Glacetarium 2011

View from balcony from one of the apartments we've rented.

The glacetarium is the Acetarium's 2011 winter retreat.

Destination: Reykjavik.
Dates: December 30 - January 13. (We'll be back in time for the Mystery Hunt.)
Program Chair: Molly de Blanc
Spirits Chair: Alex Ose (not ghosts)
Quartermaster: Sarvodaya

Description

The glacetarium is designed so that the friends and inhabitants of the Acetarium can gather, relax and enjoy good company, often in geothermal pools, in Iceland. We'll cook meals, present talks, work on projects, and try to enjoy ourselves.

Participants are encouraged to bring their project ideas, books, games, and bottles of fine duty free whiskey. We will be trying to working with a local hacker space to hold a series of talks and presentations -- open to the public!

Useful Information

Be aware of the huldufólk, the hidden people. Skepticism can appear rude.
Tipping is considered rude.
The flats will most likely have wireless Internet there.
Rent/hostel fees seem to be between $20-30 (US) per night.
1000ISK is about 5.5USD.
Apparently, New Year's Eve in Rekyjavik is crazy awesome.
Mystery Hunt will start at noon on 2011/01/14 (Friday).

Useful links

WikiTravel page for Reykjavik
A popular tour route in Southern Iceland
A more expensive man-made spa
A cheap geothermal pool
All the geothermal swimming pools in Iceland
The town of Húsavík has Icelandic Phallological Museum.
An official tour guide
Hakkavélin is a hacker space that seems to be just a few block from where we'll be staying!
Data safety when crossing the U.S. border

Getting There

There seem to be two real options for folks flying to Iceland from the United States:

Iceland Air which flies direct from Boston for $500 and up for a round trip ticket.
Iceland Express which flies from Newark and can be as low at $300 for two one-way tickets.

There may be other options from Europe.

Attendees

Please let us know if you want to come as soon as you find out!

Name	IRC	Arriving	Departing	Status
Benjamin Mako Hill	mako	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Mika Matsuzaki	mika	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Seth Schoen	schoen	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Dafydd Harries	daf	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Christine Spang	christine	12/30	1/8	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Avital Kelman	fiendishx	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Molly de Blanc	mollydb	12/31	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Danny Piccirillo	DPic	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Matt Zimmerman	mdz	12/30	1/08	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Calyx Clagg	??	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Erik Garrison	erikg	12/27	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Hilary DelaBruere	??	12/27	1/1	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Alex Ose	maalox	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Niko Kern	nike	1/02	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Paula Aguilera	??	12/30	1/08	TICKETED
Jonathan Williams	??	12/30	1/08	TICKETED

Possible attendees: Mad, Chris, Sj, Danjared, Julie

Food

Many of us are planning to cook at least one meal at home. We can coordinate what to bring and buy. There are at least 1 vegan and many vegetarians. If anybody has other dietary restrictions, please express it here.

Rooms

We have found one landlord with a good deal of space in Reykjavik. He's trying to give us a good deal and seems pretty flexible. Currently the rundown includes three places:

Flat 73: Can hold between 6-8 people in two bedrooms with a living room. One of the bedroom will have a few comfy mattresses in it.[1]
Flat 71: Immediately next to Flat 71. It can hold up to 8 people. But it's only available between the 3rd and the 11th.
Guest house: Although it's about a 20 minute walk away, there is also a guest house we can use to hold overflow. He'll rent it for the same per-person price if we can get at least 6 people. Otherwise, it should be a little more, but still affordable..

Please only add your name here after you have purchased your tickets.

Flat 73

We are reserving one apartment place that can hold a maximum 8 people from December 30th through January 13th. The house has 2 bedrooms and the landlord will be put 2 more mattresses in the bigger bedroom. There is a sofa bed in the living for 2 people as well. Ideally, we'll get two places and sleep 6 or 7 in this apartment.

Slot	12/30	12/31	1/1	1/2	1/3	1/4	1/5	1/6	1/7	1/8	1/9	1/10	1/11	1/12
1	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako
2	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika
3	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth
4	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi
5	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine
6	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf
7	maalox	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb
8(couch)	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny

Flat 71

There is an apartment next door from the same landlord that can hold 10 people that will be available from the 3rd of January through the 13th. As soon as we get 4-5 people who've signed up for this, we'll put a deposit down to reserve the space for the whole period. Please sign up quickly so we can make sure we get it before someone else does!

Since the house is not available until 1/3, the owner said that we can stay at his other guest house (20-25mins away) until the 3rd for the same price. Let Mika or Mako know if you want to rent the place. Please add your name to the list in the next box if you'll need this.

Please only add your name here after you have purchased your tickets.

