Issue #136
by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
IN THIS
ISSUE:
"Glue is something that can wet two
surfaces and then harden.
Adhesive is something that can wet
two surfaces and then harden
more. Synthetic Resin Adhesive is
something that can wet two
surfaces, harden, and sell for over
$5/oz."
-- Andy Marshall
NOTICAL
INTERLUDE
OK, this
is bizarre.
I'm sitting in a lounge aboard the cruise ship Volendam, docked in
Ketchikan, Alaska. All week we've been cruising the Inside Passage
while engaging in something so completely out of context that it
couldn't be more perfect -- the Perl Whirl.
On day one, as I was loading up my tray with the first of many
deliciously excessive monuments to gustatory bliss, an elderly woman
beside me asked, "is this your first cruise on a Holland America
ship?"
"Oh yes," I answered. "It's my first time on ANY cruise ship."
"Ooooh!" she replied, shocked by my innocence, yet delighted to be
the one to reveal the Terrible Truth. "By the end of this week you
won't want to travel any other way!"
I fell back in mock horror and held up my hands to ward off danger.
"Noooo! You're talking about my career!" She looked a bit alarmed,
gave me a half-smile, and quickly turned her attention back to the
seared ahi, exotic salads, and killer tortes.
Unfamiliar luxuries aside, the cruise was an amazing week of hanging
out with the leading gurus of Perl, writers whose work I have long
respected, and a whole population of interesting attendees. This is
certainly the most stimulating conference venue I've ever
experienced, with unforgettable moments like glancing out the picture
window during a deep software discussion and seeing a whale cavorting
down the Inside Passage, snow-capped peaks slowly drifting by, sun
sparkling off wavelets, and a white sail in the distance...
Of course, there's also the tourist culture. Key West lost some of
its languid character when cruise ships began docking at Mallory
Pier, and it was a little strange being on the other side of that
relationship with communities. We quickly learned to hurry a dozen
blocks from the ship before slowing down and looking around (better
treats away from the tourist areas anyway!). This strategy worked
particularly well in Skagway, where we joined our friends for a day
of strenuous wilderness exploration far beyond the range of all but
the most vigorous cruise ship passengers.
I would definitely do it again. In fact, if you're into Java, the
next Geek Cruise (the Java Jam) is in the Caribbean this coming
November... we're thinking about it...
--> Geek Cruises:
http://www.geekcruises.com
-->
Tim Bray's article "Big Ship, Many Geeks":
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/06/06/geekcruise.html
-->
Adam Turoff's article "Adventures on Perl Whirl 2000":
http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/06/perlwhirl.html
-->
Randal Schwartz took about 1,400 photos:
http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/Pictures/00-05-PerlWhirl
MAIDEN
VOYAGE OF MOTHERSHIP 2.0
Yikes! It will arrive Saturday, five days before we take off on
another 8000-mile loop around the US: a new 44-foot Wells Cargo
gooseneck trailer. This is insane, and the running joke is that
we'll need to buy more land since 11 acres won't give us enough room
to turn around.
The idea here is to accommodate both Microships in launchable form,
along with the bike, workspace, and adequate camping facilities for
long speaking tours. It's fully insulated, has AC and DC power
systems, windows and ventilation, an 18' awning, and a fold-down rear
door that becomes a loading ramp. Rick Wesley of Wesweld in Stanwood
installed a retractable hitch in the middle of my truck bed (the 7.3
liter diesel and 1-ton chassis now more justified than ever), and I
bought a waterproof video camera and 12V monitor from Supercircuits
along with a microwave link to make backing less terrifying. A new
Alinco dual-band mobile ham rig is about to be installed in the truck
along with the requisite CB, APRS tracker, and satellite phone... and
we're pushing hard to have Io and Europa ready for the trip. In my
case, this means completion of everything except the console; in
Natasha's, it implies basic test-sail capability and landing gear.
This tour has shaped up into an intense schedule. This will be the
first public showing of the Microship, and we're pondering the
logistics of rolling a 20-foot folding trimaran around corporate and
conference environments... this may be "micro," but it's way bigger
than BEHEMOTH.
