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TL:DR Some improvements for listens to Radio EDUtalk including some scheduling. We have an very varied and rich set of content on edutalk contributed to by a wide range of folk.

Over the Summer I’ve got a few things I want to work on. A couple of, to me, big ones. ScotEduBlogs is one, but more of that later on. First I want make a few improvements to the Radio EDUtalk stream.

Until today the stream just plays random pieces of audio from the archive files we uploaded. The files sit on the internet-radio.com server.

I had just been creating 64 kbps versions of any files submitted to the podcast and uploading them. the 64kbps files are fine for voice and keep the cost down. Unfortunately this process, or the way I carried it out had stripped the tags from some of the MP3s which meant that the information displaced on the webpage was not great.

For the last couple of days I’ve been sorting out all of the files I’ve gather over the last couple of years in a haphazard fashion. For the Radio Edutalk live shows this was easy, I’ve exported these at 64 kbps and tagged them in a reasonable fashion, eg they are titled, in the Radio EDUtalk album etc.

Scripting

Some other files I had exported at 64kbps without tags. I had to add tags to these files, a couple of hundred. To do this I used a combination of SuperCard, applescript and a couple of shell commands, exiftool and id3tool

The same tools were used along with lame to export lots of other audioboo files and add the tags back in. The only problem is with id3tool which can only handle short ID3 version 1 tags, so some longer titles are truncated. (if you really want to see this in action check a quick video. I’ve deleted a chunk of this post which gave details, in the unlikely event anyone else needs to do this sort of thing, get in touch.)

This is not perfect but gives a bit more information to the viewer about what is playing on the radio.

We have space for a couple of GB of mp3 and I have more files than that. The idea is to start a rotation, where I’ll swap out a subset of audio every month or so. Took overnight and a bit to get the first rotation of 370 files up.

Organising a Schedule

Having files with a better set of tags on the server has allowed me to create some playlists which will play at certain times.
For example at 8pm we will have a random episode of the live show, or on alternative days at 7pm Ian Field and Leon Cych will take over for half and hour. The Eduhacking Daily is mostly some teknoteacher with some other contributions. These three folk have contributed the most to edutalk.
Going through the files had an added bonus for me, I now appreciate even more the varied and rich set of content we have.

The Schedule

  • Drive Time 5pm 60 minutes a random selection of shorted episode, eg, not the Radio EDUtalk shows.
  • TeachMeet daily 6pm
  • Radio Edutalk 8pm, one random track from the live shows.
  • EduHacking Daily 9pm 30 Minutes, mostly @teknoteacher
  • Purposed Daily 10 pm 30 minutes
  • IanInShefield Mon Wed Fri 7pm 30 minutes
  • Eyebeams Tue Thu Sat 7pm 30 minutes

I’d love to get some ideas for different selection that we could schedule.

More Info

The changes also mean we can provide more information on the Radio Page, just like this:

Current track: Loading…


An invitation

An invitation to listen to edutalk audio is always open, as I am not responsible for the quality of the content I have no hesitation in saying it is great. I’ll be posting more about differnet ways to listen soon.

There is also an invitation to join in and contribute to the site, in several ways:

  • Record and audioboo or ipadio and tag it edutalk.
  • Record audio anyway you like and email it to audio@edutalk.info
  • Let us know if you are interested in joining in a live show as a guest by emailing edutalkr@hotmail.co.uk or audio@edutalk.info
  • Let us know if you would like your own live show, we have lots of time in the week.
  • We are open to any other suggestions too.

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I’ve been using Fargo for a bit of blogging recently. This is a test of using markdown to format posts.

Fargo is a simple idea outliner, notepad, todo list, project organizer.
It’s an HTML 5 application, written in JavaScript, runs in any compatible browser, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft IE 10.

A h3 Markdown header

I am hoping that using Fargo to write blogs posts might improve my blog posts by helping me to think about the structure a bit more. I am impressed with how easy it is to move blocks of content around in Fargo.

A html tag H3

I am not sure about Fargo’s business plan, here is what they say (html blockquote)

There is no charge to use Fargo.
We don’t want any limits on the growth because we think outlining is vitally important to the growth of the net as a thinking person’s platform.
We will eventually offer for-pay services to Fargo users.

I’ve put a screenshot of the editor in my dropbox to show what this looks like in Fargo.

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Lovely warm, for here, evening for a walk around the Loch Ardinning Nature Reserve.

The path that has been a swamp for the last few months is starting to dry out.
The Balck Linn burn still had a fair bit of water in it.

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Very quite evening, a roe was grazing in the reed near the loch, the smell of young bracken everywhere across the moor.
At the end of the walk beside the loch again there were a fair few young frogs leaving the pond and crossing the path.

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Walk round the glen Douglas ‘Trio’ today, Beinn Bhreah, Ben Rioch and Tullich Hill
Started cloudy with a bit of drizzle as I squelched up Beinn Bhreah. cheered up by a few groups of Red Deer and a Raven croaking overhead.

Red Deer
I’d forgotten my camera and an iPhone is not the best wildlife at a distance camera.
It began to clear up a bit after I got to the first top:

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Walked along to Rioch had some coffee and dipped down to climb up Tullich Hill.
One of the things I like about these hills is how quiet they are, I did not see another walker today, great view of the more glamorous Arrochar Alps too.

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Lunch at the top of Tullich while my phone made a wee timelaps video of the cobbler:

Although these are just about highland hills they are covered with rough grass rather than heather. Lots of Bedstraw and Tormentil along with some pink and blue jobs. Some orchids on the wetter parts of Tullich.

