In addition to having the new Voice-Mail number and Tweeting live as we podcast, I thought it might be fun to have more direct interactive communication with us as we record.  For those of you not familiar with IRC, it was a kind of real-time chat program WAY BEFORE the whole (fairly recent) instant messenging craze.

 There are many stand-alone IRC clients out there, but I use a Firefox plugin called Chatzilla to access IRC.  It's very nice, but requires some configuration, and for those of you who don't want to mess with that, you can use a simple web-interface to access the IRC server, and then our IRC channel.  Here's how:

1. Visit http://www.mibbit.com/chat
2. Use the pull down server list (next to IRC) and choose "Freenode"
3. Put some sort of nickname in the Nick box
4. Put "#bloodyveg" (without the quotation marks) in the channel box
5. Click "Go"
6. And you're off to the races!

 For those of you who already know how to use your IRC clients, the server we'll be using is "freenode", and the channel name is "#bloodyveg".  With a stand-alone client you have to register a nick with the freenode server, but you probably know how to do that.

 Our next recording session is on Thursday the 9th, and we usually start podcasting at around 7pm east coast time.

 See you there!