I sailed around the world ten years ago with two other people on this boat http://www.yachtfiona.com/ (I've been re-posting my journal entries on http://bobanero.blogspot.com./ The Captain/boat owner was a retired engineer, and intimately familiar with all the equipment on the boat. We were constantly dealing with equipment failures of various types, and it seems like every other day he had his soldering iron out fixing something. Offhand, I would say that the most critical electronic equipment was GPS, SSB radio, VHF radio, Iridium Phone, Autopilot, Radar, and Laptop. The Iridium phone was great, we always had a signal with it, even in the most remote parts of the Southern Ocean. We lost the Radar during the time when we needed it most (sailing through icebergs). For all the equipment that you have, be prepared with a plan for when it fails. You definitely need redundant GPS. A chart plotter might be handy when you're coming into a strange port, as long as you have all the correct charts loaded. Of course there is no substitute for paper charts and local knowledge. The SSB radio was valuable for communicating with various ham nets that operate in various parts of the world, where we were able to get valuable local knowledge. I recommend joining the Seven Seas Cruising Association. Their newsletters are packed with incredible information from cruisers all over the world.

Don't forget Sports.

Something basic, a "Fuck you, World" application.

I think IBM gets the credit for opening up the hardware. MS-DOS was just in the right place at the right time. They would be nowhere without IBM.

http://wusb.fm/ rules!!

Erm, that press release for the photo contest is from 2003, and there's no indication that they've carried it forward to 2008/2009. If there's no active photo contest, that destroys the irony (the main point) of the story.

Then you're not doing it right. In order to know your limits, you have to exceed them once in a while.