One facet of ham radio that I find to be fun is working special event stations.

Special event stations may operate via voice, or morse code, or digital/computer modes, etc, but in each case they are only on the air at special dates and times. This means only a limited number of stations will be able to work the special event station during the event. Other stations the world over go on the hunt for these rarer ’special event’ stations in hopes of making contact.

It’s a lot of fun and pretty rewarding to work at getting such a contact and finally managing to log the rare station in your logbook. There’s often even a special reward in it for you if you mange the task … a special QSL card or certificate to commemorate the contact.

It’s also a lot of fun to BE the special event station … to actually operate AS the special event station that everyone else wants to log a contact with.

Indianapolis is blessed with both a number of special events and an active and friendly ham radio community. Thanks to each, I’ve had the great opportunity (and privilege) to work as an operator for the W9IMS special event Amateur Radio station here in Indianapolis.

W9IMS is only on the air for a small number of days each year – surrounding each of the three big races here in Indianapolis: the Indy 500, the Brickyard 400, and the MotoGP. Indianapolis area licensed Amateur Radio Operators (“Hams”) like myself gather and operate the W9IMS station during these special events, and other hams all over the world tune in and attempt to contact W9IMS. Some of those wishing to make contact with W9IMS are race fans, some are just hunting for special event stations, and some just want to take part in all the fun. When a station contacts W9IMS they qualify for a special QSL card. There’s a unique card for each of the races that W9IMS is on the air for, and if a station manages to contact W9IMS for ALL THREE races in a given year there’s a special certificate they can receive.

It’s all a whole lot of fun.

Last weekend while operating the W9IMS “Brickyard 400″ special event, I managed to take a few recordings and decided I’d toss together a quick video to share a bit of that experience here. (Thanks to N9GSU for the still shots)

The voice operator of W9IMS you hear in this video is me (N9LTQ), and the morse code operator you hear is Pat (N2DKB).

Stations heard in this video: K0IMI, W9RCK, W3SO, N0JP, KA1SU, N3DLS

W9IMS Operators heard in this video: N9LTQ (40m SSB), N2DKB (80m CW)

W9IMS Operators seen in this video: WS9H, KC9SPT, N9GSU, N2DKB, K9TLA, W9CSX, W9ILF, K9RU, AB9QB, KC9RZI, N9LTQ, WY9T, W9SU

• CQ = Radio shorthand for “Calling any station” – inviting any station to respond.
• “40“ (as in “CQ40″) or “40 meters” = The frequency ‘band’ in which I was operating.
• W9IMS = The callsign of the station I was operating.
• “Whisky Nine Indianapolis Motor Speedway” = A phonetic spelling of the station callsign (W9IMS). Radio contacts are often choppy, usually have some noise on top of them, and are known to fade in and out. You never know how well or how poorly you’re being received at any given moment … so giving phonetic spellings greatly assists receiving operators.
• 73 = Radio shorthand for “best wishes”.
• QRZ = Radio shorthand for “What station is calling?” – in the context used here, it’s an invitation for any additional stations who wish to contact me to call in now. (pronounced “Q-R-Zed”)
• QSL = Radio shorthand for “Do you copy me?” or “I copy you”. This is essentially “roger” or “acknowledged”
• “Delta Alpha Victor Echo” = Phonetic spelling of my name “Dave”.
• “5-5″, “5-6″, “5-9″, etc = These are signal reports in RST Format. “5-9″ is essentially a perfect reading.
• “+10” = A very strong signal report indicating reception at 10db over a 5-9 rating.
• “+20” = An extremely strong signal report indicating reception at 20db over a 5-9 rating.
• “30 over” = An extremely strong signal report indicating reception at 30db over a 5-9 rating.
• “fine business” = A commonly used phrase among ham radio operators that means “very good”.
• “hi hi” = A commonly used phrase among ham radio operators that indicates a joke. It’s essentially the radio slang version of a smilie face.

I’d like to offer this open letter response to that reply (which he certainly knew would be all over the internet once it was received).

Mr. Jobs,

> “Non issue”

It’s a PHONE which will, if you pick it up, drop the call! That’s an issue. Pretty big issue. (NOT just lose bars but keep working … drop the call. – Gigantic issue.)

> “Just avoid holding it in that way.”

This coming from the champion of “technology should be intuitive, and just work”!? Why do you think we loved the previous iPhones?

The statement that essentially says “all phones suffer this sort of issue” that apple is putting out is disingenuous and you know it. I can hold my 3GS naturally and it does NOT go to “no service”. You know perfectly well this issue isn’t just something that happens with all phones. It doesn’t – not even previous models of iPhones with the same OS standing in the same location. This problem is unique to the iPhone4 HARDWARE. My 3GS NEVER does this (which has the exact same software version) regardless of how I hold it.

