This was his workbench. In many ways, it doesn't look much different than mine. Grant was an electrical engineer, like me. Gone suddenly before 50 from an aneurysm. I can't help but wonder if it looks like that now, filled with unfinished projects. Projects that only he understood the complexity of, and few would have the hope of picking up where he finished. Projects that will never be completed, now that their creator has died.
Grant, and Myth Busters were an inspiration to me as a young engineer. He was barely my age on the show, but influenced an entire generation of future engineers.
I checked his Twitter feed. Barely a bitter or angry tweet. None of the toxic outrage so prevalent in society today. The world lost a decent person, and a brilliant engineer.
Nobody knows their time. That what I leave unfinished would only be personal trivialities, and not angry tweets. That I would be able to have that impact on the next generation.
My father started his career as a software engineer in the 1970s. He worked at places like Raytheon and DEC and a few others. He started his career using punchcards, and ended his career building websites from a laptop. I am grateful that from a very young age he let me ask about and use anything he had in his home office, starting with a kit computer in the late 1970s which I learned BASIC on.
My father died in 2011. I flew back home to be with my mother during that time. It was a really hard time, made much harder because my only son was one month old, and my father never got to meet him.
In that week at home, my mother asked me to go through my father's computers and help her figure out if there was anything she should know about or do anything with. Going through his computers was a profound experience. I got to see all the projects he was working on; the ones we all knew about because they were his professional projects, the ones I knew about because we always had technical conversations, and the ones no one knew about because they were just little side projects for fun and curiosity.
I spent several days going through his computers, because it was like lingering in one last conversation with him. In the end, there wasn't much to share with my mother, for the reasons the parent comment mentioned - most of the projects had too much personal context for anyone else to pick up. But that experience had a huge impact on me. I realized that if I died that day and someone went through my computer, they'd find all kinds of projects that would never see the light of day. I was a hobbyist programmer at that point, and going through my father's computer motivated me to stop working on so many different hobby projects, and pick one or two to really build out. I realized I had developed meaningful programming skills, and I could probably build something that others would find useful.
Since then I have done that with a number of projects. If I die today, you could still find many little projects that won't ever see the light of day. But you'd also find some highly impactful projects, which I am really proud of. I miss my father every day, but I my life would also be on a very different trajectory if I hadn't learned what I did from his passing.
I see a nodemcu, some sparkfun and adafruit gear. I see the node sitting on some plug in headers over a breakout board.
That looks like things I like to play with. I'm not an electrical engineer, but am an earth scientist , engineer, programmer, and electronics hobbyist. This man was inspiring. What a loss to the world his passing is.
> Barely a bitter or angry tweet. None of the toxic outrage so prevalent in society today.
It’s pretty rare you can find celebrities who are balanced, genuine and avoid taking to outrage social media. I sadly had to unfollow Adam Savage years back because his negative tone and constant angry political outlook. That was not the content I was looking for when I originally followed him.
I normally don't care about celebrity deaths but this one really has me sad. I know a lot younger people were influenced by him but he had a positive influence on me even thought I was already well into my career as an engineer. He embodied a true engineering spirit, and watching him on TV would make me reflect and kindle the engineering spirit of my own. Even if my job wasn't as sexy, was in a sea of cubicles and the biggest explosions were a small circuit fuse burning off.
We care about celebrity deaths because our instinctive brain sees them as someone familiar. Someone that you knew, a member of your tribe. Even if that person doesn't even know you exist. It is also a reminder of our own death. Specially when it is someone young that looks fit and all.
I saw him as an engineer before being a celebrity. I'm like you deaths of celebrities although sad tend to be of vapid people. But Grant was a scientist who inspired many. Just reading the comments here it's amazing the impact he had in such a short time.
Grant was part of a group of people who showed us how engineering could be more than cubicles and paperwork, and inspired my childhood dreams which turned into fulfilling careers in both tech and entertainment. To this day Grant and his coworkers are my 'what do i want to be when i grow up' answer.
Armed with science, engineering, and curiosity, the Mythbusters crew inspired a generation. Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way.
