Some Links of Interest (I hope...)
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Square Dance Links |
Computer Links |
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| Resources | Callers | Clubs | Vendors | News & Info | Vendors | Resources |
Last updated 2008-08-16 03:56:01 PM
| The INTERNATIONAL organization of square dance callers. (Yes, I am a member!) | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. |
| 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. | |
| Jim Penrod maintains a listing of dance activities in the area just to the south of Sacramento (Stockton, Modesto, etc.), along with a list of the callers and cuers in that region. There are also printable lists of square dance etiquette rules, the "four corners" graduation ceremony, and a number of other useful items. | |
| Probably the best repository of square-dance-related information on the Internet. Also includes a list of callers around the world who can be contacted through email. | |
| 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. | |
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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... |
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Deborah is one
of the best square dance callers around. She is also a certified
caller-coach (meaning that she teaches other callers). She was kind enough to sing at
my wedding in September of 2001 (although that was more
due to my ex-wife than to me!). If you ever have the opportunity to dance to this
lady's calling, don't miss it!
NOTE: Deborah changed internet providers, and her domain name appears to still point at her old website location -- which her old ISP has apparently deleted. I'm leaving the link here so that I can update it when a new site comes online, but for right now the link doesn't work. |
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| Daryl is another of my favorites, and several of my favorite singing calls are on his record label ("Chinook Records"). He is another certified caller-coach, and I was fortunate to attend one of his schools in 1996. | |
| Nasser is a wonderfully entertaining caller. He called in Northern California for several years, but is now in southern Texas. | |
| Scot & Erin Byars | Erin is a round dance cuer; Scot is a caller, and a wonderful entertainer and showman. Both are good friends of mine, but don't hold that against them! |
| Hunter Keller | Hunter is a young man from Montana who is developing into an outstanding caller! Watch for him and Scot working together! |
| Adobe Squares | Located in Petaluma, CA. They dance on Tuesday nights at the Petaluma Women's Club on 'B' Street. Their club caller is Scot Byars (and his wife Erin cues the rounds). |
| 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. |
| Redwood Coasters | Located in my birthplace of Fort Bragg, CA. They dance on Tuesday nights to Ed Tausig and myself on alternate weeks, at the Trinity Lutheran Church on the corner of Redwood & Corry. |
| Tam Twirlers | The Tam Twirlers are located down in Marin county. They dance on Wednesday nights to Eric Henerlau at Redwood High School Their web site includes animated graphics of many of the square dance calls we use, as well as links to a couple of other sources of call animations on the web. They've put a LOT of work into this -- check it out! |
| Hilton | Manufacturer of square dance calling equipment in Concord, CA. |
| Hanhurst's | A major square dance record distributor. They also are licensed to sell .MP3 versions of some records directly over the Internet. |
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InfoWorld
eWeek |
The first two of these are updated daily, and I check them every day before work. PC Magazine is updated less frequently (generally around once a month), but has large comparative reviews of various types of computer equipment and software on a regular basis, and publishes a downloadable utility program every month. I've used some of the PC Magazine Utilities for over ten years. |
| delphi.about.com | I just recently started exploring 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 the first place I go looking for common Delphi answers. |
| Tom's Hardware | Good source of comparative reviews of computer components. |
| Provantage | 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. More recently, I've done business with Outpost and NewEgg, and have been happy with the results. I haven't actually ordered anything from PC Club -- they have a store in Santa Rosa and I do my purchasing from them in person, just using the web site for comparisons. |
| AVG Free | Grisoft is the company which makes the AVG antivirus program, the one I currently use and recommend. Their free version can be used by anyone who has one single home computer which is not used for commercial purposes, and it does a great job! Those who have more than one computer and/or use their computer for business can purchase the "Professional" version -- it differs only slightly from the free version, and the pricing is VERY reasonable. (Especially considering that the subscription for updates lasts for two years, as opposed to the single year most vendors give you.) |
| ZoneLabs | ZoneLabs makes the ZoneAlarm firewall, which I have used for seven or eight years. Yes, Windows XP does include a firewall -- but it allows programs running on your computer to turn it off whenever they want, and it doesn't alert you when programs running on your computer (such as spyware and viruses) try to communicate on the Internet without your permission. ZoneAlarm does. And, the free version does just about everything most people would need a firewall for. (You can get the free version from ZoneLabs' website, but you have to insist on the free version every time they try to talk you into one of the paid versions.) |
| Spybot Search & Destroy | A very good free anti-spyware application. Its Advanced mode includes a better mechanism for turning on and off items in the Startup list than the MSCONFIG program that comes with Windows. |
