Wiretap – The Wind at the End of the World (11 MB MP3) From 2006-03-31 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap – Forsaken (11 MB MP3) From 2006-03-24 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap – Career Opportunities (11 MB MP3) From 2006-03-17 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap – Who is the Mud Dog? (11 MB MP3) From 2006-02-24 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap – The Bat and the Weasels (11 MB MP3) From 2005-02-17 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap – A World of Possibility (11 MB MP3) From 2006-02-10. Host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap – On the Beach (11 MB MP3) From 2006-02-03. Host Jonathan Goldstein.

NPR today announced 8 new podcasts:

• Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
• Station Showcase with PRX
• This I Believe
• Classicool Kids
• Driveway Moments
• Hourly News Summary
• Not My Job
• Piano Puzzler

They’ve also started hosting podcasts for a bunch more station.

They’ve decided to offer Wait Wait in full form, and just the “Not My Job” segment to gauge if people prefer full programs or shorter bits of content. I’ve always been of the opinion that it doesn’t matter how long content is, as long as it keeps my attention.

Don’t expect Morning Edition or All Things Considered any time soon.

OK Go’s most recent podcast has an interview with Jonathan Goldstein. From their podcast page:

The band interviews Jonathan Goldstein, host of Wire Tap, the best show that’s ever been on in the history of CBC radio. Listen in as this venerable broadcaster insults Damian and Tim, and is, in turn, insulted.

Here’s a direct link to the MP3.

Wiretap – A Listening Ear (10.8 MB MP3). From 2006-01-27. Host Jonathan Goldstein

Update: I’ve fixed the mp3 link, I linked to last weeks show by accident. Also the plug-in which makes it so this doesn’t show up on the front page works, except, it still shows up in the main RSS feed. Oh well.

Audible recently opened up their Podcasting system Wordcast which allows anyone to use the Audible DRM to provide paid podcasts. Unfortunately they forgot to tell anyone… probably because it isn’t quite ready. But the potential is huge thanks to the fact that their DRM’d files work on the iPod unlike all other DRM except Apple’s FairPlay.

I’m not sure how much they have implemented but they’ve promised an integrated ad system and detailed metrics.

Wiretap – Childhood’s Promise (10.9 MB MP3). From 2006-01-20. Host Jonathan Goldstein

Wiretap – I Can See You Through the Radio (10.9 MB MP3). From 2006-01-13. Host Jonathan Goldstein

Two notes:

I didn’t intend on continuing to post Wiretaps here.  Back in April 2005 I sent an email to the CBC to see when archives would be available on the Wiretap website.  The anonymous repsponse said: “Wiretap is not available for downloading or distribution on CD yet…But we’re working on it. Please stay tuned. Thanks for writing.” Posting them here is getting old, so I’m hoping they’ll get an archive together soon, at which point I’ll remove the archive.
Continuing these posts has however inspired me to install a WordPress plugin called ShowOnFrontPage.  It allows one to choose whether each post should be promoted to the front page, or just to the category pages (it is slightly buggy under WordPress 2.0 so we’ll see how it goes).  So unless there is something particularly relevant or interesting about an episode, I won’t promote it to the front page and it will only appear on the Wiretap Category page.

The IR Blaster arrived today. Got it running in a few minutes, and I’m happy to report it controls the Sirius Starmate ST-2 radio perfectly (with the config file I created earlier.)

I need to make some tweaks (get the module loaded and LIRCD started at boot, etc) but it looks like it is going to work.

One problem I’m having is that sox (or some combination of sox, lame, and my script) for some reason is stopping the recording after exactly 3 hours 22 minutes and 54 seconds. Some sort of buffer or something must be filling up. Sox is sort of overkill, and doesn’t take an argument for number of seconds to record, so I’m instead going to try rawrec. In the days of Linux 2.2 I used mpegrec which worked like a champ. But I don’t think it builds on 2.6. So I’m hoping rawrec will do the trick. For some reason, after playing with it for 5 minutes, all I’m getting is nasty static. I’m not sure what is going on as all my arguments look good to me, but I’m tired and will try again tomorrow.
I’m not aware of any other stripped down utilities that will send line-in audio to standard out for handling directly by lame. Anyone?

