Saturday, June 29, 2013

Good News

Musician Tom Meny is on the mend!

Thanks everyone.I appreciate all of your kindness...Thanks to all of you who have checked on my parents too...this has been tough on them. I'm doing ok and I couldn't get through this without all of you. You guys really know how to make a fella feel loved.

New Show Promo

Thursday, June 27, 2013

This was NOT a fun Facebook Status to Read

One of the musicians that was regularly played on the Unsigned Musicians show, and played for us at MusicFest isn't doing well.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Tom Meny who had quadruple bypass today.  He really is a super great guy, and yes, a fucking brilliant musician.

Whatever your beliefs might be, let all of us hope that he pulls through.




For those who might have been wondering what the Facebook status update was, well, it was this...

Well...it turns out I'm not invincible after all. I had chest pains yesterday and drove myself to the ER. I was admitted to the ICU Monday night. Tomorrow at 830 AM at Seton Hays I'm having a quadruple bypass. Keep me in your thoughts. Listen to your doctors.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Updated the Site

Hey gang I just finished updating the site for the show.  The first thing I did was fix the alignment between the player and the chat, it looked jumbled before and that shit drove me nuts.

Then I added a links section.

It's starting to feel like home to me now, I'm happy with how the site is starting to turn out.  I have other changes and improvements in mind but I really have a feeling that this will continue to evolve and grow.

For those of you that might have missed the previous blog posts, we have a new home, I got tired of trying to find an appropriate place to broadcast and created one.

http://indiespotlightlive.webs.com/

We have the same quality that we had on blogtv as far as the audio is concerned and have regained the ability to play videos as well.

I feel that the site is mostly complete although I will continue to tweak it, I know from my last experience in site building it is never really done anyway.

Come check it out, the show will be broadcasted every Sunday night at 9 pm (eastern) there now.

The one thing that I will very STRONGLY recommend, is that you run an ad-blocker program, in fact I have a link on the show's page at the top where you can get one if you don't have it.  Much of the coding that I am using is ad supported, and while I am a huge fan of that at the same time, well I gotta be honest, the ads are intrusive, neither I or the musicians make any money off of them so I don't feel guilty at all telling people how to get around them.

Thank you all for your continued support.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Finally Made It Work

Hey everyone, I'm happy to report that our show on the new site was a success!  We saw more web traffic there than we've seen doing our previous format.

So, as long as the player works out, I think I'll be sticking with this.  It's been nice regaining video capability, I didn't think I was going to miss it, but honestly yeah, I have.

There are still a few bugs to work out, mostly with the site layout, and the chat.  I'll admit that I haven't spent the time on the chatroom code that I should have, now that the major issues are nailed down I can go back and tweak and work out the bugs.

The one thing that I will tell everyone coming to the show, you have to run an ad-blocker program, I have it linked on the site if you don't currently have it.  Since I'm using free software/code it is ad supported, and if you aren't running an ad blocker and click the wrong button you will end up in pop up ad hell.


Saturday, June 22, 2013

New Web Player for the Show

After working on this for almost a week, I finally have a new web player for the show.  It works just fine on the site, and the extra bonus is that I have also regained video capability!

Gonna put it through it's paces this Sunday and if it works out I'll be back in full force, including musician interviews.

Goodbye awdio, while your sound quality is great your reliability issues won't be missed.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Show Update 6-21-13, And Yes I am Pissed Off at awdio.com

I really want to continue my manlovefest with awdio.com, but the fact is that while the sound quality is kick ass, the site itself isn't reliable.  I'm not gonna lie I was pissed the fuck off last Sunday when I wasn't able to get online and broadcast.  I had a kick ass show planned out, I had just met and heard live one of the main musicians that I play on the show (Pete Berwick) and I was locked and loaded to premier the show on it's new site, with a new chat, and the embedded awdio player.  Finally, all the elements of the show back in one place!

I was really pumped up and ready to go, awdio however wasn't.  I had planned to continue to broadcast the show from awdio.com but instead of having to tell people to "click this link to hear the show, and type in this link to find us in our live interactive chat" I could just tell people to go to one site, click play on the player, type in a name and join the chat.

Apparently at the same time the powers that be at awdio decided that it was time to do some maintenance.  Really, right now?

From all appearances, awdio was down for two days although it is back online and I would be able to broadcast right now as I type this.  Until the next time, this is the second time that I wasn't able to do the show because of issues on the broadcasting site that I use to play the show.

So, needless to say I have been exploring other alternatives to broadcast the show.  I posted a rant in the Facebook group for the show and a couple of regular listeners to the show have provided alternatives to broadcasting on awdio.  I'll be flat out honest, the best option (icecast) will take more "know-how" than I currently have as far as html coding, as well as, well, just making it work.  From what I've read so far, making the stream to the internet is actually not as hard as it might look, the downside is the embedded player would have to be provided from another site.  That is the catch, sites that can provide code for an embedded player either want to charge, or are supported by advertising.  The ads I can deal with, since most of my listeners are running an ad-blocker program.

I think my only option is to try and see how it works, at this point I don't think it could be any more unreliable than awdio.

Sorry people at awdio.com, you have a great site, and the sound quality is kick ass, but none of that matters if broadcasters can't broadcast.

Stay tuned guys, you know me, you know I will make this shit work.

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Show updates;

So far, in the near future I believe I have two musician interviews lined up.  I need to find a reliable stream to broadcast the show with before I can commit to them.  In the mean time, I will be using the awdio stream to broadcast while I explore other options.   If anyone has any ideas please leave them in the comments section, thanks!

In the meantime as long as the awdio site decides to cooperate I will continue with the Sunday broadcast from there and use the embedded player on the site.  Obviously this is a short term solution until I can find the better one.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Screw You Internet I'll Make My Own Damn Page!

A follow up from my last blog post, since I couldn't find a chat site to fit my wishlist today I said the hell with it and created a new website to broadcast the show.  


I think it will be easier (and therefore we'll see more traffic) if people don't have to go to two different websites for the show.  To put this together actually only took the afternoon, although I'll be the first to admit that the site is still very much a work in progress.  I used the embed code from awdio so I'll still be broadcasting on that site, but now instead of having to go there to open the player folks can now simply go to the new site and click "play" on the player, type in a name for the chat, and bam, your in!

To be perfectly honest with you folks, I'm really looking forward to trying this out.  If for no other reason we won't have to rely on tinychat anymore.  Just the thought of not getting our asses kicked on that buggy pain in the ass chatroom ever again is enough to put a smile on my face!

So, I hate to ask you folks to do this all over again, you can still hear the show on awdio and not join into the chat if you wish, but now, to listen to the show and join the chat is a one stop shop at http://indiespotlightlive.webs.com/ so go ahead and reset your bookmarks!