There are still a few openings in the schedule, and the more speaking
gigs we line up the better...
July 27: Departure
July 29-30: SolWest Renewable Energy Fair, John Day, OR
August 4: Corporate appearance, Minneapolis, MN
August 5: Wenonah Visit, Winona, MN
August 6-9: visiting Tim Nolan & lake sailing, Madison, WI
August 10: Corporate appearance, Chicago, IL
August 11: visiting Sailrite (IN) and Clippard (OH)
August 12-14: visiting my father, Louisville, KY
August 16: Keynote, Usability Professionals Assoc, Asheville, NC
August 19-20: Hamfest, Huntsville, AL
August 21-24: Tennessee River adventure
August 25-27: IEEE Computer Fair, Huntsville, AL
Sept 3-11: Silicon Valley tour with Computer Museum, CA
Sept 15-17: Sea Kayak Symposium, Port Townsend, WA
If you're somewhere on a rough line between Alabama and California,
we might be able to visit enroute west. The Silicon Valley week also
has some openings; basically, I'm doing a succession of on-site
corporate gigs and then parking the bike at the Computer Museum
History Center at NASA's Moffett Field. Hope to see ya!
--> Wells-Cargo 44-foot trailer, model AWG-4425:
http://www2.wellscargo.com/html/body_big-awg.html
-->
SolWest Renewable Energy Fair:
http://www.solwest.org/
-->
Usability Professionals Association keynote:
http://www.upassoc.org/conf2000/reg/keynote.html
-->
Huntsville Hamfest:
http://www.hamfest.org/hffest00.shtml
-->
IEEE Computer Fair 2000:
http://www.ieee-computer-fair.org/
MICROSHIP
FINAL ASSEMBLY... MOVING ON TO SYSTEMS!
Painting now tops the list of things I never want to do for a living
(right up there with drywall and writing device drivers). After far
too many hours of research, I settled on Interlux Brightside one-part
polyurethane (Hatteras off-white), although there was a Sterling
2-part "lemon mist" I coveted. Even simple systems such this and the
similar Pettit Easypoxy (the name suggests epoxy, but that's
marketing) involve a nightmarish range of preparation steps that
differ as a function of the substrate. Where one surface involves
multiple chemical and textural environments, such as previously
painted epoxy adjacent to primer next to epoxies of varying ages from
multiple vendors, things get interesting. The project involved three
different solvents, primer, a range of sandpaper grits,
gloves, masks, sore arms, and a massive grid on the blackboard that
tracked the preparation stages of all 20 or so parts... yet STILL
there were areas of sag, excessive dust (um, homemade nonskid),
sloppy masking, and coating removal to fix chemical incompatibility.
Still, Io's right purty if you stand back a little... John Marples
allegedly refers to paint jobs as 10-foot finish, 20-foot finish, and
so on, depending on how far away you need to be to think it's
perfect. Without my glasses and with the lights romantically dimmed
(and if I don't look at that bad spot on the cowling), she's a
10-footer, oh yes.
After all that, it's no surprise that I was stunned by a classic
"from the mouths of babes" moment. The other day, welding wizard
Rick Wesley was here to work on Natasha's landing gear, and he
brought his kids. One engaging, bright-eyed 10-year-old creature
named Stephanie stood by the boat, asking intelligent questions and
drawing me into her trap. Not missing a beat, she asked, "are you
going to paint it?"
Ooof.
The three months since our last update have been packed... getting
ready for paint forced me to perform all the evil mounting jobs that
I'd been putting off due to laziness, indecision, or lack of parts.
The annoying thing about foam-core decking is that every little screw
involves a goo job -- either casting threads in a blind hole with a
syringe or hogging out an annulus and injecting fiber-filled epoxy,
drilled out later to yield a structure with column strength that
won't dimple when you tighten a nut. When you throw in shaped
mounting pads, wiring channels, avoidance of antenna interactions,
general usability and aesthetics, "just screwing on a part" becomes a
multi-day project.
