ben's people links

	Cassandra was my last major relationship - we were a couple from 1998 to 2002.
	Jack is a nice person, coffee expert, a great storyteller and had a business producing a VRML2 authoring tool. We enjoy quibbling about all sorts of things, like being vegetarian (he based on ethics, myself on ecology). He likes trains. Someday i want to create a virtual landscape for him with lots of trains on it. I haven't seen him since he moved to Maui in 2000.
	Mantid is a friend i met in Kyoto in '97. He's organized lycaeum trip reports, written an article on salvia divinorum for TRP, and worked as an underappreciated slave at a Japanese ISP. We had matching MiniDisc recorders and other shared interests and musical tastes. He's a 'web professional' in Seattle now.
	Josh drives a large dark BMW and used to have a business doing realtime 3D modeling. He likes to play soccer and is an extremely nice person. We share some musical tastes and (before he burned out) an affinity for 3D stuff. He's been promising to have his personal page back up soon... for several years.
	Frederick works and lives in Santa Clara, and is a fun, enthusiastic 3D kinda guy. I like him even though he drives one of those vehicles too evil to mention.
	I knew Aix back in the early 90s in Mill Valley, then visited him in Kyoto in '97. He was into some delightfully weird stuff that i like a lot, like Timewave Zero. I lost touch with him for years, until 2002 when he found me again - he's in Arizona doing a variety of graphics, web and video work including being a rave VJ.
	Mariva and i both have planetarily unique names - though hers is also uniquely palidronomic! We share tastes and points of view. I've admired her eloquence and unabashed geekiness.
	Nino was a cognitive science student at Berkeley with a lot of shared interests. We also grew up in the same rural backwater area of Hawai`i. He wrote cool essays that analogize related entheogens to fruit, and discussed Maslow in reference to the MDMA experience. After school, he worked on the peninsula doing speech recognition ("VUIs"). Recently he decided to tackle something more fulfilling than VUIs, so he's going back to school for Landscape Architecture.
	Nino's brother Sunny is an American otaku who's friendly with a great sense of humor. Curiously, he's never left the Big Island, so i only get to see him when i'm back there. He's been webmaster for UH Hilo for many years.

	Wende is many things; a poet, a street-wise nomad, a world traveler, a deadhead, a gypsy in a peculiarly American sense. She's magically appeared and helped me so many times in my life that i think of her as my fairly godmother.
	Cher is a scenic painter for movies, videos, TV etc. and an awesome cook, living in Santa Cruz. We were a couple in 1996, and stayed good friends.
	Adam is a damn good writer that i talk about elsewhere on this site. He's never quite managed to escape Los Angeles, where he sends out delightful dispatches to his friends. I'm still in shock that his first website went away, but there are fragments left in its place.
	Lora is a friend, mother of 5 and community activist. I was a family friend for years when they lived in Marin County. Then for a few years i mostly had contact with her son Gary who kept me in touch with what it's like to be a teenager. They moved to Arizona in 2001.

there are some people that i've been
out of touch with for so many years,
but i still remember fondly..

	Gavin is a really friendly, smart guy who is not sure what to do with his life. He's a damn good programmer that i once had the pleasure of working with, at Sense8 in 1995-96. He helped organize I really enjoyed berating him about his angst.
	Zeb was my first major relationship, 1990-95. I call her my "absurdist hindu gothpunk ex-spouse". Here's an example of her poetry. She was the most intense personality i've ever met, challenging me to stay deep and not sell out - although she did at one point say it would be OK for me to get a car..
	Keoki is a another old friend in Hawai`i who had a medievally-themed site which seems to have vanished.
	Aya was raised in Osaka, was married to Aix for 5 years, and now lives in New Zealand, teaching Japanese among other things. She's totally bilingual with no accent, and has an endearingly cute personality. Last i heard, she's developed a personal relationship with Jesus (?)
	Misty (what happened to her Well account?) worked in VR in mid-90s, notably during the dramatic upheaval of Worlds Inc. ... what is she up to now? I think she's now working for a trade show/publishing company. She never sent me the picture of her she promised, so i've surreptitiously acquired one.
	Stephen [was holoscope.com] is an architectural synergist among other things - tons of shared interests and he's a really nice guy to boot! He moved up to Seattle, and i sadly never succeeded at going up to visit him.
	Julie is a radiant spirit and a legendary web goddess. Justin has some nice descriptions of her from a few years ago. Her writing moved me deeply, but i would get all tongue-tied and awkward when i tried to communicate with her. This website, washed ashore, was inspired by her writing.
	Cliff is a SF-based network guy. He used to have an impressively personal site, but it appears to have slimmed down. We shared a lot of cultural references and a passion for the web. Back in 1997, we spent hours in the middle of night co-browsing the web... a 90's-style surfing buddy, if you will.
	Heather is smart, stylish, and an expert on 80's culture. One of my favorite people to get email from, we met around 1993 in Marin, and dabbled in email friendship for a few years after.

people around me on friendster, 2003

Much like my graphs of 1997, i tried hand-graphing the friendster network around me. At the end of July with only12 friendsters, this is only a tiny fragment of the 110305 people in my 'personal network'. I scribbled until there was no room left to cram in more connections. This needs to be automated!!

people from around my part of the web, 1997

I tried to graph a section of the web around me, but oh, what a tangled web it was. Click this image to see the full maps i made. Curiously, these folks had a lot in common. Most of them were professional web designers, many were bay area ravers, and many owned "vanity" domains consisting of their first name or nickname..

i also keep track of people from my childhood -
to try to find our where they are now, and
see which are present on the net.