Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I can’t argue with results. HPodder is doing the job for me. If you need a nice, easy, quiet, background-friendly pod catcher, you can’t do much better than HPodder. I’m sure you could find prettier, and maybe more full-featured ones. But why bother? HPodder is unobtrusive and friendly.

Get your Old Time Radio with hpodder. And your tech updates. And whatever.

Oh, hey! they have screenshots on their web page. There’s a quiet sense of humor.

I went for it today. I used the easy instructions and upgraded my media player/game to version 2.1.1. I had read that 3.0.0 was not really ready, so I decided to wait.

The main thing I wanted was to be able to play my mono Old Time Radio files. I get a lot of podcasts, many of them old time radio. Some of the stereo ones played fine, but the old mono files were awful.

I actually carry my old Zaurus around with me strictly as an mp3/ogg player. I could replace it with a big SD card if this works. I have music in both formats, and would be quite unhappy if I could not listen to all my files.

I’ve tried it and… It worked!

Mono, stereo, mp3, ogg, whatever. It all works. It even seems to play videos better. I love it when my upgrade actually is an upgrade. This is how things are supposed to work. Take note.

By the way, those instructions were great. Simple, small, complete, reassuring. I’m a happy guy.

I found myself with a few minutes (hours) on my hand. Typically everything plays slow.

I loaded up with podcasts, and found most of them running 22, 32, or 56 kbps at 44 KHz. I loaded up some music mp3s that I made from CDs and they were running 160/224/320KBPS at 44KHZ and played at full speed. I switch to mp3 files from my service (emusic) and find that they’re playing 128KBPS (mostly) at 44KHz. Hmmm. Of course my ogg files play just fine. They always have.

I don’t see any other differences, so I guess I have to transcode up to 128 kbps or so to play my other music. Or look for something more interesting to blame it on.

In the “more interesting” category: rumor has it that the difference is mono/stereo, that mono plays half-speed. Another rumor says that an upgrade will fix it. I will have to try to upgrade this thing and hope I don’t brick it. I’ll pick up another sd card and try it out this week. It’s finally become worth fixing, or at least worth trying to fix. 2.1.1. firmware is supposed to have corrected mp3 player and a much improved movie player. Official release 3.0.0 is supposed to be a dog, though. 2.1.1. is the preferred non-cutting-edge version according to the wiki.

Ah, very well. Stay tuned, and see if I mess up my toy or fix it. It could be interesting!

I have been getting my OTR downloads from RadioLovers via the web, and via podcasts Brando, Botar, and Boxcars. These are great sources for the OTR collector.

Now I’ve become pretty excited about Archive.org, and in particular their archives of old time radio programs. I’ve also been browsing some of their tech and video categories. This is a great resource for the OTR fan. I don’t know that it has the detail that the hard-core collector would want, but if you just like to listen and read the little blurbs, it’s great stuff.

I’ve been listening mostly to podcasts for the past several months. I have (as anyone would) an eclectic mix of technical and entertainment programs. Sometime I’ll have to re-post my list of sources, but for now I just wanted to mention the good work at Archive.org.

I spent too much time angry about how a lot of my old B movies don’t play on the gp2x. I knew it was format incompatibilities, but I didn’t know why. Last night I discovered there were lots of reasons, and I learned them trial-and-error. It took a fair amount of google searching and manpage reading for a leisure activity, but I have my old movies playing.

For me the secret was FFMPEG. I get pretty good results for the gamepark holding’s media player if I do it like this:

ffmpeg -i $inputfile -s 320x240 -vcodec mpeg4 -f avi -vtag xvid $outputfile

I understand some of it, and the rest was lost in my broken slumber, but it seems to do a good job. Of course, I am working in Linux (Ubuntu Edgy Eft) and installed it with apt-get. Instead of doing a copy, I use /path/of/sd/card/$INPUTFILE.avi as my output filename and it puts the video right were it belongs. I may be doing some stupid or slow things here, but it is working so far. I hope that’s helpful.

Now I have to figure out why so many OTR mp3 files play at half-speed.

By the way, I’ve quit using ffmpeg in favor of mencoder. It seems to work better, more often. I had a number of files not make it through ffmpeg.

Among the other fine choices my family made for me (including scale model TBM Avenger, a book of panoramic photos of polar regions, aircraft movies, and old comedy movies, to name a few) I received a new media player.

This is the gp2x, which will be a fun hobby. If I were looking for a slick, trouble-free, tiny console with endless hard disk storage, I’d be looking in the wrong place. It’s pretty cool, but not quite “trouble free”. This device will be a bit of a hobby.

