I don’t have time to sort this out now. Sorry.
And you should know that this post is on its THIRD title.
” … but beyond that, it’s a Crap Shoot …”
I changed the title post from its FIRST title:
Can #%^&*@ You @%$#^*& Now ???
to the second title:
Can (as in Terminate) You Now
and from that to the current title because my frustration is tempered by my respect for my ds106radio friends.
But this morning I’ve noticed some oddities in the recently launched ds106rad.io/listen page that I put together in support of the transition to the new Airtime backend. My motivation for doing so was driven by my desire to help keep us connected through the transition, and brought about by a little bit of frustration at some now-missing features that had been working in the original ds106radio technology.
However, my experience this morning gave me a flashback to the days of the Coke/Pepsi taste tests, or those wonderful childhood Think And Do Activity Books where you had to put a circle around all the little things that were different between two almost identical images.
 ds106rad.io/listen in Safari |
 Can You Hear Me Now? on aforgrave.ca |
It appears the page that I put up has been slightly modified. Just a bit. And as a shared-community effort, that’s what we’re about here at ds106.
However, the most significant difference is the oh-so-obvious missing HTML5 player in the safari-browser window — the reason I went to the page in the first place this morning! I can’t hear my ds106radio!!
Seeing this then brought a quick QA test in the Chrome browser, which initially resulted in the Aw, Snap response that appears earlier in this post.
Were I confident that I could listen to ds106radio in FStream, I would have turned there. But I fear that’s something that is on my list of things to sort out — why can’t I hear ds106radio in FStream?
If I could simply fire up the Status Page to see whether someone is streaming live or what I should be expecting to hear, I would do that — but the ongning Airplay — Offline and the limited connect between the inbound stream and the outbound metadata is sketchy at best.
 Airtime – Offline |
 Where is ds106rad.io ?? |
Apparently with WinAmp, you get metadata. Or is it Laudiocast? It used to be great with Nicecast. And Papaya. I need to talk to Nigel about that.
And the last time I was ‘casting on Papaya — it seemed fully happy to continue, telling me that I was connected to the server and that the signal was going out — but who knows where the stream was going TO? It wasn’t getting to ds106radio (no metadata to confirm either way) (AFAIK — @DrGarcia maintains SHE was on the radio then — not that the metadata indicated that, either — but I did hear her bang a utensil on some cookware at my request. Thanks, GNA!)
We all love our ds106radio — it helps to bind the ds106 community together.
And I’ve been trying to sort out little bits and pieces along the way to help out where I can — knowing that the station is in a transition period with the new Airtime software.
- I like Nightfall, and listening to the Twilight Zone. That content rocks!
- But I also like the tweetbot.
- And I also like the metadata.
- I like being able to access ds106radio from a variety of different audio clients without having to sort things out over and over. And having them work for folks who are trying to tune in.
- I like a one-button push to be LIVE on ds106radio to share with my friends.
And I like knowing when someone is ‘casting …
… and being able to immediately tune them in and listen.
I think we want to help more listeners enjoy ds106radio.
And I also know that there is no intent to make it more difficult for our longstanding friends to enjoy it as well.
We can work it out.
(But I’ll have to defer my involvement in troubleshooting recent changes for a few hours.)
In the mean time, my original experimental Can You Hare Me Now? test page remains in place. And it works for me on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. And it has links to the various listening options that used to work with ds106radio (as documented on 105theHive.org). Testing those out will be added to my list, coupled with my Stage Two need to understand the what’s-up-with-the-metadata? question. Oh yeah, and I’ll go back an check out the current page at ds106rad.io/listen later in the day to see what might be up with that.
Perhaps, in our far-flung and distributed open world, I’ve missed a blog post (entirely possible) that documents what’s up and someone might drop a kind link in the comments, or send me a DM or something to bring me up to speed.
Here’s this, lest you fear I have lost my confidence in ds106radio. It’s from my in-progress Banzai, Buckaroo series of GIFs.
“Dial It In!” (Clearly, Buckaroo was a #ds106 participant), by aforgrave on deºtriºtus
Hi Andy
With the old station I used VLC Mobile or ES File Explorer on my phone (Galaxy S2) but both were problematic. I couldn’t save details in either app so had to manually enter each time. If the stream dropped due to a poor signal moment, it would more or less never start again. On the new system neither of these worked at all. Your web page also wouldn’t show the player. I put TuneIn on a few days ago and it’s been great so far although only used it twice.
On the tablet (Galaxy running Android 4.0.2) I use XiiaLive which has generally been OK. It had its moments with chipmunking and it was never clear why that was. Seems alright on the new station although I’ve been sticking to the 64k steam as wireless in my house is so contended (LOL!)
When I try /listen in Chrome I get a broken player (no plug-in). In Firefox I’m asked if I want to run the plugin. I accept and the Player is displayed… for about 3 seconds and then it flashes between the player and a broken plugin icon 😉 I put TuneIn on it last night and it seems OK but like the phone it hasn’t really had a run out. (Seems Kevin is getting good reception via TuneIn on an iP*d.)
So on the ‘old’ station, things weren’t perfect for mobiles. Same on new station but are improving.
For the desktop experience, I always used VLC to listen. Darcy’s web page / widget never worked for me and that was in any browser). Your widget works in Chrome for the new station so that’s OK because it’s easy to push people there and not have to explain how to use VLC or even what it is.
A lot of comments on teh twitterwebs have been about the Tweetbot and I know you’ve been trying to get that to work. For me, it has been pushing out metadata far more reliably than the old one did. Now, every track I play is tweeted whereas before it was maybe 1 in 20 with lots of interspersions from AutoDJ. I rarely picked up someone was live that way. I’d normally check the Icecast status page and see if there was a /live mount. This bit is now less informative for me. I can’t tell the difference between /live and scheduled. Also it doesn’t show any of the details from my stream meta e.g. South Pacific nor I think from anyone else although I’ve been time disconnected so haven’t seen much from anyone else.
Jason said that the map was a killer and I found that too. Gave more of a sense who was tuned in and how long had they been there i.e. actually listening or just a remnant from a failed snorecast 🙂
We’ll get there (“we will” is used loosely – conscious that I’ve not been in a position to help out at all at the moment with any of this stuff and really appreciate the effort that you and Grant have applied to make it work for the rest of the crew. Props to you both (although that might be like so 2010-ish!))
So, I agree that key things are being able to easily see when someone is /live, who is tuned in, and to listen easily. The first few months of the DS106radio were messy and experimental. Maybe we need this new disruption to stop becoming complacent hippies and trying but not inhaling 🙂
#ds106radio Global community radio #4life