cygweb

I'm hopeful for my first BDFL win of the season this week.

It was tough to make picks this week. I picked Buffalo, Houston, and Arizona to upset. Go BILLS!

Manolas Handmade Soaps (that is, Melissa and me) participated in the 16th annual Bridge Bust yesterday down in Columbia. The weather was threatening the whole day, but only produced a few sprinkles near the end of the event -- around 3:30pm. But even with the good weather, we didn't do as well as we hoped to; our handmade soaps and scrubs were competing with the likes of Pixie Stix, cheap tube socks, and padded toilet seats.

Although billed as an antiques and crafts show, the actual percentage of vendors of these items (as well as foods) was probably about 60%; and that's being generous. The remaining vendors were resellers of everything from the aforementioned items, plus items such as NFL hard hats, Harley t-shirts, and framed mass-market prints. We met some very nice people and sold quite a bit of our product, but weren't thrilled to be set up alongside vendors that had rows of open banana cases with shrink-wrapped household items and toys.

At this point, getting out and making customers is the name of the game. However, we're finding we probably have to be choosy about where we decide to set up shop.

I enjoyed the first episode of "Boston Legal" last night. It certainly seems like a hybrid of "The Practice" and "Ally McBeal", but is trying to be edgier than either of them. From a technical perspective, the thing that stood out the most to me was the transition between scenes; four (? - didn't record the show) quick close-up camera shots of the new scene synced with beats of the background music. I also thought the effects and text play in the opening sequence were fresh.

The plots were good, and not boring. David Kelley continues to pick interesting legal conundrums to explore; the plot about the little black girl who wanted to play "Little Orphan Annie" (and had the pipes for it) was fun. And the cameo by the Reverend Al Sharpton was HILARIOUS.

I'll definitely continue to tune in. ABC is definitely upping the ante this season; "Lost" is a fun watch as well.

I'd be buying this today if I didn't think there's a chance I'll get it for my birthday. (Shameless wishlist plug)

Track Listing:

1. As I Am
2. This Dying Soul
3. Beyond This Life
4. Hollow Years
5. War Inside My Head
6. The Test That Stumped Them All
7. Endless Sacrifice
8. Instrumedly
9. Trial Of Tears
10. New Millennium
11. Keyboard Solo
12. Only A Matter Of Time
13. Goodnight Kiss
14. Solitary Shell
15. Stream Of Conciousness
16. Disappear
17. Pull Me Under
18. In The Name Of God

My favorite tracks from these are "This Dying Soul", "Trial Of Tears", and "Endless Sacrifice". I can't wait to see how this DVD looks and sounds.

I'm reading and listening a bit about iPodder (and podcasting in general) and am becoming intrigued at the possibilities and content. Looks like I have to decide if I want to install iTunes or use it with (*gasp*) WMP...

Over lunch I was listening to the 10/2 Gillmor Gang recording from Gnomedex 4.0 (via IT Conversations). Podcasting, RSS, enclosures and the like were discussed; it got me thinking that another way to consume podcasted content is via streaming. Based on my ICYG back-end, combined with a downloading tool like iPodder, one could automate the download, preparation, and streaming of podcasted content. Code would have to be added to manage the content subject to be streamed at any one time, but that wouldn't take much time at all.

There would certainly be downsides to consuming podcasts via streaming. If there is no way for the user to select what they want to listen to, they may have to wait for content they are interested in. If the streaming platform transcodes the content (in either the audio quality or codec domains), there may be a loss of information (stereo/mono) or quality. However, the upside of not having to manage the podcasted content on a portable device might make it worth it for some.

I may take the initiative to hitch something like this up just to prove the concept. One of the challenges will be parsing and presenting the podcasts' metadata on the stream's website.

It seems to me that a grey area here is whether or not podcasted content is inherently free to redistribute (before or after mangling). I suppose any podcasted content that you can download without agreeing to a license implies that you're free to use it as you please. One innovation in this area might be the introduction and standardization of Creative Commons licenses metadata to communicate a podcast content creator's intent.

