Monday, November 26, 2007

Internet Radio In A Pinch

I love Pandora Radio, but of late, it's been bringing my machine to its knees. I shut it down and was left with silence. I don't usually think of myself as a person who needs to code with music on, but apparently I am. I was getting desperate for a new music source.

The thing is, I didn't want to weigh down my current laptop with another streaming app. I almost considered dragging my clock radio over to my desk and just listening to FM. But please, I'm a geek for heaven's sake - we can't do anything that simple.

Instead, I took a few minutes and setup an ancient laptop which runs Damn Small Linux to be a streaming media device. Here's what I did:

  • Using the remarkably cool and light weight MyDSL I was able to easily download and install both aumix and xmms in just a minute.
  • From a shell prompt I could now run aumix to change the volume on my laptop
  • From a shell prompt I could run xmms to kick off the media player - though all it played was an annoying tone. I assume this was to show it was working.
  • I Googled around and learned that XMMS can play any MP3 stream that has a .pls extension.
  • A quick Google search found me this long list of Internet Radio stations. Most of them WMA, but there are a few that are MP3.
  • Using Firefox on my crappy laptop, I browsed to Polskie Radio Londyn and poof, Russian talk what sounded like Russian talk (but could have been anything, actually) Polish talk and dance music streamed forth from my little laptop. It was just what I needed.

What's your favorite MP3 radio station? Know of any big 'ol station lists I should be browsing through?

With all this Russian talk possibly Russian Polish talk, I'm inspired to say: Пусть Ваши поток будет unbuffered и код компилировать

Update: It's occurred to me that I have no idea if this station is in Russian. Apparently all foreign sounding languages map to Russian for me.

Update: I've discovered shoutcast.com. It lists hundreds (thousands?) of Internet radio stations, many (most? all?) are in MP3 format. They seem to work great with my hacked setup. Rock on!

Update: Thanks to John for setting me straight: Polskie Radio Londyn is a Polish station. Well, duh.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, я не забывал о вашем spreadsheet. Вещи как раз шальны вокруг здесь, и я должен возглавить вне к Los Angeles эти неделя и chicago затем прежде чем он утихомиривает вниз.

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