6 ms·

RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

58 points by fraserad 13y ago

swamp40 13y ago
What an interesting story. Did anyone here ever meet him?
- Nicholas_C 13y ago
  Makes me wonder how many other people there are like this living incredible lives fit for a movie. And here I am staring at excel.
  - pravda 13y ago
    Maybe 1/10 of 1%? The rest of us are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.
    - barrkel 13y ago
      I thought that sentence was too good for an offhand comment, and sure enough, it's a quote from "The Green Door", a short story by someone called "O. Henry". Not suggesting you're stealing it, probably it is more famous to you, but I'd never heard it, nor of the story, nor of the author before.
      - pravda 13y ago
        I thought he was more well-known! His most famous short story was probably "The Gift of the Magi" but I quoted "The Green Door". http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/ohenry/the4m15.htm http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/ohenry/the4m15.htm
  - cmicali 13y ago
    Many lives are incredible, sometimes small details, sometimes extreme events, but only a few make it a point to broadcast and paint that persona of themselves, real or not.
- bakedjake 13y ago
  I knew him from SEO land - we met in London in 2002. My favorite thing about Martin is that he would call (always on the phone, never by email) out of the blue with completely random requests. The last one I got from him, two weeks before he died, was to run a Hitwise report on some random website. Because it was Martin, you never asked why, but he was already ready to return the favor in any way he could. I remember when Shak told me that he died. It was a sad day indeed.
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  Martin and I crossed paths a few times, at first jousting and later as friends. He was truly a character. Someday I'll tell the story of how one of his unwelcome SEO explorations led to us setting a creative snare. But that story will keep for a few more years.
  - Killah911 13y ago
    That's a story I'd like to hear. I have this inherent expectation that the "best" SEO's are super technical and figure out effectively doing SEO utililizing tech mere marketers can't reverse engineer easily, but given the rangenius episode, I wonder if it's really true.
leterter 13y ago
Small planes are death traps...
- work_account_1 13y ago
  Probably still safer than driving though.
  - afterburner 13y ago
    Maybe not, found this on http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/1521885/ http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... : "How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours of general aviation. It is fairly safe to assume that when a plane crashes and someone dies, everyone on board dies. By contrast, the death rate for automobile driving is roughly 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles. Car crashes don't always kill everyone in the car so let's use this statistic as provided, which is for an individual traveling in a car rather than for the entire car. So considering that the average airplane accomplishes a groundspeed of at least 100 miles per hour, those million hours of flight push the occupants of the plane over more than 100 million miles of terrain. Comparing 16 fatal accidents to the 1.7 rate for driving, we find that flying is no more than 10 times as dangerous per mile of travel. And since most accidents happen on takeoff or landing, a modern fast light airplane traveling a longish distance might be comparable in safety to a car. By Philip Greenspun at http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety (whoever that is, I don't think he is making things up)" EDIT: fyi, "general aviation" refers to non-airline civilian traffic
    - hindsightbias 13y ago
      As a private pilot, small a/c flying is as safe as you make it. As much as pilots understand the concepts, they tend to fall back to baser instincts when an engine goes bad at the worst time.
      - afterburner 13y ago
ThomPete 13y ago
I knew Martin very well. He was part of a design agency I build in 2005 with Morten Lund and a brilliant designer called Michael Nilsson. He had built a site called Vacation Valley that we helped him redesign and after that we joined forces. Together we where involved in a bunch of fun projects (among others zecco.com which was originally build out of Copenhagen Denmark by hello) He was a young and very very smart guy and knew a lot of people and was a great thinker and yes SEO wiz. Who knows what he could have been today. I often think about him.
whatevsbro 13y ago
> When he realised I wasn’t a mod, he didn’t want to know me. So if you weren't useful to him, you were nothing to him.. > Martin seemed much more interested in helping others than amassing personal wealth .. but naturally, he just loved helping people. This guy just waltzed into famous people's offices and added them to his network, and now he's left everyone posting adoring memorials about him, gushing about what a charming and wonderful person he was. Now there's a god-mode-sociopath if there ever was one.
- ThomPete 13y ago
  He was 23 and he WAS very helpful I can attest to that.
- djtriptych 13y ago
  You can't understand human nature well enough to be sure that he has a god complex and you don't have an insect complex.
- throwawayaccnt2 13y ago
  The paragraph after is even more telling: This was a common theme when I spoke to people about Martin: he didn’t network in the normal way; instead, he was ruthlessly selective about who he wanted to befriend and charm. Soon enough, Dave and Martin were friends; on one occasion, Dave had just arrived at an SEO conference in San Jose and got a call from Martin at 2 AM: “Am I okay to sleep on your floor? So you can get me a free pass? Free bedroom?”—he expected a lot from his friends and in return he “was loyal – like no one else”. Also, the fact that he apparently made his fortune through SEO should if nothing else make people suspicious of him.
blackdogie 13y ago
23 , just too freaking young. RIP Martin
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
japaget 13y ago
OT: The page was very hard to read on my iPhone. Black text on a dark blue background with light blue headers does not make for the best reading experience. I never knew of Martin until today but his untimely death was tragic and I am sure many people miss him.