Both VP candidates said some false things last night, according to FactCheck.org. It's up to you to decide whose misstatements were worse, and, if it even matters to you.

I'm actually surprised that many outlets are reporting that Edwards "won" the debate. There was so much mudslinging and veering off-topic (by both men) that it was a little frustrating to watch.

I have to admit I'm getting sucked into the vortex that's forming around podcasting. Adam Curry (yes, that Adam Curry) is probably the foremost evangelist right now and his "Daily Source Code" podcasts do an excellent job of framing the phenomenon; they also provide some cool music to listen to. I hadn't heard Prince's "Musicology" until I heard it on DSC.

One of the things Adam mentioned on a recent DSC was helping to document toolsets and practices for creating podcasts on various platforms. In my mind, an intriguing podcast would be one that integrates recorded speech from a directly-attached microphone, music, digitally-recorded VOIP conversation(s) (meaning: not recorded via microphone on the receiving end), and cool bumpers. Being able to record and mix the entire podcast in realtime would be a plus, but it would be a technical challenge. The Windows tools that come to my mind specifically for this are Audacity for recording/mixing, and Total Recorder for extracting VOIP conversations. Adam and others have been talking about Skype as a VOIP solution, but I haven't tried it yet.

I may try some of this stuff out; if so, I'll document it. I really don't have much to share podcasting-wise at this point; maybe interactive NFL discussion with other BDFL members would be interesting to some. I have enough audio hardware on my main PC to allow some flexibility: the onboard C-Media audio, an Audiophile 2496 connected to a Mackie 1202-VLZ console, and a Xitel USB analog audio out.

We'll just have to see where this goes. Please let me know if any of this interests you.

After three episodes, I've got to say that I think "Lost" is one of the more finely-crafted shows I've seen in quite a while. I've been a fan of Matthew Fox's since "Party Of Five" and wished "Haunted" had caught on despite being on UPN. Hopefully "Lost" will remain found by enough viewers to keep it on the air for a while.

I'm digging the flashbacks as a way to introduce us to secrets about the characters. I also like the fact that the show is serial rather than episodic.

Via Google Blog: Can you say "killer app"? I knew you could.

I just tested a whitepages lookup and it worked as advertised.

For a while now I've been wanting to be able to run multiple instances of Foobar2000 on the desktop that powers ICYG. The extra instances could be used for a number of things: a parallel instance of ICYG streaming at a higher bitrate (the version I'd listen to over my home LAN), streaming different stuff like podcasts, or simply doing song/playlist management without interfering with the "production" ICYG player instance.

One of the neat features of FB2K that I've leveraged when scripting ICYG is invoking the .exe while it's already running allows one to send controls to the running player instance. It's how I change and load playlists on the fly. However, that feature (along with other dependencies, I'm sure), prevents you from launching another FB2K process with the same executable file instance.

This has been a nagging issue, but one that never bugged me enough to research. I'd turned on the per-user profiles toggle in FB2K that tracks preferences for each user, so that when I run it on my server as my normal user account, it doesn't load up all the DSPs I use to stream ICYG. And for song/playlist management, I just do all of that in a session separate of the session running the production ICYG.

Well, all of that will change now. After a little digging, I found this nugget on HydrogenAudio when doing a search on "multiple instances". Hmm... install different instances of FB2K in separate directories... What am I missing here? I assumed that FB2K was one of those apps that would let you install only one instance on a particular OS instance. Well, that's not the case. You can install separate instances of FB2K anywhere you like on the system and run them independently of each other at the same time. They can even map to the same output device. COOL!

If the command-line control functionality continues to work flawlessly with the other instances I plan to install on my server, I'll be a happy guy.

