Took me about 20 minutes to get the set up of the MTrebuild “plugin” right and get the cron job figured out, so now if you want to see what song is playing* and the three previous songs played on Radio Paradise just take a look over to the right column under Mr. Sturgeon’s Law.
If you look to the right, just under Sturgeon’s Law, you will see a new addition – a list of Radio Paradise‘s Recently Played Songs. Some helpful soul over on the RP forums created a file that scrapes the recently played page and turns it into a feed. Now all that was needed was a way to display that info on my page.
First I tried the RSSFeed plugin. After a bit wrestling I got it to work, with one bugaboo, the only time it updated (read the feed) was when I rebuilt the index page. Not refreshed, rebuilt, as in posting an entry. This meant if you checked my blog in the afternoon, the songs listed as recently played would have been heard about 20 hours before. I guess if you are a rock, that is real recent, but in human terms that is like so yesterday. And in Internet terms, with recent meaning milliseconds, that is unacceptable.
The second attempt is using another plugin, GETXML that looked promising. It took a little more monkeying that the previous plugin to get going, but I persevered. Unfortunately it exhibits the same behavior as RSSFeed.
Some Movable Type forum searching turned up another plugin that might help either of the first by forcing a rebuild of the index file at predetermined intervals. That would keep the file list updated and recent. But I can’t seem to find it listed in the Plugins Directory and quite frankly, I’m getting tired of messing with this thing that probably has no redeeming value to anyone.*
Man, I would like to bottle today. Mid 70s, low humidity, 5-10 mph winds and a sprinkling of fluffy white clouds. The pine pollen is still on the trees and the insects aren’t out yet. Bradford Pear trees blooms are still hanging around, the dogwoods are just starting and a couple of the early azaleas are out.
Radio Paradise is hitting all the right musical notes as far as I’m concerned. It is almost enough to make me want so send them a few bucks. Recent play list:
Joseph Arthur – Can’t Exist
Porcupine Tree – Mellotron Scratch
Deus – Sister Dew
Richard Thompson – Turning of the Tide
Patty Griffin – Change
Ian Anderson – Panama Freighter
Nik Kershaw – Wounded
Maria de Barros – Mi Nada Um Ca Tem
Bob Marley – Is this Love
Also, I’m reading a female PI mystery book called In Big Trouble by Laura Lippman that is hitting all the right words. Sample (she is in San Antonio):
“I’ve never had anything like this. Most Mexican food in Baltimore is so…perfunctory. I mean, you know you are in trouble when the best place in town has something called ‘Los Sandichos’ on the menu. And the Mexican place near my house has a wait staff of Estonians. Here, I could make a meal from the tortillas alone. They’re incredible.”
Rick looked puzzled. “They’re flour and lard. You could make them yourself. Anyone could.”
“Theoretically.” She could also solve simple physics equations if she put her mind to it, but that didn’t mean she was going to start anytime soon.
A chunk of the day in the middle was taken up by that pesky work thing, but all in all, very nice.
My favorite Internet Radio station, Radio Paradise, seems unavailable right now, so I was forced to listen to something else this afternoon. PEELLAND-FM was bookmarked and I didn’t remember why so I tried it. I was instantly transported back to my high school days, they were playing Deep Purple’s “Child of Time” from the album Made in Japan, 12-1/2 minutes of screaming, rambling live rock and roll. This album had a heavy rotation in the 8-track player (that’s right 8-track.) This disc along with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 4-Way Street, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, The Allman Brother’s At Filmore East and, of course, Pink Flyod’s Dark Side of the Moon really define that era for me.
If you are running Mozilla, or your IE is in the right mood, you should notice that I have my very own favicon now. It was made from a picture I used for a Theme Thursday last June, Bend. Here is a place on line that will make one for free, all you need is an image you want to use (a square one would be best.)
Don’t hate me, OK? I usually listen to Radio Paradise while sitting in front of the computer and just now they played “Clocks” by Coldplay. I love that song.
No dice on listening to Radio Paradise at work. I bet they have all that bandwidth hogging music listening stuff locked down. Oh well, Plan B, is to record 12 hours of music using Streamripper and burn it to a CDRW and take it to work, lather, rinse and repeat.
To listen to the free stream with Windows Media Player you need a plugin called Abacast. Tried installing it here at home and for whatever reason it doesn’t work. The low band (mono) mp3 stream is still there, but I can’t listen to mp3 at work because it uses an IP address and the network weasels have blocked access to anything with just an IP. In searching for a replacement I found something really close, Radio Paradise, and there stream is stereo. They are also listener supported and if I can get the stream at work I will consider donating something to the cause.