skriker

Podcast pro pořady Českého rozhlasu

author - malyfred / 8. 12. 2005

Líbí se mi snaha Českého rozhlasu nabízet ve svém audio archivu záznamy všech pořadů, u kterých mu to autorská práva dovolí. Archiv je však bohužel poněkud nepřehledný a i když už se v něm objevují snahy o podcasting, k dokonalosti to má daleko. Zatím totiž ve formě podcastu nemůžete sledovat jednotlivé pořady, ale musíte si vybrat z tématických okruhů: Publicistika nebo Věda a technika, resp. máte možnost sledovat vysílání celé stanice.

Nevadí, jednou su Čech a tak si to udělám sám. A že jsem v jádru dobrý člověk, tak se s vámi o tu radost i podělím.

Rádio na přání

Jak na to?

V archivu si najdete svůj oblíbený pořad. Řekněme, že se vám líbí „Meteor”, tak jako se líbil mně, když jsem ho každou sobotu jako malé děcko poslouchal u snídaně.

Archiv pořadů

U vybraného pořadu si kliknete na „archiv pořadu”, čímž se dostanete na stránku se seznamem všech nahrávek seřazených podle data, což je přesně to, co chceme ve formě podcastu.

V adresním řádku si přečtete hodnotu parametru p_po, v našem případě je to 15.

p_po

Posledním krokem je přidání podcastu do čtečky ve tvaru:

http://fredfred.net/rss/rss.php?n=ceskyrozhlas&p_po=xxx

kde xxx nahradíte konkrétním číslem. Pro Meteor by to bylo tedy výše zmíněných 15.

viz http://fredfred.net/rss/rss.php?n=ceskyrozhlas&p_po=15

Škoda, že něco takového nelze udělat s archivem České televize.

Podcasting v Čechách? Kde? Co?

author - malyfred / 6. 12. 2005

No co už taky jiného by člověk měl dělat, než sledovat poslední trendy a být in, ne? Dnes to tedy bude o podcastingu.

Již nějaký ten čtvrtek poslouchám Odvážné palce (podpořad pořadu Film o páté) na Radiu 1, kde pánové Fuka a Baldýnský, umírňováni Sašou Michailidisem, rozprávějí o filmových premiérách toho kterého týdne. Je to takový hezký pořad tří lidí, kteří nedokáží žít ve dvojici ani sami.

Baldýnský jak ho neznáme Fuka jak ho známe

Ale k věci, pan Michailidis má složité jméno a dobré nápady. Jedním z nich je i zveřejňování jednotlivých dílů Odvážných palců na webu ve formátu MP3, což je pro mě, žijícího v nepravidelném rytmu moderní doby, spása, neboť jen málokdy stihnu Palce on-line, neřku-li on-air.

Pravidelně jsem tedy brouzdal na jejich web a stahoval si nejnovější díl do svého přehrávače. Logické by bylo, mít pro takový pravidelně aktualizovaný „obsah” RSS kanál a nespoléhat na svoji chabou paměť. Tím se dostáváme k podcastingu, jelikož podcasting není nic jiného než umístění odkazů na zvukové nahrávky do RSS a jejich automatické nahrání do mp3 přehrávače.

Takový RSS feed (feed ~ kanál, máte někdo lepší název?) sice Radio 1 nenabízí, ale nabízím ho já.

Na adrese:

http://fredfred.net/rss/rss.php?n=odvaznepalce

je k dispozici podcast pořadu Odvážné palce. Zařaďte si ho do svých čteček. Stačí vám obyčejná RSS čtečka, kliknout pak na odkaz a uložit si soubor zvládnete jistě hravě.

Ti z vás, kteří to myslí s podcastingem vážně, nechť šáhnou po čtečkách k tomu určených:

Všechny mají ovšem k mým představám daleko, stejně jako všechny ostatní RSS čtečky co jsem kdy vyzkoušel, ale to je na jinou diskusi. Jediné čím se liší od obyčejné RSS čtečky je, že za vás automaticky stáhnou nahrávky z internetu a uloží je do zvolené složky na disku. Pozor – ani jedna z nich nezobrazuje správně české znaky.

