The UCC Mirrorball

If you have any information on the whereabouts of our Mirrorball, please contact WA Crime Stoppers. It has been over 22 years since it was stolen, but we still hold out hope.

World's First Internet-Connected Mirrorball

History:

It all started like this:

Subject: mirrorball...

To: [email protected]

Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 14:22:48 +0800 (WST)

Hi

Just got a great price for a 60cm mirrorball it's just $119.00* and I think we should buy it.

If we connect the motor - which we have to make - to one of the computers and then connect that to the website and have a "dispense party" and all of the people with a password or login can start the ball rollin, the lights a'flashin' and the CD player that we are going to get playing :-)

We REALLY NEED this...

Melissa

..and the rest, as they say, is history. We went and bought it from Kosmic. It languished in the club room for about a month whilst we worked out how to hang it up and spin it.

Correction: the cost was $190.

The Day the Music Died

Sometime in January 2001 the mirrorball was stolen from the clubroom roof, no less. It has not been seen since.

Ingredients:

  • Several bored computer geeks (one with a suicidal streak)
  • ... with credit cards and disposable incomes
  • One Epson LX400 dot matrix printer
  • One RP21 network print server
  • Chains, whips, nuts, bolts

How does it work:

Basically, the mirrorball is attached via a clip to the roller of the dot matrix printer, you print a line or a form feed and the mirrorball turns. The more you print, the faster the mirrorball turns.

mussel% echo -e "\f\f\f\f" | lpr -Pmirrorball

and for the more daring of you.

#!/bin/zsh

while true; do;

LOADAVG=`cat /proc/loadavg | sed -e 's/ .*//' `;

CRCOUNT=0`echo $LOADAVG 0.5 + p | dc | sed -e 's/\..*//'`;

[ 0 = $CRCOUNT ] || yes '' | head -$

CRCOUNT | lpr -Pmirrorball; sleep 1; done

A zsh one liner to vary the speed of the mirrorball in response to the load on the machine. At last a way to tell when your kernel compile finishes.

People involved: