Randy Pausch (1960-2008) was a computer-science and human-computer interaction professor at Carnegie Mellon University. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer and given only 3-6 months to live, he gave a now-famous speech called The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. The lecture is a fun and inspiring account of how Pausch achieved (most of) his childhood dreams, from experiencing zero gravity to working for Disney. After being uploaded on YouTube, the talk went viral and Pausch went on to appear on Oprah and write a best-selling book.

Watch the video here. It’s pretty inspiring, and the man’s positivity while living with the knowledge he’s going to die has to be seen to be believed.

Thanks to Jason for sending me the speech and quote.

– When I started this site, my little Shaolin Monk character was meant to appear in lots of comics. Surprisingly, this is only his second appearance. Here’s the first one way back in the third comic.

– I posted an article yesterday featuring October’s readers of the month. Go have a read and meet some fellow Zen Pencils readers with some great stories.