Some Links of Interest (I hope...)

Caller and Dancer Resources
CALLERLAB	The INTERNATIONAL organization of square dance callers. (Yes, I am a member!)
SDCANC	The Square Dance Callers' Association of Northern California. In addition to some members-only content (such as the note services to which our association subscribes), this site has caller availability lists for both our members and Bay-area callers in general. Note: currently, I design and maintain the association's website, and have done so since mid-2009. (Prior to that, Diane Gaskill did most of the work, after inheriting the site from the late Nate Bliss.)
sacdancer.com	Charles Bridges' web site. Charles is a square dance caller and round dance cuer (and teaches other dance forms as well!), and was the caller for the Cal Aggie Square Dancers when when I attended UC Davis. His web site has information about all sorts of dance activities in the Sacramento, CA area.
ASDSC	The Associated Square Dancers of Superior California is the dancers' association in the Sacramento area. Their web site also contains a lot of information about square dancing in the Sacramento area.
NCSDA	The Northern California Square Dancers' Association covers the northern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, including most of the East Bay. Their web site includes a calendar of dances held by their member clubs, as well as information on the Golden State Roundup festival held every Memorial Day weekend.
NSDA	The North State Dancers' Association covers most of the real Northern California (by former state senator Stan Statham's definition). Their website includes a list of their member clubs and dance schedules for the area. Their annual Jamboree is at the end of March.
SCVSDA	The Santa Clara Valley Square Dancers' Association covers the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, and quite a bit of ground below there as well -- as far down as Monterey County. Their Jubilee festival is generally the second weekend every October.
Square Dance Nevada	This website is maintained by the ICC (Inter-Club Council), the dancers' association in the Reno area and the organization that puts on the Silver State Square Dance Festival every May. It contains information about Silver State and other square dance activities in the Reno area.
ceder.net	Vic Ceder is a highly respected caller who calls just about every level there is, and has published instructional books on square dancing. His web site also has a searchable database of square dance callers and round dance cuers, as well as a wealth of information on the use of digital music by callers.
Some of my favorite callers
	This is the web page for my absolute favorite caller, Joe Saltel. You can blame him, in part, for my becoming a caller -- I bought all of his tapes and played them in my car's tape player, and eventually started singing along with him going down the road. From there, it was just a short descent into madness...
Daryl Clendenin	Daryl is another of my favorites, and several of my favorite singing calls are on the record label that he founded ("Chinook Records"). He is another certified caller-coach, and I was fortunate to attend one of his schools in 1996.
Hunter Keller	Hunter is a young man from Montana who is developing into an outstanding caller! Watch for him near you!
Mike Sikorsky	World-famous caller with a wonderful deep voice. He also wrote my favorite Christmas singing call, "Bradley The Brown-Nosed Reindeer."
Some local clubs with web sites
Buzzin' Boots	Located in Novato, CA. They dance the A2 program on Friday nights at the Marin Sail and Power Squadron on Hamilton Parkway. Their club caller is Steve Minkin. (I'm one of the callers who is asked to fill in occasionally when Steve is out of town.)
Circle 'n Squares	Located in Santa Rosa, CA. (And not to be confused with the Circle 'n Square club [no terminal 's'] in Yreka!) They dance on Thursday nights to Steve Minkin at Monroe Hall.
Singles and Pairs	Located in Santa Rosa, CA. I call for them on Wednesday nights at Monroe Hall. Their website just started in November of 2010, but it gives a little information about the club's history — at one time, it was the largest club in Sonoma County. (Actually, I designed and maintain the website, too.)
Tam Twirlers	The Tam Twirlers are located down in Marin county. They dance on Wednesday nights to Eric Henerlau at the Marin Rod and Gun Club. Their web site includes animated graphics of many of the square dance calls we use, as well as the written call definitions. They've put a LOT of work into this -- check it out!
Some useful square dance vendors
Hilton	Manufacturer of square dance calling equipment in Concord, CA.
dosado.com	A major square dance record distributor. They also are licensed to sell .MP3 versions of some records directly over the Internet.
MusicForCallers	A central resource with links to most of the major square dance music producers, and a searchable database of currently-available songs in MP3 format. Not all producers are participating in the search database, but most do.

Some computer news and info sources
InfoWorld eWeek (formerly PC Week) PC Magazine	The first two of these are updated daily, and I check them every day before work. PC Magazine started out as a monthly magazine, but has migrated into an active website. Its specialty has been large comparative reviews of various types of computer equipment and software. In the days when it was primarily a print publication, PC Magazine published a downloadable utility program every month; I've used some of the PC Magazine Utilities for over ten years.
delphi.about.com	In 2004, I started exploring Embarcadero/CodeGear's (formerly Borland's) Delphi programming environment again (after having let version 1.0 of Delphi languish on my hard disk for years). After using Google to search for answers to a bunch of different "how do I..." questions, I started noticing that this site was coming up fairly frequently. Now it's among the first places I go looking for common Delphi answers.
DelphiFeeds	A site which collects Delphi-related blog entries and postings from Embarcadero's Delphi support forums every day and displays them in one place. Very handy if you're a Delphi programmer!
Tom's Hardware	Good source of comparative reviews of computer components.
Computer Vendors I use
Provantage Fry's Electronics NewEgg	These are some of the vendors I've used for computer hardware and software. I've been using Provantage for over 15 years, since they were called "Programmer's Connection," and they have always provided excellent service. I've been doing a lot of business with NewEgg over the last several years, and their service has been excellent as well -- and their shipping charges are very reasonable. I usually prefer to go to Fry's in person, but they're quite a ways away -- the nearest ones are in Concord and Sacramento. The website is a good resource, but most of my online buying these days goes through NewEgg.
Computer Resources (Also see the "Software I Use" page)
ESET NOD32	This is the commercial antivirus program I'm recommending these days. Small, fast, and very reliable. If you listen to Leo Laporte's radio show, you've already heard of it. Otherwise, you probably haven't, but it has a very good reputation in the computer trade press. Most stores don't carry it -- go to the website and buy the download version.
Avast!	A very good antivirus program with a free version for noncommercial home use. It's smaller and faster than the current version of AVG Free, which I used to recommend.
MalwareBytes SUPERAntiSpyware	Very good anti-spyware applications, with free versions for home use. Currently, MalwareBytes seems to be the best-regarded spyware removal tool in the industry.

Page last updated: Friday 2016-12-23 13:54 MST

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