My real name is Robert Dinse, but I have used the handle of 'Nanook' since 1985. I started a single line BBS in 1982, initially not by intention. When I was in Jr High and High School, and intermittantly for several years thereafter, I ran an AM pirate radio station. For those unfamiliar with the term "pirate radio", it refers to a radio station operated without the license and blessing of the Federal Communications Commission or whatever authority over broadcasting exists in the country in question. Many pirate radio stations operate on shortwave and are often political in nature. Ours was not, we operated on 1200 Khz AM and mostly just a bunch of kids playing music and putting together humourous skits or doing talk radio. We operated with about 100 watts most of the time, although I did acquire a transmitter capable of a kilowatt or so, actually it would have been capable of more had I been able to get adequate AC power to it, and we'd fire that puppy up on special occasions. When we operated with 100 watts we had a usable signal for about five miles, you could receive our signal further if you had a good receiver and antenna but that was about how far the signal was usable with the average consumer radio. When we fired up the 1kw transmitter that range extended out to about 15 miles, but fear of being intercepted by the FCC limited the time that we operated with the large transmitter. The audio quality of that transmitter was also inferior to that of our lower powered transmitter. A number of my friends also operated pirate radio stations, in fact that is how I met some of them. One person operated a pirate radio station near the school I went to but it was only a couple watts of power and not the elaborate setup we had. Our station had an operational studio, a Gates Yard broadcast board, a Langevin compressor / limiter which we modified for asymmetrical limiting and a faster time constant. That baby could really crunch the audio and keep our transmitter heavily modulated. The audio section of our 100 watt transmitter was capable of producing about 200 watts of audio so in theory it could achieve 400% modulation. With the limiter modified, we limited negative modulation to just under 100% to avoid splatter, but we let the positive modulation go as high as an asymmetrical waveform would let it. The result was a loud but clean signal. This contributed to our range. But this station operated near the school was just a crude 50C5 power oscillator, good for about two watts, and the operator just put on taped music. He didn't have a studio. The way that we met is that he hooked up a voltmeter to the AGC line of his car radio then drove around until he found the strongest signal, got out and looked for an antenna. And then another friend I met in a similar manner. I found a station on the FM band with very bad audio and a weak signal. I listened to it and the programming was wild, very bizzare and interesting production work. At one point they gave out a telephone number and I called. After exchanging information I went out and met him. When I first received his signal it didn't even register on the signal strength meter on my receiver. Myself and another friend went out and found numerous technical problems with his operation. For starters, he was using an FM transmitter designed for military applications. It was designed for narrow band voice, not wide band high fidelity. We modified the modulator for wideband operation. Next problem was that the final was a push-pull design but one grid resistor was burnt out so only half the final section was operational. We fixed that which got the transmitter up to the full power it was capable of which was around 50 watts. Next problem was that he was using a welding rod for an antenna. We built a dipole antenna and put it up on the roof. He was up on a hill so it was perfect for FM. I lived about seven miles away and after these modifications instead of not reading on my S-meter, it now peged the S-meter. And then he had no limiter so modulation was somewhat random, we loaned a limiter to his operation. He had a studio in his bedroom which doubled as a production studio when they were off the air. Another friend operating a bootleg station coincidentally on the same AM frequency as mine, I was introduced to via a mutual friend. He also operated a shortwave station. I got my first class radio telephone operators license in my Jr. year of high school. At that point I could no longer claim ignorance of the law. The friend that operated the FM station was busted by the FCC, he didn't get fined but it scared him enough that he stopped broadcasting. And the friend that operated the AM station and SW station got busted and he was fined $750. I got scared and ceased operation. I was most afraid of losing my license which I knew was a job ticket. So after two of my friends got busted and I narrowly escaped (the FCC did visit my house but I wasn't home at the time and they never returned), we decided writing about pirate radio would be safer than operating pirate radio. This was started by my friends but I became involved later on. They were writing this newsletter using a manual typewriter and then cut-and-pasting on a 7-11 photocopier. I thought doing it with a wordprocessor and printer would be much more efficient, bought a Trs-80 model III and Scriptsit, and a primative dot matrix printer. They wanted remote access so they could compose articles remotely. I connected a modem. Because the primative operating system had no support for the serial port, I wrote a crude driver that allowed them to access remotely. Even in 1982, there were hackers running war-dialers, programs that would sequentially dial through a range of numbers looking for a modem tone and possibly compromisable systems. They found mine and started messing with the software. I wrote a primative BBS to restrict access primarily but it also provided some basic functions. Through a series of coincidences it grew and became very popular. In 1985 we transitioned to a Unix system and I needed a login. The BBS had been called "Eskimo North", so I picked the only eskimo name I knew, 'Nanook', and have used that since. In 1992 when the CIX was formed making public Internet doable, we joined and started providing internet services. Initially we connected through another start-up ISP but later got our own T1. Over the years our service has evolved and now we have our equipment co-located, but it also became increasingly less fun for me. I missed the interaction and community we had with the old BBS. And so on July 30th, I started up a web-based BBS, free like our original single line BBS. I am using phpBB which has a similar look and feel to this vBulletin software but not as polished or feature packed. For example, there is no support for sub-forums, though I understand that will be coming in the 3.x versions presently in Beta. Other than running an ISP, and now a web-based BBS, I enjoy photography and like to listen to a wide variety of music. I also enjoy some online gaming. If you would like to visit my BBS, the URL is: http://www.eskimo.com/bbs/. I also have a couple of blogs, my personal blog in which I talk about whatever crosses my mind on any given day, it is at: http://www.eskimo.com/~nanook/blog I also operate a blog concerned with the future and sustainability, mostly focusing on things like renewable energy and sustainable agriculture practices. Also to some degree the environment in general, things I think are happening with our planet, and social issues that need to be resolved if we're going to continue into the future. It is at: http://www.eskimo.com/~nanook/future The URL of my ISP is: http://www.eskimo.com/. We provide 56k dial across the US and Canada. We also do Unix shell accounts and web hosting. We have the ability to provide ASCII dialups that connect into the shell server which we use with various text-based applications to provide a service that works well with text-to-speach software on PC's to provide a service for the blind to access the Internet. Conventional graphical internet tools do not lend themselves well to text-to-speach. As I mentioned, I enjoy Photography so that is often a topic of my personal blog and also we have a photography forum on our BBS. And then aside from all the things in my life there is my family, I met my wife when I was still in high school, tripping over her little sister at a roller skating rink. I've been married 26+ years now, have four children, one of whom is out on his own now. He works as a projectionist and also handles customer service calls on the weekends at my ISP. And speaking of ISP's, one of the things that has happened is that we've lost many dialup customers to broadband over the years though many still maintain shell accounts or have domains hosted with my ISP. So I'm looking for ways to replace lost revenues. We have a pretty good hosting environment but my marketing skills aren't so good. I'm open to any legal, ethical, and mutually beneficial cooperative ventures. Thanks for reading through my lengthy introduction. I know I am prone to excessive verbosity at times. So anyway come visit my BBS or blogs. Feel free to contact me.