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Steven Roberts

@nomadness.bsky.social
273 followers 175 following 116 posts

"First digital nomad" working on a book about 17,000 miles on a computerized recumbent in the '80s, digitizing ancient media, and building mobile lab for paleogeek swan song.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
2.6 KW now on the roof of the Nomadness 24-ft mobile lab, getting closer to launch. This is arranged as a pair of 2S2P split longitudinally, each with a Victron MPPT controller (no wires cross the unserviceable center line)
2.6 KW solar array on 24 ft cargo trailer 
Detail of solar panel cross members and longitudinal rails on cargo trailer lab, with ladder in placeView of solar array support structure on mobile lab
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Mobile lab folding cooktop, powered by the Lithium bank with 2.6 kW solar, tow vehicle alternator, and shore 30A connection. This completes the little galley area, and saves the butane cooker with potentially scarce bottled fuel for emergencies.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Animated from still newspaper photo in 1983. Loops well once saved. Ahhhh memories... 43 years ago and i can feel it !
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Forgive my posting about posting, but I'm trying to decide where to do fine-grained progress reports on mobile lab and Bionode. They get lost in Substack notes, I've dialed Facebook use down to almost zero, and I've not used Twitter/X whatever for years. Here? Little tech details and bits?
Memtest 86 passed on 48 gig RAM in TrueNAS on Terramaster f8 with crash problems, used as graphic in post about moving daily detailed updates here
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
The most honest USB-C connector labeling I've ever seen. Is this a real standard?
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
@nudibranch.bsky.social #Nudivember A Melibe leonina from a few years ago, invited aboard my boat while docked in Anacortes....
Melibe leonina nudibranch
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
My dad was on the maiden voyage of the liner America in August 1940 and did some beautiful 8mm film of this part of the world... Including shore time in Port-au-Prince, Havana, and St Thomas. That's what started my digitizing business. This is a postcard that was in the collection of memorabilia
Port au Prince Haiti in 1940
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
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.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
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.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
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.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
PiKVM headbutting this weekend, complex and counterintuitive. But it is well clamped to a rack shelf and now blinking.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
A random moment from 40 years ago, east Texas, on the road with the Winnebiko
Sign in texas, 1984, road construction next 5.051 mi.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
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.
Current photo of console from the Winnebiko 2 computerized recumbent bicycle, circa 1986
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Making things with 20/20 t-slot extrusion... Geek Tinker Toys!
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Hope it goes smoothly! Alice weighed in with this lovely graphic....
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
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...
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
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
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.
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.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
A moment on the road in 1991 with Macintosh Portable in the BEHEMOTH bicycle console (controlled by ultrasonic head mouse and handlebar keyboard).
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
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.)
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
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.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
I made the Sunday funnies on September 30th, 1984... With more details in their monthly Enter magazine. Good times.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Another shipment of home movies trundling up I-5 for digitizing...
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Roberts Law of Non-Triviality: “There is an inverse relationship between the number of words required to describe a task and the amount of time required to complete it.” Something to do with the What-How spectrum…
Working on the structural bulkhead in a 30 ft folding trimaran, 1996
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
The Roberts Law of Fractal To-Do List Complexity: “Each item on a list is merely the title of another list.”
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
The Apollo AIR-1 keeps an eye on air quality in the mobile lab, with the VOC level (SEN55) spiking from film cleaner when I scan old movies. I'm adding an automation to turn on the new ventilation fan whenever it decides things are getting unreasonable. this amazing ESP32 box is about 2.5" across.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
I've been noticing how quickly CO2 levels build up in the lab, especially with more than one person in there... not uncommon to push 2000 ppm with visitors (450 is normal outdoor level). This fan retrofit replaces the original equipment piece of junk, and dropped 1700 to 700 in about 15 minutes.
Vortex 2 fan retrofit in cargo trailer mobile laboratory bathroom vent fixture
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Just hung this in the mobile lab window for times when I'm recording. This 48 ft trailer is basically a big metal box that would be a Faraday cage if it weren't for this tiny window... and it already has a Zigbee hub, cellular antenna, and security camera. Time for a roof platform!
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
I have naturally avoided the color orange for the past year or so, but that's not the fault of this Dirona pellucida who was hanging out on a piling here at the port. #nudibranchs #gardenslugsindrag
Dirona pellucida bright orange nudibranch at the Port of Friday Harbor
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
I've been thinking in terms of running Computing Across America chapters on Substack weekly, but that would take 2 years! No reason to not let them run asynchronously... life is short. As a teaser, this photo is from 1987 -- a demo of the bike while visiting GEnie in Rockville, Maryland.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Bird TV with Isabelle
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Photo processing across 50 years. Enlarger is from my apartment darkroom (with cheesy line printer art) in 1974-5; copy station with mirrorless Sony is in my current digitizing lab, capturing RAW for Lightroom. I remember dodging and burning in the olden days... versus AI and Photoshop magic now.