58 points by fraserad 13y ago

swamp40 13y ago

What an interesting story. Did anyone here ever meet him?

Nicholas_C 13y ago
Makes me wonder how many other people there are like this living incredible lives fit for a movie. And here I am staring at excel.
- pravda 13y ago
  Maybe 1/10 of 1%? The rest of us are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.
  - barrkel 13y ago
    I thought that sentence was too good for an offhand comment, and sure enough, it's a quote from "The Green Door", a short story by someone called "O. Henry". Not suggesting you're stealing it, probably it is more famous to you, but I'd never heard it, nor of the story, nor of the author before.
    - pravda 13y ago
      I thought he was more well-known! His most famous short story was probably "The Gift of the Magi" but I quoted "The Green Door". http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/ohenry/the4m15.htm http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/ohenry/the4m15.htm
- cmicali 13y ago
  Many lives are incredible, sometimes small details, sometimes extreme events, but only a few make it a point to broadcast and paint that persona of themselves, real or not.
bakedjake 13y ago
I knew him from SEO land - we met in London in 2002. My favorite thing about Martin is that he would call (always on the phone, never by email) out of the blue with completely random requests. The last one I got from him, two weeks before he died, was to run a Hitwise report on some random website. Because it was Martin, you never asked why, but he was already ready to return the favor in any way he could. I remember when Shak told me that he died. It was a sad day indeed.
Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Martin and I crossed paths a few times, at first jousting and later as friends. He was truly a character. Someday I'll tell the story of how one of his unwelcome SEO explorations led to us setting a creative snare. But that story will keep for a few more years.
- Killah911 13y ago
  That's a story I'd like to hear. I have this inherent expectation that the "best" SEO's are super technical and figure out effectively doing SEO utililizing tech mere marketers can't reverse engineer easily, but given the rangenius episode, I wonder if it's really true.

leterter 13y ago

Small planes are death traps...

work_account_1 13y ago
Probably still safer than driving though.
- afterburner 13y ago
  Maybe not, found this on http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/1521885/ http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... : "How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours of general aviation. It is fairly safe to assume that when a plane crashes and someone dies, everyone on board dies. By contrast, the death rate for automobile driving is roughly 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles. Car crashes don't always kill everyone in the car so let's use this statistic as provided, which is for an individual traveling in a car rather than for the entire car. So considering that the average airplane accomplishes a groundspeed of at least 100 miles per hour, those million hours of flight push the occupants of the plane over more than 100 million miles of terrain. Comparing 16 fatal accidents to the 1.7 rate for driving, we find that flying is no more than 10 times as dangerous per mile of travel. And since most accidents happen on takeoff or landing, a modern fast light airplane traveling a longish distance might be comparable in safety to a car. By Philip Greenspun at http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety (whoever that is, I don't think he is making things up)" EDIT: fyi, "general aviation" refers to non-airline civilian traffic
  - hindsightbias 13y ago
    As a private pilot, small a/c flying is as safe as you make it. As much as pilots understand the concepts, they tend to fall back to baser instincts when an engine goes bad at the worst time.
    - afterburner 13y ago

ThomPete 13y ago

I knew Martin very well. He was part of a design agency I build in 2005 with Morten Lund and a brilliant designer called Michael Nilsson. He had built a site called Vacation Valley that we helped him redesign and after that we joined forces. Together we where involved in a bunch of fun projects (among others zecco.com which was originally build out of Copenhagen Denmark by hello) He was a young and very very smart guy and knew a lot of people and was a great thinker and yes SEO wiz. Who knows what he could have been today. I often think about him.

whatevsbro 13y ago

> When he realised I wasn’t a mod, he didn’t want to know me. So if you weren't useful to him, you were nothing to him.. > Martin seemed much more interested in helping others than amassing personal wealth .. but naturally, he just loved helping people. This guy just waltzed into famous people's offices and added them to his network, and now he's left everyone posting adoring memorials about him, gushing about what a charming and wonderful person he was. Now there's a god-mode-sociopath if there ever was one.

ThomPete 13y ago
He was 23 and he WAS very helpful I can attest to that.
djtriptych 13y ago
You can't understand human nature well enough to be sure that he has a god complex and you don't have an insect complex.
throwawayaccnt2 13y ago
The paragraph after is even more telling: This was a common theme when I spoke to people about Martin: he didn’t network in the normal way; instead, he was ruthlessly selective about who he wanted to befriend and charm. Soon enough, Dave and Martin were friends; on one occasion, Dave had just arrived at an SEO conference in San Jose and got a call from Martin at 2 AM: “Am I okay to sleep on your floor? So you can get me a free pass? Free bedroom?”—he expected a lot from his friends and in return he “was loyal – like no one else”. Also, the fact that he apparently made his fortune through SEO should if nothing else make people suspicious of him.

blackdogie 13y ago

23 , just too freaking young. RIP Martin

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

japaget 13y ago

OT: The page was very hard to read on my iPhone. Black text on a dark blue background with light blue headers does not make for the best reading experience. I never knew of Martin until today but his untimely death was tragic and I am sure many people miss him.