Today I was informed of the death of one of the most brilliant men I was ever allowed to meet and so I am sitting here with tears in my eyes, trying to honour him.

Manfred (Majo) Heinze was what I would call a ‘Renaissance Man’. Journalist, Author, Producer, Artist, Designer, Blogger, Apple-Lover, Creator of Digital Landscapes, Entrepeneur, Porsche Lover, Motor Cyclist, Cat Owner, Douglas Adams Fan and most of all a lovely, lovely man.

I met Majo for the first time almost twenty years ago at the monthly jour fixe of the ‘Tuborg Box Cologne’, then the coolest, artiest and best BBS (Bulletin Board System) in the whole of, er, Cologne. There he sat, with his ubiquitous fag in hand, dispersing knowledge, wisdom and witticisms with a maturity far beyond my years. For some reason or other I was privileged to become a guest blogger on his inimitable and utterly brillant website ‘Industrial Technology & Witchcraft‘ that for years became my first point of call on the internet and just reinforced my belief that this chap had an intellect that I wanted but likely would never achieve. He nevertheless let me blog about my little world in North-Otago and so I met him again, 15 years later, at the dinner table of another Renaissance Man. He hadn’t changed a bit and was as brillant and cantankerous as ever. That by now he was the unofficial voice of the German Apple user community and that his Mac-essentials blog was the most successful Apple Blog in Germany didn’t much phase him. He always embraced new challenges and projects, whether it would be steampunk in cyberspace or trikes, his curiosity was unstoppable.

The world has lost one of its unique talents, and I am mourning his passing.

I imagine Mayo now in a mixture of an Ian Banksian and Douglas Adamsian paradise with embarassed drones serving him cigars while he is holding conversation with a family of pens with a PhD from Harvard while in the background a large steam punk ship crosses the horizon, playing Rudi Carrell.

And so I  will honour him by posting one of his last youtube picks.

R.I.P. Majo. Fare Well and Thanks For All The Fish.