I have so many memories, from just three weeks ago before my talk, when we ended up chatting about mainframes, to reviewing a Balisage paper and thinking "this MUST be Michael", or to an Extreme Markup conference a long time ago where I ended up at the same table as him but felt too intimidated to say as much as a single word. Or reading through his Aparecium code earlier this year, thinking about how to properly port it to eXist-db and wanting to discuss it with him.

And, of course, listening to his many closing keynotes at Balisage. I don't know about how other speakers felt, but I would anxiously wait for him to weave my talk into his, wondering how he would do it (and fearing he wouldn't, which was silly but there you are), and I always felt amazed by how effortless it was when he finally did. As Eric van der Vlist put it, he made us all feel like rock stars.

There is a huge hole in the world now.

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Attaching a few pictures. The artistic merits are questionable but Michael is very much how I remember him now.