Karai in a Nutshell
Karai is 24 years old and hails from Soviet Canada. Nova Scotia, to be precise. He loves ponies (Trixie especially <3), among other things, and was one of the original founders of Celestia Radio. Aside from his aforementioned role, Karai is best known for dressing well, being a hard but just moderator, and having a good time. Though he may seem quite offensive to newcomers, Karai can be very friendly. What seems offensive at first is Karai's own take on social commentary.
"They bomb a church, we bomb ten. They hijack a plane, we take out an airport. They execute American tourists, we tactically nuke an entire city. Our job is to make terrorism so horrific that it becomes unthinkable to attack Americans." - Swordfish, 2001
Introduction to My Little Pony
Karai stares deep into your soul, smiling as he ponders what he wants to do to you... You should start running. Now.
Karai was poking around the Internet one fateful evening (March 7th, 2011) as he stumbled upon Renard Queenston's tumblr and noticed his avatar was not the usual nurse fox, but a simplistic pony-like creature resembling the aforementioned nurse. Curious, he asked a few folks what that was all about and they informed him of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Curious, Karai scurried over to YouTube and investigated. At first, he face palmed with the power of 1000 suns because of the totally lame synopsis, "Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria..."
Deciding that he had nothing better to do that night, Karai let the lameness of the intro go and wanted to see how the actual show faired. He fell in love the moment he saw Twilight Sparkle. If that wasn't enough to hook him, the amazing theme song was. Karai's excitement was barely contained as he prepared his whole body for what he was about to witness.
During the entirety of the first episode, Karai was spamming his usual IRC channels (as usual) while most folks in said channels were less than amused. The cliffhanger of episode one simply would not do, and Karai decided that watching ponies was far mor eimportant than a good night's sleep. After watching the entire pilot, both Luna and Twilight Sparkle found permanent placing deep inside Karai's otherwise blackened heart.
The next day at work, Karai was telling all of his coworkers about this amazing new show he happened across. Despite the ridicule, two of them offered to take him to the mall to see if there were any figurines for purchase. Not a few moments later, he was called into the board room and was promptly layed off (for reasons that were not pony related). This was devistating to say the least, and he spent much of that morning wandering aimlessly around town.
When Karai returned home, he remembered his newly beloved pony friends and decided to watch all of the episodes he had downloaded at the time (up to 18!) to pass the day. Flopping down on his futon with his pet ferret, Zelda, he turned his TV on and watched him some ponies. It was a life changing experience. Normally in such a situation, Karai would have fallen into a deep depression, but the magic of friendship kept him bouyant and despite his troubles, that moment was one of the happiest moments in his entire life.
Kicking into action after his pony-thon, Karai got his finances and business in order, packed a bag and headed to his mother's house in a neighbouring town. A few days after he arrived at his mother's house, Karai noticed some folks uploading tunes to Ponychan and was quite enjoying these ponified remixes and even some original songs! He started downloading them as quickly as they popped up, turning his netbook into a non-stop pony portal filled with images, music and what have you.
Creation of Celestia Radio
CR Rule 07: Karai is always stylish. No Exceptions.
A couple months passed and Karai had to give up his apartment and his ferret. He moved back home with his mother and signed up at his local community college. Browsing Ponychan one night while settin gup his file server, he noticed an interesting thread. Some guy named Hooflander was asking if there were any pony-related radio stations. Noting the thread, Karai kept browsing Ponychan. A few hours later, his server set up and hosting one of his websites, K17.me, Karai noticed no new posts in the radio thread. Deciding he was still interested, he poked the OP about maybe starting one. They got to talking and then a third guy named PHPony popped up and offered to purchase a web domain and make a website for the project.
With the team assembled, Karai set up a test SHOUTcast server with a listener capacity of 10 and threw the "unofficial soundtrack" up to test out his server. In the mean time, Hooflander was moving to a new country and wa sunavailable for testing, so Karai posted a link on Ponychan.
When Hooflander returned online, he set up his own SHOUTcast server on his laptop and PHPony set up a crummy little website while Hooflander (a professional designer) went to work in Photoshop. With a new listener capacity of 30, Equestria Daily featured what was newly named Celestia Radio on their front page and within an hour, both the website and radio were flooded beyond capacity.
Realizing that this project may actually garner an audience, a proper web host and dedicated radio host were purchased. Hooflander quickly finished up his website design and handed it over to PHPony to turn it into a Wordpress template. A sizable MLP song pack was discovered by Hooflander and gave Celestia Radio a boost of nearly 200 extra songs. With the new website launched and the new content playing, Celestia Radio became the first pony radio station on May 23rd, 2011.
Over the summer, the addition of both PRiSON and DJ Shamrock helped bring Celestia Radio a dedicated community and fanbase. With much effort, each and every song from the original song pack was identified and official permisison requested (and granted!) to play the music. PHPony created a song submission system for artists to submit their music directly to Celestia Radio, allowing artists to get their music out to their fans faster and a continuous stream of fresh content for Celestia Radio's listeners.
Much of Karai's summer was spent answering emails, moderating IRC and seeking out new artists to play their content on Celestia Radio.
Heading of Celestia Radio
Despite living in Canada, Karai hates the cold. He does love Best Korea, though.
Near the end of the summer, Hooflander took his leave from Celestia Radio and handed over administrative duties to Karai, who hired on MyLittleInsomnia and PonyToast to help enrich the live content of Celestia Radio. Karai also hired on Plausocks to assist in moderating the IRC channel.
Near the end of his reign, Karai struck a deal with the EQBeats team to allow them to take over and manage the content for Celestia Radio. His final days were spent supervising the charity drive before handing the reigns of Celestia Radio over to DJ Shamrock.
Post-Celestia Radio
After he stepped down from Celestia Radio, Karai spent a few months completely away from ponies. He went through a pretty rough period after breaking up with his life-long love, and pondered the meaning to life. After much struggling, Karai managed to get his head together and began working with shakesoda to develope a video game.
Other Information
"I am in love with a pony and her name is Trixie." -- Karai
Karai, like many folks, is not pony-obsessed and has other interests outside of the pony fandom. some of his other interests include:
- One Piece
- The Legends of Zelda
- Final Fantasy VI
- Redwall
- Mountain Biking
- Being stylish
- Programming
- Music (obviously)
- Hanging out with his broskis
You can usually find Karai hanging out in the Celestia Radio IRC channel, or his own IRC channel on the same server, #KLD.