hammersley's radioPod app

here's a great link to a great app thanks to warren ellis. who also provides us with his characteristic raving ax-murderer-cum-attack-womb commentary on said program.

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

Ben Hammersley, he say:

I’ve cobbled together a server app, RadioPod, to record streaming radio stations, convert them to MP3s, and then provide an RSS 2.0 feed for a PodCasting application to download and then throw into iTunes ready for my iPod.

It's TiVO for commercial radio, is what he's saying. What Ben does -- and he's living in Europe, one of those sweaty countries where they eat dogs and make very bad films about perverts and mimes, you know the kind of thing, which is why he came up with this --

-- what Ben DOES, is take the live stream of The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4, which is streamed on something disgusting like RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, converts it into a handy mp3, and dumps it on his computer to be moved into his mp3 player, so he can listen to it any time he likes. Like when walking the dogs, or smoking cigars, or, I dunno, doing strange foreign dances with the neighbours so they don't perform awful santeria rites with dead chickens and his underpants.

This is very clever. The BBC releases only one of his radio shows, IN OUR TIME, as mp3. The rest is streamed, or briefly archived for later streaming, but in the vile formats mentioned above, which don't work on my mp3 player.

BBC radio is brilliant. And I've paid for it. But I don't have time to listen on appointment any more. Dumping the good stuff onto my mp3 player and listening to it in the pub while working, or while walking? Excellent.

However, the Radiopod thing that Ben has devised is.. well, it's written in g33ksp3ak.

Anyone who could convert the gibberish on this page:

radiopod

into a working Windows front end (fuck you Mac people) that, you know, had big buttons and simple stuff for people like me to understand, would be storing up great rewards in heaven. Or hell. Or possibly even just in a bar somewhere.

And then we could all listen to very fine BBC radio whenever we wanted. Except for you Mac people. You had to push it, with your shiny flowery boxes and your i-this and your i-that, didn't you? Rat eaters.

-- W

mm, rats.