Contact

Contact

Email works best: robin@island-underground.com

About Me

I've been working with embedded computing systems since the days when the 8080/6800/6502 ruled the earth, when a $25 processor was astoundingly cheap, and when 1 kilobyte of RAM was pure luxury.

When you do embedded software, you are never too far from the hardware, so hardware design has always been an interesting sideline. After spending decades in the Silicon Valley learning that I could never find a company that would pay me to make things that I though were super cool, I quit it all and moved to Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. Now, I have more time to make whatever I feel like. When I'm not working on a project, I'm battling entropy down at our building in Oldtown Oak Harbor, fixing an appliance or just trying to make some part of an old building better.

In 2019, the commercial space between Popsies and the Allure Salon was vacant. I spent about 6 months in there redoing basically all of the electrical wiring to prepare for the next tenant. While the space was empty, I put a bunch of my projects on display in the window, just to give passers-by something to look at. The projects had originally been displayed at the Wenatchee Mini Maker's Faire in June 2019. Little did I know that my display would be immortalized by the Google Streetview car!

It looks to me like the Streeview car is a Prius: you can see its reflection in the door with the camera tripod on the roof. If you click the photo above, it will take you to Steetview Maps and you can look at the projects in the window. Or for that matter, you can look around the neighborhood on a beautiful Oak Harbor summer day.

Here is the same project display as it was seen at the Wenatchee Mini Maker Faire in 2019:

It's true, I have been known to void a warranty or two. Plus, there's the whole socks and sandals thing. Get over it. I'm a nerd.