Locality Switch

I love it when things just work; there’s really no need to think about these things or meddle with them. After all, if it ain’t broke, why try and fix it?

The trouble is, what happens when something breaks? How do you fix it if you’ve never touched it before? For example, I’ve never had to clean out the faders in our broadcast console before. I don’t know the best method to do it, and even now that I know the best method thanks to other experts in the industry, I still haven’t used their advice because I haven’t done it before and am a bit nervous about pulling faders apart.

So, what is the best way to learn about equipment before it breaks and now it is critical that it gets fixed? I’ve learnt that it is best to dive in and fiddle with things whenever there is a chance. Whatever equipment there is around you, just grab a screwdriver and pull the lit off it.

For example, a few weeks ago, I pulled our low powered backup FM transmitter out of the rack, opened the lid, and had a look around. I now know that to program the frequency of it, you need to switch the dip switches and use binary. I didn’t know that before I opened it up! I also got to see how all the different components of the transmitter connect together.

Another technique to learn about equipment is by reading the manual. And the manual for other pieces of equipment similar to it. Or even manuals for bits of equipment you don’t own.

I learn heaps about compressor/limiters by downloading some old manuals off a manufacturers website, and reading through all of the instructions and application examples contained within it’s pages. I now know a bit about how Axia Audio over IP networks operate thanks to the extensive manuals they provide on their website. I don’t regret spending time doing things like this.

It’s a combination of pulling stuff apart and reading through manuals which has helped me learn what I know, but I need to keep doing this to keep learning more and more. I’m only young, and I have my whole career ahead of me, so now is defiantly no time to stop learning!

I love a bargain; we all love a bargain. It’s even better when you get something really good for a dirt cheap price. One of the things I have been meaning to get for quite some time is a VPS, but I haven’t found a provider which meets my requirements in terms of price and reliability.

I’ve wanted a VPS to do so many things. As I work in radio, one of the primary things I’ve wanted to do was setup my own streaming media server. However, as I don’t have much cash to spend, it has been hard to find a reliable VPS provider within my price range.

The key word is here is ‘reliable’. There are countless dirt-cheap VPS providers out there, but when it comes to their network latency, uptime, and other factors, well, that is another thing all together. Not to mention the tendency for providers in this area to be here one day, and gone the next!

There are entire websites setup to track this whole ‘low end hosting’ market. One such website which I’ve been following for some time is low end box. They track the very low end of the market. In fact, their criteria for listing is under US$7/month. Now, that’s pretty cheap by anyone’s standard!

After umm-ing and err-ing for a while about singing up with one of these services, I finally decided last week to take the plunge. US$6/month and a few days waiting for PayPal to clear my money, I had signed up for Delimeter USA, which ironically, has their servers located in Germany.

For US$6/month, I got 256MB of RAM, 10GB of hard drive space, and a seemingly unlimited amount of data transfer (terms and conditions apply, of course). The data transfer was the deciding factor for me to choose this provider; I was happy when I found a provider which wouldn’t shut me down if I used a bit of extra data transfer.

As far as the stability of this service goes, I currently have no clue what to expect. They boast 99.9% uptime, but I’m not holding my breath. As long as they don’t go down for hours/days on end (as a previous Shoutcast host has done to me in the past), then I will be happy.

Right now, I have Icecast2 and Apache installed on my low end box, and it’s serving up 2CCR’s MP3 and AAC+ streams. I setup Apache as a reverse proxy, so I now have our station streaming on Port 80 (in addition to our legacy ports still working). I’ve also configured it to ‘pull’ the data from our encoder, rather than our encoder ‘pushing’ the stream out to the server constantly. The advantage of this is that if no one is listening, then we don’t use any bandwidth. So far, so good.

It’s great to finally have my own server running. Being able to do whatever Ubuntu supports is great. No longer am I restricted by what Plesk or cPanel wants me to do, or what my shared hosting provider dictates. I hope it stays up and running, and the provider doesn’t collapse. But if they do, there’s a whole world of other providers out there to choose from. To me, it’s a great adventure!

I don’t typically post what I have coming up, but I feel that I really should start sharing that with you. At the very least, someone can hold be accountable if I don’t get through all the things I say I will do.

School Certificate

I’ll get rid of the boring one first. Since I am still in year 10 at school, I’ve got the school certificate coming up soon. These are a series of exams on the core subjects I have been taking at school over the last two years, including Maths, English, Science, History, and Geography. It’ll be held on the 9th and 10th of November. It’s kinds important, so I won’t be very active in other projects until these finish.

Radio Traffic Software in Access

Yes, I plan to write some software in Access! It’s something I haven’t done for ages (or ever?). Basically, I hope to make something which 2CCR can use instead of Excel. I haven’t really told anyone about it, and I don’t expect them to use it. I’m doing this for the fun of learning something new.

It’ll be real basic, basically allowing the addition of sponsorship messages, and manual scheduling of spots for each hour. It’ll also export a text file which can be imported into StationPlaylist Creator, as well as a printout of all of the spots so presenters can load them themselves.

Squid Proxy – Nicer looking error pages

At the moment, the Squid proxies I have setup display error messages wrapped in some HTML which used to replicate our station’s website. Of course, since I have changed the site so much since the proxy was setup, it’s kinda broken-looking. I want some standalone error pages (not linked to any website), which I can drop in any proxy I use and not have to worry about dependencies.

Fix the Headphone sockets in a studio

Studios experience wear and tear – this is a fact of life. One of the things I’ve been slack about recently has been replacing the headphone sockets in our main studio. I’ve got the bits ready, and the new amp has even been installed! I just need now to install the sockets on the table. This will require slightly larger holes in the desk than are already available, because naturally the new pots are larger than the old ones!

Install a new PABX

The board at 2CCR has approved the purchase of a new PABX. It’s a Talkswitch 488VS, with ten TS9133i handsets. In a desperate effort to save money, I’m doing all of the install myself. As it’s a software configurable system, it shouldn’t be too hard. Besides, I’ve already read quite a bit of the manual and it seems pretty reasonable.

You’ll certainly get a few blog posts out of this. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve!

Work Experience, V2.0

That’s right, I’m going back for more work experience!! After a chat with my school’s careens adviser and constantly being in contact with Stephen Wilkinson, I’m organising a week of tech-oriented work experience from November 16 to 21st. I love that place… I can identify with the mission and I absolutely want to be a part of it, in whatever way I can! I’m sure I’ll also be spending a bit of my December holidays at that place.

Back to the 80s

That’s right, our school’s musical is coming up soon. And it’s set in the eighties! Back to the 80s is apparently a “totally awesome musical”, and the first rehearsal I was a part of was yesterday (but the cast have been rehearsing endlessly since August). It’ll be staged in our brand new hall this November. I’m on the tech crew, so I’m in for a fun week of getting everything happening in this brand new hall.

Blog more…

Over the last few weeks my blogging level has decreased, due to school commitments, etc. However, there’s been heaps of ideas buzzing around in my head which I now need to get written down. Hopefully it’ll start coming out soon.