Still to this day, my friends and I consider the Mythbusters as the final word on so many "myths".
Grant's clever use of robotics, sensors and code opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. I still remember the first time I read a temperature sensor on an arduino. Here I was, interacting with the real world, using just a few components and some code... solving no problems but feeling invincible nonetheless.
Thanks Grant for inspiring me, and many more like me. There are so few that inspired so much.
>Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way.
Mythbusters was a great and inspiring show, but they weren't always great at following the scientific method IMO. It was always more about cool hacks than scientific validity. They decided people being injured by bullets being shot into the sky was a myth mostly because they couldn't locate the bullets they fired into the sky, in spite of talking to one of the leading experts on the phenomenon, talking to a doctor that performed surgery on people injured by bullets fired into the sky, and discovering there are people in prison for seriously insuring people miles away by, once again, shooting bullets into the sky.
That was before Grant's time though, he was awesome.
This makes me want to take more risk in life, to live a bit fuller and care less about money.
Even at 26 I still don't have a great way to digest loss like this. The loss of someone who I genuinely looked up to and whom had significant impact on decisions I made my life. Who I thought about when I really hated myself and felt that I didn't belong in engineering at college. Especially Grant, since he was one of my childhood "heroes" who never lost his luster or genuine character.
Life really is short. Plan for tomorrow or live for today. There is a balance, but I think many engineer types skew much too far into the planning, not enough into the living. I've gone to a lot of funerals and it is always a constant reminder.
Not a lot of genuine people in the entertainment business for sure. Its tragic that such a great thinker is lost, especially for our generation 50 feels so young, who knows what he could have done with more years.
Brain aneurysm is truly something terrible, I lost a friend to it a couple of years ago. (She was 22 at the time and in good health). She just woke up one day in the middle of the night with a headache and had to vomit. On the way to the hospital she fell into a coma and never woke up. Really scary.
My significant other (23 at the time, otherwise perfectly healthy) felt a sudden headache one evening. Since it didn't stop, she was taken to the emergency room immediately, where they've dismissed her with "menstrual problems".
A day after that the pain didn't stop, she ended up in the hospital, and had a (fortunately successful) brain operation some days later. Luckily it was in an accessible place, so she ended up with no apparent long-term damage.
Definitely a terrible situation to be in. About 4% of people have it, and a small percentage of those only find out when it bursts.
It is something terrible, and really scary. My best friend at the time suffered one at 23 years old. He eventually recovered but he suffered a huge loss of concentration capabilities and had to drop from college eventually. He also fought with speech impairment for many years but with a lot of training he was able to recover 99% of it.
Normally I ignore the "rich and famous" obits, however Grant's passing is really quite upsetting. MythBusters meant a great deal to me during my college years, right as I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go in life. The build team was always the best.
With the loss of Jessie in 2019, it's been a hard year for Mythbusters.
See with the Mythbusters (sidekicks), I can't really see them as rich; I mean I'm sure they made some decent money off of it, but I doubt it set them up for life and I wouldn't be surprised if they got screwed over in that show in favor of Jamie / Adam. I never heard why they were let go / quit the show, although I've always suspected it was because the show just wasn't as popular anymore.
I also rewatched all of Mythbusters early in college as I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to be. They really showed the fun to be had building wacky projects!
Grant and I lived in the same building in San Francisco for a while and I met him at the HOA-run functions. Always a delight to talk to about his crazy path through life. He was a good man and I'm really sorry to hear of his passing.
Their efforts pushed me along the path I am on and made my life measurably better.
Grant was core to that. Grant made my life better.
I got to meet him one at a Maker Faire. They say, never meet your heroes. Grant was the exception to that rule. Shaking his hand was everything I expected. He was kind to some rando and seemed happy that he was able to make a better life for some stranger he'd never met.
I'm so grateful for his efforts. I am so grateful for his humor. I am so grateful for his joy.
For several years Grant had the only other master/slave robot arm I could find on youtube. I was so excited when I found one and saw it was his...
