
Microship.com: The Library of Technomadics - mmastrac
https://microship.com/
======
aspenmayer
This is the Computing Across America guy, Steven K. Roberts. I saw only that
book cover online as a young computer enthusiast and was inspired. Here’s a
recent post from his blog and another article I found about his projects.
Thanks for sharing.

[https://microship.com/digitizing-our-
lives/](https://microship.com/digitizing-our-lives/)

[https://hackaday.com/2009/09/18/vintage-video-computing-
acro...](https://hackaday.com/2009/09/18/vintage-video-computing-across-
america/)

~~~
wglb
I met him at Dayton shortly after the book came out. He was a geek among
geeks.

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kimburgess
This site is wild. Such absolute, passionate geekery - it’s beautiful.

The name annoys me endlessly though. I also live on a boat, Microship, which
was named without checking domain availability.

For anyone who enjoys endless engineering rabbit holes, I’d highly recommend
boat life. It’s quite the ride.

~~~
owenversteeg
Hey, another HN liveaboard! I live on my 10m steel cabin cruiser in the
Netherlands that I built myself from a bare hull :) I'll put up some photos if
anyone's interested.

Where in the world do you liveaboard, and what do you live on, if you don't
mind me asking?

Any other liveaboards here on HN? We should form a club :)

(and I completely agree, microship.com is incredible!)

~~~
kimburgess
Nice! I'm on a rather odd looking ~11m steel power cat in Australia.

Currently rebuilding it from the hull with my partner. Built like a tank and a
lot of fun to quite literally hack on.

I'll eventually get around to putting together an engineering blog for some of
the projects, but the domain just points to an instagram account with high
level summaries for now: [https://ourtinyboat.com](https://ourtinyboat.com).

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ChuckMcM
I aspire to have a mobile lab as cool as Steve's.

I have known Steve since the Winnebiko days, I met him at a conference and
later Sun Labs hosted his lab efforts so I got a chance to work with him on
various mobility ideas. It was always inspiring to just brainstorm about
things. He started using fiber glass covered cardboard for the bike 'bags' and
I used the same technique to build a helmet / grocery box for my scooter.

If civilization collapses you want him on your team :-)

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ratww
This is one of the first websites I accessed in my life!

Discovery Channel used to have a show about the internet in the 90s where it
featured this guy and his bicycle, and the name stuck with me. So when I
finally bought a modem it was one of the sites I accessed.

I even remember linking it from my personal website back in 1996 or 1997.

Here's the video: [https://microship.com/microship-project-on-cyberlife-
discove...](https://microship.com/microship-project-on-cyberlife-discovery-
channel-1996/)

~~~
dang
Wow, the Internet Archive has it every year back to 97. Don't usually see
that.

[https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://microship.com/](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://microship.com/)

~~~
markjgraham
We try! :-)

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UweSchmidt
It seems that most of his bespoke designs didn't lend themselves to reuse and
further refinement. There was no open source community to maintain and advance
his inventions and no manufacturer seems to have come out with things like
touch-based security systems or watercooled helmets.

Maybe this kind of geekery is dead anyway; overshadowed by the startup dream,
bought up wholesale by FAANG salaries and crushed by the threat of a
whiteboard job interview?

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madamelic
How do you get into having a life like this? Is it just building a passion
project / idea then expanding if others enjoy + sponsor it.

It seems like he was the main dude on everything from construction to
software.

I assume this would also mean getting an MS or PhD to be able to teach college
courses?

~~~
pstuart
> How do you get into having a life like this?

Stay single and childless ;-)

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PoachedSausage
I remember reading about his bike in, I think, Wired magazine when I was
growing up in the 90's. Very inspiring.

Now he lives on a boat and appears to have a better equipped (and better
organised) lab and workshop than I do living in a house. Still inspiring 30
years later.

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nym
Steven K. Roberts is amazing. He was very influential on my ideas around
technology when I was about 12. Super awesome guy. Never afraid of living on
the bleeding edge

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kkotak
Considering the amount of anxiety reading about this type of lifestyle induces
in me, shows how much of a fear of unknown some of us live in perpetually.

~~~
brudgers
I totally relate to that. What slowly changed me was travel. Each time I
travelled expanded my comfort zone...and the early trips were just normal
things like visiting family and nearby towns for working a part time side job.

Though a reason it worked for me might be that I did not travel to be pampered
or in quest of luxury. So the explicit differences were mostly ordinary
equivalencies not level of service oriented.

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fernly
Thanks for posting this reminder. I never met Roberts but whenever I lead a
tour at the Computer History Museum I walk by the Winnebiko. It's on display
there, looking just like the top left picture on the above page. (Also, I have
spent a lot of time in Friday Harbor so can attest he's chosen a lovely place
to settle.)

