R: future of Looper's Delight (long)

[Massimo Liverani <mas.liv@libero.it>]

So i dind't personally know Kim, and i joined the list only one year ago, 
also 
if i know some persons involved.
I'm from Italy, and i'll be very happy if the spirit of Kim will survive 
also 
in this list that is made by fantastic people.
So a dont't really know what to say to you...you have all my 
understanding, 
your word let me belive that this world,
if there are people like you, is a better place and kim will surely 
survive...
so let's go on! 

ps: excuse for my 'not perfect' english

Massimo    

>----Messaggio originale----
>Da: violet@missviolet.com
>Data: 29/06/2010 7.27
>A: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
>Ogg: future of Looper&#39;s Delight (long)
>
>I've been trying to write something about this all week, but finding time
>and strength has been hard.  It's difficult to write this even now, but I
>feel compelled.  I don't know how eloquent it will be, since I don't feel
>particularly coherent right now, so bear with me.
>
>I know many of you are reeling right now and worrying about what's going 
>to
>happen with Looper's Delight.  Will it fall apart?  Will it be abandoned?
>I know it's hard not to fret, but please try to have faith.  I need
>everyone to, because...
>
>What's going to happen now is exactly what was going to happen anyway.  
>For
>a long time Kim had been frustrated that the site was such a mess and he
>had no time to work on it.  Even the times he did update it, he had a 
>tough
>time because he didn't know much about HTML; adding even the simplest 
>thing
>was hard for him, which is why the site is so jumbled and inconsistent.
>
>He'd been begging me for more than 10 years to help him clean it up.  
>Every
>now and then, I'd make graphics for him and help with layout on the site
>using my awesomely bad circa 1998 web skills (the CD ad banners, the
>navigational buttons ... ugh, please don't hurt me!  They were cool at the
>time, I swear!).  But the main reason I never fixed the site for him was
>because it needed to be switched over to CSS, and *I* didn't really have
>the skill to do what needed to be done, either.  But it was something we
>talked about many, many times.
>
>I've worked on several sites since then and I know much more about site
>development than I used to.
>
>Two days before Kim died, I told him I had finally begun site 
>restructuring
>for Looper's Delight.  He was SO HAPPY!  I can't even tell you how excited
>he was.  For anyone who doubts that Kim still had a passion for LD, I can
>tell you that the passion never left.  The fire I saw in his eyes that
>night, the joy ... I will never forget that and I wish you could have seen
>it.  He was simply stretched thin and his job at Nvidia was so stressful,
>there wasn't enough time for him to do everything he wanted. I watched him
>wrestle with that for so many years.  You have no idea how frustrated he
>was that he couldn't do everything he wanted to do.
>
>In the past I had added an interface to the site to make updating the news
>section easier for him, but he never had time to learn how to use it.
>(Currently, you'll notice the news page is giving a server error; that's a
>result of my moving the interface UNDERNEATH the running site when
>restructuring began in order to hide it so that the existing site can 
>still
>viewable while I work on the re-org.)  I told Kim that since I already 
>knew
>he probably wouldn't have time to give me much input or work on the site
>even with the interface added, I was also going to join the list so I 
>could
>get input from the community directly and get you involved.  He laughed 
>and
>said yeah, that was probably a good idea!
>
>So the upshot is, Kim and I had already agreed that I was going to take
>over the day-to-day management of the site and seek input/help from the
>community.  I had hoped he would be here to guide me because I don't 
>really
>know the sorts of things that are of interest to you, but sadly, well, we
>see how that went.  But I was going to rely on the community for much of
>that anyway.
>
>So together we can do this.  You know the sorts of things that are of
>interest to loop artists.  I know what Kim's vision was, I know the
>principles that were important to him, because they're the same principles
>by which I run my OWN sites and mailing lists.  We were in absolute
>agreement on how mailing lists should be run - and as you've seen for
>years, he took great pains to structure the list so that it would be able
>to run without him personally babysitting it - and we also had many
>wonderful discussions on how we felt news sites should be operated.  I 
>will
>miss those discussions so much.
>
>You may not have Kim any more, but I hope you'll find that his spirit 
>lives
>on in me.  We were two halves of the same whole.  (Although I am,
>admittedly, the more verbose half.)  I hope you can trust that I will take
>the site in the direction Kim would want it to go, because I watched him
>care about it for the past 14 years and I know how much it meant to him.
>
>The trouble for me at the moment is that having lost Kim now, I won't be
>able to get to the actual redesign as quickly as I'd wanted to.  I was
>working on it, and now I'm reeling and life as I knew it has come to a
>screeching halt.  Not only am I too heartsick to focus on much of anything
>right now, but I'm also going to have to work on keeping Kim's personal
>sites - KimFlint.com and Annihilist.com - alive in his name.  This is on
>top of the work I have to do for other sites on our server and dealing 
>with
>my own website, Undented.com.
>
>I haven't given much thought yet to how I'm going to keep up with it all,
>but I do have people to help me through this, and I have all of you to 
>give
>me input when I'm sorting out the LD stuff.
>
>But for now, things are going continue the way they were and would have if
>Kim were still here: the list will continue running the way it has been,
>and I will be reorganizing the site behind the scenes and getting some of
>you involved when I'm ready.
>
>I hope this gives you some hope for the future during this painful time.
>
>Oh!  I nearly forgot ... although the way the site is physically run is
>going to change dramatically (in that it will be able to be updated
>regularly when I'm done with the re-org, yay!) the overall look probably
>won't change much.  Originally I had wanted to come up with a new design -
>nothing overly flashy, but something better than what's there now - but 
>now
>that Kim has gone, his mother has asked if we can at least keep the entry
>page similar to what it's been all these years because it comforts her and
>makes her think of Kim, so we're going to do that.  But it will also
>feature a prominent memoriam to Kim.  I don't think anyone would argue 
>that
>that's the way it should be.  So it isn't the overall look that will
>change, but the way the content is organized and updated, which will make
>it much more exciting and interesting for everyone.  I'll be relying
>heavily on the community to help with that.
>
>And I'm going to clean up the archives.  When I looked at those, I was
>shocked by all the spam!  I wish Kim had told me that was happening - I
>could have cleaned that up.  Eesh!
>
>So the site isn't going to suddenly turn all crazy, just be more coherent
>and easier to navigate and update.
>
>Okay, I'm done now, and very tired, and I may not have the energy to
>respond to replies, but I *am* here and will be reading as much as I can.
>
>Violet
>xoxox
>
>