Flutterby™! : Randy Pausch's last lecture

Ripping off a MetaFilter entry feels like it's cheating, but the entry on Randy Pausch's last lecture deserves some wholesale distribution. Randy Pausch is dying of liver cancer. He's also a virtual reality pioneer, university professor, and lots of other stuff. On September 18^th he gave a lecture on "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". You can read the Wall Street Journal's summary, but I started up the direct feed on a side computer, in VLC, to listen to it, and it's grabbed me.

For Eric it's a good look at someone who's found tremendous fulfillment in teaching and academia. For me it was a reminder of the earlier days of real time computer graphics. It's got some good notes on parenting, kids, dreams, computer graphics and programming, all sorts of cool stuff. It's funny, poignant, and if you were going to waste somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours on a rented movie, this'd be worth a watch instead.

And he considers the Alice project his professional legacy, if you're interested in VR or teaching programming that looks worth checking out.