As I mentioned in a previous post, the only way to have a computer controlled recording set up for Sirius satellite radio involves buying a receiver unit designed for a car (the SIR-ALP1 for example), then getting a board that provides a serial interface.

Today it occurred to me that there must be away to use my current satellite receiver (a Sirius Starmate ST2) to schedule recordings. My first proposed solutions involved the new lego mindstorms kit set up in some sort of Rube Goldberg way that physically pressed buttons on the receiver at given times. A good way to rationalize getting the new lego mindstorms. Then I realized I could probably get an infrared transmitter that is controlled by the computer, point it at the receiver have the computer change the channel at specific times.

The first step involves getting all the IR codes the remote uses for each button press. I wasn’t even sure the IR remote that came with the receiver would work with other IR equipement. I tried to find specs for the remote, read through the docs for the Starmate ST2 on the FCC website, took the remote apart to see if the board said what frequency it worked on. Nothing. Time to just try it out. To do so, you need to use the irrecord utility that is included with LIRC and an IR Receiver (which I happen to already have from my PVR project). Unfortunately, for reasons I don’t understand, but probably makes sense, LIRC requires a kernel module. And for more reasons I don’t understand, the lirc kernel module needs to be built from source. Perhaps because the settings are hard coded into the module?

So I spent a bunch of time trying to get LIRC running on my Ubuntu Breezy linux box. There are a couple packages. lirc-modules-source which you first use to build the kernel modules, and lirc which includes lircd, irrecord, etc. I had trouble building the module, and all I could find was reports of others having the similar problems. I decided to just download the source directly from the LIRC website. That ended up building without any trouble.

I built the module, insmod’d it (I first had to run setserial according to the instructions on the LIRC website). Ran mode2 to test it out. It started… I pressed a button on the remote… success! text and numbers scrolled along the terminal.

Then I ran irrecord and went through the steps to create a configuration for the remote. Basically, naming a button, and then pressing it as it registers the command sent via IR.

With a config file in hand for the receiver, I placed an order for the IR Blaster. Other IR transmitters varied greatly in price. The IR Blaster was only $15 including shipping, so I emailed Mike, the guy who makes them and he didn’t see any reason it wouldn’t work.

Next will come figuring out how to make LIRC work as a transmitter instead of a receiver. Then with a few utilities to record from line in as mp3 (lame, sox, etc.), cron, and Podcastamatic, I’ll have Podcasts of Howard Stern, Wiretap, and any other Sirius content. Update to follow.

Wiretap – The Art of Charity (10.9 MB MP3). From 2006-01-06. Host Jonathan Goldstein

Note, you can look at only Wiretap related posts here.  Or you can subscribe to the RSS feed of just wiretap posts here.  The RSS link creates an enclosure of the MP3, so you can subscribe to it directly in iTunes. However, as far as I know, there is no way to make a post in Wordpress that is not published to the front page.

After a long hiatus (I moved and the CBC staff were on strike) I finally managed to record a new episode of Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein.  This episode is titled, “Of Man and Beast” (9.5 MB MP3).

My very kind mother got me a Sirius Satellite receiver for Christmas. After researching it for a while, I decided to ask her for it even though I had some apprehensions. After getting it set up and using it for a couple hours, I’m still not so sure that I’ll keep it around.

The receiver itself seems quite nice. It has a decent screen, built-in 44 minute cache, and decent controls.

