[HN Gopher] BEHEMOTH - Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine, O...
___________________________________________________________________
BEHEMOTH - Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine, Only Too Heavy
Author : robin_reala
Score : 117 points
Date : 2020-09-11 07:56 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (microship.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (microship.com)
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I love the description of the community involved in building it.
| It brings to mind the quote from Antoine de St-Exupery:
|
| "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect
| wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them
| to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
|
| On the other hand, one has to wonder if he wouldn't have needed a
| 105 speed transmission had he heeded that other famous quote:
|
| "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
| but when there is nothing left to take away."
| samcheng wrote:
| Pretty awesome. He had a binary keyboard, one button on each
| handlebar, and could type at 35 WPM using it. Impressive! I
| wonder if there is a market for that now, so people could text
| while biking. Or driving?
|
| https://microship.com/on-the-loose-in-dataspace/
| ajuc wrote:
| At 2 seconds per word you're probably better off with speech
| recognition. But it wouldn't work in loud traffic.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| SR is faster than 99% of the population can type. You can
| type for far longer than you can talk though.
| egypturnash wrote:
| BEHEMOTH hit the road in 1991. Speech recognition was... not
| a solved problem at that point in time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking
| pmoriarty wrote:
| A throat microphone[1] might work.
|
| Another interesting option would be some kind of subvocal
| recognition device.[2]
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_microphone
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Oh, Microship and the Winnebiko!
|
| I'm so happy to see this obscure uberhacker on HN.
|
| Stories about this guy's exploits would be just the sort my ideal
| vision of HN would be exclusively populated by.
|
| Real Hacker news.
|
| His _" A Decade of Microship Development"_[1] is also well worth
| reading.
|
| [1] - https://microship.com/microship-development/
| paleogizmo wrote:
| I vaguely remember this as a kid. For those who are better
| readers than I, does this site describe what all the computer
| hardware actually does? I was expecting something like primitive
| turn-by-turn navigation, but there doesn't seem to be focus to
| this, just a whole lot of desktop hardware grafted on a bike. It
| doesn't make any sense even in an era before common mobile
| hardware.
|
| Edit: While mobile hardware really didn't get good until 20 years
| later, the TRS-80 Model 100 existed in 1983 which had a real
| keyboard, could run third-party programs weighed under 4 pounds,
| had battery-backed memory and _ran 20 hours on a set of 4 AA
| batteries_. So a non-absurd solution for some portion of his
| design requirements existed.
| microtherion wrote:
| The Epson HX-20 existed even a bit earlier:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_HX-20
|
| I did a bit of programming for one, it was a rather neat
| machine.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| its so he could connect to telnet, and write his book as he
| rode.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| It's very dangerous to drive and write at the same time, I
| don't see how this is usable
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| He uses chord typing using buttons built into the handles
| used to steer the bike. There's a claim that it's not that
| hard to learn.
| rtkwe wrote:
| He's biking so the reaction tolerances are much looser more
| so if he's following back roads with very few cars which is
| sounds like he was from the another post where he talks
| about atlases.
| sp332 wrote:
| With a physical keyboard, you can touch-type and keep your
| eyes on the road.
| giantrobot wrote:
| BEHEMOTH was featured on the Discovery show NextStep back in
| the early 90s[0]. Roberts describes and shows off all the
| components. As I recall the most of the big hardware in the
| trailer was a printer/fax, a satellite phone, and ham radios.
| He had a PowerBook he used when not on the bike. You could
| definitely slim down a lot of stuff today or just eliminate it,
| you don't really need a printer or fax machine today and a
| smartphone has tons of connectivity.
|
| [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TgNPLH2SYtk
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" BEHEMOTH, whether moving or parked, must provide maximum
| possible autonomy in power generation, computation capability,
| file storage, communication, navigation, and maintainability --
| anywhere in the world, all controlled via a flexible graphic
| user interface..."_
|
| also:
|
| _" My original motive was simple enough. Horrified by a view
| of the American Dream from the curtained windows of a three-
| bedroom ranch in suburbia, doing things I didn't enjoy anymore
| to pay for things I really didn't want, I hit System Reset. Six
| months later, in the fall of 1983, I put my house on the market
| and moved to a recumbent bicycle -- I was a 30-year-old
| technomad heading across America with a primitive laptop, solar
| panel, and xnet connection..."_
|
| and later:
|
| _" I've had the dream over the years of putting together a
| nomadic community, a tribe of network-linked freelancers who
| move freely in physical space as whim, weather, and clients
| dictate. If this seems risky in these economically troubled
| times, remember that your real security is not what's in your
| bank account, but what's in your head. Skills are highly
| portable, and many of them can be wielded entirely via
| networks, phones, fax, pagers, satellites, and so on. If you
| are a wizard in some field, you will be welcome anywhere -- yet
| you can maintain the illusion of stability via methods that are
| now very familiar..._
|
| _Technology has developed enough in the last few years that
| this idea, once rather fanciful, is now quite realistic.
