Wizard with a Time Machine | Hacker News Reader

Wizard with a Time Machine

microship.com

78 pointswalterbell26 comments

It's not even the main focus of the article, but I love how this mentions in passing that Steve Roberts was the original digital nomad! I remember seeing his custom recumbent bike with built-in computer in a TV documentary decades ago. Amazing to hear that he has continued to be a trailbreaking innovator.

I probably saw the same documentary and found it fascinating. I remember being excited when I found his blog many years later. He’s definitely an interesting guy.

I chatted with him at the Dayton Hamvention way back when his first book came out. He had his bike there at the time, along with his girlfriend.

(bike) Computing Across America, 1983-1987, https://microship.com/category/caa/page/5/

(boat) Building the Microship Trimaran, https://microship.com/microship/

> The Microship project spanned a decade, with three different labs and multiple design revisions... at last yielding an amphibian pedal/solar/sail micro-trimaran. This massive project was fueled by about 160 corporate sponsors and a team of brilliant geeks.

His books, https://microship.com/product-category/publications/

It's not a wheel, it's a time machine, a carousel... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3n2sJ43Hg

Ah, this is perfect. Thank you.

I emailed with the “Wizard” last year or earlier this year about 5000 slides my father took of WW 1 forts and battlefields in the 80s (most not on maps or accessible). His attention to detail is insane, even by email.

I have not pulled the trigger yet because he tripped me up when he asked if the slides are cataloged in any way. They are, but the notes are scattered and it’s going to take me a significant effort to reconstruct which slides are of which location. Ultimately I’m not sure I’ll get to it and the slides will probably remain as slides until I die.

Hi! Steve here... I remember that conversation! When this question comes up these days, I think of my own daunting archives, much still not done, and realize that the original "catalog" is the tangible/emotional metadata of proximity and packaging (along with notes). I know what certain slides look like because of the familiar ancient boxes or binder sleeves where they have lived for a half century... so we attempt to capture THAT and not get hung up on actual labeling (unless there is a system already in place).

In practice, this means folders for physical groups, ordering that reflects the way they were packaged, and photos of the physical media to serve as a reference. The actual filesystem has "digital contact sheets" (from Lightroom) and both RAW and JPG folders, but nestled in there are pictures of the source material to help rekindle the feeling of the familiar collection... even if just the box a carousel was in.

Can you provide your email address so I can lookup our conversation and reply?

My father shot thousands of slides when we lived in Nigeria in the mid 70's. He still has them, but I have started scanning them myself with Pentax DSLR, and macro bellows with slide copying attachment. It been pretty fun--I was 5-6 at during this time, so some of it lines up with my oldest memories. I've found that the Kodachrome slides have have held up much better than the other (mostly Ektachrome) slides. The colors on the Kodachrome look like they were shot yesterday.

My father also has a bunch of super 8 shot by his parents, but I really don't have anything to convert those well, so he sent them off for conversion. Among other things it includes footage of mygrandparents vacationing in Cuba before the revolution.

I have a similar situation, but no Pentax. I've been trying to figure out how to scan thousands of my grandfathers slides. Too expensive to send out for processing, I think. But there don't seem to be any good auto-feed scanners and the thought of scanning 5000 slides five at a time is daunting! It's annoying that the slides are all in trays for automated playback with a slide project, but there are no scanners that feed from trays!

I'm thinking of setting up a slide projector on auto play and recording that output. At least that would batch by fifty.

Any suggestions?

I also have a few daguerreotypes to scan. Hard to find a scanner that supports them!

Where does this wizard’s money come from? I’ve read about his bikes many times in the past but this is the first time I’ve ever really stopped and thought about the price tags. “I rode around the country on a 1.2 million dollar computerized bicycle”, sheesh. Then he shifted to a couple of computerized yachts. His film/video digitizing setup discussed in this article is a mere $10k.

(Wikipedia is a dead end, his computer bike is wikinotable but he is not, so there’s nothing to see there about where this money might come from. Wealthy family? Wizardly levels of persuasion? Crime? I dunno.)

First, if you do a lot of the work yourself, "valued at" and "What it cost to build" are two very, very different numbers. Never forget that news articles will tend to be lazy about "Oh, XYZ cost that much new, OK, add that in..." when someone like Steve is going to have a better line on used equipment at a good price, or perhaps some sponsorship deals.

Second, he's a big fan of the "nickel generator" projects - something that, once done, will generate some trickle of income more or less indefinitely on minimal additional labor. And he's got a lot of those in various forms.

