Nick Nicholas' Handy List of WebHead Mates & Acquaintances

From High School

Tim Gabric

Timbo wishes he was "leftie postgraduate student rabble"; instead, he's a hard-working CompSci PhD, although I've recently heard disturbing rumours to the effect that he is currently getting a life. A trend that must be quashed and halted post-haste! (Update: Tim has indeed successfully quashed those rumours, by becoming duty programmer at Computer Science...)

Carl Rosman

Carl Rosman and I were thick as thieves in high school --- all the way down to competing for primacy in the HSC examinations (he won). What I know of classical music, I owe to him (including my Mahler fixation, which he has meanwhile gotten over). Much wiser than I was at the time, he studied music instead of engineering at university, and is now based in Sydney with the Elision contemporary music ensemble. The review's mention of Carl embracing and high-fiving after a performance is not the Carl I remember --- which is probably for the best. :-)

Bert Thompson

Ælbright, Son of Thompe, whom I've known since we were both wee whippersnappers (1985), doesn't have much of a home page, since he feels he has better things to do with his time than be a WebHead. So he goes out and... gets a job in the real world?! And then, comes back as a research fellow to Academia?! Whatever happened to his plans to take over a small Central African nation? Tut tut, Bébért... (The more so now he's left for the UK to join the suits in pursuit of money.)

Michael Winikoff

Misha (I'm reasonably certain I'm the only person I know to call him that, and I only did so in high school) is a mega-brilliant pianist --- which is why he did a PhD in CompSci, natch. A good thing he had the Melbourne Uni Choral Society to keep him within the world of the cultured. (And of the married!) Michael, now working as a researcher in West Virginia, has succeeded in life in two goals at which I have failed. The first was to become a composer. The second was to grow a convincingly full beard...

From Undergrad: In Melbourne

David Barnes

Of the notorious "Gang of Six" (or was it five), David has a sense of humour best described as... sobering :-) . He is very tall, very married to Lisa Crosbie, and very enamoured of ascii cows... Now working in Sydney with telescope thingies.

Tim Bell

Ain't academic life grand? In 1992, he's my closest confidante; in 1994, he makes the mistake of doing CompSci Honours ("The Degree of Death"), so I only see him twice in the entire year. It's 1995, he's supposed to be bludging through his Masters', and I've only seen him once so far this year. (The fact that I never venture over to the CompSci building may have something to do with that; I'm waiting for

Warwick Harvey

Yes, that grin on his home page pic (unchanged from his time as a CompSci PhD at Melbourne) is for real. Don't see much of WarFish these days (especially now I'm on a different continent) --- but he's boisterous enough to counterbalance me any day (along as I'm bound and gagged :-) .

Andrew Malone

Straaange things happen when Andrew and myself are together on social occasions. The best description of these straaange things is that they're loud, involve a lot of hyperactivity, trekkerei, and/or theological debate, and are usually accompanied by bouts of boisterous singing. Plus, of course, Young Master Andrew (who did Science/Engineering and thence the leap across to Linguistics all one year ahead of me) is The Originall Begetter of the Goatee, leading Fiona W. (yet another of the "Gang of Six") to conclude that everyone on campus will soon end up with one. (And wot's wrong wivvat, I say!)

Libby Reid

Libby now calls herself Elizabeth, which I cannot fathom, because she's not much of an Elizabeth, but as a Libby, she's fabbo! Libby is an ex-{rabid Treknik}; a Redhead of Champions; as bubbly as all buggery; as erudite on matters net.cultural as someone who keeps getting published in net.culture journals should be; and a good friend. She is now Married... With Kittens in L.A.; I hold her to her pledge of homing after a decade...

From Undergrad: Online

Ivan Derzhanski

Master of languages artificial and not, erstwhile denizen and terror of Edinburgh, now whipping the Bulgarian Computational Linguistics curriculum into shape... conclusive word from the laboratories...)

Richard Kennaway

Richard Kennaway is a legend (who gives good hugs), and don't let anyone (especially him!) tell you otherwise! I mean, where does one start... Esperantist, Lojbanist, Klingonist, conlangist (Richard maintains a home page for artificial languages which is a sine qua non), long-suffering member of soc.bi where people seem to go out of their way not to notice him :-) (just as well, what with the chocolate-cuddle-avalanches to be had there), person who reads out my translations of Shakespearean sonnets on British telly... I mused aloud at the Microsoft Institute, one day, looking up his home page (and no, I'm not saying this to annoy you, Richard): "Hm. He's kinda cute. In fact, I could go for him..." To which my colleague Mark Dras replied "Would this be before or after you found out he was your long-lost twin brother?"

