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Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

100r.co

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#11

I love the contrast in "Low tech/bootstrapped tech" this way vs, say, duskos.org. I call this "rabbits vs forth" tech bootstrappers. [1]. It's somewhat strange to me that their tech journey is so narrative and ends up with a VM stack, rather than any kind of salvaged / repurposed hard tech. But then again, I'm probably on the forth side of the spectrum. https://jodavaho.io/posts/rabbits-or-forth.html

With their stance of permacomputing, you don't think the two go hand in hand? A simple VM that can be implemented quickly on almost any hardware or underlying tech stack you can scrounge together? The only thing they'd be really against is designing new hardware to run Uxn "natively," which would seem to push you exclusively to reuse what you have.

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#12

I love the contrast in "Low tech/bootstrapped tech" this way vs, say, duskos.org. I call this "rabbits vs forth" tech bootstrappers. [1]. It's somewhat strange to me that their tech journey is so narrative and ends up with a VM stack, rather than any kind of salvaged / repurposed hard tech. But then again, I'm probably on the forth side of the spectrum. https://jodavaho.io/posts/rabbits-or-forth.html

> ends up with a VM stack, rather than any kind of salvaged / repurposed hard tech

I love reading the Hundred Rabbits blog but I view it as sort of an artistic endeavor in addition to pure tech. Indeed, my idea of "low tech" would be 16-bit systems or early 32-bit stuff like 386 and 486 PCs, etc. These machines are surprisingly capable even in 2025 with the right applications. They can be repaired seemingly indefinitely with a soldering iron and spare caps.

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#13
post #10

It's remarkable how good you have to be at tech to be low tech and low maintenance.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and as I understand it from their writing, life on the sea is a constant maintenance battle against when the "ground" underneath your feet is trying to pull you in at every step, from corroding everything holding you together to the isolation driving extensive planning and maintenance for self sufficiency projects.

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#14
Love 100r! There aren't a ton of examples online, but their livecoding music software/language, ORCA, is a remarkable instrument. https://100r.co/site/orca.html

I posted a clip to bsky a few weeks back: https://bsky.app/profile/r.whal.ing/post/3lpyrm4vrqs2d

And Allieway Audio made some great Youtube videos about ORCA too if people would like to learn how it works in more of a tutorial format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaI_TuISSJE&t=446s

(I love the Dwarf Fortress background for this video, it absolutely nails the vibe)

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#16
post #4

Does anyone know if they're able to support themselves purely on donations via Patreon, etc., or if they need to do contract work, too?

Unsure about the day-to-day situation, I imagine by now they make enough off of the stuff they put out as 100r that combined with very low expenses it's sustainable or close to. In past blog posts they mention taking on contract work for boat repairs.

Yeah, when you take the rent and many of the temptations of the big city lifestyle out of consideration, the cost of living gets surprisingly low.

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#18

I love the contrast in "Low tech/bootstrapped tech" this way vs, say, duskos.org. I call this "rabbits vs forth" tech bootstrappers. [1]. It's somewhat strange to me that their tech journey is so narrative and ends up with a VM stack, rather than any kind of salvaged / repurposed hard tech. But then again, I'm probably on the forth side of the spectrum. https://jodavaho.io/posts/rabbits-or-forth.html

I still use an Atom N270 netbook, and DuskOS is on the edge; but there are zillions of Atom netbooks in LaTam and in the outside as goverments agreed to ship these to students. With TUI/CLI tools you can do wonders, far more than CollapseOS. Yes, I know Forth, I did a good chunk of Starting Forth.

UXN once tweaked it can run stuff like Oquonie.

BTW, a properly set Emacs can double as a great legacy platform too; from IRC to whatever (BitlbeeIRC), Web browsing, email, gopher and gemini browser with elpher (and the Gemini proxy gemini://gemi.dev), epub reading, music and video (Emacs' emms, but mpv+yt-dlp can be set to play stuff at 480p/720@30FPS), Usenet client, RSS, Elisp itself, M-x calc and Gnuplot, PDF viewer (pdf-tools), Org-Mode+Hyperbole to expand your brain like nothing, sokoban gaming, Tetris, ZMachine text adventures with Malyon, MUDs, trace routers from OpenStreetMap with osm.el ...

For stucking I/O:

Usenet->slrnpull+GNUS.

Mail->Mu4e+mu.

People doesn't know that today computers from 2003 can do wonders and access far more services than they would think.

Once you can do TLS 1.3 'fast' enough (P4 w/ SSE2), you can do anything from IRC, email, gopher, gemini, usenet and rss from proxies and terminal or Emacs clients.

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#19
I recently got my basic cruising sailing license. And I also enjoy hacking on low-power, low-end salvaged computers that are repairable with a minimal set of tools and a manual. I'm hoping one day my tech journey will lead me to spending more time aboard and working on projects in this space.

100r and https://screenl.es and dynamicland are huge inspirations.

Re: Hundred Rabbits – Low-tech living while sailing the world

#20
post #4

Does anyone know if they're able to support themselves purely on donations via Patreon, etc., or if they need to do contract work, too?

I believe that at least one of them worked for Meta before they embarked on this journey and I believe that they basically used the big tech money to FIRE. They've been able to them supplement and transition their income with the games and apps they've produced as well as related income from their 100rabbits work, as well as having minimized living expenses and no children. None of this is meant to be judgement or in any way demean the work they currently do, I love all of their stuff. Just trying to answer your question.
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