Slot	1/3	1/4	1/5	1/6	1/7	1/8	1/9	1/10	1/11	1/12
1	Matt	Matt	Matt	Matt	Matt	Matt
2	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx
3	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik
4	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny
5	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox
6	Niko	Niko	Niko	Niko	Niko	Niko	Niko	Niko	Niko	Niko
7	jdub	jdub	jdub	jdub	jdub
8	Paula	Paula	Paula	Paula	Paula
9
10

Guest House/Other Options

If you need a room in the guest house, put requests down here. We'll try to aggregate these and get these to the landlord and will let folks know. We're currently under the impression that we will have plenty of space. The cost of the guest house will be 25USD/person/night:

Hillary: 12/27 -> 1/1
Erik: 12/27 -> /1/3
Maalox: 12/31 ->1/3
Niko: Night of the 2nd, would sleep on floor or on couch if it is easier/cheaper
Paula and Jdub 12/31 -> 1/2

There are hostels and are other apartments for people that want to come for period from December 30 through January 1st. Folks can expect to pay between US $20-35 per night in shared apartment or hostel. Mako and Mika will not arrange these other accommodation though. Obviously, the bigger the place, the cheaper the per-person/per-night cost.

Costs

The current plan is going to be to pool the total cost, split by the number of total person nights, and then charge people by the number of nights they will stay.

Flat 73: The cost is 1380GBP(about 2200USD) for the entire period which works around to around $20/night/person if the place has eight people sleeping in.
Flat 71: The price is 1150GBP.
The Guest house: The price is 25USD/person/night for those who need a place to stay before their houses become available.

The total costs are GBP 2530 for the two periods in the times listed in the boxes below. With 5 slots fully filled in the second house we will have, the cost will be about USD $27 per person, per night. With all ten slots filled, the cost will be about US $20 per person, per night. This is subject to changes in the GBP/USD exchange rate.

Activities

Folks should brainstorm ideas of things they might like to coordinate while there.

I want to read and talk about a few academic papers about free software! (Mako)
Fish Fillets and other puzzles -- maybe we can solve some Fish Fillets levels as a group
I want to write an academic paper about public health, computer security, quarantine, and compulsory vaccination (with a focus on the use of public health metaphors in computer security and Zittrain-style examination of the effects of these metaphors on computer users' freedom). I would be interested in collaborating with anyone who's interested. I also want to work on other writing projects. (schoen)
I'd like to write a draft of an academic (or non-academic!) law-review style paper about how the porn industry has moved from highly centralized to largely decentralized personality-based economics models that employ many more people due, at least in part, to a lack of ability to enforce copyright claims. I want to suggest that this is a model that other cultural industries (e.g., music) might follow. (Mako)
- But you should know that some porn companies have filed large-scale copyright infringement actions against individuals recently, so there are at least parts of the porn industry that are interested in the litigation tactics pioneered by the recording and film industries. See, e.g., Every Inch Counts: Porn Filesharing Lawsuits Crest 30K Defendants and Porn Industry Lawyer is New Copyright King with 16700 Lawsuits Filed. ZDNet also mentioned a large porn industry copyright enforcement conference that took place in Tucson in October.
  - I had no idea. I think I'm going to withdraw this idea in favor of something else. -- Benjamin Mako Hill 23:08, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
    - Hm, i've heard similar things about companies that produce anime in Japan. There are always the big companies that'll bring out the copyright guns and stick to the "old" ways, but that doesn't necessarily discredit the idea, i don't think. DPic 07:06, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
I want to do some sort of experiment with narrative and storytelling forms through film, pictures, words, or something else entirely. There will be some cool visuals, as Maalox pointed out, with the lighting that might be fun to play with. I have nothing beyond that. (Molly)
Mako and I are thinking of writing an essay about abandonware as an example of waste and risk due to proprietary software licensing. (schoen)
Listen to Sigur Rós, Björk, and Seabear DPic 07:06, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Film project? I have a camcorder and can record talks, crazy fireworks, random discussions, and good times, but mayhaps a film-project would be cool as well. Lip dub? Story (Molly)? Simple music video? DPic 07:06, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Talks

We're going to be running a series of talks during the trip. We're going to coordinate with a local hacker space so that these talks are also open to the general public and maybe in a local hacker space (currently only two blocks away) wherever possible.

Molly de Blanc will be the program chair and will be coordinating and scheduling talks and helping select among the suggestions here.

Try out some new talk about Confronting Reality about social science on free software and how we can use it (Mako)
Prison blogging -- a report on the Between the Bars project. (Mako)
Prison nutrition (report on project to teach prisoners nutrition). (Mika)
Geek nutrition (report on a survey of geek eating habits). (Mika)
Reprising HTTPS Ubiquitous and Fragile from HOPE (schoen)
Someone should maybe give an overview of the Acetarium if we're giving a talk at the hack space?