This will make some work for me, but it's for the better. I need to document all the current settings I have in place to run ICYG (which are tied to a service account) and then uninstall the current FB2K instance and reinstall fresh in the default location (C:\Program Files\Foobar2000\), selecting not to use per-user profiles. I'll accept the default associations for the supported music file types, and it'll only be used for non-streaming (i.e. interactive) activities. Then I'll install a second instance that's local to the directory hive I've got all my other ICYG stuff in and change my scripts to point to it. However, I'll make sure not to associate this instance with any file types or make any program groups or icons; I don't want to accidentally trigger it outside of the ICYG role. Then I've got to customize that instance with all the DSPs and settings I documented before. After I've done that I can hatch additional FB2K instances in the same manner for each stream I want to serve.

It's amazing how sometimes the simplest solutions don't immediately present themselves.

Update: I believe I've verified that simply copying a working FB2K installation to a new location successfully creates a separate, working instance with all of its own settings. Also, to turn off per-user FB2K profiles, you can go to Preferences/Core/Startup and uncheck "Enable user profile support".

Via Geek And Proud: This site made me laugh out loud.

OK, next week I start trying to pick more upsets. I'm staring at .500 this week if the Skins and the Pack win. Ugh.

This week was one of the two weeks per season where I don't root for the Jets. (Sorry, Don.) They are for real, showing a lot of composure in the fourth quarter to beat the Bills today. Mark and Robin had us over for the game; their Dish network package includes the NY CBS station.

Now, if the Bills don't beat the Dolphins next week, I may have to pack away my Bledsoe jersey. This is getting depressing.

Via ipodder-dev mailing list: This is a letter that Adam Curry recently received:

Just wanted to touch base with another way that iPodder can (and is) being used. I can selectively subscribe to podcast feeds here at Whole Wheat Radio (www.wholewheatradio.org) and let iPodder pick up them up on a timed schedule. I've adapted my software that runs the station to look in the Downloads directory of iPodder and when it sees a new MP3, it can queue it up and play it immediately on the webcast. It's pretty neat to have short clips play between songs. (I filter out any audio that is longer than 10 minutes...)

So not only can an iPod pick up and play audio, but webcasts can do the same thing. Cool!

Jim Kloss
Talkeetna, Alaska

Great idea. When I blogged about the possibilities of streaming podcasts, I was thinking of it a bit more statically than Jim. Perhaps a daily schedule update. One of the things that's great about a dynamic playlist is that you can get content online at its freshest.

I'm considering investing time into creating a stream that would encompass the following:

• Subscribe to a list of podcast feeds (published on the stream's website) that would be polled on a relatively agressive schedule. New content would be downloaded immediately.
• Parse as much metadata about each podcast as possible for display on the stream website. This would include the tags on the audio file, as well as information in the associated RSS entry.
• Run a scheduling algorithm that favors new content and schedules it to be streamed ASAP. As content ages, it is queued up less often.
• The stream website would inform readers of queued content, estimated play times, and would display metadata and hyperlinks associated with each podcast.

My hobby programming projects are born out of a desire to scratch a personal itch, but if you guys have any feedback, please share it. I think creating this would be a fun exercise.

I just found out that Christopher Reeve has passed away. Like many others my age, I was a fan of the Superman movies -- at least, at the time they were released. ;) Mr. Reeve's activism after his unfortunate accident was inspiring. May he rest in peace.

I'm checking out RC1 of Doppler, a .NET app for downloading podcasts. I'm interested in seeing if its scheduling works. (I haven't been able to get iPodder's to.)

It looks and acts cool; I like being able to drag and drop URLs from Firefox to Doppler. I also like its initial feed parameters; it lets you tell it how many of the most recent enclosures to download, and if you want to specify a maximum enclosure size for the feed.

Doppler is working swimmingly for me (its scheduling works). For a few days now I've been pretty regularly listening to the following feeds:

• The Daily Source Code
• Trade Secrets
• Evil Genius Chronicles
• IT Conversations
• Brandon Fuller

DSC has been interesting to keep up with. And the recent Wil Wheaton items that IT Conversations put out were entertaining.