But yet, you tell us that for this version of the iPhone to be able to make calls or access wifi (for more than a few seconds), we can’t hold it in the most natural and intuitive way? The way I can with any other cell phone out there (even any other version of iPhone). The way I (and just about everyone else) has always held a phone since … ever? The same way you held it on stage at the media event? (you knew there’d be photos of you holding it right?) … One wonders if it was really the bloggers and their wifi that caused you the networking issues you suffered on stage.

I dunno, Steve … this is all sounds like textbook “issue” to me.

I’m certainly not going to be upgrading to a new version of the iPhone … that can’t make calls if I so much as HOLD IT!

- Dave

First of all there’s a bit of noise … followers/friends that I cannot for the life of me remember how/why we know each other. Secondly I have some followers who, while I like them very much, I may not want following my status day to day. Lastly (and most importantly), the previous point has made me consider that there may be a small number of people I follow that for whatever reason I have now mentally put into the “didn’t really have a fair opt-in choice” as to my following them.

So, while I may unfollow some accounts I’m not interested in … be aware that If I unfollow you, this may not be the reason. I may simply have decided that you deserve a new ‘opt-in’ choice around me following your status day to day.

If I remove you as a follower please don’t take this personally and simply re-follow me if you are interested or shoot me a “WTF” email and I’ll (probably) re-add/un-block you.

Most importantly, if I stop following you – please don’t take this personally either – shoot me a “WTF” email and I’ll re-follow. And lastly, If I do un-follow you and then later send a new follow request – you are free to decline/ignore it.

Anyway, I may or may not get this done this weekend, but its a safe bet I’ll be doing some list pruning in the future. If these actions leaving you thinking “WTF”, just shoot me an email and it’ll all be made well again.

I found this photo on Flickr (I dont know the photographer), which includes me at the icom booth at the 2010 Dayton Hamvention.

Other than a few blurry cell phone camera shots, I neglected to take any photos at all while there … so it’s nice to see that there’s some proof I attended out there somewhere.

I found the following video on YouTube that I thought he might like. It’s a great old 1940’s news reel style film about Short Wave Radio operators (aka “hams”). The stories told within are presumably true of course … but done in that awesome cheesiness that was 1940-ish news reels.

I’m writing this post on my iPad as a matter of fact (while my desktop iTunes finally gets the latest updates applied). Blogging from my iPhone never really worked for me despite there being ‘an app for that’. Typing on the iPad however is indeed very nice. In landscape mode the keyboard is very very usable. I can totally see myself using this to blog, and work on longer documents.

This was one of the main reasons I wanted to go with the iPad over other readers I was considering. (I was already in the ereader market, but having one that could also let me work on word docs and blog etc was a killer feature for me)

Oooh my Mac is ready to sync up with the iPad and send my ebooks over to it – gotta run. I’ll blog more about this later.

It let’s you publish new posts and manage existing posts of your wordpress blog (both wordpress.com as well as self hosted blogs). It looks pretty good, and I’m actually using it now to create this post. Having an easy to use way to blog in my pocket may actually get me to blog more often (mobile safari is great but trying to use the wordpress admin pages in it is just too painful IMHO).

Naturally you can post photos you have taken on your iPhone (or that you have syncd to your iPhone) so that makes mobile photoblogging pretty nice (now of there were just an official flickr app for the iPhone).

Check it out at: http://iphone.wordpress.org

So, its a good idea for publishers to make sure their Syndication Feed URL is easy to find on their website.

Sometimes a publisher gets lucky enough to have more than himself and his best friend as a subscriber, and watches with glee as he gets more and more and more subscribers over time.

But what happens if the publisher wants to start using a different blogging software, or changes some 3rd party services, or perhaps even just starts using a different set of core-plug-ins and in doing so ends up changing his syndication feed URLs? Does he lose all of those original subscribers? Do all of his original subscribers have to unsubscribe from the old URL and then resubscribe to the new one?

Thankfully, no. With a little planning the publisher can make sure he never has to lose or inconvenience a subscriber just because his source syndication feed URL has changed.

I was recently asked how a publisher might move subscribers from one subscription feed to another without actually asking them to unsubscribe from one URL and then resubscribe at another. The following are my tips on how to set up “publisher friendly” feed URLs. By “publisher friendly” I mean the publisher is now free to do whatever he wants with his blogging software or source feed …. secure in the knowledge he wont lose or inconvenience his subscribers.

