Yes, this is a morbid topic, but we need to talk about it. There was a time when people stayed in one place their entire life. Everyone you ever knew was most likely in that same place. The world of an individual probably knew in full when that individual drew his or her last breath. Now we move about, but more importantly, we are in contact with people all over the world. What happens when a person with global contacts dies? How do other people learn about this event? The Idea Behind This Blog Post I started to write this post one year ago. The idea came to me about seven years ago when I was exchanging emails with a friend in another country. He travelled a lot as an independent consultant and spent much time away from his family. This was in the pre-Twitter, pre-TripIt, pre-Facebook, pre-all-sorts-of-social-networking-applications days. I…
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I bought myself a treat the other day: a handcrafted pen by Gunnar Langemark of Langemark Pens (site in Danish). I was struck by the beauty of the colors of this pen. The black wood is “bog oak” – oak that has been buried in a bog for hundreds of years, even thousands. This particular bog oak comes from the area around Roskilde, Denmark. One of Gunnar Langemark’s friends discovered it when he was out riding in the forest. The lighter colored wood (my photograph doesn’t do it justice) is called “Purple Heart”, which is a popular name for a tree that is native to Central and South America. It has a nondescript story, but it is beautiful to hold and behold. Gunnar has videos on his site so you can see how he makes the pens. I hope you can sense the care he puts into bringing these bits…
7 CommentsReading about the augmented future of technical communication triggered a memory. Many years ago, when I worked at Computer Associates, they produced a product called CA-7/OLC. (I think that was the abbreviation.) It was an enhancement to their CA-7 software, which is still used for scheduling jobs on big old mainframe computers. The interface for CA-7 was, of course, the good old green screen – green text on a black background. The software came on – are you ready, kiddies – magnetic tapes. CA-7/OLC was different. The demo included a large piece of hardware that played a 12-inch laserdisk. (Gee, I forget the names of all the parts after all these years.) The product was on a PC using 3.5-inch diskettes, and the laserdisk had some additional magic not possible on the PC back then. When you ran the program, you saw the usual green-screen interface. Slightly boring, with a…
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