The anchor was a big one: I had always assumed, conventionally, that
I'd launch the 9-pound Delta off the bow... but I worried about
clambering over hot, slippery solar panels to deal with the
interactions between anchor handling and helm control. It finally
occurred to me that a canoe is symmetrical and I should be able to
ride off the stern just as well (off-center with a bridle if
necessary). So I molded a pad for an anchor launcher at the base of
the starboard arch, bolted a chain tensioner and cleat to the aft aka
behind my seat, and moved the Ankarolina webbing reel to the aft
hatch cover atop 6 shaped spacers. Done, and a big one off the list.
Despite what I said in Issue #135, I mounted the sternlight at the
top center of the arch on a bit of sculpted fir left over from
cat-door installation, complete with glued-in tubing to route power
from a cable harness traversing the entire arch (beginning at the
thruster mount, where a hole penetrates into the aft stateroom).
Later this Aqua Signal unit will be retrofitted with a cluster of
white LEDs, just as the bow units flanking the Handar wind sensor on
the bow will get red and green.
The Mobri radar reflector is on the starboard side of the arch, with
the mount modified to allow locking in the vertical position with a
tethered pin and easy folding to let the akas swing up for road
transport. This modality complicated everything... there are two
very different operating modes along with the occasional need to slip
under low bridges. Some antennas, like the new Shakespeare dual-band
cellular, could be attached to standard marine ratchet mounts to
allow folding; others, like the Rocky Mountain stainless dual-band
J-pole on the port arch and the 102" HF whip at the stern, had to
have custom retraction systems fabricated. The 3db marine VHF whip
at the bow had to fold in TWO axes to sneak under the hydraulic
steering control arm.
Incidentally, that cellular antenna serves a dual purpose: Natasha
inaugurated our new Sailrite Ultrafeed sewing machine by conjuring a
long black fabric tube that carries three burgees (at the moment,
Northwest Multihull Association, Electric Boat Association, and the
rec.boats newsgroup), with an eyelet for bungee retention to the
deck. The antenna can then be tilted to a jaunty angle as I arrive
in port, flags festively a-flutter. This ruins my radiation angle,
but hey...
The sexiest antenna on board is the Globalstar satellite radome,
which connects to the cradle that accepts the Qualcomm GSP-1600
tri-mode phone (satellite, 900 MHz analog, and 900 MHz CDMA). This
absolutely magical unit, which I've been using lately here in the
black hole of communication (the west shore of Camano Island), also
sports a serial port for PPP-flavored connections up to about 9600
baud, as well as all the requisite interfaces for crossbar
integration. It's expected to become our key voice and data link on
the Microships... and I tellya, it is downright SPOOKY to make a call
with this handheld phone and realize that there are no terrestrial
cell sites involved. The signal is carried by low-earth-orbit birds
acting as bent pipes between here and the ground station, then routed
into the public telephone network or the Net. Such amazing
infrastructure, yet so easy to take for granted...
Speaking of communications, we now have dual-band handhelds for our
packs -- Alinco DJ-V5T's. An easy mod opens up the receive from 76
to 999 MHz (cellular blocked), and 200 memories with alphanumeric
labels make it a surprisingly turnkey little unit with great audio,
three power levels, and iMac-flavored packaging. It's Natasha's
first HT (and my first in 10 years!). Now if we could only hit a
repeater from this massive Faraday cage... I knew we were in trouble
when I noticed we only get 2 TV stations and no cellular coverage
except for scratchy analog and pricey Nextel! (I'm hoping a friend
will buy the 10 acres of woods next door so we can put a broadband
passive repeater on the hill...)
Of course, some forms of RF propagation aren't limited to
line-of-sight, and I'm all a-quiver with today's news that we'll be
adding an Icom IC-706MKIIG to the ship -- a tiny all-in-one rig that
I've been lusting after for ages. Much more on this after I get a
chance to play with it, but I already know it will be a central
communication tool... <swoon>
The end of the 3-year mechanical fabrication phase is having a
galvanizing effect -- I'm actually starting to think about systems in
some context other than how they get bolted down. Tim Nolan has
completed an incredibly dense package (with 6 Microchip PIC
processors dancing together) that takes care of 8-channel solar peak
power tracking, thruster control, battery management, live display of
the whole process, and compression of power telemetry into a form
palatable to our database server (atop MySQL). It's now waiting for
connectors in the solar panels and cabling into the console, and for
the installation of "harness-level" connectors under the hood that
will at last allow us to start wiring. The mind reels.
