Nomadness

This is the home of Nomadness, the latest technomadic substrate of Nomadic Research Labs. Previous projects are scattered around the Microship site, but this one is focused on the new boat and its embedded geekery… as well as voyaging adventures.

Highlights as of January 24, 2012:

There is now a clear travel plan for 2012, with a few short local trips followed by an August-September circumnavigation of Vancouver Island (with countdown timer over there on the right). A set of four project pages has been set up to focus our efforts, with one devoted to tasks that have to be done before launch.

The latest blog post takes on some philosophical issues of designing a complex system like this.

The new Library of Applied Technomadics & Gonzo Engineering is now up to 112 entries… media coverage, system design documents, my old magazine articles, and other material. The most exciting recent addition is the first chapter of my long-awaited audiobook production of Computing Across America, the book about my technomadic adventures around the US back in the 1980s. Chapter 1 is 14½ minutes long (with sound effects!) and is the first of nearly 100 that will roll out gradually over time.

There are now 16 issues of the Nomadness Report… A Weekly Compendium of Boat Hacking and Gonzo Engineering. Back issues are in their own online store, complete with nifty shopping cart and “contact sheet” images of all the internal pages. Those two links will tell you all about this übergeek-publication project, which is now my most technically detailed writing outlet.

Of course, none of that replaces the blog, which is right here. Being eternally Googlable, I prefer these posts to each focus on a single topic and be fairly complete; the Nomadness Reports, on the other hand, include all the hacks, noodlings, experiments, schematics, quests, current sources, and changes of direction. The two are orthogonal, and not at all redundant. There will eventually be a series of hardcopy design packages that add a third extreme: complete working documented designs of selected ship systems, some with associated kits… but those come later.

Meanwhile, I have moved Nomadness to moorage in La Conner along with a nearby development facility, apartment, and the mobile lab. Boat projects are coming back to life after a hiatus of a few months, and in the tradition of BEHEMOTH and Microship, it’s becoming geek performance art…

Kirsten and I have launched a new product line of marine-grade Expedition Medical Chests: ER-grade supplies in gasketed Lexan cases that were recently featured at Three Sheets Northwest. We are also producing kayak stand slings and paddle bags, and she is teaching seminars on wound care for cruisers… the next one of which is on February 18 at Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle.

There is a dedicated page for the boat webcam (updating every 10 seconds, though it freezes every few days until I power-cycle the Pepwave Surf Mini), as well as a link to the APRS tracker that displays my current location on a Google map.

My latest book, Reaching Escape Velocity, is available in my online store - including, at last, a PDF version! You can also get the Kindle edition on Amazon.

In preparation for moving aboard, tonnage-reduction is a huge priority. I have a list of books for sale as well as an eBay store that has been a bit quiet lately. The Microship is for sale, and can be seen on Yachtworld… that price is not cast in stone, so please contact me if you are interested!

I’m still playing the piano (about 5 years now) and will be building a keyboard into the lab/studio desk on the boat. My first musical YouTube video is here: Gnossiennes 3 & 4 by Erik Satie.

Speaking of video, my talk at Xerox PARC back in 1989 was recently unearthed and YouTubed… then posted on Hackaday and elsewhere. This was just at the beginning of the BEHEMOTH project: Part 1. Part 2. (about 13 minutes total)

More soon!