Ziepod je o řád lepší než zbytek. Umí české znaky, dokáže rovnou přehrávat (streamovat) soubory bez externího přehrávače atd. Pokud nemáte nějaké větší požadavky, tak se dá dobře používat i jako vaše hlavní RSS čtečka.

Pokud máte tip na jiné zajímavé pořady českých rádií, pro které by stálo za úvahu vytvořit jejich vlastní podcast – napište ho do komentářů a já se o to pokusím. V Čechách zatím experimentálně funguje Rádio na přání Českého rozhlasu, ten také provozuje archiv svých pořadů. (Podcast pro něj už chystám.)

Update: Zde je návod, jak získat podcast pro celkem libovolný pořad Českého rozhlasu.

Pro seznam podcastů v angličtině lze doporučit www.podnova.com nebo www.podcast.net a protože podcasting je hit, máte tam na výběr z několika tisíc různých zdrojů.

Zdravím Odvážné palce!

How to use FeedBurner with WordPress without .htaccess file

author - malyfred / 2. 12. 2005

What is FeedBurner?

FeedBurner

For those who don't know FeedBurner yet – continue to services description. Shortly – you get statistics and some aditional services for your RSS feed for free.

Statistics

How to use it with WordPress?

If you use .htaccess file on your web – continue to WordPress FeedBurner Plugin.

The other people (including me) who are not allowed to use .htaccess files by their webhosting company. (So we have to have index.php in the permalink structure of our WordPress powered website.) must employ simple hack to achieve the same result.

Step by step

  1. Register at FeedBurner and when they ask you about your feed address use this:
    http://addressofyourweb/index.php?feed=rss2
    e.g. http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php?feed=rss2
  2. Now the hack comes. Open wp-feed.php in the root directory of your site and edit it according to this example:


    <?php
    if (empty($doing_rss)) {
    $doing_rss = 1;
    require(dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-blog-header.php');
    }

    //this is the code for FeedBurner
    if( $wp_query->query =='feed=feed' ){
    header("Location: http://feeds.feedburner.com/skriker/");
    exit;
    }
    //end of the added code

    where you replace http://feeds.feedburner.com/skriker/ with the address that you've got from the FeedBurner.

  3. All feeds from the default RSS address generated by WordPress (http://yourweb/index.php/feed/ e.g. http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php/feed/) are redirected to the FeedBurner but your readers don't notice any change.

Monitor Calibration

author - malyfred / 28. 11. 2005

If you want to see pictures on your monitor at least a bit like what the author wanted you to see – you should have a calibrated monitor.

I like for example my Dark skriker theme for this web but there are always a few people asking about the reason why I have completely unreadable website. Well, the problem is in their monitor adjustment.

There is a huge theory behind the monitor calibration and also quite many thick books have been written about this topic but I am not going to bother you with all that stuff. You should actually check just two (ok, three) things. Let's do it in two steps:

Brightness and Contrast

The pattern that should be visible on the next two images:

What you should see

Try to play around with the brightness and the contrast as long as needed to make all "edges" visible on this picture:

The best case

If you have a really "shitty" monitor and you cannot find the settings that work with the previous image – try to do the same thing with this one (and you should consider buying a new monitor):

The worst case

OK, the most important part is behind us and you can stop here.

If you have nothing to do or you have just realized that your monitor has actually quite many buttons that are changing "something" you can continue to:

Gamma

The gamma is a bit more problematic because the difference between CRT (you know, these old analog monitors) and new LCD displays is pretty big when you consider gamma curves. Anyway – you should be able to see the border between 90% and 100% at least on the last two stripes. Preferably the difference should be visible also on the first stripe. Don't care about the yellow stripe, that's another story.

