Archive for the 'Obit' Category
RIP Ion “The Meatball King” Oita
Posted on February 9, 2012 - Filed Under Obit | Leave a Comment
Great art comes from great suffering. I’ve had a tab open in one of my browsers for nearly a month now. But think about the meatball. In my opinion, the meatball is the highest form of cuisine. It is a sphere, nature’s most perfect design, of meat and spices and other adjuncts. You can put [...]
RIP Ilya Zhitomirskiy (1989 – 2011)
Posted on November 16, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | Leave a Comment
I am inherently skeptical of anything that comes out of NYU. However, a year ago, when it was revealed that part of Facebook’s business model was selling out your personal information, Ilya Zhitomirskiy decided to do something about it. He and three of his friends decided to make a new social networking site. It would [...]
The Cat and the Textile Lady
Posted on November 9, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | Leave a Comment
Today we celebrate two lives. The first is Jack the Cat. In late August, Jack the Cat went missing in JFK airport. Somehow it went viral. A Facebook group was started, which swelled to over 25k fans. The fans, friensd and wellwishers of Jack never gave up hope. And, after two months, Jack showed up. [...]
RIP Sony Dream Machine (1975 – 2011)
Posted on November 2, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | 2 Comments
Chances are you know someone who wakes up to a Sony Dream machine. One of the white (now yellow) ‘Digicubes’ is what I used to get my sorry butt out of bed down to breakfast for about as long as I can remember. I still use a Sony alarm clock to wake up but it [...]
RIP John McCarthy (1927 – 2011)
Posted on October 26, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | Leave a Comment
Another week, another passing of one of the unsung bearded heroes of the modern computing era. This time we celebrate John McCarthy who, for all intents and purposes, created the concept of artificial intelligence (he coined the term in a speech in 1956). Back then, the idea of machine intelligence was very limited. McCarthy was [...]
RIP Dennis “dmr” Ritchie (1941 – 2011)
Posted on October 13, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | 2 Comments
Once again we’re remembering a person that has touched the lives of literally every single person who has touched a computer. Mac users, you would not have your oh-so-sleek operating system with out dmr. By the way, dmr was the way he referred to himself on the internet. That’s right, three letters. His first major [...]
RIP Charlene (2004 – 2011)
Posted on October 5, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | 9 Comments
For those of you who don’t know, we’re talking about my car here. Charlene. And no, she’s not dead. I just sold her to a better home. I drove her maybe once a month and I felt awful depriving her of the open road that she once knew and loved so well. See I went [...]
RIP Michael Stern Hart (1947 – 2011)
Posted on September 13, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | Leave a Comment
Who the heck is Michael Stern Hart? Well, he is one of those nerds who as done a great service almost anonymously. He invented the e-book. That’s right. The guy that invented the thing that is causing a revolution in the publishing industry is no longer with us. And here’s the first story of the first [...]
RIP David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards (1915 – 2011)
Posted on August 30, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | Leave a Comment
The life and death of Robert Johnson will always be a mystery. However we have Honeyboy Edwards to thank for the version that doesn’t involve the devil springing up from hell and collecting his Faustian bargain. See, Honeyboy was there and saw Johnson drink the poisoned whiskey. He was there with a lot of the greats. He [...]
RIP Alex Steinweiss (1917 – 2011)
Posted on July 20, 2011 - Filed Under Obit | Leave a Comment
A long time ago, before Elvis but after wandering minstrel bands, there was no such thing as cover art. The record that you wanted would come in a green, brown or whatever monochromatic scheme you could think of. That is, until Columbia hired Alex Steinweiss. He came up with the radical notion that there should [...]
