Matters Audio

I've been having lots of fun playing with Echolink, a very clever VOIP system for ham radio operators. It astounds me that I can have "armchair copy" through my laptop and a 24 kbps dialup... if you're a ham and want to chat, give it a try and email me for a sked! Most users are Windoze-based and use the client software from the main Echolink site; those of us on Macs use EchoMac instead. There are over 2000 stations on at any given moment, many of which are repeaters... meaning that I can walk around (inside Wi-Fi range) with my untethered iBook and converse with someone driving to work in Tokyo. Ain't technology wonderful?

Another percolating project, in addition to a book proposal currently underway, is to make an audiobook of Computing Across America. This has languished for years due to serious publisher problems (don't get me started on that topic or this will turn into a rant), but there's a lot of life in the story (and the themes of freedom-security and breaking the chains are as timely as ever). Maybe we can even get it into the catalog of Simply Audiobooks. (Full disclosure: that's an affiliate link.)

In the spirit of the picture in my previous update, here is another from 20 years ago... a photo of me on the Winnebiko in the Austin American-Statesman:


In other news...

Items sold since last entry:

Genome by Matt Ridley - $5.25 to St. Germain, Wisconsin

New goodies on eBay:

Sanseido デイリ コンサイス Japanese-English Dictionary.

Site updates:

Another Miles with Maggie chapter has been added to the collection... "Junkyards and Tollbridges"