Note: gamma could be hidden under the "Color temperature" in your monitor settings where it could be possible to change the values for Red, Green and Blue separately.

Gamma test

More detailed instructions: http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/

the id3alist – competent ID3 editor and mp3 manager

author - malyfred / 24. 11. 2005

What does it do?

The id3alist is ID3 tag editor (up to version 2.3) and file manager of some kind. It helps you to edit the ID3 tags in your mp3 files and then rename and organize these files according to the values saved in the tags so you'll get well organized bunch of folders that have the structure as you defined. The playlists are created as a bonus.

This program is not for those who have 20 mp3 songs. It's not even for those who have 200MB of mp3 files. It's for those who have to manage tons and tons of music because only guys facing to such a boring work can appreciate this carefully designed and thought out program:) (just co-operation with www.freedb.org is missing)

Screenshots

Archivist

author - malyfred / 2. 11. 2005

Problem of every blog is that all posts disappear in archive after while and they cannot return back to the front page unless the author changes the publishing date. That’s a cheap trick and we don’t like cheap tricks, right?

So I’ve created Archivist – plugin (for WordPress) that does this job in a nice way.

Archivist

Installation

Copy archivist.php file to your wp-content/plugins directory and activate it.

Settings

All these settings can be changed in archivist.php:

'number_of_posts' – number of posts from the archive that should be shown on the front page.

'random' – these posts can be selected randomly or sorted by date.

'frontpage_position' – where should be selected post(s) inserted on the front page. Picture above shows the situation where this value is set to 1. (Archive post is inserted after the first post.)

'from_categories' – it's possible to limit the categories where the post(s) are selected from. Just insert the list of category IDs.

'older_than' – defined in days. E.g. 60.

'newer_than' – defined in days.

'keep_the_limit_of_posts_per_page' – Set to "true" if the very last post(s) on the front page should be "removed" from the this page in order to keep the limit of number of posts per page. Set to "false" if these "removed" posts should be just "moved" futher. Only issue is when set "true" that you will "miss" these "removed" posts on the second page:(

'title' – defines how should be changed the title of selected post(s). There is added "From the archive: " before the title of each post by default.

Download

archivist1.2.zip – (WordPress 2.5 and higher compatible)

Other recommended plugins

Smartphone Homescreen

author - cnainee / 25. 10. 2005 /
  • česky

As a happy owner of Motorola MPX200 smartphone I am quite surprised how few homescreen galleries is on the web. Situation becames much worse when LeMondeDuSkin was closed. The only one gallery known to me at this time is at Modaco. So I have decided to release my own homescreens. Enjoy.

If you know about any cool homescreen gallery let me know in discussion below !!!

porscheCapture.jpg snbGirlCapture.jpg

snbLadyCapture.jpg

Download: Porsche Homescreen | SnbGirl Homescreen | SnbLady Homescreen

iRiver H320 – iPod on steroids!

author - malyfred / 18. 10. 2005

Two months ago I bought an iRiver H320 music player as a successor to my beloved MP3 discman iRiver iMP-400 SlimX. Since that moment I've been using it everyday so I feel I have enough "experience" with it now to tell you some of the pros and cons of this "piece of the future".

Introduction

There is no reason to copy & paste the full feature list here so I'll just give you a short summary. It has 20GB hard drive inside (there is also an older-brother iRiver H340 with 40GB). It plays MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, ASF music files, video using XVID codec and pictures in JPEG format.

Recording via built-in (or external) microphone directly to mp3 is useful and working smoothly. The FM-tuner is good to have if your battery is dying and you are stuck in traffic jam, because it takes less power.

What I should point out is the outstanding number of options that you can customize however you want. You can finely tune sound and recording settings, playmodes, re-charging (using USB or traditional re-charger), timers, skins & icons used in players menu, file browsing, …

And don't forget that it plays music for 15 hours on a single battery charge!

iRiver H320/H300 series

Steroids

What makes the iPod a good player is playing music:) but what makes H320 wonderful is playing music AND the billions of other possible ways of using it – you can set everything to fit your needs.