Brandon (who recently released an MT plugin to support RSS enclosures) spoke about his attempts to get a podcast recorded on Windows, and moving back to the Mac platform. I'm still feeling out what I'd need to set up to record one of my own; we'll see.

I forgot to post about this when I found it out a few days ago. Following up on this entry:

If the command-line control functionality continues to work flawlessly with the other instances I plan to install on my server, I'll be a happy guy.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. I successfully "cloned" an FB2K install by customizing the preferences of an instance and then copying the "foobar2000" directory to a new location and renaming it. I even went the extra step of renaming the foobar2000.exe executable to foobar2000-hiq.exe to designate the "high quality" instance. When invoking either of the FB2K executables with command-line parameters, they affect the FB2K instance with the highest process ID (the one launched most recently).

Even if it worked, this would be a hack, since there's the potential that the two instances would go out of sync due to random quirks in how they might crossfade, etc. If Oddcast was able to output multiple streams (similar to Shoutcast, that would be a much more elegant solution.

We watched the current episode of "Lost" yesterday and I thought the exposition of the story about "Locke" was excellent. This is a fun show to watch.

Adam has quite a story about how he got a recent DSC uploaded. What dedication!

With Joe Horn's 7-yard TD reception just now, I believe Cyg's Calorie Outlets have achieved their first victory of the 2004 BDFL season. It's about time!

Whew...

(Ed. Note: I really need to redefine my categories. Soon.)

Web radio accord reached:

Licensing issues aside, radio looks to be the next Fair Use battleground for one simple reason: time shifting. XM Radio recently pulled a version of its satellite radio receivers for the PC off the market after one user wrote an application (Time Trax) which allowed XM subscribers to record broadcasts for later listening.

[...]

Indeed, the RIAA and XM Radio both issued vague, but ominous threats after the existence of Time Trax came to their attention.

Podcasting is definitely within the scope of the issues raised in the article, applicable to those who podcast copyrighted content. If/when there is a Cygweb/ICYG podcast, I'm going to try and avoid that issue entirely.

In addition, the article's explanation of webcasting royalty fees reminds me of why ICYG is a club and not a business. ;)

I came up with a way to have a single-sourced ICYG available at high and low qualities without using multiple instances of Foobar2000. I changed the main FB2K instance's streaming to Vorbis Quality 10 (as good as it gets), and I have a Winamp/Oddcast instance tuned into that and streaming it out at Quality 0 at the normal ICYG URL (which is still for club members only). The only potential downside (besides being once again at the mercy of Winamp's stability) is that the extra decode/encode cycle may affect the quality of the Q0 stream. I'll take a listen to it and see what I think. You ICYG members: please let me know if you hear a difference.

Regulator vows to ease way for Net phone use

To hold that packets flying across national and indeed international digital networks should be subject to state-commission economic regulatory authority is to dumb down the Internet to match the limited vision of government officials. That would be a tragedy.

I just hope he also thinks that federal regulation of VOIP should be light or nonexistent. Isn't it all just data?

Or, "Who Needs VCRs?" ;)

This is that weekend where we welcome fall by battening down the hatches. ;) I've moved our deck furniture into the basement and will be mowing the lawn a final time a little later today. Then I'll pressure-wash the deck, the backyard fence, and some of our house's siding.

We have more shrubs this year than last, so I'll be getting some wood & burlap to put up some protection for them. Ah, the joys of home ownership.

While watching some close games I've upgraded the site to MT 3.121.

Via Blogarithms: Doug Kaye got a welcome answer from Magnatune regarding the use their catalog of music in podcasts:

As far as I'm concerned, a podcast is a non-commercial use of Magnatune's music and as such, covered by the Creative Commons use of Magnatune's catalog, hence requiring no fee or further permission.

Thanks to Doug for asking the question. I'll definitely be checking out the Magnatunes.