As you know, the console area is protected by a cowling, now hinged
and easily removable -- a modification that became necessary upon my
embarrassed realization that tensioned landing gear deployment lines
through cowling fairleads would prevent access to electronics when
she's on her wheels. I also rendered the eight nacelles for lockdown
screws obsolete by adding a pair of Southco soft draw latches, making
"popping the hood" a quick, no-tools operation.
I should mention here that there has been a major change of
philosophy regarding the console. As the fabrication of the
monstrous articulated pressurized box has loomed nearer, I've become
more and more aware that it will take months... and frankly, I'm
tired of life in the lab and want to get on with adventure. The
original plan was to have ALL systems resident in this enclosure,
with two holes in for battery cables and a thicket of waterproof
connectors to the rest of the ship. But it occurs to me that what we
call the "harness level" (power distribution and low-level switching
of the relatively non-geeky devices like navlights) should be simple
and readily accessible. Why not put all that stuff into relatively
protected but not sealed space under the gasketed cowling, and then
fixture simple pressurized boxes containing the goodies? It's a bit
more messy as far as cabling is concerned, and certainly less
elegant, but it will allow development to proceed incrementally with
the intervening stages actually useful and permanent. It also
reduces packaging to the use of mostly standard boxes, which sounds
good to me.
Speaking of packaging, the solar project finally got done by Bob
Stuart -- a daunting task involving eight 3-stage vacuum-bagged
layups over inch-thick Divinycell (with okoume inside the top layer
for impact resistance), each carrying two Solarex 30-watt ultralight
modules. The panels are hinged into pairs, of which there are two
per side... translating into a total of sixteen 30-watt modules split
into eight channels (with a 17th on top of the cowling). The
construction was extremely complex, with internal wiring tunnels and
sealable service ports, sockets to mate with pins emerging from the
gunwales, tubes intersecting those to allow the units to be locked in
place with long rods, and tie-down fixtures that interface with
inflatable cushions riding on the modified ama decks. All this has
to flex with wave motion, handle body weight and other abuse, retract
on hinges where necessary to allow access to landing gear controls,
and be non-obviously but easily removable for transport. The whole
system was done with Bob's characteristic perfection and attention to
detail.
There's only one thing that turned out to be worse than expected: heat.
Closed-cell foam is an excellent insulator, which in many
applications is a Good Thing. Here it is not. First tests, on a
temperate 70-degree afternoon in the Northwest, showed surface
temperatures reaching 160 degrees. It's easy to imagine hitting 180,
which is beyond the practical limits of our disappointing 3M type 80
spray adhesive (already showing failure signs 20 degrees below spec).
The unsupported Tedlar of the modules then softens and shrinks
slightly upon cooling, wrinkling the surface. We're now looking at
rework options: hog out the foam core and bottom skin, build up an
egg-carton structure of edge-glued ply, and retrofit a new bottom
skin with lots of big holes. Or cut out everything and embed
aluminum honeycomb into the existing frames. (We don't want to think
about re-doing the frames... they would take months to clone, and
honeycomb closeouts are difficult.)
There's also active cooling... but that's more enchanting than
practical. We'll experiment with 3M type 1300 hi-temp silicone
around the edges to constrain shrinkage, but repackaging will
probably be necessary <sigh>.
But in the refreshingly well-behaved world of software, Ned Konz is
continuing to make headway on our server design... with new
brainstorming partner Randal Schwartz. We're looking at a new
possibility: writing the GUI in Squeak (an implementation of
Smalltalk), with Perl as the duct tape that holds together the
databases and linux-domain widgetry, Java scattered around browser
sandboxes and Dallas TINI boards, FORTH running the crossbar
controller, and embedded PICs coded in whatever's handy. The Squeak
front end would be completely portable across all our platforms since
it runs atop a virtual machine. More on this in the next issue; in
the meantime, my object-oriented learning curve is steep and amusing.