This post is a bit long and may be a bit scary, but don’t worry … there are only six steps. I’ve tried to include alot of explanation behind the steps so that you can really understand what is happening, but don’t let the added words here scare you away …. it’s pretty simple.

1. Give your subscribers a feed URL that never changes – no matter what you do on the back-end of your site.
2. Move any existing subscribers over to this “permanent” URL, transparently – no inconvenience to your subscribers.

To accomplish the first goal you have two choices.

1. Use a service like feedburner and just publish the feedburner URL.
2. Create a URL at your own domain such as http://mydomain.com/feed

Option 1 is easier because it doesn’t require that you have the ability to edit your .htaccess file, but it does require you always use feedburner. (i.e. you can’t later switch services without having to readdress this issue again) …. So if you have the ability to edit your .htaccess file, option 2 is ideal. Lets assume you want to use option 2.

Step 1) Find your BLOG-GENERATED FEED URL.

Step 2) Decide if you want to use feedburner (or similar service), and if so use the BLOG-GENERATED FEED URL when creating the FEEDBURNER URL.

NOTE: From now on, when I mention “SOURCE FEED” I mean either a) the FEEDBURNER URL (if you are using feedburner or a similar service) or b) your BLOG-GENERATED FEED URL (if you aren’t using Feedburner or a similar service).

So with that in mind, lets assume for the sake of these instructions that your SOURCE FEED is http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED (Be sure to replace this URL with your actual SOURCE FEED URL in any of the instructions below)

Step 3) Now lets pick the FEED URL that you will actually publish to your visitors/subscribers. Pick a URL at your own domain that doesn’t already exist. This is the URL you will publish as your FEED URL, and its only purpose is to redirect (behind the scenes) subscribers to the SOURCE FEED where all the data actually is. Lets assume the FEED URL you chose is http://www.mydomain.com/feed. (It’s the /feed portion that we want our server to redirect to the SOURCE FEED, and we’ll use that portion in our examples/code below.)

(Has Step 3 confused you? Check out this clarification of Step 3)

Goal #1: Give your subscribers a feed URL that never changes.

Step 4) Now all you have to do in order to accomplish Goal #1 is redirect your FEED URL to your SOURCE FEED. The advantage to doing this is that if the location of your SOURCE FEED ever changes, you can just update the redirect, and your subscribers are none-the-wiser. To accomplish the redirect, you’ll need to edit the .htaccess file for your website. (If you’re having problems finding the .htaccess file, try a different FTP / File manager program – the .htaccess may be ‘invisible’ in the listing your application provides)

Add the following lines to your .htaccess file (above any other redirect rules or <IfModule> blocks that are already in the file):

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^feed/?$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

Goal #1 is now accomplished!

That was easy wasn’t it!? You can now send any new subscribers to your newly created FEED URL (http://www.mydomain.com/feed) and they will actually be subscribing to your SOURCE FEED (http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED). As described before, you can alter the redirect at anytime in the future should your SOURCE FEED URL change … and your subscribers will automatically move with you. Nice.

Goal #2: Moving existing subscribers from an old feed URL to the new one you just set up.

Step 5) First things first, determine what your OLD FEED URL is. Lets suppose it was something like http://mydomain.com/archives/feed.xml. Notice it’s the “archives/feed.xml” part of the OLD FEED URL that defines the file we want to redirect … so lets call this last part the OLD FEED PATH. We’ll only need to reference the OLD FEED PATH (archives/feed.xml) in the .htaccess rule we’re about to write.

Step 6) Now, lets provide a redirect for your OLD FEED to your new FEED URL. We do this just like we did with the last redirect we wrote – by modifying the .htaccess file.

We’re going to use a slightly modified rewrite rule this time however because we want this redirect to report a “permanent” redirect so that smart feed readers will automatically move over to the new url from now on (don’t worry the dumb feed readers will just keep asking for the old one and just keep getting redirected to the new one each time).

To accomplish this redirect, add the following line to the code you just added to the .htaccess file – just above the </IfModule> line.

RewriteRule ^archives/feed.xml$ /feed [R=301,L]

Done and Done! Goals 1 and 2 have now been accomplished.

The overall changes to your .htaccess file should look like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^feed/?$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^archives/feed.xml$ /feed [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

And you’ll want to put these lines above any other rewrite rules or <IfModule> blocks you already have in the .htaccess file.

• Your old/existing subscribers will be seamlessly redirected to your new FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/feed) the next time they request the OLD FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/archives/feed.xml)
• New subscribers will start off requesting your new FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/feed)
• So, now ALL of them are asking for your new FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/feed) … which is redirected to your SOURCE FEED

Now, you can change just about anything you like. You can change the source of feedburner, or even drop feedburner all together in the future and your subscribers never have to change their FEED URL. You just simply alter the redirection in your .htaccess file to what you want – and your users wont know the difference.

