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What does it take to be a programmer out at sea?
- noonespecial 17y agoA gps that twitters your location to friends and family would be cool.
- TriinT 17y agoTwitter is for pussies. APRS is much cooler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Position_Reporting_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Position_Reporting_Sy...
- lsb 17y agoIt's stunning that packet losses are so high at sea that they need to exponentially distribute it for transmission to be successful.
- matthewking 17y agoThe SPOT gps has satellite coverage over the majority of the world and can email your friends and family google maps links periodically. There's another bolt on service somewhere that twitters it too, I think based on having the service as one of the email recipients. http://www.findmespot.eu/en/explorespot/index.php?cid=112 http://www.findmespot.eu/en/explorespot/index.php?cid=112
- tezza 17y agoLifejacket
- dhimes 17y ago+1 for life jacket. We lose too many good people at sea who would have been safe if they were wearing one. They are very comfortable and convenient to wear now, so there's no reason to not wear it. But then, part of my mission as a volunteer is to rant about this... http://www.usps.org/localusps/marblehead/ http://www.usps.org/localusps/marblehead/
- Kadin 17y agoPlus one for the cat, if they make such a thing...
- Luc 17y agoPeople sometimes hang a thick rope, a bit like a cat's scratching pole, off the side of the boat, so the cat can get back on if it falls in the water. Some people even put some catnip on it to make the cat used to climbing up and down it. Only useful when in harbour, of course...
- Raphomet 17y agoBoat, schmoat. Call me when I can be a hacker in my flying, Mario 3-esque airship. I'll be in my room under the green pipe. Seriously, this is a pretty awesome article. It looks like the main problem is Internet access, for which there are few solutions, all laughably expensive. The site linked in the article is clearly targeted at people who own yachts.
- mixmax 17y agoI live on a boat, and I can tell you that it realy isn't a problem. It was five years ago, but not now. Almost all marinas have wireless, and you can get 3G phone cards that will give you decent transmission a few miles off shore. If you're further out than that you're probably not programming anyway. Not unless the weather is really calm and you're at anchor. This is in Europe, but I expect it is the same in the US.
- dhimes 17y agoYou are living the dream!
- mixmax 17y agoThere was another post a while back about living a free life where I also mentioned living on a boat, and I got asked loads of questiong, both the objective part about the life and the hands-on part about how to buy a suitable boat, internet, anchoring, electricity, etc. etc. I, half-jokingly, wrote that maybe I should write an e-book about it, and got pretty good feedback. So I'm actually gathering material and have written up a table of contents. I don't know whether I'll finish it yet, but I might :-)
- matthewking 17y agoHere's the link for anyone interested: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565186 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565186 Id be interested in the ebook too if you ever get around to writing it.
- andreyf 17y agoCurious that this was deleted on SO, but rose to #1 here...
- eru 17y agoWhat's SO?
- nutmeg 17y agoSO == StackOverflow
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- hvs 17y agoSO is for programming questions. They try to keep "administration" questions (which this, oddly, sort of is) to a minimum.
- Maktab 17y agoNot really. It was the original (joke) question that SO deleted, presumably on the basis that it went against their guidelines, but the submission here is not that question. It's an interesting response from some guy who chose to treat the question as serious and put some effort into identifying the logistics of programming full-time aboard a yacht.
- dcurtis 17y agoWell, I can say one thing: SSH over satellite internet is... an interesting experience, to say the least. A 2 second delay is really annoying.
- sammyo 17y ago'Out at sea' past a 50 mile line, communication is very slow and very expensive. Some exceptions, there is free email with a ham license, non-commercial and certainly no images, A single sideband HF transceiver and modem is 1-2k$, think 9600 baud in optimum conditions. Within a mile of the shore of any industrialized nation, standard wifi is supposed to be pretty available. The boat in the picture is not getting too far offshore with one neophyte and one cat.
- Vivtek 17y agoOh man, oh man, this is exactly what I want to do when I grow up. I keep hoping satellite access will get cheap(er). In the Caribbean, apparently, it's not so horrible.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y agoThis is too funny: just half hour ago I finished A Mile Down: The true story of a disastrous career at sea Hope he ends up better than David Vann did :-) I would put the laptop in a Pelican or a NEMA4-rated case to limit corrosion and extend keyboard/monitor/mouse cables through the case. Seal the cable exits with gland seals and filter the incoming air. No matter what, you'll be dealing with a lot of salt air corrosion in a small boat on the ocean. I was trained as a Merchant Marine officer and know what a never-ending battle it is, even on large carriers. Personally, I'd leave the computer in a sealed case and only use it in harbor. Too many other important tasks will take up your time when at sea.