NilObject(me)

So. Who is this NilObject?

Nobody is entirely sure. The available evidence suggests a human being with an unusually persistent interest in making old computers do things they were never supposed to do.

At some point, ordinary curiosity escaped containment. Since then there have been Macintosh computers, ancient operating systems, resource forks, graphics formats, programming languages that remember when floppy disks were expensive, and an alarming number of projects which began with the words "I wonder if..."

The resulting person is best understood not as a finished product, but as a long-running beta release.

Selected characteristics

• Will investigate an obsolete technology purely because it exists.
• Considers documentation an interesting starting point rather than a final authority.
• Has a suspicious fondness for things with resource forks.
• Can turn a five-minute job into an architecture.
• Occasionally turns the architecture back into a five-minute job.
• Has never met a weird technical problem that didn't look at least slightly fun.

In the unlikely event of a wake

If this page is ever displayed at an Irish wake, please don't make a fuss.

Put the kettle on. Find the good whiskey. Tell the stories that get less accurate every time they're told.

Someone will eventually say, "He spent an awful lot of time messing around with old computers."

At which point the correct response is:

Then raise a glass and carry on. The object wouldn't want a memorial service to interfere with debugging.