The playa phone booth wll be back, give it a call

[bradtem]

The playa phone booth will be back this year. It will spend most of its time at Camp Save-the-Man at 7:30 and (Virtual) Delerium, however it may at other times roam the playa.

If all goes well, we should also have excellent voice quality this year. In addition, voice mails left by callers to the phone will be available on the web via the on-playa web server at http://4brc.com (only from on-playa.)

You will be able to browse the voice mails, describe them and volunteer to deliver them.

The phone will have the same number (213) -634-1441, for those of you trying to reach the playa. However, PLEASE don't call it until monday, or after labour day. And due to playa-rules, things may not be quite working on monday, either.

Come visit the phone (and the nearby ATM machine) along with the photo wall and lots of other stuff in my camp.

Calls out to the world will, of course, be free.

Full details and last year's story at http://www.templetons.com/pq/

[swampdog]

Phone booth was great last year, thanks! I hope to try it again this year!

[dmoore]

you really are a cool guy! see you there!

[spectabillis]

I will third that, my sincere gratitude for doing this.

[ZaphodBurner]

I saw the phone last year, saw somebody talking into it and, after a bit of playa-virgin mental calculation, determined that the whole thing was a prank.

Was actually a non-Burner co-worker who heard about it and clued me in weeks later. He was so fascinated by it that he's coming with us this year.

It's The Phone That Hatched a Burner. Will seek it out this year.

-c

[swampdog]

This is not a criticism, more an odd compliment. The actual sound connection was pretty spotty when I used the phone. The woman who used it ahead of me spent the whole time saying "No, Mom, I'm fine, I just had the opportunity to call... No, Mom, I'm FINE. FINE. Everything's OK. Can you hear me? O....K...."

My call was similarly broken up "Can you hear me? I love you. I...LOVE...YOU... What?"

Personally I thought it added to the art of it - semi-coherent bits of playa love flying around the cosmos. A feeling of intense concentration as I tried to force my words clearly down the wire. I really loved it.

So you may not want to plan to hunt this up to make a clean, precise communication back home, but you should definitely give it a try if you see it. It's very cool.

[DVD Burner]

Question:


Does anyone know what kind of other problems the playa phone booth has had on the playa?

I'm curious because I am working on a project for this year that works on similar principles and would like to understand what the unpredictables were.

I am positive we have most of the bugs that are normal with VOIP solved.

Hint: a dual DSP solves some of the sound problem.

and a few other things too much to mention. Any info is greatly apreaciated.