I felt a real connection with him, even though I didn't know him personally. It's been a long time dream of mine to be on battlebots, and I treasure the Deadblow T-shirt I got there about 20 years ago. This truly hurts.
Brain aneurism. The thought has always kept me up at night, and this only serves to make the fear worse. Poor guy, I really looked up to him. This really puts a damper on my mood which had been on an upswing recently
One of his most recent creations was a Baby Yoda! So sad to hear of his passing, like many others here I was inspired by him and still aspire to be a creative coder and builder like he was.
Wow. When I was a kid Mythbusters was one of the only TV shows I watched, and Grant was my favorite on the B team. It was one of the few shows really encouraging kids to do science.
My dad got us direct tv back in 2000. I watched a lot of MTV, Cartoon Network and Discovery Channel (where mithbusters was broadcasted for us, Brazil). I already had a taste for science and engineering, I use to love Beakman's World (when I was even younger). Is great to see how many people, like me, were inspired by people like Grant. He will be missed, for sure. You should see some of his videos in robot fight.
Had to do a double take on this one. He always seemed like a genuine and kind person, it's weird to see "Grant Imahara" and "Dies" in the same sentence.
[+] [-] bjt2n3904|5 years ago|reply
This was his workbench. In many ways, it doesn't look much different than mine. Grant was an electrical engineer, like me. Gone suddenly before 50 from an aneurysm. I can't help but wonder if it looks like that now, filled with unfinished projects. Projects that only he understood the complexity of, and few would have the hope of picking up where he finished. Projects that will never be completed, now that their creator has died.
Grant, and Myth Busters were an inspiration to me as a young engineer. He was barely my age on the show, but influenced an entire generation of future engineers.
I checked his Twitter feed. Barely a bitter or angry tweet. None of the toxic outrage so prevalent in society today. The world lost a decent person, and a brilliant engineer.
Nobody knows their time. That what I leave unfinished would only be personal trivialities, and not angry tweets. That I would be able to have that impact on the next generation.
[+] [-] japhyr|5 years ago|reply
My father died in 2011. I flew back home to be with my mother during that time. It was a really hard time, made much harder because my only son was one month old, and my father never got to meet him.
In that week at home, my mother asked me to go through my father's computers and help her figure out if there was anything she should know about or do anything with. Going through his computers was a profound experience. I got to see all the projects he was working on; the ones we all knew about because they were his professional projects, the ones I knew about because we always had technical conversations, and the ones no one knew about because they were just little side projects for fun and curiosity.
I spent several days going through his computers, because it was like lingering in one last conversation with him. In the end, there wasn't much to share with my mother, for the reasons the parent comment mentioned - most of the projects had too much personal context for anyone else to pick up. But that experience had a huge impact on me. I realized that if I died that day and someone went through my computer, they'd find all kinds of projects that would never see the light of day. I was a hobbyist programmer at that point, and going through my father's computer motivated me to stop working on so many different hobby projects, and pick one or two to really build out. I realized I had developed meaningful programming skills, and I could probably build something that others would find useful.
Since then I have done that with a number of projects. If I die today, you could still find many little projects that won't ever see the light of day. But you'd also find some highly impactful projects, which I am really proud of. I miss my father every day, but I my life would also be on a very different trajectory if I hadn't learned what I did from his passing.
[+] [-] anakaine|5 years ago|reply
That looks like things I like to play with. I'm not an electrical engineer, but am an earth scientist , engineer, programmer, and electronics hobbyist. This man was inspiring. What a loss to the world his passing is.
[+] [-] JohnBooty|5 years ago|reply
They said he had one of those personalities where he made you feel special. Not through flattery; in a truly genuine way. We lost a truly good guy.
[+] [-] slau|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodesocket|5 years ago|reply
It’s pretty rare you can find celebrities who are balanced, genuine and avoid taking to outrage social media. I sadly had to unfollow Adam Savage years back because his negative tone and constant angry political outlook. That was not the content I was looking for when I originally followed him.
