musings, and other hopefully interesting material.

As some of the D’ni-knowledgeable among you may have guessed, the title of the site doesn’t refer to its textual contents, but is rather a reference to the D’ni term gahrohevtee – the language used to write Linking Books. The fact is that I’ve set myself to start learning the Art of Writing when I get to D’ni. Quite ambitious, I know, but I’ve dreamed of becoming a Writer for a very long time, and now is as good a time as any to start learning. So, next to a general blog, this website will document my progress in becoming a Writer, and hopefully at some point the Ages I Write. We’ll see how that all goes.

Anyway, today I retrieved the wooden box where I kept my Relto Book, and tomorrow I’ll be packing up my stuff and heading off. I’ll bring my laptop, though I’m not sure yet about how to get power and internet access… I’ll have to ask around when I get there.

Oh, I also heard the Bahro are back? I’m somewhat worried about that since I don’t know what happened between them and Yeesha in the past two years, but we’ll see. Well, despite my excitement I’m going to try and get some sleep (that reminds me, the weird day/night conditions in the cavern and the Ages will take some getting used to… ugh). See you all down there! :)

PS: There are still a couple of small graphical problems with some areas of the site, hopefully I’ll get a chance to work those out soon.