PicoBlog

The year 2020 will go down in history as one of the saddest, most contentious in world history. The pandemic brought deaths and dysfunctions that we’re still coming to grips with. For me the spring of that year was truly terrible. My father died April 25. My mentor Robert ‘Rocky’ Ford May 19. And today, three years ago, my long time friend Andre Harrell passed away in an West Hollywood apartment.

Mis amigos,  This week we lost a maestro, an ambassador of Barcelona’s legendary La Boqueria market…my friend Juanito Bayén who has been welcoming customers to his legendary Bar Pinotxo for more than 60 years.  I first met Juanito when I was a boy in Barcelona, and I would go to Bar Pinotxo whenever I had some money for breakfast. Juanito was a permanent fixture there, and I’ll never forget him—in his bow tie, with his big smile, making his amazing Cafe con Leche, and the way he made everyone feel like they were a local.

Brandon Gilles, robotics vision pioneer and founder of Luxonis, the company behind the OAK cameras, OAK modules, and The Robot Hub, recently passed away from Long Covid complications. He documented the illness and recovery pathways here for anyone else in the same situation: https://t.co/A8Xejlv46l To remember his work in spatial AI and robotic vision, I… ncG1vNJzZmhqZG7Fb7%2FUm6qtmZOge6S7zGinaKqVorKursSroKefXZe%2ForrDqKVmn5mhuaa%2FjJ%2BmrqaUmr8%3D

I met Dan Dennett during the first week of classes at Tufts University, in the Fall of 2003. I had just turned 23. At that point I’d have been living in the US for less than a month and was starting a master’s program in a language that wasn’t my own. I recall having to pre-play every conversation in my mind to make sure I wasn’t going to say something grammatically incorrect.

In Minneapolis, next to the house where we grew up, lived a girl and boy the same age as my sister and me. We listened to them tell stories of their mysterious and enchanting uncle Duncan, known to the family affectionately as “Uncle Dunc.” Uncle Dunc was different than the other adults we knew—he was younger and lived in New York, where he was a painter. In earlier years he had gotten into trouble (he was asked to leave a school or two), which of course made him even more appealing to us children.

There is no evidence that the polio-stricken Franklin D. Roosevelt ever pushed himself up and out of his wheelchair to prove a point to his military advisors that a counter-offensive against Japan was a worthwhile risk in the hours after the attack against Pearl Harbor. In the hands of a less-competent actor, such a scene might make for a seriously distasteful moment that borders on the line between dark, unintentional comedy and historical malpractice (in other words, just another day on set for Michael Bay).

Internationally-beloved Fleurie vigneronne Julie Balagny passed away suddenly on July 1st at the age of forty-five. The cause was a heart attack, which occurred in the painfully novelistic circumstance of the wedding of her half-sister, a cardiologist. As sensational in life as in death, Balagny leaves behind an acclaimed career in which she forged a more radical aesthetic path than that of her stylistic forebears in the Beaujolais, even as her picturesque lifestyle - that of a courageous, independent neo-vigneronne, surrounded by farm animals - helped inspire untold numbers of friends, disciples, and fans.

“Remember.” — A fan’s sign at the United Center, Game 5 of the 1998 NBA Finals Michael Jordan’s final shot as a Chicago Bull is one of the most famous sequences in the history of sports. Just saying those words — “Michael Jordan’s final shot” — evokes not just imagery but emotions. We all remember seeing MJ strip the ball from Karl Malone with the Bulls trailing by a point, the clock ticking down on the season, the realization that Phil Jackson would not call timeout, that Michael was going to keep the ball, a chance to wrap all-things-dynastic then and there.

A member of the Lunduke Journal Community recently discovered the joy of MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) — the on-line, multiplayer, text-based role playing games (typically played via the Telnet protocol). Which made me realize: The Lunduke Journal simply has not spent enough time talking about the joy of MUDs. To help rectify that, let’s take a little stroll back to the 1970s… as we explore the history of the very first MUD — and, in fact, the very first multiplayer, online role playing game on the Internet: MUD1