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Grass filled with vole tunnels too, I nearly stepped on a couple of the wee beasts scooting along the tunnels.
Back down to the road I noticed some new signage pointing to the hills. Selfish twinge that this might mean the walk is a bit busier in the future. Amazing that you can get so alone a short hour from glasgow.

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5 hours 20 minutes, 10 and a half km, 1012m of up.

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First published on Fargo moved here 22 Jul 2019

Given the weather was drizzle and rain we waited until after 4 to start this walk. The forecast promised some sun in the evening. This didn’t quite materialise but the rain stayed off.

Plenty of fox gloves and other flora to peer at.

White foxglove #walknote #floraFoxglove

By the time we were heading back to the car it had brightened a wee bit and the clouds had cleared from Ben Ledi across the loch.

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About 7 and a half km

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The weather promised to be rainy so I decided to rein in my plans and go on this closer to home walk.
14 deg C in the car when I set off rather late at about 9:30, cloudy and a we bit muggy.
Arrived at the distillery around 10, the weather stayed dry for the whole walk. Low cloud and a stiff breeze. Quite nice to walk in.

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Dumgoyne very green now. As usual provides a bit of aerobic exercise before a gentle walk to Earl’s Seat.
Lots of bog cotton bobbing across the moors. A couple of ravens in the distance and a few noisy larks at the trig point.

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Needed to put on a jacket after eating lunch at the trig point but in general warm enough.

Here is the kml file on google maps. About 10 and a half k in around 3 and a half hours.

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First published on Fargo moved here 22 Jul 2019

Dull and overcast, looked like it might rain but didn’t. Dorothy and I took a short walk to the Whangie and back.

flower

Pleasant walk lots of bog cotton and larks. Nice Woolly Bear on the path.
#woolybear #walknote
Surprisingly quite for a Saturday morning.

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There are only a few days until Google Reader grinds or snaps to a halt.

I can’t say I am ecstatic about this but I have been doing a little planning and thinking.

My current use of RSS and google reader is as follows: I read, I bookmark to pinboard, tweet links, collect some articles on Instapaper for reading again and I email links to my work and home accounts.

Most of this is carried out using Feeddler pro on an iPad, I occasionally also Reeder or more often the GoogleReader site on a mac. I use Feeddler on my iPhone too.

Feeddler is, in my opinion, a really good fit for the way I use rss.

For example it lets me set a preferred address (well two) which are already filled in with my home and work address, so it is very few clicks to send an interesting link to my work address from my breakfast table. Feeddler also lets me trim down the services it shows, which saves a bit of scrolling.

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What I’ve done to prepare:

  • Read a lot of blog posts collecting links on pinboard tagged googlereader
  • Bought the new version of Feeddler: iPhone-only Pro version. To go with this I got an account on The Old Reader and a trial on BazQux both which sync with the Feeddler. I’ve taken up an account on Hive too.
  • The Free Feeddler app has been updated too, I am really hoping the paid version of the iPad one is updated or there is a new version to buy that supports the pro features, especially the link menu like the iPhone one above.
  • When things settle down a bit, I’ll choose one service to either pay for or donate to. I pay for flickr, pinboard and a few other services, I use RSS a lot more than those and would be delighted to support a good service.
  • I’ve installed the beta of NetNewWire which was the first rss app I ever used.
  • I’ve also set up a few rivers with some of the feeds from my greader export. This is the most interesting development. This uses Dave Winer’s River3 and is starting to get useful. I’ve had a few experiments with river2 and the OPML editor before this, but this one is up and running.

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I’ve been messing around and tinkering with Fargo.io a wee bit more today.

Fargo started as an outliner, I found it because I read Scripting News after messing with the OPML application on my mac.

Fargo is still an outliner but it has developed quite a few interesting features in a very short time. Early on one could post to a blog that supported the metaweblog api and I made a couple of posts to my blog.

This does not work perfectly with my blog as it is not WordPress and does not seem to return the correct id to Fargo, this means I cannot update the post from Fargo.

Now Fargo is developing into a publishing engine. For example this ‘post’ is published and is part of a blog. I’ve not really got my head around how the blog is setup I’ve just copied settings from some other users and messed about a wee bit.

The main aim of fargo at the moment seems to be:

  • But we want to emphasize that if you’re a writer and non-technical, you don’t need to understand what’s in the engine. It’s our job to make this simple for you, a job that we take very seriously! ;-)

So I am going to hit the wordpress icon on the left and see if this ends up on my blog.

Update: Well that worked fine, updating from Fargo didn’t, so this is copied and pasted from the Fargo Post:

The post got published on my blog, but the wrong id was returned. Even changing the id in the outlines attributes did not fix this. I can’t update the post.

The other thing I noticed is the type is changed to metaWeblogPost so that seem to change the formatting on the published post, losing the styles and menus. I got this back by adding another type attribute, this replace the original. I guess, if it worked with my blog, updating would not work? When I click the wordpress icon i get Save “Fargo.io is getting interesting” as a blog post? So I guess if I clicked OK I’d get a new post on my blog ant the type would be set to metaWeblogPost.

In fact the type attribute seems to be changed even if I cancelled. I changed it back manually.

Update 2 22-06-2013 I’ve managed to get a slightly better blog with a sort of purpose going with fargo: Walk Notes. Mostly by copying stuff from kyle<.a> one of the fargo devs outline.