I was invited to speak at the conference of the MicroHAMS Amateur Radio Club, and am grateful to Kenny Richards for filming my talk on the Microsoft campus in Redmond. This took place about a year after I acquired the Amazon 44 named Nomadness, and gives the history of my technomadic adventures along with a…

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This was an amazing experience… hanging out with fascinating people (Alan Kay, Thad Starner, Dean Kamen, and other highly creative notables), displaying my toys in an interesting setting, a well-managed show… like the ACM97 show four years earlier, it was wildly educational. The only artifacts that remain are the gorgeous photo above and this delightful…

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My second speaking gig on a Geek Cruise (after Perl Whirl and before Linux Lunacy) was in the western Caribbean aboard the 720-foot Ryndam in the Holland America Line. This was not only a week of deep immersion with Java geeks and a sort of broad circumnavigation of Cuba, but it resulted in a very…

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For a few years, I was in the active stable of Keynote Speakers bureau, and every few months would load BEHEMOTH into a trailer and trundle off across the US for a gig… usually filling in the gaps with more casual events and visits with friends or sponsors. This was a particularly fun one for…

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I remember this well… speaking to a crowd obsessed with renewables, bike and embryonic Microship on display for 2 days, brutal heat, lying in the creek to cool off, and an evening party with Java the Cat visiting all the campsites and then returning home to the mobile lab. The first piece below is a…

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I was originally going to give the various bits of text related to this adventure into separate posts by date, but they would sprawl from a June 1999 bit in the Seattle Weekly to articles in late 2000 about the event. Instead, I’ll collect it all here, since it really is one cohesive tale. This…

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In 1999, the Microship project was in full swing in the Camano Island lab, and I periodically loaded up the mothership (a 44-foot Wells-Cargo fifth-wheel trailer towed by my Ford truck) to haul BEHEMOTH and in-progress nautical machinery around the US on insane, whirlwind speaking tours. This one was particularly fun… an after-dinner talk to a…

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In an alternate reality, were I to be employed, there is a very small group of organizations that I would find alluring. MBARI is one of them… a playground of oceanographic research, with a blend of academic exploration and corporate deep pockets that has attracted geeks across a broad spectrum. An old friend of mine,…

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ITX2 – Seattle Center November 13-14, 1998 Keynote Speaker: Steven K. Roberts world traveler and creator of gadgets Years ago, Steve Roberts quit his job, sold his house and embarked on a journey across America with a homemade, computerized bicycle. He has logged over 17,000 miles with BEHEMOTH, which weighs 400 pounds, requires 105 gears…

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Steven Roberts A Pioneer of Technomadics Steve Roberts is a high-tech creative genius and problem solver. From 1983 to 1991, he pedaled 17,000 miles around the country on a computerized and networked recumbent bicycle that allowed him to remain connected and productive while wandering freely. During 1997, he set aside the bicycle to work on…

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