Vale Predator

I was going to write a post about how the Fourth World War is a film every­one should see.

Instead I have to write that my good friend predat0r died at 2am on Sat­urday, of cancer, aged 32 or some­thing equally insane.

He was one of the smartest, most amaz­ing, polit­ical, incred­ible people I’ve ever met. He had a brain the size of a planet, he was tall and sexy with long hair, he rode a motor­bike and he kluged together tech­no­logy so people could have free access to the net. He was a Cave­Clan dude and hap­pi­est down a drain.

The last thing I did for him was get him into the Mel­bourne Museum exhib­i­tion of CSIRAC before it opened, know­ing he prob­ably would­n’t have time to see it again, and his e‑mail to me about it was typ­ical him: 

Dude… I’m back in Sydney still glow­ing about having the privel­age to
walk around inside the ancient elec­tronic brain which is on show in
Mel­bourne. Fuckin’ yeah. Even better than the drain sim­u­lator. Whooar!
Thank you, thank you thank you for doing whatever you did to David to
per­suade Ed and I to check the thing out. It’s a bit like seeing a really
prim­it­ive organ­ism for the first time and being enchanted by the idea that
fun­da­ment­ally the pro­cesses which run it also run one­self. Geek gold!
It’s wicked. Arrr! 😎 

Beam! > 

I’m flying to Sydney tonight. The funeral is tomor­row morn­ing, 11am, St Joseph’s, corner
of Rosa and Fre­d­er­ick Streets, Oatley for those of you who knew him. There’s also a wake at the Turella squat on Friday night.

EDIT: I Just remembered when Pred and I were wan­der­ing around New­town cemetery in March and chat­ting about epi­taphs and I came up with one for him that he thought was a hoot. So:

Pred­ator. Died 05.06.04.
“Ah, so that’s what’s under here’