Everything sounds better over the radio.

Your Morning Cup Of Coffee

2003-12-15  Bill Pollock  

	* I realized the benefit of having "blue hours" when I was working
	out in my yard.  Rather than actual RF occlusion, I've got more
	issue with blasting the "F" word ten feet away from a couple of
	youngsters.  I'd missed tagging up Minor Threat's "In my eyes" --
	"AT LEAST I'M FUCKING TRYYYYYING."  I don't mind minor ones, just
	really loud, really clear ones.

	* Sounded really good this weekend -- some of the tracks honestly
	suprised me.  The Pixies "Where Is My Mind" is one I haven't
	listened to much.

	* Some upgrades needed before a release: full administrative page,
	add "gong" feature (kick songs out of queue/playlist completely),
	security on edit.  Possibly replace CGI with PHP?  Support for
	bigger song lists/infinitely sized lists.

	* Perfect job for Frank (or maybe Walter): news reader.
	Headlines?  Full stories?  Something like Newsblaster would be
	kind of fun -- robot reading made-up news.  Barring that, someone
	providing either plaintext newsfeeds of "top headlines" or XML
	would be nice.  

	Links:
	Newsblaster
	News In Essence -- Essentially crap

	* Walter sounds nicer than Frank on this Newsblaster feed:

	"The capture of Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, eight
	months on the run and found hiding in a hole beneath a two-room
	mud house near his hometown, was unlikely to destroy the
	anti-U.S. guerrilla insurgency, U.S. and Iraqi officials said
	Sunday."
	
	
2003-12-13   Bill Pollock  

	* Had my friend Greg over, he seemed rather impressed by the
	setup.  

	* I must say -I- am really happy about it, so there.

	* Convinced my friend Andrew to give me one of his computers to
	build out as a radio station of his own.  I figure it'll get the
	stuff out there a bit and allow me to develop Good Stuff like and
	ISO and whatnot.

	* In trying to figure out How To Get Free Schwag I emailed the
	Cepstral folks -- they've got a Partner Program that I'm hoping to
	get in on.  Could be fun.  We'll see if they want to deal with a
	hobbyist/programmer.  I think they've got some relation to the CMU
	bunch, so we'll see if they've got the right spirit.

	* Emailed the guy at Reasonably Clever (Chris Doyle) to see if he
	allows redistribution of the minifig images his generator creates.
	The thing has plenty of export-y options and documentation
	likewise, so maybe so.

	Link: 
	Minifig Generator (Minimizer)
2003-12-12  Bill Pollock  

	* Only downside: volume control isn't RIGHT on my keyboard.  Need
	to find my remotes :) Wanted to turn up DMX a bit :) Tradeoff: I
	don't necessarily need my speakers anymore. Hmmm.  MP3 player
	project perhaps?
	
	* Suprised I didn't log this earlier, Duncan's v/o guy:

	

	I have, effectively, created this guy in my PeeCee and made him do
	my evil DJ bidding for eternity.  Tell me that's not someone's
	vision of hell...

	* I'll admit now that this has got to be the biggest environmental
	conditioning thing I've done for a while.  A good sort of Alva
	Edison moment.  I understand the puss that guy had on him most
	times.  Rrrrr.  Nothing's fucking working.
	
	* Duncan sounds really good over the air.  Wow, "these are the
	breaks" as it were.  Bumps right into "People Just Ain't No Good."

	* Get downstairs, get things online again.  Bring my -analog-
	radio, a cheap radio-shack tuner.  The first known broadcast was
	of Guided by Voice's "Hold On Hope", but just because the ceedee
	happened to be the first one I dug out of my pile of 20th century
	acetate.  Somehow that's appropriate.  It bumps out OK on a
	station a bit close to a high school one for my liking.  Then
	again, why not?  Not like anybody'd miss it any.

	Besides, I play better tracks 24/7.