Programming

It should be no surprise that my interest lies with the non-music programming. Sirius has made licensing deals with NPR and PRI, but the selection is pretty weak. Most notable is the absence of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. I have been on the lookout for a version that didn’t contain annoying local modifications. Most public radio stations hack these shows up, adding their own local content that is often not interesting. I was hoping that Sirius would provide a clean version. Not even available! I presume due to politics (NPR upsetting member stations for bypassing them.) So, as far as Public Radio content, there is nothing I can’t already get via the internet.
I’ll keep my mind open about music programming, but after a quick glance, the smaller independent music isn’t popping out at me.

Howard Stern and the Comedy channels will hopefully provide me with some adolescent entertainment.

Timeshifting

44 minute cache just doesn’t cut it. I’ve been recording public radio shows for several years now for transfer to my iPod and once you can listen to any show whenever you want, you never go back. Podcasting has just made this even easier.

No computer controlled receiever for Mac OS X

There are now a couple solutions for controlling and recording content with a computer. TimeTrax is a commercial solution for Windows.

A guy has created a “Sirius to RS232” board which allows you to connect a receiver designed for a car to your computer via the serial port.
The Audio::Radio::Sirius perl module has been created which will work with the above board. However, support under Mac OS X is unchartered territory. In theory it would work with a RS232 to USB converter. I emailed the creator of the board, and he said he hadn’t heard of anyone using it with Mac OS X.
Neither XM or Sirius is excited about a computer controlled recording solution for piracy reasons, but I’m sure someone will take the plunge and get this working on Mac OS X soon. I almost went for it, however, I just couldn’t justify the cost of the SIR-ALP1 receiver, the RS232 converter board, the RS232 to USB converter for something I wasn’t sure was going to work.

Reception

I’ve got a window in my office pointing directly west (the direction I was suppose to put the antenna) and the receiver was unable to get a signal requiring me to install the antenna outside which makes a bit of a mess.

Online streaming pretty crappy

Sirius offers on-line streams at a lower bitrate to subscribers. However, it is almost exclusively music channels. If it matched all their channels, I wouldn’t even bother with the receiver and just record the web streams. Of course they make that a pain too, using an embedded windows media plug-in that doesn’t work for me in Firefox. When I try it in Safari, it opens the stream using the external Windows Media Player application, says it is playing, but there is no sound.

Cables

The receiver is quite small, but it has these three annoying cables (antenna, audio out, and power) sticking out the left side. Not much they could do about it, but it is a mess.

Commericals

Cable TV promised subscribers that by subscribing, you would get to have a commercial free experience. Sirius has skipped that from the beginning. Music is said to be commercial free, but the talk channels all have commercials. The PRI station even has a commercial telling me to

Sound quality

I don’t particulary care (speech doesn’t require many bits) but Sirius has clearly sacrificed sound quality to squeeze more channels in.

I was at least aware of all the above issues before signing up, but decided to give it a go anyway. However, unless I’m surprised by content that I’ve yet to discover, $13 a month just isn’t justifiable.

My Christmas present to myself this year is the M-Audio Microtrack. It’s a tiny field recorder that uses standard Compact Flash cards. It can record MP3 and WAV and comes with a little stereo microphone that actually seems to work quite well, at least to my untrained ears.

There are a couple good reviews of the device. Here’s the Transom M-Audio Microtrack Review. And here’s the O’Reilly Review.

It arrived last night and I brought it along with me this morning on my commute. I’ve documented my commute with photographs, now it is time to do it with audio. However, I know next to nothing about editing, so it will likely be a while before I have something that isn’t a full hour and half long.

I also still have a ton of experimenting to do. Figuring out how to properly adjust levels etc. Until then, I give you a sneak peak. This 60 second piece is of two commuter rail trains. The first is an outgoing train passing by, followed immediately my inbound train. It clips a couple times… oops. I always thought that recording in stereo was useless, but you actually get the sense of a train passing by you which is really cool. Listen to commuter trains. (~ 1 MB MP3) Best when listened to with headphones.

Audible today announced Wordcast. (website, press release) It’s been rumored for a long time but finally here. Or is it, I don’t see how to actually enroll.