--> Squeak: http://www.squeak.org
(This is not to be confused with Squeak, the tiny 12-foot sailboat
piloted by Stephen G. Ladd on a remarkable 3-year voyage through
North and South America... yielding a very interesting book.)
--> Voyage of Squeak: http://www.eskimo.com/~sgl/index.html
NEW
WEBSITE AND PUBLICATION...
She did
it! After three months of work punctuated by daily slaving
over Europa and a bit of video production, Natasha has finished and
uploaded the completely redesigned microship.com website -- with
consistent navigation, a sleek look, and all sorts of new features.
She did the whole project in CyberStudio, PhotoShop, and Illustrator,
toolsets far from the raw HTML of the Early Years.
Naturally, there are still a few unfinished bits, mostly in the areas
that require me to do some writing. But it's getting fun -- one of
the new toys is a Perl script written by Ned that serves a random
sponsor logo from the pool every time the front page is accessed.
Real Soon Now there will be the long-awaited virtual console updated
by telemetry, return of the Microship labcam, and more goodies to
flesh out the archives.
Please have a look and give us your comments!
--> New Microship Site: http://www.microship.com
Of course, we also enjoy good old-fashioned paper publishing, and are
particularly pleased with our latest book: the fourth edition of
"From BEHEMOTH to Microship." This has a beautiful new design by
Joyce Lukaczer, a cover photo by Randal the Perl guru and his magical
Nikon, art direction by Natasha, a completely rewritten Microship
technology section... and a full edit by Dave Aton in Atlanta to
catch the bugs that escape my scrutiny. We're even getting fancy
with production -- full-color cover, perfect binding, loads of
photos, ISBN (1-929470-00-2), bar code... heck, this looks like a
real book!
As a veteran of the late lamented non-commercial Internet, I promised
not to use these postings for any kind of direct product promotion,
so I'll stop there... but do hit REPLY if you're interested and I'll
give you the details.
(Sneak-preview: I've decided to do something I *should* have done
with BEHEMOTH... publish a massive, detailed, engineering-level book
about the whole system from gooey epoxy to GUI software. The title
will be "Inside the Microship," and it will take a long time... but
should be worthwhile.)
MEDIA,
SPONSORS, AND LINKS
Some of
the most important news relates to our ongoing industry
support, without which this project would be absolutely impossible.
We are most grateful to the following for new sponsorships....
Alinco, for the pair of DJ-V5T dual-band handhelds and the DR-605T
50-watt mobile rig... nice stuff! I've never used Alinco radios
before, but am very impressed with the feel and functionality of
these units. Some Alinco handhelds have an amazing cost-performance
ratio (even one under-$100 model) -- check them out at:
--> Alinco:
http://www.alinco.com
Icom, who
provided the IC-725 HF rig for BEHEMOTH about a decade ago,
is back on our active sponsor roster with the eagerly awaited
delivery of an IC-706MKIIG, a 100-watt radio that packs an incredible
amount of flexibility into a computer-controllable 5.5-pound package.
It covers HF from 160-10 meters, as well as 6, 2, and 70cm bands...
with more features than I can even begin to relate here. This is the
stuff of serious ham-radio technolust (at least for people who love
high-density packaging). Keep an eye on their website -- we'll be
doing a technical article about the integration of this rig into the
Microship.
--> Icom: http://www.icomamerica.com.
Qualcomm, a long-time supporter of these technomadic projects, has
donated the Globalstar satellite phone and related hardware. I'm in
love, pure and simple. If you wander outside normal cellular service
areas, take a look at this... airtime and hardware prices have just
come down considerably.
--> Qualcomm Globalstar phones: http://www.qualcomm.com/globalstar/
Draco,
maker of the magical Casablanca digital video editor that has
given Natasha a major creative outlet and barterable skillset, sent
along their FireWire interface as well as upgraded software.