[+] [-] aortega|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GloriousKoji|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewstuart2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corpMaverick|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghughes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emag|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixelface|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glouwbug|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alupis|5 years ago|reply
Still to this day, my friends and I consider the Mythbusters as the final word on so many "myths".
Grant's clever use of robotics, sensors and code opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. I still remember the first time I read a temperature sensor on an arduino. Here I was, interacting with the real world, using just a few components and some code... solving no problems but feeling invincible nonetheless.
Thanks Grant for inspiring me, and many more like me. There are so few that inspired so much.
Rest in peace.
[+] [-] phaus|5 years ago|reply
Mythbusters was a great and inspiring show, but they weren't always great at following the scientific method IMO. It was always more about cool hacks than scientific validity. They decided people being injured by bullets being shot into the sky was a myth mostly because they couldn't locate the bullets they fired into the sky, in spite of talking to one of the leading experts on the phenomenon, talking to a doctor that performed surgery on people injured by bullets fired into the sky, and discovering there are people in prison for seriously insuring people miles away by, once again, shooting bullets into the sky.
That was before Grant's time though, he was awesome.
[+] [-] d33lio|5 years ago|reply
This makes me want to take more risk in life, to live a bit fuller and care less about money.
Even at 26 I still don't have a great way to digest loss like this. The loss of someone who I genuinely looked up to and whom had significant impact on decisions I made my life. Who I thought about when I really hated myself and felt that I didn't belong in engineering at college. Especially Grant, since he was one of my childhood "heroes" who never lost his luster or genuine character.
[+] [-] jeffrallen|5 years ago|reply
I'm about double your age and don't either. And I would be surprised if someone double my age claimed to.
Live every day like it could be your last. Don't hold grudges, and tell people you love them.
That's the best we can do. And it is apparently what Grant did, as his colleagues all have fond memories of him.
RIP, Grant. You were cool.
[+] [-] snarfy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chansiky|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doopy-loopy2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mseepgood|5 years ago|reply
Depends on what type of risk. Some risks make you die earlier.
[+] [-] woutr_be|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] input_sh|5 years ago|reply
A day after that the pain didn't stop, she ended up in the hospital, and had a (fortunately successful) brain operation some days later. Luckily it was in an accessible place, so she ended up with no apparent long-term damage.
Definitely a terrible situation to be in. About 4% of people have it, and a small percentage of those only find out when it bursts.
[+] [-] ainiriand|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codecamper|5 years ago|reply
Seems like there is something called a Magnetic Resonance Angiography.
[+] [-] Aeolun|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShakataGaNai|5 years ago|reply
With the loss of Jessie in 2019, it's been a hard year for Mythbusters.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertoandred|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pininja|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericbarrett|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Balgair|5 years ago|reply
The whole crew were, are.
Their efforts pushed me along the path I am on and made my life measurably better.
Grant was core to that. Grant made my life better.
I got to meet him one at a Maker Faire. They say, never meet your heroes. Grant was the exception to that rule. Shaking his hand was everything I expected. He was kind to some rando and seemed happy that he was able to make a better life for some stranger he'd never met.
I'm so grateful for his efforts. I am so grateful for his humor. I am so grateful for his joy.
Thank you Grant.
[+] [-] pontifier|5 years ago|reply
I felt a real connection with him, even though I didn't know him personally. It's been a long time dream of mine to be on battlebots, and I treasure the Deadblow T-shirt I got there about 20 years ago. This truly hurts.
The 2 videos for the curious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7l4YE2K-HI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XChu20hTxU
[+] [-] donatj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajeet_dhaliwal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oski|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallabie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmlundberg|5 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Continues
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2732442/mediaviewer/rm1680690432
Edit. The episodes are free, at https://www.startrekcontinues.com
[+] [-] JackFr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phantarch|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/grant-imahara-dead-my...
[+] [-] pininja|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/I7P4frD_GiE
[+] [-] hasperdi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chillee|5 years ago|reply
What a tragedy.
[+] [-] atum47|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mockapapella|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmastrac|5 years ago|reply