Keeper of the Archives...
with Bill Johnston
Many of you have heard of a place out there on the web called 'Ack's Faq', but do you know the man behind it?
Jim "Ack" Cambron (as in Acker-Dackerly) has been in the
information business for many years. He has been in broadcasting since 1969 when
he started out as a
transmitter engineer at The University of Kansas NPR radio station, KANU. He
has a degree in Broadcast Journalism from KU. He has been a fry cook, an
author, a radio dee-jay, a news reporter, a video cameraman, a video editor
(from primative two inch quadruplex videotape to computer video), a web
master, a FORTRAN/Assembly language/Visual BASIC/DBASE/PHP software
engineer, a trampoline athlete (He has Circus Blood in him!), a pizza
delivery guy (Dominos AND Pizza Hut!) and an extra in the HBO movie "Truman" starring Gary Sinise
(roughly 15 frames).
Ack, as he is known far and wide, started playing with Suzukis back in 2001, but has been online since the early 80's... back when, as he puts it "all we had were TRS-80s, home-made 1200 baud MODEMs and assembly-language BBS software".
Ack's Garage started on March 15, 2007 with five episodes featuring the
likes of Kevin "Sarge" Lafferty, Sean DeVinney, Johnny "Holeshot" Vetter and
some guy named Bill Johnston... Go to acksfaq.com and click on the
Ack's
Garage button (or click the hyperlink you just read). Make sure your
sound card is working and the volume is turned up. 
He started Ack's FAQ in an effort to somehow pay back all the great
help that was given to me by fellow zookers on the Internet over the years.
Plus, he likes to "stay up 'til dawn surfing the net, writing web pages and
doing multimedia stuff". This FAQ is a compilation of many things. Starting
as a place to look up information posted on various bulletin boards around
the country, it has grown to include some of Ack's original articles and
links to other articles on many of the popular vehicle websites out there
(even iZook!). Nobody has all the info out there, but Ack's Faq takes points
you in the right direction.
The Ack's Garage podcast series is yet another crazy idea
from Ack. He
describes it as Click and Clack Meets Jesse and Ian (of Spike TV's Extreme
4x4). You get to hear interviews of the movers and shakers that regularly
contribute on the Suzuki internet forums - not their typed out words but
their actual voices. Plus, he also has fun answering common post questions, takes
a look at news and events and generally experiments with this new media form.
Izook.com is probably the best Zukin' site on the Internet because of incredible number of useful technical and how-to articles. I really enjoy fabbing and modding my truck and iZook.com has really helped me a get the most out this hobby over the years. ---Jim 'Ack' Cambron |