As an added bonus, you’ve just cheaply and easily ‘branded’ your feed URL with your domain name (instead of feedburners).

Extra Credit:
For extra credit you may want to update your blogs theme or styles to publish your new FEED URL both in the content of your pages as well as in the auto-discovery links in the page headers.

Click image to play Video, or choose a format via links below.

Formats available: Flash Video (.flv) Quicktime/iPod (.mp4)

In Colin’s post he points out how often we seem to jump on a bandwagon for a given web site or service not because it’s the best one out there, or even just because it’s our inexplicable favorite … but rather just because that site or service is where it seems everyone else is going.

I’m somewhere in the middle.

In some ways I do tend to use what “everyone else” is using. Twitter and facebook for exmaple. There are alternatives to each. I use these because they are the ones that everyone else is using.

However in other areas I laugh in the face of convention. I’ve been videoblogging since before YouTube was … YouTube (not that you could tell recently). Despite YouTube coming on the scene and the great exposure it can offer, I don’t plan on using it routinely anytime soon. Granted I don’t really care about exposure, but mainly I avoid YouTube because I’m geekish enough that I want far more control over my presentation, alternate formats, syndication feeds, etc than most walled gardens like YouTube allow for. Also I like the terms and conditions at Blip.tv way more than I do the ones at YouTube. So in this case, despite it being one of those “everybody else in the world is using it” sort of things, I’ll stubbornly post and syndicate from my own site thank you very much.

Honestly, I’m also rather fatigued of constantly trying to get in on the next big thing that may not even be any better at all than the things we’re using today. I dislike ning (even though it’s cool) because I’m sick and freaking tired of signing up for yet another social network. Ning makes this fairly painless I guess, but thats assuming you want the same profile info etc. I may hire someone to shoot me if I have to sign up for one more freakin social network.

This all reminds me of the great IM wars … really preferring service A, but trying to get all your buddies on the same contact list while trying to make sure you are signed into service B often enough to be available to someone who wasn’t on service A … UHG. In the end, we all started using clients that tried to hack together all of them into one place even though such clients had half (or fewer) of the features which made us prefer service A in the first place.

Maybe the interwebs move too fast sometimes. I think that’s the bottom line: there are too many new things every single day to constantly be jumping camps … so, some services (like Pownce) don’t get the use/credit they deserve because … well dang it we just don’t want to reinvent this wheel yet … we just got here. Colin points out that being first is a huge advantage and he’s right … the later the entry the better the service will have to be to convince me to switch.

Through all of this, I’ve become a big fan of the idea that we can and should create distributed social networks and services that are open an cross-compatible. There’s alot of work to be done on that front, but it has already begun (check out http://diso-project.org/ ). It’s one of the reasons I liked Colin’s “The-Diet” page so much – it basically formed up a simple and loose distributed social network.

Someday I’ll be able to enter into my single authorative profile (openID maybe?) my standard profile/avatar info as well as things like:

• My Friends/Buddies are: <url to FOAF/XFN info here>
• My photos feed is: <flikr url here> (or maybe picasa if I use that instead)
• My Updates feed is: <twitter url here> (or maybe pownce if I use that instead)
• My blog feed is: <rss feed here>
• My IM service is: <service>/<screenname>
• etc etc etc etc etc

Social networks could be distributed and dynamically updated. Imagine: you signup at SocialNetwork-A and it automatically gets your buddie info from your authorative profile and knows that I’m one of your friends. (We are friends, right?) It could then check my friends info the same way it checked yours to confirm that I count you as a friend as well. SocialNetwork-A could include for you in your social network view things like my twitter updates, my photo feeds, my blog updates, etc all without my having to enter all that info AGAIN into YET ANOTHER social network. I could do the same for you at SocialNetwork-B. We could chit-chat accross networks via blogs/posts/tags/feeds etc (if you dont have a blog then your socialNetwork-A can provide that feed) … ah it would be so wonderful.

Maybe it sounds too geeky and confusing, but trust me it could be done in a way that is very simple and transparent to the non-geek-user. I guess it will depend on someone figuring out a way to make such a system profitable.

I long for the day I can have one profile and list of services that others can consume without my having to redo it all 150 times every 6 months.