It made some interesting choices. The first was to be all open source. It’s a linux-based device for starters, and seems to stick to the common standards like USB ports and standard AA batteries. It even has a pretty familiar A/B/X/Y button layout with L1 and R1 buttons like on the game cube. I don’t play games, so it’s all the same to me, but the kids noticed some similarity. Also, its storage is entirely via the Secure Digital port. I happily have gotten two of them recently, each 1GB. I think I’ll watch for more/bigger ones. As is, thought, it’s enough for some video and audio.

It does some things really well. I find it to be a very good audio player and video player. It is also an ebook reader, though I’ve not tried that yet. The screen is large and bright, and I found it pretty comfortable for watching video. It’s really a pretty nice unit.

It handles OGG and MP3 very well, and has a variety of EQ presets. I can get whatever I want out of it musically, I think. I’ve a number of podcasts to catch up on, both talk radio and old-time radio comedies and . The one gig cards hold a lot of episodes. I’ve also been watching “Santa Clause Conquers the Martians” (a particularly bad Public Domain .avi file I have on hand) . This media player covers a lot of file formats, I’m not too worried about being able to get my media onto it.

There are only a couple of shortcomings. One is battery life. I sadly will only get about 10 hours of audio play (screen off, I assume) or else about 6 hours of video. If I use the USB cable to transfer files, I burn battery while transferring files. Luckily, I have a card reader/writer that is USB powered, so I can avoid some hassle. I will have to carry a few rechargables and a battery charger around with me, regardless. I don’t want to go burning through batteries all the time. But it will be sufficient for me to use on planes and trains, and I can use my laptop when I’m in a hotel room. There is also the option of an AC power supply. I can get around this problem.

Another issue is that it’s not as easy to install games on this thing as one might like. I’d like it to be like plugging in a game boy cartridge, but that’s now how it works. Installing requires some effort on my part, and games don’t install all the same. I hear that installing MAME on this device makes it more useful as a game platform. All of that doesn’t much matter, though, because I am not a game guy. I installed frozen bubble and it took me a while to learn the controls. I just don’t have the instinct for console games. Since I’m not so hot on gaming anyway, I may not mind this at all.

The main frustration I have is trying to get it to fast-forward a video file. I don’t want to watch the intro to Santa Conquers the Martians even one more time. I’ve had enough. I need to figure out how to use this thing better.

There is a longer and more detailed writeup at wikipedia’s GP2X page.

I found the fast-forward, it just didn’t work on the Plan Nine file. On other files it works just fine. You use the joystick by pressing left. A tap takes it a few seconds forward, but you can hold it to the left and get a progress bar at the top of the screen. When you think it’s far enough, release it, and the movie resumes from the forward point. It’s quite nice, when it works. I also installed a game or two, but games bore me pretty quickly. Now I need a 4GB SD card to plug in. I already got my rechargeable batteries, so that’s not the big worry anymore.

I’m writing a program to copy my podcasts and mp3 files to my player. Copying is not a big deal, but I have funny ideas about how to do it.

Before I tried writing a program I would pick them by hand and copy them to my player. That was clearly for the birds. I don’t need to spend 1/2 hour picking my songs and programs each day or even each week. It’s too much.

I started by collecting up all the files and then pulling them by random selection, but that left a lot to be desired. Some of the podcasts are series. I don’t want to hear the episodes out of order. Then there are some that are long, and having them chosen twice in the same month is too much. I end up skipping them, and it wastes space for stuff I want to hear.

I tried to work it out by file date, but it’s not really related to anything but when I retrieve files. When I subscribe to a new series, I really don’t want to listen to all 7 episodes I just downloaded in order of retrieval. I want them to “merge into the flow” with all the other programs I have. Especially if they’re talk programs (engadget, buzz, etc).

So I figure that I should write a program to deal with my complex “needs”. It needs rules.

• I don’t want two files from the same series, so I need to group by series
• Within a series, I want the oldest file that I’ve not already heard
• I want to be sure I get a file from each time-sensitive program if possible
• Once I get the time-sensitive stuff, I want to fill with non-time-sensitive stuff
• I want to get as much as possible on my player each time
• I just want to click a button and have it “happen”. I don’t want to be involved

Guess what? This is really hard when podcasts don’t have their ID3 tags filled in. I’m writing all kinds of silly “fall-back” algorithms to try to figure out what series and episode and date I’m dealing with. What I would love to see is consistent use of “ALBUM”, “TRACKNUMBER”, “YEAR” and “ARTIST”.

