People I Honor: Jon Postel

I love Jon Postel because of his Robustness Principle and how it can be applied far and wide from the confines of computer science. All great truth finds wide application!

Also he had a flowing beard and wore sandals and was the ultimate editor of technology. Yes, I am weird and read RFCs for fun. Jon's RFCs were the best - pure poetry!

The Internet works because Jon Postel wouldn't let it do anything less. He was a model for the benevolent dictator and knew what a good God should be about!

Postel Center: About Jon Postel

People I Honor: Chuck Moore

I poked around the Forth programming language in the 1980's and really enjoyed it. It really seems to work better with my brain, which strangely acts more like a computer than I suppose other brains do. That was when I first ran into Chuck Moore, who created Forth.

It is simple, it is efficient, it is very, very different, and it is (perhaps above all) esoteric. These are all descriptors of me! I am Forth!

I think Chuck is one of the most unique minds around, which I like immensely. His brain is just wired differently and I feel a kinship there. He has also been accused of being clinically insane, which I probably have been as well.

Chuck Moore's Weblog

People I Honor: Bob Pease

It is with great sadness that I learned in the creation of this post that Bob died just a few weeks ago in an accident while driving his beloved VW Bug. I am very sad that I will no longer partake of any new "Pease Porridge". My list of "people I honor" continues to be more of a list of folks I will have to meet in the hereafter...

Bob Pease is a brilliant analog engineer who enjoyed a rich set of avocations (hiking, biking, deep thinking), which is a sign of greatness to me. I enjoyed how he thought and wrote and respected most of all his unpretentious yet still scientific methods.

I also once saw a picture of his office, which looked like a cave with walls made of technical documents, much like mine at home.

Bob Pease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People I Honor: Don Lancaster

I have a wall of pictures of people I really, really like. They have different attributes that I value and they are very, very smart. You likely have never heard of any of them, unless you are heavily into electronics, computers, philosophy, libertarianism, or Mormonism, which says a lot about what fields of endeavor I pursue!

Here is one that is actually still living and is still incredibly productive (which is the attribute I treasure in him along with his staggering common sense) - DON LANCASTER!

This is a link to his "What's New" page, which looks suspiciously like a blog. He doesn't mind passing out his ideas and experience for free, which is also something I admire.

Guru's Lair: What's New? for 2011