Interests

Some background on a few of my after hours interests / hobbies.

Total FM

I’ve been a low power FM broadcaster since 2007. It began shortly after I had been made redundant from a commercial radio broadcasting role. I wanted a way to retain a connection with broadcasting but to do so on my own terms. Setting up a not-for-profit hobby FM radio station seemed like the way to go.

I imported a transmitter from the UK and have been running a station ever since. It’s called Total FM and if you’re in Dunedin, New Zealand you can tune in and hear it on 107.3MHz. You can also listen online anytime at listen.totalfm.nz there’s a mix of music from the 70’s to today. From time to time you might also hear me doing some announcing on it.

BBS + fsxNet

Agency BBS is a Bulletin Board System (BBS) that I first ran in Hamilton, New Zealand between 1993-1995. Out of nostalgia and curiosity I resurrected it in late 2012. Since then it’s been an ongoing geeky source of enjoyment for me and the many users from around the globe that login and use it for messaging, online games, etc.

Keeping with the BBS theme, I established fsxNet.nz (a fun, simple and experimental message network) in late 2015. It uses Fido Technology Networking standards to communicate between connected BBS. At present over 250+ BBS across over 20+ countries across the globe are active members of fsxNet.

Usenet

In the 1990’s I was an active participant in Usenet newsgroups with access to groups offered by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) at no additional cost to their customers. By 2006 most ISPs had dropped Usenet citing a lack of customer demand. The thing is it never totally died.

In 2017 I wondered was Usenet still alive? To find out I established news.bbs.nz. It is to my knowledge the only server of its kind active in New Zealand. The server is peered with others around the globe (Düsseldorf, Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Falkenstein, Los Angeles, St Petersburg etc.) and carries only text-based newsgroups.