I sometimes wonder the same about some of my old techy friends and colleagues who once were very involved, active and visible in the early days of the Internet but then disappeared from the face of the earth (or, well, of the Internet at least).
Occasionally I'd stumble across something about Kai on the web...a honorary doctorate here, a ui-design paper there, a book release to which he contributed... and, of course the Byteburg. But rarely something new.
I just want to thank him for all the inspiration he provided in my early computing days -- life-changing inspiration, in the truest sense of the word. It was the set of Kai's Power Tips & Tricks *.wri documents and HSC's Kai's Power Tools that taught me Photoshop in an era of chirping modems and bbs-systems far from the web as we know it today. His tools not sparked a huge interest in the more obscure functions Photoshop had to offer and learning how they worked, they also invited me to become more open and creative than I ever could be as a technical draftsman before - first involved as hobby artist for a demo-group, ultimately leading to a change in my career to work as a web-designer in the mid 90s.
Bryce was a huge inspiration to me as well. I was already interested in 3d-graphics (and programming), but Bryce opened a whole new perspective on 3D landscapes and terrain visualization. It was Kai again who inspired me to explore usgs-datasets, learn more about gis, programming, graphics, image processing theory -- and then to pause my career to study comp-science... four years in a technologically so fast-changing period, that almost seemed like a jump through time. When I wrote my thesis I picked up my old Bryce-inspired 3D-terrain hobby again and worked on a client-/server-based 3d geo-visualization system, for which I had basically the same idea that Google brought to life with Google Earth soon later. I dumped my own project, but I will never forget the great and exciting journey I had in all these years because a few of Kai's papers and tools invited me to explore new possibilities.
But coincidently I ended up following his footsteps and leave Germany to work and live in the US. But I guarantee this time it was not Kai who inspired me!
Hm, was it?Some critics may think he's overrated and reduce him to a bunch of funny user-interfaces, but it's really just about a spark of inspiration Kai's work provided in my early days.
Just imagine, first stuck working all day at a drawing board, programming in my spare time and playing with bbs-networks. With graphics reduced to ASCII-art, or the Windows 3.1 program manager -- how could I not be thrilled and excited to suddenly find Kai's colorful user interfaces that invited you to play and explore? He was so ahead of his time. It wasn't about productivity, but about a once-in-a-lifetime eye-opener, view into the future, and a message that there's so much more to discover and learn.
Now this may all make me look like a stalker
But this was and still is Kai's brilliance to me. Thank you!
Gerrit