• ALBUM: the podcast
• YEAR: the podcast year if possible. That would be *this* year if you’re making new ones
• TRACK NUMBER: either an index for this year, or for all time. Either is fine
• ARTIST: if you have a guest or are rebroadcasting, this is handy. If you broadcast OTR, then “The Shadow” is a fine artist name. This way, I can group all of The Shadow broadcasts and file them through in order, and can treat “Fibber McGee and Molly” separately.

If you are broadcasting sermons, a similar scheme is much recommended. ALBUM would be your church, and ARTIST would be the minister. The others are unchanged.

If you don’t care to help by doing consistent tagging, then please try to use a good filename convention. I personally like the ALBUM-EPISODE-YYYY.MM.DD format. I can parse it and work with it rather well. Please don’t add extra separators or the like. And please don’t use US (MM/DD/YY) or European (DD/MM/YYYY) date formats or anything else clever. The thing I’m shooting for here is that the titles should sort well.

It would be easier yet if you were to use YYYY.MM.DD-ALBUM-EPISODE so that the names sort naturally.

Of course, that’s all a fallback position. I don’t care how you name or number your episodes if you will give me good ID3 tags. Dr Dan Hayden (a word from the Word) does a wonderful job. C/Net buzz stinks at it. Ravi Zacharius (just thinking) does a good job. IT Conversations stinks at it. Charles Hodgson (podictionary) is wonderful. Slashdot review stinks out loud.

It is funny to me that the ones that are best at using ID3 tags are the ones that are non-technical!! Is that bizarre? The educational and theological podcasts are leading the way in intelligent and consumer-friendly ID3 tags, while techy podcasts are seriously trailing. It’s crazy.

A national treasure, Botar’s Old Time Radio serves up a lot of great classic shows with a minimum of talk and fuss. None, in fact. I have recently subscribed to the podcast, and have been collecting series that I didn’t even know I would like in addition to Jack Benny (a local hero, btw) and Fibber McGee and Molly, and The Shadow.

I highly recommend Botar as a source for your podcasts, and find it to be great bedtime listening. I am so able to relax listening to the old comedies. When I was a kid, I would stay up and listen to CBS Radio Mystery Theater. I would often fall asleep waiting for it, or shortly after it started. Some of those stories weren’t even good dream-fodder but it is a happy memory.

I also subscribe to others, and it is nice sometimes to get tidbits of history, but I’ve had podcasts where over half the program is general chat and discussion (not even necessarily about the shows). I would like to hear some tidbits of information and history sometimes, but I subscribe for the shows themselves primarily. I appreciated sites like Botar where they just get down to the meat of the matter.

I’m enjoying several now. I think that I’m mildly addicted to the Yesterday USA/Radio Memories Network podcasts. I have really come to appreciate the old programs. I heard ‘Red Ryder’ the other day, and have to admit that it was pretty exciting. I also just listened to a double-feature of Superman with guest stars Batman and Robin.

In line with my intent to reread the bible entirely this year, I decided to get some Bible-reading podcasts also, in addition to my usual Ravi Zacharius podcast. I recently found one called The Whole Truth a daily bible reading. Random does a nice job of reading, and doesn’t embellish or explain. That makes it perfect for my purposes. Besides, there are plenty of other great teaching programs if you want exposition. I especially like Through The Bible with Dr. McGee.

I’m also a firm fan of the technical shows SlashDot Review, Engadget , Linux Linc Tech Show, CNEt Buzz Out Loud, and IT Conversations.

I’m probably a month behind in all my podcasts (gotta cull that list down). It’s no good when the computer’s disk is clogged with month-old shows. I need to get it cut down to just three hours’ programming per day so that I can hear the all on the commutes.

I’ve been listening to the podcast for Brave Men Run. I started it because it came from Radio Memories Network a regular source of Old-Time Radio (OTR) for my commutes.

It’s one of those comic-books-come-to-life kind of thing, where people discover others with special abilities. It’s been a lot of fun so far, and I’m only on the 18th chapter (the 6th broadcast). If you want to give it a listen, you can try either of the above links. If you’re not into the genre (watchmen, comics, etc) then you might not be interested in at all, but science fiction/fantasy fans should give it a shot. I don’t mind giving the author/reader a free plug here:

26 Jan 2006, Update: the more recent installments take on a “young man comes of age” angle, and have moved toward the R rating. I’m not so crazy to recommend it to the younger audience (has underage drinking and some sexual content to distract from the story). But the story is still interesting and it’s still going somewhere interesting, I think. If you don’t want to overlook that, then maybe it’s best not to get hooked.

While you’re at Radio Memories, you should check out channel 6, the history channel.