In a sad twist of fate, Ian was killed at 74 years of age, struck by a car while riding his bike in Greece. The Economist and The Times both published touching obituaries for Ian. This quote is from the Economist:

Bikes rarely let him down. Escaping once from spear-throwing Turkana in northern Kenya, he felt the chain come off, but managed to coast downhill to safety. He crossed China from north to south—in 2006, at 72—with just three brake-block changes, one jammed rear-brake cable and a change of tape on the handlebars. In his book, “Into the Remote Places” (1984), he described his bike as a companion, a crutch and a friend. Setting off in the morning light with “the quiet hum of the wheels, the creak of strap against load, the clink of something in the pannier”, was “delicious”.

I hope to find a copy of his book.

If you’re interested in the technique, you should check out the making of the video, which includes a cameo by visualization superstar Aaron Koblin. Oh, and they open sourced the data. Holy crap that’s awesome. Go Google, Radiohead and Aaron.

Which is obviously some sort of spam, possibly from a XSS hack. This reminds me of the first effective email worm I ever experienced, where someone I thought highly of (a professor at MIT) sent me a link about photos of Anna Kournikova, and of course I clicked… never again.

Until now. It goes to show how important the sender is in propagating a worm; a really intelligent spammer would take this into account, use the email/social network address book to determine who the likely influenced people are, and message these people first.