I had the pleasure of speaking for the first time with James Robertson with voice instead of badly emoted text on irc today. I'd classify him as having a classically American accent, not your southern drawl, but the kind you expect from a tourist taking too many pictures of something of with supposed historical value. The conversation was mostly light hearted, though I did dive in to business a bit quicker than I really wanted to.

He called me - I'm not sure which phone service to blame.. his or mine, but we should have established an 'over' system, as some times talking would clip-out the other person. I'd have thought international phone calls would have been solved by now! but apparently we're stuck with half-duplex.

It's fun to talk to somebody for the first time when you've had so much involve ment with them over the last year in a purely virtual world. Until today, I didn't know how the guy who's just set up a blog for me sounded. How bizarre! This falls well in to my theory of human communities. My theory is this: Humans will make a community anywhere, over any kind of medium, simply because it's there.

So in summary: Hi James! I look forward to our next chat. Any other #smalltalk'ers who want to call me, let me know! :>