	* So, downstairs to the CeeDee player, hook back into that after
	some fitful testing earlier in the evening that gets derailed by a
	show about Chris Webber.

	_Chris Webber_

	So help me, I'll be about to find the cure for cancer and fucking
	Chris Webber would foul it up.

	* So I got the box and got it up, but not without setback.  The
	night before much anger and drama over the fact that the damned
	thing won't properly come up where I want it to.  I wanted a nice
	clean channel but perhaps if I had better knowledge and better
	tools I'd figure out why I couldn't.  I go to bed, tired,
	frustrated, angry.

	I wake up with a game plan that came at the expense of some sleep.
	Tie it all together using lowest common denominator stuff.
	Reference quality on all of them.  Too many unknowns left to
	factor if I do it up the way it needs to ultimately go together.
	Are my lineouts set right?  Is this cable OK?  Does -this- work?
	
	"Clearly the back door way in is the easiest.  You've just got to
	get past the two dogs."  

	"WOOFWOOFWOOF."


2003-12-10  Bill Pollock 

	* Up WAYY too late late last night coding, listening to the storm
	rip at the house, etc.  My brains were a bit jangled by this app
	called "AutoZen" which was a fairly simple implimentation of
	something like a binaural tone generator.  There's a base drone
	and some waveform that allegedly twinks your mental state, kind of
	like mantra chanting but all done digitially.  Couple of
	interesting scripts.

	Only able to listen to it for a few minutes before I got distracted, but seems interesting nontheless.

	Links:
	AutoZen (for Linux only) 
	via Dave Phillip's Sound And Midi Software For Linux page. 

	* Good news: got the "blue hour" coded up.  Bad news: I forgot
	that $arrayref = \@new_array doesn't do what @{$arrayref} =
	@new_array does -- namely work -- so it wasn't actually going to
	skip anything.  That and my expediency move of only paring down
	the "immediate" playlist to legal songs would have meant that only
	five songs got checked.  If there were ten bad ones in line in the
	queue, the filter would have done nothing.  Both fixed in a little
	morning haxing.

	* Discovered workaround to annoying PHP hilighting: html-mode.
	Eversomuch nicer.  Change Log Mode shows me that I'm probably not
	formatting these things properly to some esoteric standard.

	* TRANSMITTER: Still none.  Somebody got a package and it wasn't
	me.  Generally I'm more patient, but wonky delays in shipment
	always make me jittery.  Code's all done now, its the weak
	component to this process right now and I had been scheduling
	completion for its approximate delivery.  Its not all sad and
	tragic, its still only Wednesday, so let me tell you a little
	story about the transmitter:

	50mW which I think means that I am below the range where I need
	permission.  I believe up to a half watt is legal as proven by the
	"Food & Liquor" fools a few years back.

	That was the story going around at the time, anyways.  Still, they
	give numbers like 500' which would mean that under optimal
	conditions I would perhaps hit a half-dozen houses solidly.  My
	hope is that in the somewhat signal-opaque shador of my stucco
	house surrounded by a bunch of other electronic devices, the
	transmitter will barely reach the back corner of my yard so I can
	listen to some tunes while gardening.

	My understanding is that so long as I'm not stepping on anybody
	else's signal, I'm within my rights as a free citizen of these
	here United States to broadcast to my backyard.  At least,
	behavior like this is why I own a home -- if this proves not to be
	the case perhaps I'll sell out and move to Italy.

	I realize that transmission is a kind of a fickle thing (as my
	corless keyboard just reminded me) so for peace of mind I built
	the "blue hour filter".  As part of the HTML buildout -- in truth,
	driving it -- sat a ID3 tag editing bit built to fix the abuses
	done to the pristine format of the tags across the collection.  It
	was simple enough to build "explicit content" tagging in at the
	same time.  This is done by in-program convention more than any
	inherent feature within the MP3 tags themselves.

