The last lecture of Randy Pausch, or making the most of childhood dreams

via /.: Randy Pausch is a VR researcher who's done all sorts of cool stuff, and is now dying of pancreatic cancer at age 46.

This is a video of his last lecture: http://cmu.edu/uls/journeys/

in which he talks about his childhood dreams (including experiencing zero gravity and working as a Disney Imagineer), how he's achieved them (and what he got out of them), and what it's been like to help his students achieve theirs.

It's about 2 hours long, and I haven't watched the whole thing yet. But it's worth watching even if you don't give a rat's ass about VR: he's a good speaker, it's not at all a technical talk, and seeing someone with a terminal illness that can still be this cheerful is, well, inspiring and thought-provoking.

Here's a YouTube version of the above talk, cut into 10-minute segments: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2271329759182712042&q=Randy+Pausch&total=19&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

and here's a news article that talks about the lecture, if you don't have 2 hours to spare:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07262/818671-85.stm

Randy's home page: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

Update: OK, I've watched the whole thing now. Seriously, go watch it. I was truly moved.