• I use twitter because that’s where everyone else is.
• I don’t use pownce (but I do have an account) because I don’t want to have to do ad-hoc spontaneous updates at two places.
• I use gtalk becuase its awesome, not littered with adds and plugins, and is open.
• I use YahooIM because I have a huge list of contacts that use the service.
• I use MSN because my xBox360 signs me into it.
• I use AIM only because I can now do so through gtalk.
• I use facebook because the dang thing wont stop spamming me with vampire bites and cocktails.
• I use flickr because it both rocks and is where everyone is.
• I use blip.tv because they allow me far more granual control over how/when/where my work is presented, distributed, and discussed than any other service I’ve tried.
• I dont use YouTube because I want/need a video hoster that allows for multiple file formats.
• I use MeFeedia because I can watch sources from all over the net at one site.
• I don’t use GoogleVideo because it sucks.
• I use Seesmic … well I don’t really use it actually, but I do have an account, and look forward to where the service might go.
• I use ning … as rarely as possible.
• … there are others … oh, there are others …

Watch the video

Tags: iPhone

(Click the image above to watch the video!)

It’s Videoblogging Week 2007! The week where all sorts of people all over the world crank out one new video every single day … just to do it. Witness the maddness at MeFeedia.

Tags: videobloggingweek2007

In this Post:
Second Life Location (Slurl): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gyeongju/113/158/74
Media URL: http://www.slackspace.net/dynamic-media/smil.mov

(Click the image above to watch the video!)

It’s Videoblogging Week 2007! The week where all sorts of people all over the world crank out one new video every single day … just to do it. Witness the maddness at MeFeedia.

Tags: videobloggingweek2007

I’m sorry to say recent events have changed my opinion of BlueHost. I will no longer recommend them, or offer them as an alternative when hosting options are discussed in the videoblogger community. As I doubt anyone at BlueHost is going to concern themselves with my issues, I expect that overtime I will move all of my domains to some other hosting provider. After seeing their sympathetic shock and anger upon hearing my story, I expect my friends and family that I regrettably introduced to BlueHost will take their business elsewhere too. While losing 10 or so accounts and whatever referrals might have been had will probably not cause any real concern for BlueHost, I can assure you that their profound ignorance on how to provide hosting and address even the simplest of user issues will lose them far far more.

If anything is more shocking that their complete inability to respond to support requests in a timely manner, it is there AMAZINGLY inept and arrogant response when they finally bother to offer one.

If you’re shopping for a hosting provider, take note …

Not so long ago the president of BlueHost (Matt Heaton) sent out a whole series of emails letting his customers know that they were aware of the serious performance issues on their servers and were actively working on it. These emails were soon followed by emails that essentially said ‘things should be much better now’.

Unfortunately for me, you, and this site … DavidMeade.com was still suffering from debilitating server issues. So, i sent an email to BlueHost support. I got an auto-response saying we can’t email support anymore and had to use the web ticketing system. Frustrating but so far no big deal, I copy and pasted my email into their web form for them:

Two days later my site was still nearly unusable and nobody at BlueHost had even been assigned to read my ticket. Concerned I added an entry to my ticket.

Two days later still, constant timeouts and server CPU errors had made accessing my administration pages impossible, corrupted one file, and made uploading a fix impossible. It was now 4 days since my support request and still nobody at BlueHost had been assigned to the ticket. I added the following to my ticket:

Two days later, now 6 days out, the server issues were now a little more intermittent but definitely still present … and nobody at BlueHost had responded … nobody was even assigned. Desperate to be able to ftp to the server reliably again I added the following to my ticket.

Another 2 days passed and the server issues were now much more intermittent … but were of course still causing problems. To ftp up a simple page would require half a day of retries. I was pretty angry at this point. More than a week of suffering and I just knew that if they ever bothered to respond at all they’d likely load my page during one of its now more frequent good moments and conclude nothing was wrong.

Now I wanted them to address the server issues and their inability to provide any support whatsoever for over a week of SERIOUS server issues. (I mean I could get hosting far cheaper if i was willing to put up with that level of support). I added the following to my ticket (not really thinking anyone would ever bother to read it).

A few days later I actually got a response from BlueHost support. After apologizing for the delay, they told me that slow sites are often caused by links to things like pictures on flickr, and that before they could work with me they suggested I remove any and all links to pages not local to my site.

!?

I was dumbfounded. After a week … They were seriously telling me that they as a web hosting company can only provide support for those sites which don’t link anywhere?!?!?!

In the interest of full disclosure here is their exact response:

I just couldn’t believe what i was reading … I added the following to my support ticket:

A few days later (after finding several other hosting options in case the worst happened) I got a response from BlueHost … and the worst happened:

I sat horrified and amazed at the response. An entirely new “support” agent had responded and endorsed the idea that BlueHost could only support performance issues for sites that did not link to pages elsewhere on the internet.

Naturally I’ve no intention of conforming a webpage to this bizarre 1985 style of offline content.

