Randy Pausch Passes

Randy Pausch giving his Last Lecture, photo by j.w. ramp.

Our dear friend and colleague Randy Pausch passed away today, July 25, after a brave struggle against pancreatic cancer. Randy captured the minds and hearts of millions worldwide with his Carnegie Mellon lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," and his book, "The Last Lecture."

Randy, who earned his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon in 1988, returned to the university in 1997 as an associate professor of human-computer interaction and computer science. Along with Carnegie Mellon Professor Don Marinelli, Randy was the co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, a leading interactive multimedia education and entertainment center.

At Carnegie Mellon, Randy was also the director of the Alice software project, a revolutionary way to teach computer programming. The interactive Alice program teaches computer programming by having kids make animated movies and games. A fitting legacy to Randy's life and work, Alice may in the future help to reverse the dramatic drop in the number of students majoring in computer science at colleges and universities. Randy was also known as a pioneer in the development of virtual reality, and he created the popular Building Virtual Worlds class.

An award-winning teacher and researcher, Randy was also a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He used sabbatical leaves to work at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA), and he consulted with Google Inc. on user interface design. He is the author or co-author of five books and more than 70 articles.

Perhaps the greatest lesson, however, Randy taught us all was how to live, even in the face of great challenges, and how to follow our passion. While Randy's greatest passion was clearly his family, he did not shy from sharing his passion for his work as a professor, for his students, and for Carnegie Mellon. We will miss Randy, but we will carry the memory of him and all that he did to make Carnegie Mellon a better university and each of us who knew him a better person.

Sincerely,

Jared L. Cohon
President
Carnegie Mellon University

Portraits of Hunter.

My brother Hunter is such a willing photo subject - I love to try out new lighting ideas with his help! I was thinking one day that our downstairs bathroom has bright red walls and also a translucent shower curtain.... which led me to the idea of putting a flash inside the shower and bouncing it out for some nice soft portrait lighting with the striking red background... Ta-Da!

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I was also messing around with some cardboard and aluminum foil to make myself a 'ringflash', a device to distribute the light from my external flash around my lens for an interesting 'wrap-around' look that's kinda popular nowadays.

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...which ended up with me photoshopping him here: My Bro on GQ   ...maybe when he's famous and playing for the Yankees :)

New Look.

I just updated the look of this blog, so if you have any questions please leave a comment on this post. Here's a photo I took last week (along with the wide one up top there):

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Working, Working...

Seal of the City of SitkaI'm just over halfway through my first week at the new job, interning for the engineering department of the City of Sitka. Everything's been going really well - sometimes it's tough to find something to do, but I've got a couple projects to work on now and it looks like the rest of the summer should go just fine. It was cool to pick up the paper tonight and see the photo on the front page that had a wooden pipe that I had done some research on this morning for my boss and see his boss quoted in the article.

Bryanne and I had to bring some old (1940's on) blueprints and file cabinets out to the archives at the Sawmill Cove Industrial Park out the road and some of the empty offices looked like great spots for shooting some photos - I'll have to see tomorrow if I can get a hold of the right people to get me in there on the weekend sometime... I'd love to get up on the roof of the city building too, I saw the ladders for that from behind the office this afternoon and it just got the roof-exploring side of me all excited.

P.S. - I've got a link to my 'photoshelter collection' photos, pictures that have been approved by professional image editors for sale online. It's kind of the creme de la creme of my photos, so feel free to take a look. And hey, if you're a photo editor or creative director yourself, feel free to give me a ring sometime, I'd love to chat  :)

Photos from Maine

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Drove around a bit last night with my camera and took some pictures as the sun was going down... it was so peaceful with the nice evening breeze after a long day in the 80's and 90's.