E.g. you can choose whether you want to browse through files according their ID3 tags (as the iPod offers) or directory structure (PC-like filetree). You have a file browser in the players menu that allows you to move and delete both files and directories on the internal hard drive. The ability to read text files is just a sweet bonus.

iRiver H320/H300 series

A very underrated feature is that you can copy pictures directly from your digital camera (USB stick, another MP3 player, memory card reader, …) and use H320 as a portable storage. There is a small USB adapter for this in the box. That makes H320 a direct competitor for devices such as SmartDisk FlashTrax. The only limitation is that the camera must work as a USB Mass Storage Device. Unfortunately my Canon S60 (and any other Canon) doesn't do that. (List of some other compatible and incompatible devices)

When we are talking about connecting with other devices it's necessary to mention that you can use full capacity of the internal drive for any kind of content. When you connect your H320 to the PC/Mac it works like other drives in your computer and you can copy any file, not just music, and all these files can be managed by the built in file manager at a later time. So it is possible to have your documents, pictures and/or favourite porn movie saved in H320 and then copy them to your colleague's USB stick while you are having beer in your favourite pub.

Skins

Skins are in this gallery and here are the instuctions how to use them.

You can even use an Apple-like skin if you feel insecure about your player not being an iPod :)

skin for H320/H300 series

Carrying case

iRive H320/H300 series

The carrying case is shipped with the device and is quite reasonably designed. But nothing is perfect. On the surface of the back side of the case is small screw but this little guy has an enormous tendency to unscrew and fall out. When this happens, the player falls from your belt and you have no chance to save it.

iRiver H320/H300 series

It has happend to me twice already, and I thank God everyday that player still works. One drop of fast drying glue would be enough to deal with this issue but I'd like to keep the screw removable. I've not found good solution to this predicament yet:(

iRiver H320/H300 series

Remote Control

There is no remote control in the standard version (the H320SE has it), but you can buy several different models separately (with LCD display or just buttons). Unfortunately my old iMP-400's remote control doesn't work with H320. That's a shame because iRiver products are usualy compatible. The RC for iMP-550 should work fine.

Video

Video for the iRiver H320 can be easily converted according this manual. Just two short comments – I recommend using these settings: 64kBit/s, mono, 44.1kHz for MP3 sound and target video bitrate about 200kbps. There is no visible difference with higher values and mono sound is usualy good enough for a video of this size and quality. Download a sample video for the iRiver H320 converted with these settings. To play this sample video you need to copy it into your player and play it as an ordinary music file.

The End

I'd recommend the iRiver H320 to everyone, one restless screw cannot destroy my satisfaction and the everyday use of my player just reinforces this feeling. Well done iRiver, well done!

You can buy an iPod and you'll get a stylish MP3 player but if you'd prefer to get the first class services everyday – you need iRiver:)

Opera Browser For FREE! Vol. 2

author - malyfred / 20. 9. 2005

Opera Software today permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its desktop Web browser. Acknowledging that the ad-banner and the option to pay for its removal has limited mass adoption of the browser, Opera is now offering its ad-free, full-featured browser completely free of charge in a move to grow its user base and penetrate the mass market.

Opera browser for FREE!

If you don't use Opera yet – you should try it now! www.opera.com

Opera browser for FREE!

author - malyfred / 30. 8. 2005
Opera software

„For one day only, you can get an ad-free version of Opera. Simply e-mail registerme@opera.com to obtain a registration code. This offer is valid from 12 a.m. Tuesday, August 30 to 12 a.m. Wednesday, August 31 2005 (PDT).“

Faster is to try this page: http://my.opera.com/community/party/reg.dml but it seems quite busy now:)

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