106 drop in

A short excursion into code

A few posts/couple of weeks ago I installed the oEmbed HTML5 audio plugin here. This allows me to upload mp3s and other audio files, the plugin takes care of presenting the audio using the html5 audio tag with a flash fallback for browsers that do not support the type of audio: This plugin converts URLs to audio files (MP3, OGG, WAV) into HTML5 audio with Flash-based player backup
This seemed to do the trick. This morning I noticed that none of my audio was showing in FireFox. I right clicked on the space where I expected to see the player and saw the the Flash file was not loaded.

Looking at the source it seems that it is using a swf file belonging to google:
http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf

and that is Error 400 Not found.

Using Cyberduck I had a look at the plugin’s code. Part of this check to see if the file is an MP3 and the browser FireFox. firefox does not support playing of MP3 via the audio tag so the plugin uses the google Flash file, which is of course missing.
$embed = sprintf( '<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="audioUrl=%1$s" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf" width="400" height="27" quality="best"></embed>', esc_attr($matches[0]) );
On my ‘real’ blog I usually embed audio using dewplayer so I decided to edit the plugin to use that.

I uploaded the dewplayer.swf file to the top level of my site and changed the code, I need to change the name of the var from audioUrl to mp3 and the url of the google swf to /dewplayer.swf.

If you are viewing any of my audio posts in fireFox you should hopefully be less puzzled.

Update: the plugin has been updated: WordPress › oEmbed HTML5 audio « WordPress Plugins

1.1

Google removed their MP3 Flash player from their website, so we include it in the plugin itself now (it’s still the same player)

Here

Poetry Reading — MISSION: DS106 Poetry is meant to be read aloud. Select a poem – it can be a personal favorite or one you find randomly – and read it aloud. Explain in your recording why you chose that poem.

Lots of S sounds I am afraid.

I am reading a poem by my daughter about hillwalking.

DS106 Confusion

Create a ds106 radio bumper Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station.

This one is pretty simple. Short segment from Gnawa Diffusion‘s Frik Fashion.
I’ve enjoyed Gnawa Diffusion for a few years while hardly understanding a word of their lyrics (in Arabic, Tamazight, French and English). A fair metaphor for DS106.
Nothing fancy. Just the start of the track and a few words. A few minutes with GarageBand. I regularly do some quick edits of recorded audio and normally use audacity followed by Levitator for that but prefer GarageBand now for recording and simple ducking.

Bobbie and Me

SongStory — MISSION: DS106

My memories fade over time, but sometimes there is a song that can take me back to a place that revives the memories of my past. The song allows me to remember things I thought I had forgotten. So, for an assignment, pick a song that does that for you, and tell some stories about what you remember… …In the assignment you might want to mix your voice over parts of the song, give an intro, tell the story first and play the song, break up the song with the story – lots of options. But nothing too long – my attention span is short. These would be great to post on ds106 radio.

About two minutes, hopefully not too long.

bobbie and me

Falling short

After last week’s excitement, I have fallen a little short of my own expectations this week. I’ve not been near minecraft, didn’t even get started on the Design Safari. I manage one Design Assignment, the creative commons one and then tried the Lyric Typography Poster.. I saw a couple of great results (and this looks like something professional) for this and though it didn’t look too hard. I cranked through iTunes until I remembered one of my favourite song Judge Not, there are a few different reggae songs with this title but the one I like is by Dennis Brown:

The phrase I like is Judge Not, for we all fall short of the glory of Jah. I’ve taken Jah out of the quote as I am not religious. I like the idea of trying and falling short more than Judge not lest you be judged (Matt. 7:1).

I started thinking about this, googling King James font, I saw a reference to calson, so decided to go with Big Calson which seems to be on my mac. I was hoping to get a sort of old looking text and spent a couple of hours failing to get anything like my imagination. I did consider the old english type of font. I was also thinking for some reason about flags and decided on a flag background; red gold and green seemed obvious. Many tutorials and tests later I ended up with this:

This falls very short of the target: Choose one of your favorite lines from a song and illustrate it using only typography. Consider how the font, color, sizes and placement of the typography can reflect or emphasize the meaning of the words.

Nevertheless I have now spent a deal of time playing with photoshop and trying out various tutorials, hopefully this will help.
Here are a few of the tutorials I read through:

So I had another go: