A visit to uWink

I did something fun and useful today, taking a jaunt down to LA for lunch with an old friend (adding in the meeting of an industry celebrity in the process). I went down to visit long time friend Brian Yoder who I hadn't seen in quite some time and get some idea what uWink is all about.

As a result, I got to meet Nolan Bushnell, which was quite a treat. We had a short conversation which somehow covered a wide variety of things including his participation in creating Chuck E. Cheese (I'd somehow missed that part). Also a quick discussion about FORTH and our seemingly shared view that the language is great for rapid development, but that customization (if you've seen one FORTH, you've seen one FORTH) made it very difficult to bring in new people (not to mention that the growing system memory sizes made FORTH less necessary). He also mentioned involvement in something I can't seem to find a reference to, an early eighties geographical database. I have a big thing about maps and such (I once thought I'd be a Physical Oceanographer, essentially a deep sea cartographer) and this stuff still fascinates me.

Our lunch (at some unnamed Thai joint -- we went in through the back door) was pretty good. Lemon grass soup with shrimp (a lemony broth with mushrooms, various floating green stuff, chunks of ginger and shrimp) and a very mild yellow curry and chicken. We spent most of the time talking about current and future mobile platforms including SK-EarthLink. We wound up in a weird conversation where Brian was worried about things his phone makes impossible (or nearly so) from an interface perspective, while I was concerned about things I feel all phones make impossible from a cost or interoperability perspective. Identity management and user control are a big part of the missing picture. We have a long, long way to go.

It was a useful discussion and it was also nice to see that part of LA again, it's been quite some time since I was down there. Then again, I'd love to sit in on an after hours conversation between Brian and Nolan. I know how Brian tends to wander, and the results can often be quite interesting (Brian is at heart a philosopher who does engineering). One quick five minute view of Nolan Bushnell is not enough. I want to see them together, bouncing off one another. Adding my own spin of course.

It was a lot of fun and I hope to do it again.