| Virtually any information-based business can be operated from
| the road..._
|
| _...it all points to one thing: getting away from your desk
| without simultaneously disappearing from Dataspace. "_
| deegles wrote:
| I wonder how light you could make this with current tech. A
| tablet computer + raspberry pi would cover most of the features,
| plus electrified with today's lithium batteries would make this a
| beast (pun intended) range-wise.
| egypturnash wrote:
| You could pretty much replace the whole thing with off-the-
| shelf stuff that fits in a backpack. Laptop, smartphone,
| tablet, a decent Bluetooth speaker, and you're good. Maybe some
| solar cells on the bag. You're still on your own for the
| handlebar keyboards. Get a couple Twiddlers and cram the guts
| into some grips, I guess.
|
| And a trailer for nothing but camping gear instead of hauling
| around three desktop machines.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus springs to mind.
|
| "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's
| heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." -Albert Camus
| s1mon wrote:
| I remember following Steve Roberts at the time (probably on
| USENET). It's entertaining to think how much of the tech on
| BEHEMOTH could be replaced by a smart phone or tablet. There are
| a few things like the HAM radio, printer, and some of the head
| mounted stuff that you'd still need in order to duplicate all the
| functionality. The weight reduction and improvements to
| functionality would be amazing.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I saw him talk in our elementary school, met him, and still have
| his book. He rode that thing all over the US and wrote a book
| while doing so. Most interesting thing about his setup was the
| custom keyboard mounted to the handlebars that was based on a
| stenographer type setup.
| deegles wrote:
| Can't be stopped for texting and driving if the laws for that
| don't exist yet!
| dshep wrote:
| I imagine a lot of people here might be too young to know about
| Steve K Roberts. He had an earlier bike called WINNEBIKO (II?).
| Imagine yourself as a kid in the 80s watching something like this
| on TV, it was super cool.
|
| High-Tech Bike on Spectacular World of Guinness Records - 1988
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2G6DtfZFUU
|
| Xerox PARC Winnebiko presentation by Steve Roberts - 1989
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU6MXakwcjI
|
| It's easy to overlook how inspiring this was without knowing
| about the context in which we lived back in the 80/90s. No one
| had cell phones, few people had computers, or had ever used a
| computer network, let alone the internet. I'm not sure I had even
| used a computer at the time, and I saw this guy on TV talking
| about being able to: write a book while riding his bike, talk to
| people all over the world via computer network, work remotely, it
| was _poof_ mind blown. Like looking 15 years into the future.
|
| Later on during University, after my first summer programming
| internship I read his book, "Computing Across America", which I
| highly recommend. For me at least, Steve was also kind of a
| lifestyle guru. Reading his book you realized you that you didn't
| have to be chained to a desk in an office, that technology would
| open up new lifestyles. It was a wake up moment where I tried to
| visualize my ideal life, and where the normal way of things was
| no longer interesting and something to avoid.
|
| Steve Roberts has a youtube channel here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/microship/videos
| nix23 wrote:
| I really miss that time, when computers where something special,
| floppy-disk trade in school and that one guy with a Next-Cube
| without games but his father said it's the most powerful machine,
| and endless "Death Knights of Krynn" hours with friends....ok
| maybe i'am a 'adult' now...that's why, but IT really lost most of
| it's magic.
| dawg- wrote:
| There are still geeks doing quirky and whimsical things with
| computers, there always will be. They are just harder to find
| in all the noise.
| nix23 wrote:
| True, normally RetroComputer Clubs are a good starting point.
| white-flame wrote:
| The noise is that everybody's trying to extract money out of
| computing.
|
| The whimsy is in just enjoying it and exploring within it for
| its own sake, which is the willingness to simply put time &
| money _into_ it without that noise.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| In some ways they are actually much easier to find.
|
| Now we have makerspaces, like Noisebridge, chock full of
| geeks hacking on all sorts of crazy and interesting stuff.
|
| There are forums like Hackaday and various engineering blogs
| and vlogs.
|
| HN itself occasionally has a good lead.
|
| All of these people are easily contactable now, whereas in
| the past you might struggle to get in touch with them even if
| you'd heard about them somehow, especially if they were in
| another country.
|
| Now distance is not really an issue any more, and you can
| even do video communication with them, easily trade
| schematics or anything else you may wish to know or have
| pretty much instantly.
|
| This is truly the golden age of hacking right now. Enjoy it
| while you can.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-09-11 23:00 UTC)