My name is David Dunphy. I grew up all of my life in a town called Garden City in New York. Although I've lived there for all of my life, except for four years at college, I have traveled to some awesome places such as Florida for vacations, Windham New York in the Catskill Mountains for skiing, and Paris France as part of a high school trip. In fact, I spent my 16th birthday there. I have one sister who is 30 years old, and like me, she is totally blind. She lived with me in New York, but now resides and works in the state of Arkansas. She's a certified assistive technology instructor for the state, and hopes to evventually find a job that will allow her to put her love for teaching towards helping others learn.
Some of my interests include music, broadcasting, computers, sports, especially baseball, (Let's Go Mets!!!) meeting new people, going out to dinner with friends and family,
and having fun. Speaking of music, I listen to and like all types of songs. Basically, if the tune sounds good, I'll listen to it. When I'm not hanging
with friends or listening to music, you can usually find me talking on the phone, listening to some of my old time radio shows, catching the occasional
movie, or playing cards on
allinplay.com
which is an online games site for those who are blind and visually impaired. The site allows for people to play card games like Crazy Eights, Five Card Draw Poker, or Texas Hold-em. The subscription fee is reasonable, but all the money one gambles with isn't real. Thank god for that!
From the time I was a child, I have always been fascinated by all the hard work that a dj would do to put a radio show together. Since I like being the entertainer and performing, I decided that I wanted to go in and study radio for my career. I wanted to provide the thrills that were given to me to some aspiring dj of the future who might be tuned into my show. I would many times listen to the talk shows to see how they put their shows together, and the music programs to try and understand why commercials were played at certain times, why they never played more than one song in a row by the same artist, etc. Hell, I'd even listen to the Spanish-speaking stations. I didn't understand more of the technical aspects of broadcasting until college, but I was fascinated by what I knew took lots of hard work and effort on the part of those broadcasters.
My four years of college were a struggle. I went to school at
Marist College
in Poughkeepsie New York, and although I did well with my classes, making friends was hard, plus I lost my mother to cancer. I also had trouble finding
work in the field. I was, however, lucky enough to secure a time slot for all four years on the college radio station, and did some small amounts of work at a local radio station near the college campus.
As a result of not finding work after I graduated, I have joined my sister in Arkansas. I received some training as a computer programmer at
Lion's World Services For The Blind
I just completed an internship to gain some experience in the programming field at a company called Trans America, but found that programming is not what I'm looking for as a means of fullfillment. I'm currently looking to get into the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer program at lion's World in 2008, and want to do work as a tech support/software trouble shooter for a company. I find myself helping friends and family all the time with this, and feel I will do a good job working in the computer field, and keeping the broadcasting as a serious hobby. In a way, I don't mind that though, since I'm not tied down by the restrictions of mainstream radio. I don't have to play ten songs by the same artist in an hour, followed by five or six commercials, or things like that. There's more room for free form and creativity, which I prefer.
It was during my college time that I discovered that it was possible for a person to broadcast right from the comfort of home. I discovered
live365.com
which is a site where people could, at one time, freely broadcast music, comedy, talk or what ever. All they needed was some software, an internet connection,
content to broadcast, and that was it. In 2000, I reestablished contact with my friend William. He too had an interest in radio, but like me, never had
a source for putting that interest to work. But we spent hours playing with the software, and got ourselves on the air. I was so fascinated at how easy
it was to broadcast on the internet right from home.
Soon after, I heard about a radio station called
Testpattern Radio, which was a station developed by some people who left another project to start their own. I joined them, and what started as a show where I play music
from tapes turned into one where I could play actual mp3 files and crossfade them to make the shows sound professional. Once TPR broke up due to server
costs, and the fact that live365 began charging high rates to broadcast, Will and I decided to experiment with the server software to see if we could get
on air. After several hours, we got on air, and that's how we broadcast today. You can find out more about Will's station by
clicking here
Will then bought a domaine and some web space for his station, and agreed to let me have some space on his web server. It was such a relief to take my
site off free providers that put millions of pop-up ads and banners on my page. I now currently have my own web space, but am still very much involved with the development and maintenance of Will's space and sites, and still will continue to help him in any way I can. After spending 2004 working for FTP Radio, which is a station on
for-the-people.com
I left to join a bigger project run by The American Counsel Of The Blind called
ACB Radio Interactive
It is there where my shows could be heard on Sunday nights at 8 PM eastern. However, my last show will air on Sunday, February 17 on that station due to changes involving how we have to broadcast to meet the demands of royalty rates imposed by a company that deals with such things called Sound Exchange. While I have no objection to artists being compensated for the use of their works, when the broadcasting experience becomes more like how things have to be done in commercial radio, with restrictions on show prep and too much logging and review to ensure that you don't play some of the same things as heard on other shows in too short of a time frame, I just can't be tied down. I hold no ill will towards the project or the people who run it, and will continue to help broadcasters out in any way I can there, even if I myself do not have a show slot. So I will continue to broadcast weekly out of my new home on
Radio Laser CTI
and will continue to work towards my goal of having my own free form radio station.
On Wednesday, January 18, 2006, I briefly joined jammin 85.3, and had a show on there from 9 to 11 PM eastern. I left Jammin after only a few months of time due to my desire to expand to a different audience of listeners beyond the visually impaired community, and because of pathetic management decisions made by Jammin. As a result, on Wednesday, July 26, 2006, I had a show that
could be heard on Wednesday nights from 9 to 11 PM eastern on a station called Phoenix Radio. Unfortunately, the station suddenly went off the air in July of 2007, so as of now, I only host a show once a week on Wednesdays. I was introduced to this station by my friend Dennis who is close friends with the station manager. In january of 2008, I was offered the 9 to 11 PM slot on Wednesdays, and I took it. Thus, my career on CTI Radio has been born, and will continue to grow. I'm hoping to have my own internet station up within the next few months.
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