Front door to the Rando Young Intellectual Estate
Project Atlas is the authoritative public map for this body of work in physical computing, science and engineering education, measurement, robotics, human performance, embedded tools, and AI-assisted laboratories.
The governing questions are: How much? Enough? Measure reality, then judge sufficiency against a purpose.
The estate is not a file backup. It is an idea backup. Files, repositories, manuals, code, comics, experiments, and validation records are evidence containers whose purpose is to preserve enough meaning for the work to survive its original author.
IDEA_PRESERVATION_PRINCIPLE.md— the governing archival rule.IDEA_INDEX.md— canonical map of the durable ideas across the estate.IDEA_CARD_TEMPLATE.md— preservation record for individual ideas and systems.CANONICAL_INVENTORY.md— current public project/system inventory and dispositions.MIGRATION_LEDGER.md— what was copied, pinned, treated as upstream, or deliberately withheld.SOURCE_SNAPSHOTS.md— how exact legacy repository snapshots are preserved and recovered.MIGRATION_QUEUE.md— finite finishing/recovery queue.PROJECT_CARD_TEMPLATE.md— operational control record for durable systems.LEGACY_REPOSITORY_MAP.md— historical repository-to-canonical-home mapping.AUTOMATION_STATUS.md— current automation/completion status.
Each canonical repository now carries an IDEAS.md record where appropriate so a future reader can recover the intellectual contribution without first reverse-engineering the file tree.
| Repository | Role |
|---|---|
| software-defined-laboratory | SDL: endpoints, host bridges, MCP, discovery, protocols, dashboards, reference experiments |
| core-10 | CORE 10: Kitchen Inquiry Lab, One Cup Chemistry, NOTHING IS FREE / Personal Energy Laboratory |
| nugget-physical-computing | Low-cost physical-computing learning ladder and progressive computational transparency |
| measured-world-lab | Instruments and experiments for observing ordinary physical phenomena rigorously |
| measured-human-performance | FFT, SQM+, Tone Trainer, PlateLab lineage, shared measurement infrastructure |
| bargain-bin-robotics | Low-cost educational robotics, robot-as-instrument, Lazy/Patient LiDAR |
| computing-observatories | CRCL, Forth observatories, visible CPUs, simulators, instrumented execution |
| embedded-tools | Debuggers, programmers, bridges, protocols, embedded infrastructure |
| works-and-publications | Papers, manuals, essays, guides, illustrated briefs, conceptual transmission |
| project-atlas | Idea map, governance, status, lineage, recovery and handoff |
This estate is a curated working exhibition and source trail, not a dump. Each durable system should have one canonical name, one canonical home, an honest lifecycle state, a known-good proof when one exists, and a clearly stated next action.
A project is not considered preserved merely because its source or PDF exists. The estate should retain its problem, central idea, rationale, mechanism, distinctive contribution, evidence, conceptual evolution, limitations, and reconstruction path.
Lifecycle labels are active, validated, incubator, archived, upstream, and proprietary / off-GitHub. Source, evidence, and presentation should remain distinguishable.
CORE contains the technical and educational foundation: SDL / SUPER / MCP, CORE 10, and the Measured Machine line of Nugget, observatories, simulators, tools, and robotics.
APPS applies transparent measurement to human and personal decision problems: FFT, SQM+, Tone Trainer, and PlateLab. Shared infrastructure should be extracted rather than duplicated.
TRANSMISSION turns the work into something another person can inherit: Project Atlas, guides, manuals, papers, experiment packages, visual explainers, and comics.
IAS — Independence Assurance System — is intentionally off-GitHub. It is not part of this public repository estate.
When time or storage is limited, preserve in this order:
- unique ideas and design rationale;
- canonical explanations and architecture;
- representative working source/executable artifacts;
- validation evidence and experimental data;
- teaching material and visual explanations, especially comics;
- historically meaningful versions showing conceptual evolution;
- duplicates only when needed for provenance or reconstruction.
- How much? Enough?
- Experience Before Equation
- Need Before Technology
- Not talk, do
- Prefer durable ideas over particular platforms.
- Preserve broadly; publish selectively.
- Name behavior clearly.
- Explicit failure is better than plausible-looking invalid data.
- Do not call copied material verified until its minimum working path has actually been reproduced.
Lifecycle: active
The initial GitHub source-rescue phase is complete: exact legacy snapshots, canonical homes, provenance boundaries, and substantial recovered source are in place. Deep recovery is continuing under the idea-preservation rule: representative implementations, manuals, comics, validation evidence, and historical lineages are retained only insofar as they help a future reader understand, test, teach, reconstruct, or extend the ideas.