Every morning I sit down and check out what’s happening in the world. Aside from the news, I check about thirteen blogs that I read daily. I have a facebook, a myspace, a livejournal, and twitter. Back in the day, I used to have a blog, and an orkut account.
At any given time, I can talk to people around the world, be it through instant messaging or irc or email or forums. I can shout my most mundane thoughts to the world at large in a dozen different ways.
None of this seems as cool or magical to me as radio.
My dad has been a ham since decades before my birth. Every time I visited his house, I was transfixed by the room that had all his Ham Radio Stuff – radios, equipment, computers, microphones. Long before we owned a computer that had the internet, he was talking to people across the globe. And it wasn’t all just vapid chatting, either; I was particularly impressed with the SKYWARN program, giving advance warning in nasty weather and potentially saving lives.
As cool as it all seemed, it was also intimidating. You had to have a license to be a ham, and I only visited every so often. I never pursued it myself, even when they got rid of Morse code proficiency requirement. Still, I felt cool riding around town with him, in a car topped by antennas, even though people invariably slowed down ahead of us, thinking he was a plainclothes cop.
Then I became a DJ.
I was in college and my school’s station needed music majors to run classical shows. The two years I spent as a DJ were quite possibly the most fun years of college. This wasn’t some modern, computer-run station with pre-ordained playlists; this was on the fly, I hope you know a seven-minute piece because if you run over the next DJ will strangle you with your headphones kind of DJing.
This was real power! And it was in real time. When a snake was loose in the station, callers let us know if it was poisonous. A man got mad at me on Halloween because I had already played Night on Bald Mountain before he had turned on the show. And when a hurricane hit, we were in the station the second power was back on campus, reading out the emergency information even as it was printing.
Don’t get me wrong; I love the internet. I live on the internet. But radio will never become some background noise for me. Every time I’m in a new area of the country, I’m flipping through, trying to find something new and unique. I fear, though, that it’s a dying medium, even to us geeks, as stations become more and more homogenized.
So what about you? Are there any hams out there? Any of you adding your own touch to the local airwaves? And if so, got an internet feed?
Oh, and if not, why not? It’s seriously fun, I assure you.
About j
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fo-W1wDXHA
I tried to find the Patty and Selma clip, but this will do.
I’ve had my amateur radio license for… 12, 13, 14 years or so? My email address is my callsign, and I use it as a username for… pretty much everywhere. It’s never taken, and I legally own it, so why not.
Graham´s last blog post..I have a PHB2 and you don’t!
KF4EQO here. I’ve been a ham since 1995.
Interesting, when I first saw the title I thought it would be a post talking about War Pig Radio, a new geek/gamer streaming internet radio station put together by Ed Healy (Atomic Array) and Dan Repperger (Fear the Boot). Check it out at http://www.warpigradio.com.
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler´s last blog post..The Lure of the City
@ Graham – I always wondered about your email address… now I know!
@ Daniel – I will ignore this blatant promotion since it’s geek and radio related.
Heheheh…
@Graham – My dad uses his callsign as his username everywhere, too! And I had never seen that episode, believe it or not.
@Sid – I just read today that hams can sometimes reach the International Space Station. Ever chatted with an astronaut?
@Daniel – I guess I’m a bit of a nostalgia dork, as I haven’t been able to find an internet radio program or podcast that really draws me in. I’m willing to keep trying, though.
@e – Well, I did tell any DJs to give me links. So I’m at least partially to blame, sigh.
@e – Actually, just to be clear, it wasn’t promotion. I’m not affiliated with War Pig beyond being friends with the founders. I mentioned it because of it being geek and radio related.
@J – I personally can’t stand the current state of radio, so podcasts and internet radio have been heavensent for me. I can get my content without any extra annoyance. I DO miss sometimes the old college radio station from UM, at least how it existed when I moved here. These days it’s more or less the same, but the quality has dropped and the DJs, oh the DJs.
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler´s last blog post..The Lure of the City
@J -
Yeah, it’s possible to hit the ISS. On a clear day, if you have a good angle, and you know where to broadcast, at least.
Heck, it’s easier to hit the sky than it is to hit anywhere on earth, at least long distance. No skip to worry about.
…anyways…
I agree with you on the radio thing. Luckily, I have a great local rock station, so I’m doing alright. But I wonder what you think about the Slacker Personal Radio service (comes with a recommendation from Wil Wheaton, and the online version is free). It interests me far more than most online stations (last.fm bothers me for some indiscernable reason), but I can’t use it here in Canada.
Hell, I should just set up one of my other browsers with a Slacker homepage and a proxy server, so I can try it. Chrome might just get relegated to media player…
Graham´s last blog post..I have a PHB2 and you don’t!
I did a classic rock show on my university radio (Subcity Radio at Glasgow University) for a couple of years. It was great fun.
I used to take the piss a lot though. There was one day I was a freshman, I turned up so hungover that I played the whole of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidi back to back with the fully 1812 Overture. Just so I didn’t have to think.
Most my shows were more polished then that though.
Had a lot of laughs though.
Oh, and the cheesiest name in rock: the show was called Arockalypse Now.
Hammer´s last blog post..The State of the Art
@J – I’ve never tried to talk to ISS but I did attempt to reach MIR when it was still in orbit. As Graham mentioned it’s mostly just knowing when the ISS is close by. That and the crew listening on their equipment.
@Graham – Well, I’ve never spent more than five minutes on Slacker Radio. My first impression was that it was still pretty generic, and somehow lacking that personal touch that you get when a person says, “This is awesome, give this a shot” (I’m NOT referring to ultra-commercial DJs who talk in those goofy voices, btw). But I’ve had a station playing for awhile now, and it is better than what I’ve been getting locally, that’s for sure. So I’m not in LOVE with it, but I might throw it on from time to time.
@Hammer – Your show was awesomely, awesomely cheesy! I cracked up when I read it. And yeah, the old joke is that if a DJ puts on Freebird, they have to make a bathroom run.
Being a primarily classical DJ, most of my pieces were way long, so it was a matter of finding the right ones that would fit to make an hour, or two hours. Whenever I had to sub a “regular” show I felt overly stressed, because there was so much more searching, and I was less familiar with the library. 