Archive for March, 2006

Elder Brenders (right) from Lyon, France decided to do this. In Heilbronn the chapel is designed in such a way that bees can somehow find their way into the building, but cannot get back out again. They congregate near the windows frantically flying around until they lose all strength, give up, and die.

In the springtime this is especially troubling because the number of bees that get stuck rises from about 2 per day to somewhere near two thousand! People have to swat them away all during Sacrament Meeting, and the missionaries volunteer to come and sweep up the piles of dead bees before Sunday comes every week.

The choice of the phrase “I Love Bees” is pretty funny considering how much we all hated them after having to clean them up week after week.

I said I was looking into getting FIFOs working so that the filesize requirements would be reduced. It’s also more efficient this way. I was heavily influenced by the two scripts created by Daniel Howard.

So here’s how it works. You get to create two scripts. The first one is for recording. It’s an all-purpose script that I called record.sh. Here is the code:

#!/bin/bash

#

# record.sh

#

# Use mplayer to capture the stream

# at $STREAM to the file $FILE

#

# example: record.sh my_radio_show 60 mms://someserver.com/stream</p>
<p>DIR=/home/shawn/PodCasts #directory where to save the file

TEMPDIR=/tmp</p>
<p># Don’t edit anything below this line

#######################################################

DATE=`date +%d-%b-%Y`  # Save the date as DD-Mmm-YYYY

YEAR=`date +%Y` # Save just the year as YYYY

NAME=$1

DURATION=$2 # enough to catch the show, plus a bit

STREAM=$3

TEMPFILE=$TEMPDIR/$NAME-$DATE

FILE=$DIR/$NAME-$DATE # Where to save it</p>
<p># Capture Stream

mkfifo $TEMPFILE.wav

mkfifo $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav</p>
<p># The lame settings below are optimized for voice encoding

# The sox command below strips out any silent portions

lame -S -a -m m –ty “$YEAR” –vbr-new -V 9 –lowpass 13.4 –athaa-sensitivity 1 \

    –resample 32 $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav $FILE.mp3 >/dev/null &

sox $TEMPFILE.wav -c 1 $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav \

    silence 1 0.2 0.5% -1 0.2 0.5% >/dev/null&

/usr/bin/mplayer -quiet -cache 500 \

    -ao pcm:file=”$TEMPFILE.wav” -vc dummy -vo null \

    -noframedrop $STREAM >/dev/null&</p>
<p>sleep 5

# get the pid of all processes started in this script.

PIDS=`ps auxww | grep $TEMPFILE | awk ‘{print $2}’`</p>
<p># the & turns the capture into a background job

sleep `echo ${DURATION}*60 | bc`  # wait for the show to be over

kill $PIDS # kill the stream capture

rm $TEMPFILE.wav

rm $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav

This script takes three args:

1. the name of the show you’re recording. This will be used in the final filename with the current date appended.
2. the length of the show in minutes
3. the URI of the stream (often mms:// or http://)

This integrates very well with another script that will hold all the data for the shows we want to record and automatically set the start times for us. Here is my script that I called today.sh

#!/bin/sh

#

# today.sh — schedule what programs you want to rip today using the

# recorder script.</p>
<p># Non-obvious paths

RECORDER=$HOME/bin/record.sh

RECORDER_HI=$HOME/bin/record-hi.sh</p>
<p># Set up stations

KFI=”http://a814.l1977144512.c19771.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/814/19771/v0001/reflector:44512?MSWMExt=.asf”

WXNT=mms://wmc1.liquidviewer.net/WXNT

WPGB=”http://84.53.144.36:80/D/1046/20063/v0001/reflector:43803?MSWMExt=.asf”

KOZZ=mms://lotusradio-kozz.wm.llnwd.net/lotusradio_kozz</p>
<p># What day is it?

TODAY=`date +%a`</p>
<p># EVERY DAY

#everyday() {}</p>
<p># WEEKDAYS

weekday() {

	# “Record John_Ziegler for three hours, starting at 7:00pm.”

	echo $RECORDER John_Ziegler       180  $KFI | at  7:00pm

	echo $RECORDER Glenn_Beck         180 $WPGB | at  6:00am

}</p>
<p># MONDAY

if [ $TODAY = “Mon” ]; then

	# everyday

	weekday

fi</p>
<p># TUESDAY

if [ $TODAY = “Tue” ]; then

	# everyday

	weekday

fi</p>
<p># WEDNESDAY

if [ $TODAY = “Wed” ]; then

	# everyday

	weekday

fi</p>
<p># THURSDAY

if [ $TODAY = “Thu” ]; then

	# everyday

	weekday

fi</p>
<p># FRIDAY

if [ $TODAY = “Fri” ]; then

	# everyday

	weekday

fi</p>
<p># SATURDAY

if [ $TODAY = “Sat” ]; then

	# everyday

	echo $RECORDER Handel_On_The_Law   300 $KFI | at  6:00am

	echo $RECORDER Dr_Dean_Edell        60 $KFI | at  2:00pm

fi</p>
<p># SUNDAY

if [ $TODAY = “Sun” ]; then

	# everyday

	echo $RECORDER Jesus_Christ_Show   180  $KFI | at  6:00am

	echo $RECORDER Glenn_Beck          180 $WPGB | at 10:00am

	echo $RECORDER_HI Dr_Demento       120 $KOZZ | at 10:00pm

fi

Using this as a template you might notice another script being referred to. record.sh has audio processing optimized for talk radio. For higher quality and stereo, you need to change a few things. You can download all of the scripts mentioned here at the bottom of this post.

To finish off this solution you need to run today.sh at some point after 12:00am and before the start of the earliest program you wish to record. I set mine to run daily at 1:00am.

# Schedule recordings for today from radio streams

0 1 * * * /home/shawn/bin/today.sh >& /dev/null

Downloads:

• record.sh
• record-hi.sh
• today.sh

One of my favorite rip-offs was this unassuming little fast food grill restaurant in Ludwigsburg. The entire name is “Fried Chicken from Kentucky Land.” Although KFC franchises do exists in Germany, the closest one is over two hours away from this place. It is doubtful that most people that eat here even know what Kentucky Fried Chicken is. Maybe the owner just has a sense of humor.