Thursday, April 30th early A.M. report

I woke up at 1:30 A.M. - two hours earlier than I usually get up, at 3:30 - couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to do some more work on mastering the first volume of the Dictaphonia compilation project. I have worked out the problems I described in the "Dictaphonia Shop Talk" topic below. I have mastered all 19 submissions received so far and it all sounds great. It looks like I will have room for 25 or 26 total contributions on the 60 minute master. Most of the microcassettes I have worked with usually hold something like 31 minutes and 15 seconds per side.

I look at auctions for microcassette-related items on eBay every day. Yesterday I saw this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/90-Microcassette-tapes-Recorder-Secret Recordings_W0QQitemZ370194846116

The guy is selling a Radio Shack brand recorder and 90 microcassettes for a starting bid of $0.99. The microcassettes all contain secret recordings made by a previous owner of conversations and telephone calls. What a treasure trove! The seller includes a YouTube video in which he describes the items and even reads texts from the j-cards of the microcassettes. It is a shame that he didn't play excerpts from the tapes!