I hope everyone survived the holidays intact. You know, every year I ask Santa for a Flickinger console, but he never kicks down. Darn.
We will be putting on the fifth annual TapeOpCon in Tucson, June 16-18 this year — the theme is Camp Tape Op, as we'll be in a beautiful resort on the edge of town, along with field trips to the Fox Tucson Theatre and Club Congress. I'm hoping many of you can make it out to camp. After Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans we kept hoping that TapeOpCon could return to that city in 2006, but eventually we found out the Orpheum Theater suffered $3.5 million in damage and that the Fairmont Hotel would not reopen until November this year. We'll be doing this year's conference in Tucson, but the spirit of New Orleans has become very special to all of us.
On another note, the Tape Op Message Board has been up and active now for a few months. It looks like we've finally found a stable home for it, thanks to Ryan Abernathy and Hillary Johnson. Many thanks to our moderators: Tony San Filippo, Chris Garges, Hillary, Craig Schumacher, Joel Hamilton and Brian A. Roth. It has been a new twist to have moderators and more forums for specific topics — so far I think it's working real well. Please check it out — it's free and a great place to ask questions and discuss topics. Just go to www.tapeop.com.
Finally, as this issue goes to press, we're really close to finishing the production on the second Tape Op Book. Like the first book, this one reprints older mostly out of print issues of Tape Op. Book number two is issues 11-20 and this time we're self-publishing it! Tape Op subscribers will be the first know when the book is done and we're planning a specially priced package just for our loyal readers.
On a sad note, John Simonton, the founder of PaiA passed away in November 2005. Many of us have built PAiA kits over the years and learned much in the process (in fact, I still need to troubleshoot the sloppy job I did on my Theremin kit a few months back). We here at Tape Op send our condolences to his family, co-workers and friends.
Thanks so much for reading,