I remember doing what he did to JSTOR, to mytopo.com in 2001. This was a perl script that fetched topographic map tiles, and stitched them together to make a big map.
I printed that map, and brought it on a boundary waters trip.
I remember feeling puzzlement when I saw the north-south tile boundaries didn't quite match.
I remember thinking and testing, and realizing this must be due to the map projection error.
I remember feeling satisfaction using a pencil to calculate how to adjust for the projection. I remember feeling elation when the edges matched exactly.
I remember feeling fear, knowing I was breaking rules. I was doing all this from the office of my employer, after hours.
I remember feeling excitement because of the fear.
I remember the the look of concern on my girlfriend's face when I described the accomplishment and showed her the map. "Oh honey," she said, "Did you hack?"
Half a decade later, I remember writing python scripts to scrape color names from paint manufacturers, to build the first dataset for colr.org. Also in perl.
I remember researching whether color names could be copyrighted.
I remember feeling rather fearless after learning they could not. I remember feeling distinct pleasure at adding "cadbury purple" to the dataset. I remember doing this from home, with no connection to my employer.
I remember porting colr.org to web.py. I remember learning web.py at the same time I learned python, and feeling thankful to Aaron for creating it.
I remember my friend Hamid. He was from Iran. We met in college, studying electrical engineering at a state university. It was not exactly MIT.
Hamid and I were roommates for a year or so. He was older than most US college students. This was because Hamid had lived in hiding for 8 years, during the Iran-Iraq war.
To avoid conscription, his family sent him to live with an uncle in another city. He lived and worked in the basement of the uncle's electronics shop, repairing TVs and other appliances. After the war ended in 1988, Hamid's family got him out of the country.
Hamid rarely talked about this time in his life. But I remember one time someone asked him what that war had been like.
He replied, "You look out the window, and you see the missile come. You see it hit your neighbor's house."
Hamid had a tough time with the math courses required for electrical engineering. He outright failed a few, but he re-took them and passed.
He was a genius in the lab. He could, and would, help anyone with their hardware labwork. He didn't just help, he taught. He was patient and kind. He understood analog electronics with an instinct strengthened by years of practice.
While we were roommates, he took a VCR out of a dumpster, and fixed it. That VCR had been smashed to pieces.
Hamid made really good milk tea.
After he graduated, Hamid was hired as an RF engineer. He spent years driving around the US building cell networks. He told me much of his work involved correcting poor antennas designed and installed by incompetent engineers. "The company is so desperate to build, they hire anyone with a pulse", he told me.
Hamid broke his nation's laws. If he had been caught by the Iranian government, he would be imprisoned or executed.
I remember following Aaron's drama-filled departure from reddit, and some of his further escapades. I remember feeling like this dude was amazing, but maybe too intense. I remember hoping for his peace and happiness, but fearing it might not be in the cards. Aaron lived in interesting times, and he was devoted to stirring up more interest.
I remember the cold feeling in my stomach when I read about the JSTOR arrest. I thought about the topo maps, and the colors.
I remember feeling less regard for Aaron, because he had been caught doing a bad thing. Why did I feel this way?
People break laws, and laws break people.
The law broke Aaron. He was not made of iron. He was made of person.