Steven Roberts

<blink>good times</blink>

It's the ratio of all you put out to all you get back. Only part of that is financial.

I'm using an F8 with 14 TB and TrueNAS... what an amazing little machine! Almost dead quiet even when cranking huge Immich imports across Tailscale.

Meet Bionode - Nomadic Research Labs A Mobile Minilab by Steven K. Roberts Nomadic Research Labs Introducing an information toolkit and cognitive prosthesis built into a hand truck… with 14TB of NAS, video and audio production, sensor su...

In insane times, we have to refine our tools. I've never thought of myself as a "prepper" per se, but building all my geek systems onto a hand truck feels like a really good idea. A distant descendant of BEHEMOTH now under construction in my lab...

microship.com/meet-bionode/

Bionodal branding, using a beautiful artifact from about 30 years ago -- something that began life as quarter inch stainless steel plate and was cut with wire EDM at a friend's machine shop in Chicago, attached with 3M High Bond to the soundbar.

Herondactyl!

I drove a school bus around the country for a year, and calculated that it got 1.2 light years per cubic mile of gasoline

"deploy the sharpies!"

Whereas over on this side of the pond, any reference to that forbidden topic is asking for trouble. Science bad! Headdesk.

Primum non nocere

I know I haven't talked about the big picture of this project yet, but here's another close up... The PiKVM is great at some things but not so much at local console. Fixed this with series connected cheapie for "manual and auto" modes, selecting local console devices or complex network stuff.

Reviews are pouring in? A splash of publicity? A flood of orders?

More blinkies! Third Pi in the cluster now alive - installed to SD and then cloned image to 1 TB SSD and changed boot order. And the KVM is working after lots of hair pulling.

PiKVM headbutting this weekend, complex and counterintuitive. But it is well clamped to a rack shelf and now blinking.

Feline AFib Detection - Nomadic Research Labs Retrospective Atrial Fibrillation Detection via Feline Jacobsonian Substrate Analysis of Nocturnal Adhesive Artifacts Steven K. Roberts, Nomadic Research Labs, with Isabel and Alice Abstract In a long...

Observing elevated plasma concentrations of Atrial Natriuretic Peptide after nocturnal AFib episodes, correlated with my cat's refusal to engage with adhesive CPAP-adjunct lip tape residue, I created a retrospective study on potential Jacobsonian diagnostic modality. 🧪

microship.com/feline-afib-...

Agreed .. i always spoke of my technomadic adventure as a combination of all my passions. Besides, interesting things happen at the boundaries between specialties

Sign in texas, 1984, road construction next 5.051 mi.

A random moment from 40 years ago, east Texas, on the road with the Winnebiko

Current photo of console from the Winnebiko 2 computerized recumbent bicycle, circa 1986

Current state of the Winnebiko 2 console, which I moved into the shop yesterday while clearing a workspace for the new project. I've always really liked this version, which covered about 6,000 mi on both coasts of the US.

Feline Existential Angst - Nomadic Research Labs Isabelle the cat is writing a philosophical trilogy about individual autonomy and the cat's view of self, summarized here along with a photo.

Been swamped with a new project (still in stealth mode), digitizing, and reacting with dread to the goings on that dominate the news. Now and then, we just need a bit of sanity preserving humor. Isabelle, who is now 15, wrote a book. Lead photo AI, writing biological.

microship.com/feline-exist...

Making things with 20/20 t-slot extrusion... Geek Tinker Toys!

YouTube video by Nomadic Research Labs Prehistory of a Technomad - 1963-1983

I just parked my "prehistory of a technomad" on YouTube, a little under 7 minutes. Plan is to do additional videos spanning the whole adventure epoch (including Deep Geekery), with the main body of the story continuing in text.

youtu.be/-RzBPcDYCF0

(And I'm back to work on Substack!)

Hope it goes smoothly! Alice weighed in with this lovely graphic....

Hacking Calculus Class - Nomadic Research Labs A paleo-geek finds a work-around for a failing grade in senior-year high-school calculus, doing a little hack for the teacher.

Hacking calculus class a half century ago... And a few thoughts on the dreaded "permanent record"

microship.com/hacking-calc...

The beginning of a long day pedaling across Utah in 1984, 100 mi between services. Flying down the pass in the darkness, the wind chill was minus 18.

Map showing riding days in Utah on Computing Across America adventure, 1984

1984. Cold, cold, snow on the banks, tires rushing, trucks changing lanes, ears popping. Deep chill, violent shivers, insane grins, teeth frozen, all lost in the blast of wind. Headlight off to save the battery. If I’m going to kill myself, it might as well be with dramatic intensity...

Winnebiko 2 computerized recumbent bicycle at a shore, parked in front of an END sign. Taking some time in 1987, about midway during the technomadic adventures.

Fun digitizing some of my own photos for a change... old slide binders and carousels are turning up treasures from those halcyon days. This one is from sometime in 1987, during the Winnebiko 2 era.

A moment on the road in 1991 with Macintosh Portable in the BEHEMOTH bicycle console (controlled by ultrasonic head mouse and handlebar keyboard).

What scares me about him snagging all that data is that it's now trivial to correlate with voting rolls and medical histories.

It was a treat getting off the rock for a day in America... I have gotten jaded about ferry trips over the past decade. I took a break from working on system design to play tourist. (In the looming darkness of the age in which we find ourselves, the little moments count... I must do more of them.)

This is Isabelle, who's now 15. She helps with everything, including lab overload, pain, the dread of imminent autocracy, existential angst, procrastination followed by despair, unkempt adulting, and the annoyance of being biological and finite.

I made the Sunday funnies on September 30th, 1984... With more details in their monthly Enter magazine. Good times.