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Subject: 
More info on James Jessiman
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw
Date: 
Wed, 8 Dec 1999 02:47:53 GMT
Viewed: 
876 times
  
A while back I received an email asking for more information on James
Jessiman.  I thought about what this person wrote, and it would be nice to
get some more info on James for the site, so people can have a better idea
of who he was. Below is the letter I received and my reply to it.  Please
reply with thoughts on how we can improve the memorial on ldraw.org.

-Tim Courtney
  ldraw.org Project Coordinator

http://www.ldraw.org
http://www.zacktron.com

AIM:   timcourtne
ICQ:   23951114

At 11:35 PM 11/17/1999 , I wrote:
At 11:11 PM 11/17/1999 , Jerry Rutherford wrote:
    Greetings,

    Until 20 minutes ago I had never heard of LDraw, nor of James
Jessiman. Having seen your site, and downloading the software (still
need to install it...) I was wondering about the creator... what he was
like... education, etc.

    I went to the memorial page and could only ascertain that he was no
longer with us, had died of an unknown cause in 1997, and was born in
1971. It would be nice to have a face to go with the name... some
background information... something to give myself, and others like me,
a feel for who this person was. (And in a spiritual way... still is.)

I understand your desire to know more about James.  His legacy lives on
for those who knew him, like myself, and I hope the site provides all we
can to keep him alive in the hearts of all LDraw users.  Unfortunately,
none of us have a picture of James.  As far as I know, no one from the
online Lego community has met him in person.  He lived in Australia and
died of flu complications at the age of 25.  We don't have a whole lot of
background information either.

Certain members of the community [1] do have his parents' email address
and keep limited contact with them.  They have approved of our continued
use of his work and the community works to respect their rights with the
software.  None of us have real solid background information about James,
besides those who knew him well.  I unfortunately only had a small amount
of contact while he was still alive.

    These are just my thoughts... as someone who jumped into the middle
of something with no idea of it's history. Why was it written? How long
did he spend on it? What other works may exist? See my point? It would
have been nice to say, "Thank you" to James... but my feeling is that
there should be something on the memorial page that tells more about
"the man" and what he was like.

I don't know the answers to all of those questions.  I know that it had to
be written before summer 1996, because that's when I first encountered the
online Lego community and models designed in LDraw.  I did not become an
LDraw user until mid-97, about the time when James passed away.  He was
helping me a little on grasping the program when he died.  He wrote it to
be able to share Lego model designs with others through a simple file
format.  The parts library is expandable and continues to expand today
with the LDraw development group at lugnet.cad.dev.  It is an extremely
versatile file format and parts library which has served as a base for
other cad programs such as MLCad and LeoCad.

I'm not disagreeing with you on the memorial page.  For the most part,
when creating ldraw.org, I took the original memorial site and copied it
as well as cleaned up a bit.  No new information was added.  Its been a
couple years, and for the most part the community has moved on.  He is
still missed, but now his memory lives with us in the program he wrote and
the impact it has had on us.

    Take care,
    Jerry

I'm sorry I couldn't fulfill the answers to your questions.  You bring up
an interesting point and something that I probably should look into.  I
wouldn't mind getting more information on who James was.  I don't believe
we can get a picture, though.

Thanks for writing, enjoy LDraw!

[1] in this case, the original L-CAD members (now lugnet.cad.dev)



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