How Not To organize an Open Air concert for 3.000+ visitors

(Inspired by yesterday's visit to Eric Clapton on Bowling Green, Wiesbaden, Germany, Earth)

1. Create different visitor areas for people with seat tickets at the front, stand tickets, and seat tickets at the back. Separate these areas with solid constructions, requesting visitors to show their ticket at each border and disallowing entrance for people with the wrong ticket category. Hey, there's restrooms in each area, even in yours! Just on the other side of that crowd!


2. Create a separate entrance for each class of ticket holder. Plus, don't place any signs telling people what to do. After all, it's funny for 60-100 € paying customers to queue up for 20 minutes just to be told they found the wrong entrance. Isn't it?


3. Don't care about sizing the grill or drink stations. People do like queues, don't they? And wouldn't more than 4 grill/drink people per 500 visitors impact the relaxed atmosphere?

X61s + T-Mobile UMTS

In case you're using a Lenovo X61s and wonder why you cannot connect to T-Mobile's UMTS service in Ubuntu 08.04, here's how you get there:

1. Drivers are not an issue. Run lsusb and you'll see:
   
   ID 1199:6813 Sierra Wireless, Inc.
   
   Besides, lsmod | grep sierra should show:
   
   sierra 14468 0
usbserial 35816 1 sierra
usbcore 146028 5 sierra,usbserial,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
   
   And finally, you should have /etc/ttyUSB[0..2]
   
   
   
2. Turn wireless on. First, the hardware switch (obviously). Secondly, open two consoles, run cat < /etc/ttyUSB0 on the first. Issue 'at!gstatus?' > /dev/ttyUSB0 on the second. You should see something like this:
   
   !GSTATUS:

Current Time: 1312 Temperature: 51

Bootup Time: 0 Mode: LOW POWER MODE
...
   Mode is important: If it's LOW POWER MODE, the UMTS LED on the case is off. To turn it on, issue echo 'at+cfun=1' > /dev/ttyUSB0 - the LED should turn on, Mode switches to ONLINE.
   
   
   
3. Authorize. Check the PIN status using echo 'AT+CPIN?' > /dev/ttyUSB0 - if it says READY, proceed. +CPIN: SIM PIN means: issue your PIN with echo 'AT+CPIN=1234' > /dev/ttyUSB0
   
   
   
4. Connect. Stop your cat < /etc/ttyUSB0-session beforehand. This chatscript (/etc/chatscripts/tmobile-connect) works for me:
   
   ABORT BUSY
ABORT VOICE
ABORT 'NO DIALTONE'
ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE'
ABORT 'NO ANSWER'
ABORT DELAYED
"" 'ATZ'
OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet.t-mobile"'
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
OK 'ATD*99*1#'
CONNECT \d
   
   ... and the wvdial (pppd)-config (/etc/ppp/peers/tmobile):
   
   /dev/ttyUSB0
460800
defaultroute
usepeerdns
nodetach
crtscts
lock
noauth
local
debug
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/tmobile-connect"
   
   Connect by typing pon tmobile
   
   
   

Would be nice to see the power & PIN management in Ubuntu's network manager some day, wouldn't it?