The true irony in all of this is that the president of BlueHost had throughout this nonsense a post on his blog pondering why some companies seem to go out of their way to frustrate their customers … there are those in his own backyard who could provide some valuable insight on this.

Sorry for the lack of postings lately. I’m kinda going through a “uhg I just don’t want to blog” phase. I get these phases every now and again but the good news is that they pass … and when they do I usually come back with vengeance.

One thing I wanted to share with you is a new feature I’m working on for DavidMeade.com: The Episode Archive. This page is still considered in BETA, but I’m pretty happy with it so far.

The Episode Archive dynamically generates a thumbnail view of all videoblog/podcasts here at DavidMeade.com. For those who are techie enough to care (or other videobloggers/podcasters) here are some things about the Episode Archive I really like:

• It is dynamic so it automatically updates as I add episodes to the site. (Naturally, it is the 21st century after all)
• If there isn’t a thumbnail for an episode when the page is called, it will actually go and create a thumbnail for such an episode. (It of course doesn’t bother if a thumbnail already exists for an episode.)
• It uses the poster image that was used in the actual posting as the source for the thumbnail it creates. (Rather than grabbing a random frame from the video … I pick the poster image for an episode very carefully and want that care to work for the thumbnail as well)
• The thumbnails it creates are named based on the episode name and the md5 hash of the enclosure file. (This ensures unique and predictable names for the thumbnails, and thus doesn’t require any additional storage to a database)
• If it has to create a thumbnail but fails to find a poster image to use as a source it uses a default thumbnail image. (But so far it’s be really really good at finding the poster frame.)
• It has a cool Ajax hover effect to give episode info for whatever thumbnail you’re mouse is hovering over.

As I still consider this in BETA you can expect the current features to be polished up a bit and perhaps a few more features before I push it live (give it it’s own link on the toolbar).

I may even decide to make a wordpress plugin out of this, but I haven’t decided yet.

Anyway, I’m still alive and I’m still playing around with the website some … I’m just not blogging alot lately.

Thanks for your continued viewing of DavidMeade.com. If you haven’t already subscribed to DavidMeade.com, this would be a great time to do so! Subscribing to the DavidMeade.com RSS feed lets you sit back and relax and automatically receive the latest from DavidMeade.com whenever there is new stuff to see … without having to check the site all the time … and without having to join some email newsletter.

Also … be watching for some changes at DougMeade.com. Doug and I have been working behind the scenes there as well. Kevin also has an interesting blog at HicksFamilyOnline.com khicks.com where you can contribute! You can find a quick summary of each site on the right hand side sidebar here at DavidMeade.com.

You can use SMIL to create a single file that will play multiple files in sequence. You can use php to generate a SMIL document dynamically .. altering the contents of the SMIL (and its playlist) based on any number of things. Further you can tell PHP to output this SMIL document as a QuickTime .mov file (Which is handy in all sorts of situations).

If you want the SMIL to be sent out as a .mov file the first step is to tell PHP that the content-type of the page its generating is a quicktime video. You do that with the following code:

<?php
header("Content-Type: video/quicktime");
?>

Next you want to output the SMIL document. Because we ended the php code block above (with ‘?>’) we can now just type out the begining (and always the same) part of the SMIL document directly.

SMIL documents usually start with “<smil>”. However because we’re creating a .mov we need to tweak that a bit. QuickTime Player will only recognize a MOV as a SMIL document if it begins with “SMILtext”. So we start our document with:

SMILtext<smil>

Now we want to output the header portion of the SMIL document. This part describes the layout of the SMIL document. Now, we only need one viewing area for this exercise. SMIL calls a viewing area a “region”, and you can have multiple regions on the overal canvas. (SMIL calls the canvas the “root-layout”) Since we only need one region (viewing area) on our canvas (root-layout), you can see that I’ve set our region (viewing area) to be 100% of the canvas (root-layout).

<head>
<layout>
<root-layout id="vlogsphere" width="480" height="270" background-color="black"/>
<region id="r1" width="100%" height="100%" fit="meet" background-color="black"/>
</layout>
</head>

With that out of the way we can get on to building out the playlist. First we start the body of the SMIL document and tell it that a sequence of media files is to be listed

<body>
<seq>

Now we just add the list of media files. Lets say that you want to start each play list with a particular graphic. You just list the image file and assign it to the viewing area (region) we defined above.