Mark Shoulson

Mark, whom I've known on the net since 1991, is my fellow traveller in Artificial Languages. We've both done Esperanto together, then Lojban together, then Klingon together (which I guess makes me my fellow language warrior.) He is currently deputy grammarian on the Klingon mailing list, and runs the Klingon Language Institute Web Page. He has also proofread (read: grammatically critiquing) the long-suffering (and now finally released!) translation by Andrew "Guido#1" Strader and myself of Hamlet...

Veijo Vilva

Veijo is a very good Lojbanist (certainly more conscientious about it than I have been); maintainer of the comprehensive Lojban Home Page; and has managed to call his department's Linux box after a character in a Lojban series of stories he's been contributing to (documents on them are available gzipp'd)...

From Postgrad: Linguistics

Anthony Jukes

Far be it from Anthony to expostulate on his web page on anything --- particularly that his wit is more acerbic than a thousand car batteries, or that he has displayed more insight into how utterly impractical I am than a gaggle of Jungians. Anthony is a sweetie in the clothing of a curmudgeon, and a dear friend.

Leslie Layne

Leslie is k00l in many respects: being an adamant Southerner in a world taken over by Damn Yankees; being admirably blokey while still having to point out to everyone in Australia that in the States women can be called Leslie; keeping the wonderment of linguistic discovery about her even though she is using lambda calculus for syntactic evil instead of semantic good; being sprightly nasty even at her most compassionate. Whether her wombat fixation is something as laudable as the rest of these traits is something I will let the reader judge.

Tania Stahan

One would think that this lanky, basketballing, rock-climbing, effervescent and wide-eyed acolyte is the antithesis of me. One would be wrong, for I walked around for months proclaiming that we were in fact the same person; I was only disabused of this when it was pointed out to me (slowly and deliberately) that Tania is what I would like to think I am like, and not what I have actually ended up. Tania now ably fulfils the task I once took upon myself of annoying the Melbourne linguists out of their complacency.

Marija Tabain

The loud and perilously effervescent Marija, pride of phoneticians and doyen of derring-do, was an Honours student in Melbourne University Linguistics (where she worked on old Aboriginal guys saying "yaaaaanyuwaaaa") before taking off for the greener pastures of Macquarie Instrumental Phonetics, where she completed a PhD on fricatives. Whensoever Marija and Nick get together, whole suburbs are evacuated! And a warning should be posted on the streets of California, too, for if all goes well Mish-Mash will be taking up a postdoc in UC Santa Cruz in '99.

From Postgrad: Outside Linguistics

George Baloglou

For the past two and a half years, George has been my co-translator of the Byzantine Bestiary, and an invaluable sparring partner on matters of Byzantine literature, Greek linguistics, Greek national identity, and up-to-the-minute Greek slang. He has also procured for me more references than is humanly decent. George is an amateur in the best meaning of the word, whose dedication to his avocation commands my admiration.

Rosie Jones

Rosie is the ideal person to do the Busstop with while waiting at a bus-stop, for a bus, at 10 p.m. on a weeknight. Sydney's loss is Pittsburgh's gain now that she has gone over to the States to study. She's long overdue for a return visit...

The Gang at Microsoft Software Institute

Legends, each and every one, except for the ones that aren't. It was an enjoyable two months I spent working with them in '95, though I don't want to make a habit of this 'real-world' stuff. Featuring, in the (then) Distributed Computing Unit, Steven "Garfield" Sommer ,Jon "He always was such a quiet lad... then he discovered motorcycles and leather" Tidswell, Brent "Dr Seuss Impersonator" Curtis, Richard "I took a paycut to come here" Buckland --- all ably administered and admonished by Dr John "I went on leave for three months. I came back. My wife was pregnant :-) ??" Potter. And in the Natural Language Unit, Alpha "Subtle" Luk, Mark "You know you want to get up and dance" Dras, Mark "My, the interns are getting louder and louder" Lauer (now in business in the UK; why he expressed admiration for my command of linguistics, I'll never know), and last, hence anti-least, Adrian "Fuck! That just gives me a big purple hard-on" Tulloch --- all under the alternatingly cherished and dreaded management of Dr Robert "If you start singing along to the Village People, I'm going to fooking hit you", 'I'll just get a photo up on my home page that looks nothing like me", "Don't call me Bobbie", "Captain Bobbie" Dale.

Andrew "Guido#1" Strader

Mighty Klingonist, even mightier eccentric and all-round enfant terrible, I am priviledged to have worked with him on the Klingon Hamlet. All I need do now is convince him to do a PhD in Linguistics...