Panda

David ‘Panda’ Mery

david@gizmonaut.net

Blog and site updates – gizmonaut.net/blog/   rss

Blog entries

suspicious clothing

Wear the t-shirts!

suspicious clothing

Articles

EXE Magazine

Semantical, 'pataphysical and other occurences

  See my recent pictures on Flickr. (Some older collections: signs, 'Pataphysical events, Korean dreams, a few pandas and demonstrations.)

  A smartphone, a Bluetooth headset and a multitool are some of the essential tools often hanging from my batbelt. I sometimes carry other stuff.

  The list of feeds I try to keep up with is available in Bloglines.

  Some of my bookmarks are posted to del.icio.us.

  Review my cv. Find me on LinkedIn

‘gizmonaut’

The name of this site – a portmanteau word made from ‘gizmo’ and ‘astronaut’.

The first use of the word ‘gizmonaut’ appears to be in ‘programmers are almost universally gizmonauts’ by Lou Grinzo (Source: EXE Magazine, November 1999) and, with a different spelling, in a book titled The Gismonauts written by Keo Felker Lazarus (Published in 1981 by Modern Curriculum Press; ISBN 0695416073)

A ‘gizmo’ is ‘1. something whose name is either forgotten or not known [syn: dohickey, dojigger, doodad, doohickey, gimmick, gizmo, gubbins, thingamabob, thingumabob, thingmabob, thingamajig, thingumajig, thingmajig, thingummy] 2. a device that is very useful for a particular job [syn: appliance, contraption, contrivance, convenience, gadget, gizmo, widget]’ (Source: WordNet)

‘What we do know about the origin of ‘gizmo’ is that it is a relatively new word -- in fact, if you've been using it all your life you can't be over 50 years old. ‘Gizmo’ seems to have originated in the U.S. Navy during or shortly before World War II, where it was used as an all-purpose synonym for ‘whatchamacallit.’ The postwar return of draftees to the civilian world brought the word into general usage, and postwar authors from Saul Bellow to Max Shulman popularized ‘gizmo’ in the late 1940's and early 1950's.’ (Source: The Word Detective)

Reclaim your civil liberties

Many thanks to everyone visiting this website. It has been developed while listening to Minimum Design Music by Nahmi Moon. The self-portrait at the top of this page is based on a picture of Blow-up by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer exhibited at the Seoul Media City. Thanks to Orsetta for the ‘panda’ nickname. If you're using Firefox, check out Frode's Hyperwords.