Interface installation remains on the to-do list pending acquisition
of a suitable camera (hey, is anyone from Canon on this list? ;-)
--> Draco: http://www.draco.com
Ronstan
has provided most of our rigging components over the past 2
years (blocks, cleats, traveler), and most recently sent eight
high-load blocks to replace some of the ones we originally used for
landing gear deployment. Bob ran the numbers: hitting a pothole or
curb at walking speed can exert crushing loads on the plastic
ball-bearing blocks with the most extreme line-reversal angles, so we
replaced those with plain bearings and metal sheaves.
--> Ronstan: http://www.ronstan.com
Datastick
Systems sent us their new MyCorder DAS-1206, a wonderful
gadget that plugs into Palm and Handspring PDA's... gathering
multichannel data and allowing logging and data reduction. Very sexy
and well made -- and they now have a thermocouple unit as well as
another with 16-bit input, along with even more flexible software.
It's a lab in your shirt pocket...
--> Datastick: http://www.datastick.com
Speaking
of Palm, I'm fairly bursting to use my new Palm VII
connected organizer, the one with the flip-up antenna and nationwide
wireless internet service with a huge developer community. There are
PQA's (Palm Query Apps) for all sorts of things, but there's this
black hole of communication problem again: I can't see a signal
anywhere on our facility <whimper>. Hope that changes soon --
Palm.net now has a flat-rate unlimited service plan that addresses
the pricing issues raised by early reviewers, and the PQA approach is
much more flexible than the "wireless web" services I've seen the
cellular companies advertising.
--> Palm Computing:
http://www.palm.com
-->
Palm.net: http://palm.net/
Perimeter
Industries solved a huge problem for us: these teensy
outer hulls do not support normal fenders (I discovered the problem
on the Fulmar adventure... fenders would flop around no matter how
they were tied, especially when we tried rafting together). Besides,
it's a pain to slither across the solar array and fiddle with the
silly things. These folks make a product called "Gunnel Guard," a
fabric-encased 3/4-round foam extrusion that we'll bond along the
outer hull-deck seam on both amas, turning the Microships into
nautical bumper cars. Tasha will sew on little tabs to provide
lashing points for the inflatable solar panel supports.
--> Perimeter Industries: http://www.perimeterindustries.com
Sky Pole,
maker of fiberglass kayak paddle shafting, donated four
8-foot lengths when we were planning to use the material as the outer
solar array support. As it turned out, the flexy boat requires a
mushy solution, but the tubing turned out to be perfect for
transverse line-handling in Natasha's aft landing gear deployment
system, and is now bonded to her aft bulkhead. No web site, but if
you've used Werner and other fine kayak paddles, you've doubtless
familiar with Sky Pole's lightweight blue tubing.
OK, time to wrap up this long (and long-overdue) report with a few
quick media hits and links....
We made Wired! There's a
half-page article about the Microship, with
photo, on page 132 of the June issue, or text-only online at...
--> Wired article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.06/mustread.html?pg=13
I haven't
had much time for freelance writing lately, but I did write
a piece with a technopassion slant for the June issue of 73 Magazine.
The article, slightly generalized as a "what's this all about?" intro
for our website, may be found here:
--> 73 article: http://www.microship.com/whatisthis/what.html
And we had a one-page story in Sports Illustrated in the April 24
issue, page 80.
Finally, in keeping with our tradition of providing random
interesting links in each of these updates, I offer four:
--> WaterTribe Cruising Challenge: http://www.watertribe.com
-->
Human Powered Boats: http://www.HumanPoweredBoats.com
-->
Bill Hayward's adventure aboard Blue Skies:
http://www.wavelengthmagazine.com/1997/on97blueskies.html
-->
Recumbent Cyclist Magazine:
My
apologies for the long silence during this mad push to completion,
and a warm welcome to over 250 new subscribers who have arrived in
the past three months via the sign-up page on the new website. The
next update should be in September, hopefully with amusing tales of
mini-adventures during our 7-week tour....
Cheers from the Microship lab!
Steve