Sony mirrorless camera on Kaiser copy stand with fixtures for slide and negative handling, against CRI99 backlight.  This is in my media digitizing lab, with a dedicated Mac Mini for Lightroom.My apartment darkroom in 1974-75, a half century ago. Polishing drum for glossy prints, chemicals, enlarger, and primitive line printer wall art.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Sunbreak at the lab compound today. (Gratuitous filters, but Puppette was murky in all that backlight and the photographer was lazy.) The 48 ft "Delta" media digitizing lab is the one on the right.
Golden retriever in dramatic light on gravel between mobile labs
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
The point of my Nomadness boat projects was open-ended global voyaging... but I didn't reach escape velocity (despite writing a book by that name). This dreamy photo taken while enroute to Princess Louisa Inlet in 2018 gives me a pang... especially the Canada part. Missed the launch window.
Vancouver skyline at night from boat
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
40 years ago in Texas, pushin' west on mah trusty steed, Winnebiko. I was posting tales on CompuServe, writing on a Model 100 and hitching up to pay phones. And now it's time! I am bringing the adventure story back while I still can, with a newsletter from the time machine and video mini-features.
Steven Roberts aboard Winnebiko recumbent bicycle in Texas, 1984
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
Lighting up visiting Aequorea Victoria jellyfish with ultraviolet, causing them to emit 509 nm around the skirt of the bell. Green Fluorescent Protein can be edited into all sorts of things as an indicator of cellular activity, and was first discovered in Friday Harbor.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Demonstrating Prestel at the National Online Meeting in 1981. At its peak, this videotex service had about 90,500 subscribers...
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
"Please no cases of mistaken identity," she says.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Diver down, replacing zincs and scraping running gear. Isabelle is doing red-alert binaural localization using interleaved saccadic and pinna scans, complicated by the diver's movement. She keeps checking with me to be sure I know what's happening in her medial superior olive. "Steev... serious!"
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
I really should reissue these shirts designed back in 1994 by Faun while we were in the Microship Lab at UCSD... One of the first T-shirts ever made with a URL (on the back). Thanks @edlazowska.bsky.social for finding this and taking such a nice photo... great memories!
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Spring of 1970 -- somehow induced my parents to drop me at the interstate to hitchhike into the unknown. My mother was not pleased about this, but tried to look good for the camera. I was 17, and after a few adventures landed in Joliet to get a job as a deckhand on barges. (Digitized 8mm film)
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
A random treasure from Deep Inventory... a couple of panel-mount telephone leaf switches, from back in the day when you could determine the state of a system by looking at it. I have too much stuff.
Two vintage panel-mount leaf switches
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Getting to know the wire recorder in the lab... I love this little printed insert that shows how to do audio editing. It's a good metaphor to keep in mind when I'm layers deep in a DAW timeline.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
YouTube studio update.. Shure MV7+ microphone with internal processor to kill Synology NAS fans, and it can run XLR thru channel strip or USB with line-level mon into ATEM. I used my old Heil boom, and made a magnetic catch with heat shrink padding because, hey, mobile lab at least in theory!
Shure microphone on boom in YouTube studio
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
There's so much unnerving insanity afoot, competing for attention with the baseline complexity of Too Many Projects, that I just want to post a cat picture. So here's Isabelle, clambering up the stern ladder of Datawake to commune with the gulls.
Gray cat climbing stern ladder on boat in marina to get to upper Deck
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
As I work on the video project about my paleo-technomadics, I am constantly realizing how much of my life is now in the rear-view mirror. This was 40 years ago, on the road in Palatka, Florida, having lunch with a local reporter. The entire cultural context is completely different.
Steven Roberts showing bicycle travels on atlas in Palatka, Florida, 1984. Model 100 computer on the table in a cafe
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
I often think about the scarcity of people who intimately understand the analog machines that keep our digitizing labs running... and how these contraptions will become more and more fragile after they are gone. This is my Betacam SP deck (Ampex CVR-65) and I know a guy...
Inside of Betacam SP tape deck in digitizing lab
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
One of my favorite bizarre sky-show phenomena... A fallstreak hole that I photographed over Friday Harbor one day in 2019.
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
42 seconds of dreamy exhalation, 30 ft below my stern, shot with Trident ROV. #marinebiology folks... who is this?
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
In the eternal trade-off between simplicity and namespace preservation, I just added a second bsky account to tie into my "microship" branding (primary dotcom since 1993). Not sure about content differentiation yet, but I might make it a gizmological paleogeek history feed. <creak>
Steven Roberts in 1991, wearing BEHEMOTH bicycle helmet called the brain interface unit. This has heads up display, ultrasonic sensors for cursor control, lighting and audio, and internal heat exchanger for body cooling. This is now in the Computer History Museum along with the bike itself
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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
In the digitizing backlog department, these are the copy stations for movies and stills. Slides & negs are shot with Sony A7iii against CRI99 backlight with focus on grain, inhaled into Lightroom on Mac, then edited (crop, WB, etc) - with Loupedeck for sanity. Exports to SmugMug and thumb drive...
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