Via Ars Technica: DMCA dealt serious blow by Sixth Circuit Appeals Court

In a word, the appeal [by Lexmark] failed. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against Lexmark (decision here), and offered future guidance relating to the use of the DMCA. As you may recall, the DMCA is all about copyright, and it was Lexmark's (necessary) argument that their copyright was infringed upon by SCC when they reverse engineered the chip. The court, however, sided with the view that access controls are not typically eligible for copyright protection.

Generally speaking, "lock-out" codes fall on the functional-idea rather than the original-expression side of the copyright line. Manufacturers of interoperable devices such as computers and software, game consoles and video games, printers and toner cartridges, or automobiles and replacement parts may employ a security system to bar the use of unauthorized components. To "unlock" and permit operation of the primary device (i.e., the computer, the game console, the printer, the car), the component must contain either a certain code sequence or be able to respond appropriately to an authentication process. To the extent compatibility requires that a particular code sequence be included in the component device to permit its use, the merger and scènes à faire doctrines generally preclude the code sequence from obtaining copyright.

EFF: Lexmark vs. Static Control Case Archive

The issue of podcast metadata has come up several times on various podcasts, including Adam's. One thing I've been thinking about inplementing when/if there a Cygweb podcast is to have an Ogg Vorbis version of the podcast that would utilize the ability to concatenate multiple Vorbis streams (each with their own metadata) into a single Ogg file. The streams would correspond with the different "segments" of the recording. I have a method for doing this that Don used for his ICYG show "Up The Downstair" and it worked great. Here's what you do (on Windows):

1. Record and mix a complete show, outputting it as a WAV file.
2. Break up the WAV file into smaller WAVs that correspond to the different regions you want to tag (i.e. segments, songs, ads).
3. Individually encode the smaller WAVs as OGGs and tag them.
4. Concatenate the OGGs in order using the command:
   copy /b source1.ogg + source2.ogg + ... + sourceN.ogg destination.ogg

In Foobar2000, the one file shows up as multiple lines on the playlist, one per Vorbis track, so that might be kind of confusing. Of course, Vorbis files won't play on most portable players right now, so I wouldn't expect this to be the most popular podcasting solution. But it would probably be the most open format with the most metadata.

We're going to try it out for a week and see how it works.

1. Web-based.
2. Clean interface.
3. 1GB of storage.

It just works.

Bands Debut Dual-Sided CD/DVD Hybrid

This seems pretty cool, especially if the consumer isn't gouged by the price. Playing surfaces on both sides mean careful handling is required.

The New Yorker: Talk Of The Town: The Choice

This puts the actions of the Bush administration under a critical microscope and helps frame the reasons why someone like me will vote for Kerry next Tuesday.

OK, I finally watched "Fahrenheit 9/11" last night and am working my way through Moore's factual backup. I wasn't very aware of The Carlyle Group before watching the movie, so the allegations asserted about the Bush-Saudi ties took on a new weight in my mind. I don't believe some of Moore's thoughts about what the president was thinking when told the nation was under attack, but the questions asked about why we went to war the way we did and the footage from Iraq is something I think more Americans should see. I already hold the position that we had no reason to go to war there, even with all the "evidence" that has now been proven false. The film does a great job of putting human faces on the war.

Moore has encouraged online sharing of the film; you can download it from this site.

We went to Hersheypark In The Dark today and I'm happy to report that Ryan didn't need to have his hand stamped for Trick-Or-Treat this year, unlike last year.

I guess that's a move in the right direction.

Scott and I had already planned to meet in person for the first time today prior to each of us accepting Ross's invitation to meet up. We hooked up to check out the 1PM games at Croc'n'Berries this afternoon and I thoroughly enjoyed getting the know the man behind Nitevilla and Brutal Deluxe more. We consumed a copius amount of Lager and wings and discussed everything from family to politics to "the next big online thing". I look forward to many more meetups with Scott in the future.