	I've tagged up a couple of exising files as "blue" and my hope is
	that it allows me the freedom to put up more of what I would
	consider "good music" without worrying about the community
	standards might be of my next door neighbor if she happens to pick
	it up.  I've set the "blue hours" up to run from 10-6 and while
	that's a bit more liberal than most media outlets (especially
	direct broadcast) this -is- backyard radio.

	If directly asked I'd admit this is all overkill, but part of this
	for me is actually working the model -- how would I do this For
	Real If Money Were Being Paid For It.  The solutions are a bit
	simple but damn do they work good.
	 
	And that's what fun hobbys should be all about.

	* DAMNIT Should have known what I was googling for all along.
	Part of the mp3 boom box design problem was wrapped around not
	finding appropriate speakers: "Stereo PC", which is what the
	damned thing was.
	
	Andrew corrected me today and said that I couldn't call it a
	ghetto blaster.  If I can't blast the ghetto with it, I don't want
	it so screw him, but credit does go for influencing design.

	Links:
	Google Search
	In-bay speakers, $22-50US (SPKINTPRO)
	
	
2003-12-09  Bill Pollock  

	* Hobbytron status still not updated.  I'll have to take their
	word for it.

	* In looking for perl hooks for Cepstral I came across a ballpark
	figure for Rhetorical: $3K.  The voices definately sound cool and
	the $3K might buy you licensing that you don't get with the
	standard Cepstral product, but I dunno if its really 100 times
	worth it.

	PS - I have no idea what "*" is, but its got to be the lamest idea
	for a product name -ever-.  Can't google it, it means weird things
	in various system implimentations, etc.

	Link:
	Asterisk discussion archive

	* Looks like very nearly what I want to do is:

	theta-cmdline -o - "Hello, jeeves" | tee sample.wav | sox -t wav - -t ossdsp /dev/dsp

	But something about theta-cmdline doesn't like being stroked in
	this way.  The STDOUT doesn't flush or something.  If I redirect
	the "-o -" into a file and then cat the file through the tee/sox
	pipeline then everything works out okay.  I'm obviously missing
	something here, but what?  A flush?

	* Fa-SHEW!   Turns out the command line is, in fact

	theta-cmdline -o - 'cow cow cow' | tee sample.wav | sox -t raw -r 16000 -sw - -t ossdsp -s /dev/dsp

	There's a little pop at the end that I'm not entirely sure how to
	control.  Not awful, but a little off-putting.  It appears to be
	coming via the sox process since the cmdline app sounds okay
	without it.

	* PS -- tee doesn't work for this, as I've found out.  Must be
	stripping something (nulls maybe?) from the stream.  Redirecting
	-o works fine.

	* PPS -- perl doesn't seem to handle this much better.

	* Fuckit, when its not working, its not working.  Put a bullet in
	that and move on.  The synth w/o the audio generation runs
	crazyfast and that works just as well.

	Link:
	Last chatter
	
2003-12-08  Bill Pollock  

	* Hobbytron replies: shipped today!  Merry Xmas!  Thanks, John!

	* Gotta finish up the loose ends.  Want to get a limiter on the
	"Explicit Language" tracks, only play them after ten.  Yes, this
	is all very silly but sometimes Doing It Right is worth a little
	extra effort.  Plus, more legal is more better in case I end up
	rocking some irate neighbor's house by accident.  No need for them
	to hear "Don't Call Me Motherfucker, Motherfucker" blasting out
	Johnny's "My First Radio".

	Anybody up listening to radio past then is some kind of psychotic
	anyways.
	
	* Get some more web content together.  This file, for one.  Its
	all plaintext in a cheesy php wrapper, or hadn't you noticed?

	* I'm going to call my lawyer and see if he can't slap some writ
	on the gnu sons-of-bitches and/or RedHat for yucking up my emacs.
	What the fuck is this context hilighting bullshit?  I'd email
	Steadman, but last time I talked to him about the subject he said
	I could roll my own and leave -him- alone.