Third, he lives simply. Quite so. And he's been around for a lot of years. All those add up to both a lot of connections, and likely a decent stockpile of cash for projects.

I met him some years back. Great all around technowizard!

How much do people on HN regularly spend on a house/car?

Hi! You answered this perfectly. That "$1.2 million bicycle" is not at all an out-of-pocket figure. I can't even imagine what that would be... the real value includes all the goodies from sponsors, the amazing creations of volunteers, and some abstract notion of the value of the time. I think it came from some interview when the writer insisted on my putting a number on it, and it just stuck... for better or for worse.

https://computerhistory.org/profile/steven-k-roberts/

>Prior to Steve's life as a technomad, he owned a consulting engineering business in the Midwest and published three books on microprocessors and industrial control system design.

That alone could make you wealthy, if he also invested in the field he could be super rich.

I'd love to know what you all think is a good method to store these digital files at home in such a way that they can be: 1. easily viewed at home. 2. easily passed to the next of kin. 3. optionally: easily and selectively shared remotely with others as the owner sees fit.

My default delivery vehicle is thumb drives, with copies for relatives and instructions to copy them to a primary system and use the thumb as a backup. For photos, I often deliver JPGs via SmugMug for folks who want to share a collection with family and maybe print a few, but that does not solve the problem of storing RAW files (big, though most people just want the more familiar and much smaller JPGs).

Same for film and video files. When a collection gets big, I prefer the T5 or T7 SSD, or if cost-sensitive I deliver on USB HD. When a client wants to distribute a little bit of video to relatives, I sometimes put it in my Vimeo account as a private file, or use Dropbox (though they punished me recently for "oversharing a file" even though that was never defined!). But the default is just USB3 thumb drives... so cheap and easy.

Sometimes people want DVD, but I try to talk them out of it unless it is for a parent who has nothing else. A decade from now, people will find people like me t get the video files off those shiny discs, with drives no longer available.

But that doesn't really answer your question. I use a NAS and some combination of cloud and local filesystems, but it really is a hard problem to do it well if the collection is sprawling. Proper archiving is an art, with a ton of setup time to establish a framework.

Thank you for this detailed reply.

rarely talk about this, there is another wizard that lived in friday harbor.

I spent most of my youth and 20s with this man. He taught pain alleviation and hypnosis. I spent 6 years learning from him, 2 as an intern. When I left, the whole hypnosis community made me sick. It is filled with false hoods and people lusting for power. Tony Robbins hired my mentor, the guy the book Monster's and magical sticks was about, "dave".

I occassionally saw patients with burns and cancer treatments. While till this day, I have no real idea how I can allevate their pain, they do. I stopped after an ass named wolf of wall street jordan belfort, used a portion of it to scam people out of millions.

My last phone call was with him, I asked him if he was going to let his current "life mate" if she was going to told the last 2-3 missing pieces.. He laughed, and said no, it should go our graves. I am conflicted , cause i want people to know he FOUND the secret, but realized it was like a nuclear weapon of communication. Politicians are already manipulative, but to make an army of them that has near god like abilities... would be socially resposible.

Thus I hide on the internet, rarely complain, and speak about the other wizard in friday harbor.

may he rest in peace, and Ill take to my grave what he left out. The night where I saw the magic he was trying to keep secret. He grabbed me in the throat and made me swear not to tell. I kept my promise old friend, my 2nd dad.

Is there no defensive value? Would your/his position change if it was already being used for offense? This is akin to the zero-day debate.

Some secrets keep themselves.

"The history of mankind is the history of war between gangs of hypnotists."

The san juan's seem to both collect and produce wizards

This inspired me. I think this kind of work would be fascinating and deeply satisfying.

There are services that will do this, but I would imagine that many of them only handle formats where there's enough demand to justify the necessary gear and setup. It's definitely the sort of work where someone really into that specific thing can devote more resources than your average video/film/etc production and distribution house.

I've done a bit of this with personal material (friends, family, my own stuff). Even then it's just when I have the necessary equipment already. Currently it's just a flatbed scanner, VCR, cassette deck, and capture card.

They don't get a ton of use, but when someone mentions having old tapes they can't watch anymore, I usually try to give it a go.

Thank you! There is indeed a strong emotional component... lots of wonderful connections with clients including tears, long conversations, connections arcing between the archives of intertwined families, and so much more. I often forget that it is "business."

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