billkendrick

Early years: Pong, Atari 2600, Timex Sinclair 1000 (inheirited when my brother got his Commodore 64), then Atari 1200XL. 8 or 9 years later, a friend gave me an IBM PS/2 that I mostly used for BBS-ing and with SIO2PC to boot my Ataris (ended up with a couple of 800XLs).

As a kid, I tried to write countless games and apps, and even have almost all of the old 5.25" floppies. My notable contributions include Cooltris, Sludge and Gem Drop, from the late 1990s. I was a long time comp.sys.atari.8bit Usenet newsgroup participant. And, for a short while (until they kicked out folks who weren't part of the university), I maintained the Atari 8-bit section of the UMich FTP archive. I also run and "maintain" the XL Search FTP search engine.

These days I'm a Linux geek (co-founded my town's LUG in 1999, and continue to run it), CTO of Smashwords, Inc. (ebook publishing/distribution platform), and between 2009 and 2016 (after Vintage Computer Festival on the west coast originally went on hiatus) I ran an annual Atari Party in California..

You can hear me on early episodes of the Atari XEGS Cart by Cart podcast, where I was a co-host. I occasionally contributed to the ANTIC Podcast, talking about recent homebrew titles.