BusBuilding

“It may turn out that I am better off with a diesel pusher or even a trailer. I am still investigating the whole bus thing to see if it would be for me.”

Very possibly NOT -

The lure/love of Bussing is what creates Bus Nuts, not a desire for a cheap motorhome.

Motorhoming or camping is ONE hobby,

Bussing is a completely different hobby.

We have a camper interior (worlds simplest) in our “Sports Car of Coaches” to justify owning the bus.

Yes, it’s great fun to camp the wilds of Canada or AK, and to use as the “worlds biggest Greenbriar” as some call it,

But the reason for ownership is the delightful fun it is to DRIVE the coach.

You have to dig the machine!

Examine whether you want to just go camping, or if you really are turned on by the BUS part.

– FAST FRED

[BNO Forum]

“My conversion is going to be a minimal conversion - not a big overly expensive re-manufacture job.”

Great minds think alike - the minimal conversion is far harder to create than the sledgehammer / smash to the skin style.

And more fun to drive as it should be many tons lighter.

And far easier to maintain!

– FAST FRED

[BNO Forum]

The reason I’ve included this excerpt here is to acknowledge, yet again, the contributions of those in the bus conversion and rving communities who tirelessly support each other and pass along their perspectives and learnings. You know who you are.

…we’re going to toss around the words ‘culture’, ‘art’, and ‘philosophy’ a lot. If you are not a programmer, or you are a programmer who has had little contact with the Unix world, this may seem strange. But Unix has a culture; it has a distinctive art of programming; and it carries with it a powerful design philosophy. Understanding these traditions will help you build better software, even if you’re developing for a non-Unix platform.

Every branch of engineering and design has technical cultures. In most kinds of engineering, the unwritten traditions of the field are parts of a working practitioner’s education as important as (and, as experience grows, often more important than) the official handbooks and textbooks. Senior engineers develop huge bodies of implicit knowledge, which they pass to their juniors by (as Zen Buddhists put it) “a special transmission, outside the scriptures.”

From The Art of Unix Programming
by Eric Steven Raymond.

Referring to a ‘basic’ conversion…

Some coaches look like a throwback to early RV times before the ’smash to the bones’ demolition then rebuild with twinky lights with cat house mirrors became popular.

With the structure intact there is no need to have “structural” foam insulation blown in, and she should be still structurally sound enough to not need the white tar roofing goo.

No covered windows equals lots of light & air,
rather than Sewer Tube living.

The FMCA had a series of articles in the 80’s that cover this style basic camper conversion, still avilable for free to members.

Sometimes the KISS principle can work really well,

IF you don’t need a 60ft articulated doubble decker with 8 slideouts, rooftop patio/helipad, that is.

KISS, works for ME!

– FAST FRED

Man, I so want to swap words around and put in other words in place of ‘Unix’ and software-related terms in these quotes, but it would be a travesty. It’s just too beautiful, elegant and plain smart for me to butcher it. Just use your imagination and swap out that endeavor which has your passion.

Attitude Matters

When you see the right thing, do it — this may look like more work in the short term, but it’s the path of least effort in the long run. If you don’t know what the right thing is, do the minimum necessary to get the job done, at least until you figure out what the right thing is.

To do the Unix philosophy right, you have to be loyal to excellence. You have to believe that software design is a craft worth all the intelligence, creativity, and passion you can muster. Otherwise you won’t look past the easy, stereotyped ways of approaching design and implementation; you’ll rush into coding when you should be thinking. You’ll carelessly complicate when you should be relentlessly simplifying and then you’ll wonder why your code bloats and debugging is so hard.

To do the Unix philosophy right, you have to value your own time enough never to waste it. If someone has already solved a problem once, don’t let pride or politics suck you into solving it a second time rather than re-using. And never work harder than you have to; work smarter instead, and save the extra effort for when you need it. Lean on your tools and automate everything you can.

Software design and implementation should be a joyous art, a kind of high-level play. If this attitude seems preposterous or vaguely embarrassing to you, stop and think; ask yourself what you’ve forgotten. Why do you design software instead of doing something else to make money or pass the time? You must have thought software was worthy of your passion once….

To do the Unix philosophy right, you need to have (or recover) that attitude. You need to care. You need to play. You need to be willing to explore.

From The Art of Unix Programming
by Eric Steven Raymond.

All the philosophy really boils down to one iron law, the hallowed “KISS principle” of master engineers everywhere:

From The Art of Unix Programming
by Eric Steven Raymond.