<img src="http://www.slackspace.net/psb.jpg" region="r1" background-color="black"/>

Now at this point we continue listing the media to display in order. Video files are added in the same way we added the image above, excpet we use “video” instead of “img”. For example a video entry might look like:

<video src="http://blip.tv/file/get/DavidMeade-VloggerShrine307.mov" region="r1" background-color="black"/>

So at this point we go back to PHP code and get a list of all the videos we want to play and print out an entry for each one as shown above. You can get this list of videos however you like (Database calls, parsing RSS feeds, etc). You might even take variables from the query string to dynamicaly alter what media files your program goes out to get.

Once you have created an entry for each media file, you can close out the php code block and go back to writing normal SMIL. Now we have to tell the SMIL document that we’re done listing the sequence of files, that we’ve reached the end of the body of SMIL document, and indeed we’ve reached the end of the SMIL file itself:

</seq>
</body>
</smil>

Thats it!

Wanna see an example? Here’s a link to a php page I made that generates a SMIL based quicktime file.

http://www.slackspace.net/dynamic-media/smil.mov

When you go to that page, it creates a SMIL file whose media content is parsed from an RSS feed of recent videos posted to the ‘videoblogging’ category at blip.tv. The contents of this SMIL will change based on the contents of that RSS feed. As new videos are add at blip.tv, new videos will play in the above SMIL document.

You can also tell the above page to ues a different RSS feed. Lets say you wanted to view all the videos from DavidMeade.com (and who wouldn’t want to do that?!) You can go to the same url, but pass it the url of the feed you want the SMIL document to use:

http://www.slackspace.net/dynamic-media/
smil.mov?feed=http://www.davidmeade.com/feed (no line break)

Experiment with various feeds. I’ve had a good time watching my MeFeedia queue with this SMIL document.

Because the file output by the PHP code is a Quicktime Movie file, you can use this url in places that normally expect a .mov. For example I’ve used the above url to watch videoblogs in Second Life!

So you may have noticed that my file ends in .mov. Typically php files end in .php. Either will work here, however if you want or need to have the php file actually have a .mov extension, you may be wondering “How did you get a php page to end with .mov?!”

All you have to do is tell your webserver that files that end in .mov are php files. This is actually something you dont want to do for your whole website. I however told it that .mov files within a specific directory should be treated as php files. (All other .movs will be regular .mov files)

How to do that depends on your webserver for for apache server, you just create a directory and include a .htaccess file in that directory. the .htaccess file should contain the following line:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php mov

And that should do it.

Update: See the comments if you are having issues with QuickTime X

Meet the Vloggers Midwest

6:30pm – 8pm

Meet the Vloggers hosts videobloggers from around the Midwest talking about their experiences with this new medium. Speakers include:

• Chuck Olsen from Minnesota Stories
• Richard from the Richard Show
• Bill Streeter from Lo-Fi St. Louis
• Tim Stotz from The Progrum
• Doug Meade from DougMeade.com
• David Meade fromDavidMeade.com

Node 101: a Hands-on Video Podcasting Workshop

3pm – 6pm

Meet the Vloggers will be hosting a hands-on workshop from 3pm – 6pm to help people with any aspect of creating a video podcast. If you have ever been interested in creating an online diary, encoding for the PSP, streaming your home-make or work-related videos, or have tried to start a podcast and have questions about the process, then visit our workshop. Feel free to bring your laptops or cameras, and we will connect to the internet and start podcasting on the spot.

Workshop presented by

• Mason Dixon
• Doug Meade
• David Meade
• Last Lap Nick
• Kelly Belly

Imagine that you have a favorite print magazine that you just live and die for. Maybe it’s Sports Illustrated, maybe its Home and Garden, maybe its Wired, or Time. You love this magazine and pace back and forth once each publishing cycle desperate to read the latest issue the moment it hits the shelves. So on Monday you go to the news stand to see if the new issue is on the shelf. It’s not. Drat. So on Tuesday, you go to the news stand to see if the new issue is on the shelf yet. It’s not. Drat. So on Wednesday …. you get the idea. This is where magazine subscriptions are so handy. You don’t have to keep running to the news stand. When there is a new issue it’s delivered directly to you.

Now imagine that you have a favorite blog (whose publishing schedule isn’t nearly as predictable as a print magazine). Each day you have to go to the website and hit refresh … only to discover that the new blog has not been posted yet. Each day you have to go back to the website and check yourself to see if there is an update … each day … over and over again.

Now imagine that you have 30 or 40 blogs you want to keep up with (or even hundreds!) Clearly nobody wants to routinely and futilely go refreshing 40 webpages each day on the off chance a few of them MAY have an update.

Thankfully, like print magazines, you can subscribe to content online as well. You needn’t keep checking, you can rest assured that when there is an update you will receive it.

