Haven't felt like this since River Phoenix passed away. I saw Heath last time I was in New York, it was last November. I was there for Ad:Tech. 

I fell in with a crew I shouldn't have, ended up at a place I shouldn't be, with a bunch of other people who shouldn't have been there, and kept to my little crew, as I rubbed elbows with the drinking, smoking, you-name-it-ing NYC underground. It lessens the shock a bit. Most of that scene looked as StereoLab described SF in 1999 - "So much beauty, that just won't last...". 

I remember identifying with him in Ten Things I Hate about you, a modernization of the Taming of the Shrew. I identified with him in a Knights Tale, The Four Feathers and even Cassanova. I wouldn't admit it though. I rarely admit that I take after certain fictional characters. Well, I'll admit Catcher Block from Down With Love.  

I'm saddened by the loss. I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain, but I think it hits my rental que this weekend. Expedited in honor of his only Oscar nomination. 

Considering his only unpublished post production work is the role of The Joker in the upcoming Batman film Dark Knight, it looks like Brokeback is the only Oscar nomination he'll have achieved in his palpably unfinished lifetime.

Sid 

A friend of mine, she's a professional in communications (and leisure), had LinkedIn as a client and asked me to join her network so she could learn more about the user experience. I had actually joined during the Social Network boom of 2002/3 and quickly forgot it in the sea of new friendster look-alikes.
My profile hadn't been updated in years. I added her as a colleague, kicked out some old business contacts and searched for current friends and colleagues. It was like arriving at a formal. Being a veteran of the friendster beta and an avid tribe.net user I had considered online social networking to be useful only for dating. I had met an ex girlfriend that I was with for 3 years on friendster. The story was always so hard to tell because it lacked romance to say we met on friendster and it was kitschy as internet dating gets. Conversely, it's great to say you connected with a business partner or firm on LinkedIN. I would rather say I found my employees, contractors and business partners on LinkedIN than from a staffing agency or *gasp* craigslist.
Anyway, now I get business partnership pitches, job offers and network inquiries weekly. It's really a phenomenon. I wasn't aware how hire-able I was. I don't want this to seem like an ad for LinkedIN but the combination of LinkedIN and Splendora makes a decidedly upscale social networking experience- and I wanted a reason to show off my LinkedIn profile Check me out:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sidhubbard

Us magazine published an article titled "Angelina's Twisted Double Life" that really made me sad. First, Angelina Jolie has a multifaceted life. Claiming she has a double life is like mistaking a diamond for piece of glass. She balances so many facets no ordinary person is willing to take on. It's no small job to be an ambassador, care for children, manage a marriage, manage the media, be elegant and beautiful, and maintain an amazing posture through it all.

When asked about heroin she said "...I've been fascinated by it. I'm not immune, but I won't do it now, at all." It's courageous to display vulnerability and choice in a statement like this. Often times she speaks and I don't think people can hear the strength and equanimity. She was quoted when picking up pax from the orphanage "Photographs make him upset.I'm sorry for bringing this into his life.". Here she shows care for the child and takes responsibility for what the paparazzi is doing. She didn't say "I'm sorry you a$%ho$%es won't leave us alone". She's fully aware that the paparazzi are a machine and not ever going to go away. She also appears prepared to teach pax about them.

She's intent upon exploring motherhood, in her own fashion. The last thing any mother would want is to have the media evaluating her choice of family design. Considering there is no good yard stick for family design in today's media, I'd like to see how she does. There seems to be a trend towards having children later in life and that creates issues when you have one and find you want many. I think she's pioneering a beautiful design.

I'm at Cafe Flore right now. My ex-wife introduced me to it in 96. It was decidedly less-crowded back then. The whole vibe of the city was more about art and less about activism back then. As everyone knows now, beteween 96 and 2000 most of the art collectives moved on and many of the independant artists as well. Buildings like Defenestration on Mission at 7th are all that remain of that once wicked-deep artist vibe. Defenestration is the building whith the exterior covered with furniture that appears to be escaping the inside.
}}they just served me my liver pate crostini and french onion soup. The crostini at Reverie in Cole Valley is so much better. Floré just shouldn't serve this. My hunger is the only reason I'm not sending it back{{
Anyway, it seems like these days I work on the web 24/7. When I arrived in the 90's I thought that by now my life would be about the art I was making, and it is, for the most part. Software architecture is an art. I do consider myself an artisan and my greatest works have been "hand-coded". Like my relevancy engine. Both labour of love and work of art, it's able to determine what words define an article or page on the web, regardless of language, in about 18 seconds. I consider it one of my very earliest masterpieces. 
I wonder what became of my friends who left in the wave of art refugees in the late nineties. It's so easy to loose track of people. Weak connections add a lot of strength to a network, but socially, they are the easiest ones lost when there is a cultural shift. I find that the question is the best testament to their art. For imagining them doing what they set out to do, and finding what they set out to find, inspires me and gives me hope that I'll find what I set out for. A home, love, a family, social impact and glowing legacy.

I still have a bit of an empty nest feeling with my office. 1k ftsq is a lot of space for just two people. I miss my early dev team. Last Feb through August I felt like Captain Jack on the high seas of web 2.0 opportunity. Now there's a new whiz kid startup every day, and a bunch of silly ideas creating a lot of distracting noise. I believe that this will play out much like the first web. The revenue focused startups will form the next wave of bedrock and integrate the ui innovations of the deceased. It seems what the early web was expecting from ad revenue, the second web is expecting from market data. I just can't see how user generated random market data can be worth what is being spent on it. Models like Flixster and yelp baffle me. I'm looking forward to filling this office back up, shifting gears and heading up a sales team. Come April first, Captain Jack is back. For now, it's very quiet. Like the calm before a storm. 
Speaking of the calm before a storm, I'm really excited about the third web. I think it's about 2-3 years out. With Adobe's launch of Apollo and the coming XUL revolution, the third web's theater will not be the browser. It will be the platform. It's not suprising to hear that Google is working on a phone, or thin clients are hitting multiple industries. Sooner than you think, you'll be looking back and saying "remember when you needed a browser to access the web?"  It will all seem so primitive. Even though there is so much happening in the web, it's all just a ui lab, researching what's next.