In case you're at all interested...
I went to college in Berkeley between 1987 and 1991. I think that about says it all. To be honest, I've haven't really been keeping up with Bay Area punk and the Gilman St. Project- I live in L.A. now and it's been awhile since I've been back to Berkeley. But I still remember the scene back then, and that's why I set up this server.
Server(s) info
This 'cast went live on 3 March 1999. Other than a month hiatus during July 2000, when I left my place of employment and had to move the 'cast elsewhere and another month where I had to deal with finding some more stable software it's up pretty much all the time. Currently, it 'casts at 64kbps.
The tunes and the web site you are looking at now are currently served off a Celeron 2.4GHz running Linux, a custom client streamer/encoder, and the icecast server. This computer also does a bunch of other stuff in support of my other hobbies.
The website is built with PHP (the original site was my first major PHP project), with a Postgres database backend. I never gave thought to the code being used to run anything other than this site so it's not generally usable- sorry!
Some things you may ask...
What's with the messed up songs?
Some songs play as a one second long series of rapid chirps. Check out this sample for an example. This has to do with the way these tunes were encoded not being liked by the more recent versions of lame. Why older versions of lame had no problem and the newer ones do, I don't know.
If you notice this with one of the songs, please let me know and I'll re-encode it.
Can't you turn down the bit rate?
I've played around with the bit rate and was mostly unsatisfied with anything under 56kbps. A number of listeners have indicated that they enjoy the higher quality as well. For a period, I tried to alternate with 56kbps during the week and 24kbps over the weekend in an effort to be equitable, but I had to abandon that idea because remembering to make the switch was an issue.
I liked that one song- can you send me the mp3?
Nope. Please don't ask. That's a slippery slope I don't want to start down.
My favorite band is XXX- why aren't you playing them!?!
Unfortunately, my music collection (and cash flow) is finite. If a band isn't on the playlist or in the database somewhere, I don't have them.
What I have planned/would eventually like to do
The database
Eventually, I'm hoping to make it a one-stop resource for all the information about bands and their albums. Something like AllMusic, but for good music ;-). I need your help tho'. Go submit some info. And rate everything!
Smart song rotation
I don't know how I would pull this off, but wouldn't it be keen if while you are listening, songs you've rated poorly don't get played? That'd be awesome.
If you've got suggestions, let me know!
Credits
Things that make this all possible:
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Icecast sends the streaming audio to you. |
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Apache serves up the web pages |
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PHP provides dynamic web pages, as well as database access for the music and the forum. |
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PostgreSQL provides the backend for the music database and the forum. |