	* Added Heavything ID bumpers every 3 songs.  Voice Talent once
	again via the internet, this time from Rhetorical.  Wish those
	guys would make an easy-to-buy/install/afford product for Linux.

	Link:
	Rhetorical

	* The announcer (Duncan) sounds a little quiet when compared to
	the general din of the MP3s playing.  I probably need to equalize
	the volume on the mp3s anyway (since I -know- some of them are
	inconsistent) but also need to boost the output on D-money.  Turns
	out Cepstral includes the code for their command-line tool so it
	was simple plug-and-play past that to get the thing built and
	hard-coded with a bit more oomph.  They don't have a switch for
	the volume by default -- perhaps I'll add it and send it back to
	them.

	Perl hooks would be nice too.

	* Where the fuck is /dev/audio on Red Hat these days?  The
	standard Unix audio device comes up as "not found" on my box when
	I target it, but audio -is- coming out of some device.  Some
	indications of /dev/dsp?  Maybe not.  Whatever I pipe through that
	comes out a'crap.  I want to tee the output of Duncan into a file
	so one could audition the breaks via the web, but a lack of a
	targetable file makes life difficult.  More research needed.
	
2003-12-06  Bill Pollock  

	* Whine to Hobbytron -- when's my backorder going to be in?  You'd
	think with the tech crowd they are courting here they'd have a
	better notification system.  I want to be paged in event of a
	crisis such as this, damnit. I have such technology, why don't
	they?

2003-12-05  Bill Pollock  
	
	* Impatient, impatient, impatient.  Where's my fuxing order?

	Backordered!?!  Tragedy!

2003-12-04  Bill Pollock  
	
	* I start doing some web design because I figure the transmitter
	isn't fucking here yet and its something to do.  Plus, it allows
	me a "cheap" (in code terms) interface to MP3 tag editing.  Since
	the deejay runs his chatter off the title and artist contained
	within those tags, getting them right is fairly key.

	Added bonus: the website means I've got a cheap interface to -all-
	this stuff and vice-versa.  I finally realized what php is truly
	good for, which is essentially overblown SSI-ing for those in the
	back who think they are too hip for SSI anymore.  This stuff all 
	worked in about 1997 with half the code...
	
	
2003-12-02  Bill Pollock  

	* Order the transmitter from Hobbytron.  I had to sign a
	disclaimer stating that I'm familiar with all the broadcast rules.
	I think that I should be pretty jake and very little should escape
	my property line.  Hopefully.  Just to be sure I'll tag up
	Explicit content for post 10pm.

	* Code up some backend stuff to generate a playlist, push songs to
	the mp3 player proper and generate a little "patter" for a TTS
	module.
	
	* Patter complete, I sprung for Cepstral's Duncan
	For the price ($29.95) the clean package they give you is sweet.
	Pretty much the only other thing out there for Linux is Festival
	and while free you very much get what you pay for.  Cepstral gives
	you the voice, a fairly decent command-line utility to do TTS out
	of the box and a API to use against their library to generate your
	own stuff.

	To tell you the truth, Duncan isn't the best sounding.  Frank has
	a much smoother pronounciation but sounded a bit stuffy for "The
	Voice Of Heavything".  Linda -totally- had the voice I wanted but
	her pronounciation sucked.  I'll probably get both later if I ever
	get tired of Duncan.

	Links:
	Cepstral
	Play with the Voices

	* DeeJay sounds fucking hilarious.  Just the right mix of break to
	music.  A little pause to let you know you're listening to radio.
	Probably the best $200 I've spent this year, not including
	strippers.
	
2003-12-01  Bill Pollock  

	* Decided to go the FM Transmitter route rather than lameass MP3
	player approach.  Nothing quite holds the size of raw PC disk.  I
	contemplated going with a mini-ITX but figured I'd want radio on
	-that- too and I've already got the damned server together.

	Links:
	Hobbytron