Editorial Echoes #6
A vegetarian group wants the red meat advertisement starring Sam Neill to be banned. Samuel has a chuckle at their expense.
The episode can be downloaded from here.
Samuel
1 comment March 21st, 2006 at 06:00am
Posts filed under 'Editorial Echoes'
Editorial Echoes #5
It’s Canberra day, and Samuel examines the weekend’s South Australian and Tasmanian state elections and what effect they have had on Australia’s political landscape.
The episode can be downloaded from here.
Samuel
7 comments March 20th, 2006 at 06:00am
Editorial Echoes: Thanks for the support
I would just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has been listening to and/or subscribing to Editorial Echoes through the first week for your support. I have been pleasantly surprised by the download statistics all week, and I’m very pleased to see Editorial Echoes currently ranked 17 in the Talk Radio category on iTunes. I have screenshots to prove it!
(Click to enlarge)
Or accept my closeup
Once again thankyou, and there will be another episode of Editorial Echoes on Monday morning.
Whilst on the subject of podcasts, Samuel’s Persiflage will be behind schedule this month in that it will be released after the 10th-20th of the month window. This has been caused by interview delays, and I will endeavour to have it online for you ASAP.
Samuel
10 comments March 17th, 2006 at 07:02pm
Editorial Echoes #4
This morning Samuel takes a look at the Commonwealth Games and their reputation as the “goodwill games”.
The episode can be downloaded from here.
I was in a much less noisy environment for this one, so I’ve tried it without noise reduction, I think it comes out OK, let me know if you have a view on the noise reduction or lack thereof.
The next episode will be on Monday, as this is a weekday podcast.
Samuel
9 comments March 17th, 2006 at 06:00am
Editorial Echoes #3
Minister for communication Helen Coonan has left the way open for advertising on the ABC. Will it happen? Will the ABC remain supposedly “independent”? And should it happen? Samuel answers the questions!
The episode can be downloaded from here
We also have an iTunes link now, which is http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=130324642&s=143460
Samuel
12 comments March 16th, 2006 at 06:00am
No Editorial Echoes Today
I have to inform you that there will be no Editorial Echoes today, for the same reason that there has been no new posts on this blog over the last 24 hours…hayfever, and a rather nasty dose of it too!
There was really no point in me trying to record a podcast with a blocked nose and a sore throat, and as I spent most of the day asleep anyway, I didn’t have much to talk about. I am feeling better now, and will have to travel out to Bruce today to hand in an assignment which was due yesterday, the same one I nearly handed in last week (and to the person who emailed me with a non-working email address, no it wasn’t Requirements Analysis, it was Client Support).
Anyway, I will take this opportunity to explain the automation which is enabling you to receive Editorial Echoes each morning at 6am, even though I may still be asleep.
The night before the episode goes online I do a quick bit of editing (noise reduction and adding in the music) before saving the MP3 and uploading it. I also write the update for the RSS feed, and the sidebar listing, these also get uploaded.
Before I go any further, I should explain a thing or two about the directory structure of this website. This website is hosted on Bluehost‘s “Box 35” along with many other websites. On that server, I have a directory located at /home/samuelgo/ this is my “home directory” and is effectively my root directory (aka my / directory)thanks to the use of a “chroot jail”. (It is worthwhile pointing out that the server is Linux based, and you can type those terms into Google for more info).
Everything you see on this website is located in my /public_html/ directory, which is effectively the / directory of the website (aka the https://samuelgordonstewart.com/). (Technically most of this site is generated dynamically by pulling stuff out of a database, and most of the URLs don’t physically exist but are understood by the server with the help of some modrewrite rules in the .htaccess file.)
OK, if I were to upload these files straight into the Editorial Echoes directory (/public_html/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/) it would be possible for people to download them earlier than the release date, and would result in podcast software downloading it very early, so a bit of automation and trickyness is necessary.
Instead of uploading the files to the public Editorial Echoes directory, I upload them to a hidden Editorial Echoes directory outside of the /public_html/ directory, and effectively not accessable by the public. This directory is the /echoes/ directory.
As I said, that file isn’t publically accessable, so that doesn’t really solve anything as there’s no point having a podcast that people can’t download…that’s where the automation kicks in. I have a couple cron jobs (cron being the Linux task scheduling program) set up to automatically copy the various files to their public locations. These three files are
- The updated sidebar
- The updated RSS feed
- The MP3 file
The cron jobs look like this:
55 11 * * * mv /home/samuelgo/echoes/echo*.mp3 /home/samuelgo/public_html/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/
0 12 * * * cp /home/samuelgo/echoes/echoes.xml /home/samuelgo/public_html/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/echoes.xml
0 12 * * * cp /home/samuelgo/echoes/sidebar.php /home/samuelgo/public_html/wp-content/themes/blix/sidebar.php
Each cron job is one line, but the webpage forces line wrapping. The server is somewhere in the mountian timezone of the US, which is currently 18 hours behind Canberra. I will have to modify the times when the difference changes.
I should probably explain these cron jobs.
The first one says “at minute 55 of hour 11 of every day of every month on every day of the week, move /home/samuelgo/echoes/echo*.mp3 to /home/samuelgo/public_html/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/”
The asterisk is very important there as the mp3 files will have different names each day, but will conform to the “echo(episode number).mp3” format. The move command is also important as it means I don’t have to delete the old mp3 files each night, and the command isn’t going to recopy old files. The time (which works out to 5:55am Canberra time) is very very important. The mp3 file must be available before anything else is online, otherwise podcast software will fail to download the new episode, which will result in them either giving up or constantly retrying (which would, with enough podcast clients, create a distributed denial of service due to the excessive number of concurrent connections), make WordPress provide incorrect information in the blog’s RSS feed about the mp3 file, and give people who manually download the file “404” errors until the file is online.
The second one says “at minute 0 of hour 12 of every day of every month on every day of the week, copy /home/samuelgo/echoes/echoes.xml to /home/samuelgo/public_html/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/echoes.xml”
The only real differences here are the time (Midday server time, 6am Canberra time), the command (copy instead of move) and the filenames. I’ll let you use your imagination for the third one.
Also overnight, I write the post for the Editorial Echoes episode, which I schedule to appear at 6am. WordPress will ultimately make it appear slightly earlier or later, which again emphasises the need for the MP3 to be online before 6am.
The only thing which cannot be automated is the Editorial Echoes website, which I manually update when I get around to it. It is normal for it to be a bit behind from time to time.
I hope that sheds some light on the automation which makes this all possible without me having to be up at 6am every morning.
Samuel
14 comments March 15th, 2006 at 06:59am
Editorial Echoes #2
Today’s teacher strike in Canberra poses the question: “Why do teachers always take half-day strikes?”. Samuel explains the reasons, and why it is such an effective strike format.
The episode can be downloaded from here
Samuel
8 comments March 14th, 2006 at 06:00am
Editorial Echoes #1
Editorial Echoes #1 for Monday March 13, 2006 is online. Today’s topic is mobile phone charges, how they’ve become too complex, and what can be done to fix it.
Many thanks to Chuck A. Spear who suggested the “Editorial Echoes” name, and thanks to everyone who suggested names.
Editorial Echoes hs its own email address, echoes@samuelgordonstewart.com
The podcast feed can be found at https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/echoes.xml
iTunes subscribe link coming soon.
The Editorial Echoes page, with a listing of all episodes can be found at https://samuelgordonstewart.com/editorial-echoes/
Future posts about future Editorial Echoes episodes will not contain the logo, and will be much shorter than this one.
Samuel
21 comments March 13th, 2006 at 03:10am