Dasher

David MacKay gave a talk today on an idea of his. Called Dasher, it is meant to make writing more efficient. I encourage you to try it! Its fun, its conceptually cute, and, hell, it works!

David's work reflects his ideas. His book is free to download, his software free to install. He hates the concept of patents, and dislikes the current American government. Most of all, he is very undiplomatic in declaring his ideas. All this is quite evident from his website. But I realized the extent of simplicity of the thoughts only when I met him.

During the talk, his enthusiasm was palpable. Even infectious. His eyes would widen, and shine, as he would explain some interesting idea. He would rise on his toes to impress some important problem on the audience. He speaks quickly, in the pleasing British accent (quite a welcome change from the American accent, where every sentence ends in a question mark). With the exciting gadgets, and the numerous demonstrations (he 'wrote' using his breath), the talk was quite well received.

There was visibly greater energy in the presentation hall. And even greater in the Wireless Foundations after the talk, when we discussed some ideas with him. I got more work done in the evening than usual!


Quotable quotes:

"Writing is navigating through a dictionary of all possible books"
"Let them come and sue me, nothing would make me happier" (regarding a question on possible patent infringement)
"Dasher comes with Linux. But you can download it from my website, if you are unfortunate enough to use Windows"