great times
March 24, 2012
Dear Clifford,
I vividly remember our great times in my parents basement ('het hol'/'the lair') in the Grensstraat in Amsterdam somewhere in the eighties. You were my best friend and personal live-in scholar. We were always talking. About maths, languages, zen, all the sciences, music, computer programming and even some of women (of whom we could only dream at that time, heh) and anything else you had currently wrapped your mind around and where I could barely follow. You were a true 'Uomo Universale' in the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci.
Although we were all vague at times (due to the hazy atmosphere)
you were never shallow and always had an elaborate opinion about almost every subject in existance, and encouraged me to do the same, but please!! a different one, so that we could discuss them at great lenghts. It forced me (which is good for a 'Neutral Good' char like me) to form an opinion on things and be able to exchange thoughts about it.
Of course we also got hungry at times, no idea why, and we emptied out my parents fridge and ate everything till we drove them wild!
You taught me how to use a computer to the edges of it's capabilities (at that time the Commodore 64). We played computer adventures together (basically living books that you could enter) until we figured out every little detail of those large virtual worlds.
I remember late night bouts of really hard core machine code
programming, where we made the game of Life run on the C64 in 6502 machine language!
(http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html
check out buttons Run Spaceships and Run Lightspeed to get a good feel of it)
Nothing else was important than getting it to work on those nights,
and work together till it was exactly how we wanted it. You showed me what analysis and thinking is ('even goed nadenken'), and debugging.
What persistence is and perseverance when working on a project.
I remember when it was finally done we watched the screen literally for hours, in amazement of all the moving blocks in rapid succession.
Thank you for stretching my imagination beyond my wildest dreams!! And showing me what a wonderful place this world can be, at times!
I wish you the best on your new journey and I'm sure you'll have
an opinion about it and let them know!!! heh. Love, Arjan.
PS An old but good taste of cliffords thoughts and opinions is still online here: http://users.rcn.com/cps.interport/
Read http://users.rcn.com/cps.interport/objective.htm
to get in the mood, or this one for a taste of his poetry: http://users.rcn.com/cps.interport/juliet.htm
i love my woman black let me
pour some cream in you let me
stir you up let me
drink you
All content copyright (c) 1998, 1999 Cliff Stabbert.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Content License, v1.0 or later (available at http://www.opencontent.org/opl.shtml).Put simply, you can copy, distribute and even modify this as you see fit, as long as you point to these original documents, clearly indicate modifications, and include both my copyright and a pointer to the Open Content License.
I vividly remember our great times in my parents basement ('het hol'/'the lair') in the Grensstraat in Amsterdam somewhere in the eighties. You were my best friend and personal live-in scholar. We were always talking. About maths, languages, zen, all the sciences, music, computer programming and even some of women (of whom we could only dream at that time, heh) and anything else you had currently wrapped your mind around and where I could barely follow. You were a true 'Uomo Universale' in the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci.
Although we were all vague at times (due to the hazy atmosphere)
you were never shallow and always had an elaborate opinion about almost every subject in existance, and encouraged me to do the same, but please!! a different one, so that we could discuss them at great lenghts. It forced me (which is good for a 'Neutral Good' char like me) to form an opinion on things and be able to exchange thoughts about it.
Of course we also got hungry at times, no idea why, and we emptied out my parents fridge and ate everything till we drove them wild!
You taught me how to use a computer to the edges of it's capabilities (at that time the Commodore 64). We played computer adventures together (basically living books that you could enter) until we figured out every little detail of those large virtual worlds.
I remember late night bouts of really hard core machine code
programming, where we made the game of Life run on the C64 in 6502 machine language!
(http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html
check out buttons Run Spaceships and Run Lightspeed to get a good feel of it)
Nothing else was important than getting it to work on those nights,
and work together till it was exactly how we wanted it. You showed me what analysis and thinking is ('even goed nadenken'), and debugging.
What persistence is and perseverance when working on a project.
I remember when it was finally done we watched the screen literally for hours, in amazement of all the moving blocks in rapid succession.
Thank you for stretching my imagination beyond my wildest dreams!! And showing me what a wonderful place this world can be, at times!
I wish you the best on your new journey and I'm sure you'll have
an opinion about it and let them know!!! heh. Love, Arjan.
PS An old but good taste of cliffords thoughts and opinions is still online here: http://users.rcn.com/cps.interport/
Read http://users.rcn.com/cps.interport/objective.htm
to get in the mood, or this one for a taste of his poetry: http://users.rcn.com/cps.interport/juliet.htm
i love my woman black let me
pour some cream in you let me
stir you up let me
drink you
All content copyright (c) 1998, 1999 Cliff Stabbert.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Content License, v1.0 or later (available at http://www.opencontent.org/opl.shtml).Put simply, you can copy, distribute and even modify this as you see fit, as long as you point to these original documents, clearly indicate modifications, and include both my copyright and a pointer to the Open Content License.