“Ok big deal” you’re thinking. “So what?”, you wonder. “So I’m gonna sign up at all these websites and their gonna email me there stuff?!”, you think. “Big deal”, you decide.

Well here’s the magic part … you do NOT have to sign up ANYWHWERE. You don’t have to give your email address to ANYONE. In fact, the sites online that you subscribe to don’t have to know the slightest thing about you … they don’t even have to know you exist … they certainly don’t need your email address … and you can still have all of the new stuff delivered right to you!

“How?!” you ask? The answer is ‘RSS’. Readers love RSS because of its convenience and the fact that it’s YOU THE READER that manages the subscription process (not half a dozen email bots on just as many disparate websites). Content producers love RSS because it it allows for the ubiquitous and authorative distribution of their material to a far wider audience via a channel they don’t have to constantly manage (no cumbersome mailing lists to manage).

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and it truly lives up to it’s name.

If you’ve ever subscribed to a podcast, you’ve used RSS. Podcasts use the RSS system to allow users to subscribe to an audio blog. Every time a new episode is released, the mp3 is automatically received by all of the subscribers and transfered to their personal mp3 player of choice.

You can subscribe to Video Blogs in the same way. Why would you want to do this? Well besides the convenience of not having to wonder when new stuff is available, video’s are large files … if you subscribe, you can use a tool called an ‘aggregator’ to automatically download those files for you. By the time you next sit at your PC, the videos will already be downloaded and waiting for your to click play.

You can of course subscribe to text blogs too. You can subscribe to just about anything.

To take advantage of RSS subscriptions, all you need is an application called an aggregator. It’s an application in which you manage all your subscriptions, and it in turn downloads any new content detected. Apple’s iTunes is a good example of an aggregator. Within iTunes you subscribe to all sorts of podcasts (which are simply RSS feeds), iTunes checks the feeds periodically and downloads any new mp3s available.

There are all sorts of aggregators available and which one you should use depends on the sorts of subscriptions you want to maintain. Personally, I recommend FireAnt. FireAnt is a great aggregator that works really well with text, audio, and video. FireAnt will find and download the latest and greatest from your favorite sites and services and provide you with a hand dandy little comment button so you can still enjoy participating in the community.

You can get FireAnt at http://www.getfireant.net. Using FireAnt is pretty easy, just install it, click the ‘add channel’ button, and enter the url for the feed you want to subscribe to. Thats it. If you don’t know the feed url, try just putting in the website url and FireAnt can often times figure it out for you.

I’ll save the techie ‘how it works’ for another post should people be interested, but in the meantime do yourself a favor and get an aggregator. RSS is the wave of the future. Before long, it will be how we’re all be gettin’ the goods online (web browsers are so 1995). It allows your favorite online sites and services to update you without having to spam your email box. It lets YOU decide what content is important to you. It’s media savy and can allow you to subscribe to audio, video, and applications.

RSS feed can be a really great extension of a website, so go subscribe and stay in the loop easier than ever before!

DavidMeade.com

website: http://www.DavidMeade.com

RSS feed: http://www.DavidMeade.com/feed

DougMeade.com

website: http://www.DougMeade.com

RSS feed: http://www.DougMeade.com/feed

HicksFamilyOnline.com

website: http://www.HicksFamilyOnline.com

RSS feed: http://www.HicksFamilyOnline.com/feed

Get FireAnt

However, the feature doesn’t work if you use a hosting service for your media files whose published permalink to the media file issues a redirect behind the scenes to the actual file at a different uri. Most services do this I think. Blip.tv, OurMedia, The Archive, etc. (Just for clarity sake: This is not a problem with the hosting, but rather a limitation in wordpress.)

Anyway, I wrote up a quick modifcation to the wordpress code to allow for this. If you use word press and would like to use it’s auto-enclosure feature but it’s not working because you are using a hosting provider for your media files, here’s how you can fix it (in most cases).

Edit the wp-includes/functions.php file

FIND:

Code:

for ( $i = 0; $i < $count; $i++) { $key = strtolower($matches[1][$i]); $headers["$key"] = $matches[2][$i]; }

(the above should be around line line 818)

AFTER the above code, ADD:

Code:

$headers[’status_code’] = substr($response,0,strpos( $response, "\r\n", 0));

FIND:

Code:

if ( $headers = wp_get_http_headers( $url) ) {

(the above should be around line 783)

AFTER the above code, ADD:

Code:

if ($headers[’status_code’] == ‘HTTP/1.1 302 Found’ ) { $headers = wp_get_http_headers($headers[’location’]); }

SAVE

There you have it. WordPress will now correctly add enclosures for the media files you link to in your blogs.

NOTE: use at your own risk, but it’s working for me.