Dec 17 2007
Mud Radio is Off The Air
Yup. Off the air for good. Good enough anyway.
I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but nothing happens when I try to connect. Jody originally set it up for me. I have no clue how to fix whatever is broken. And I don’t care enough to learn. All that webcasting configuration crap seemed way too complicated to me, anyway.
So that’s it. ‘Twas fun.
Well I enjoyed it; the one or two times I happened to catch it.
I have thought about setting something like that up for my students at the school where I teach - a site where they could play their own music and have some other type of interactive web program. If its real complicated to set up and keep running, I doubt I would do it. I like to start things; I don’t like to maintain them.
For what it’s worth, I enjoyed it when I tuned it too, and I particularly enjoyed the day that you thought the US Justice Department was on your case and about to shut down the operation.
I’ll poke around at it over x-mass, if you want. I have no memory of how I set it up, but that’s typical; I’ll figure it out.
Sol, that was a funny day. I was seconds from shutting it down.
If I turn the webcast on again some day, it won’t happen until:
— I have something to offer listeners besides, “Duh, hello, this me again. I got nutin’ to say now. I just thought I’d turn on the mic. I have to talk softly now because the guy upstairs might hear me. Ah, the hell with this! See ya!” I enjoy getting on the mic, but it’s painful unless there’s some content worth listening to. And it would have to be convenient for me. I’d never want a hobby to feel like work.
— I’m living in my own house. Presently, I live on the ground floor of a house that was never designed to hold apartments. The guy who lives upstairs has his office right above my office, and the walls are thin. There is no sound-proofing at all. He can hear my keyboard clacking as I type this. He can hear my phone ring. He can hear me talking on the phone. He can hear it every time someone leaves a message on my machine. He’s up there trying to write some kind of Masters thesis. It’s difficult to make any kind of sound down here without disturbing him. I used to play my guitar from time to time throughout the day. I can’t do that anymore. Nor can I play music through my PC speakers, let alone get on the mic and talk stupid. It’s been like this for more than a year now. I’m sick of it (not being able to play my guitar or listen to music too), as I’m sick of many things about this house. Thankfully, if all goes as planned, Jenny and I will have our own house by the spring.
— I get a new computer. The one I have now is getting old and it’s showing its age. Everything is starting to go on it. It takes 30 seconds for Winamp to start up. Everything is slow. Programs freeze all the time. Eventually it’s going to blow up in a ball of sparks and flames like a Star Trek computer and I’ll have no choice but to get a new one. With a new house on the way (if those plans work out), I won’t be able to afford a new computer any time soon.
— Jody sets it up again from scratch. I didn’t have the patience to figure out what went wrong with the ShoutCast plugins, so I removed all of it. It’s completely gone. So Jody will have to start from zero. And if he doesn’t do it, I’m frigged. I’m confident I’ll never care enough to go through the headache of setting it up myself. I’m totally dependent on Jody.
— The webcasting software is much more straightforward. I put up with the ShoutCast plugin for Winamp, but have you ever seen what this thing looks like when it’s running? It’s not too difficult to work with, but like just about everything tied into Winamp, it needs to be redesigned so that it’s simple to use and so the most commonly used functions are easy to access. It’s was too technical. Which is fun if you’re a tech guy. I’m a mild tech guy. Anything that takes more than 5 minutes to set up is too much for me.
In other words, it could be a long time before Mud Radio comes back.