7 May 2008
Good music for my commute
Posted by Matthieu under: Linux; Music
We just moved to Providence, RI and I started commuting this week. 1h15 one way to Watertown, MA if there is no traffic or accident… that leaves me a long time to reflect on the meaning of life 
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In order to make this commute bearable I definitely need some good tunes… and unfortunately I don’t find any of those on Boston area radio stations (except perhaps WERS which has some good stuff). I can listen to my iPod… but it can get repetitive as I am not buying as much music as before, and I start to know my collection.
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The solution was to record the radio from the web broadcast, make it available as a podcast and sync my iPod in the morning before leaving for work. Et voila, a few hours of music, news and French speaking people… everything that will help get over my morning grumpiness!
And with the time difference between France and the US it even feels like live radio, I get the morning news almost at the time it was broadcast 
On a technical level this is how it works:
I setup cron jobs on my web server to record Radio Nova stream from the web, using streamripper. Then I inject some meta data in the recorded file with id3v2. And finally the file gets published as a podcast thanks to DirCaster. In the morning I sync up my iPod with the podcasts that were recorded earlier in the night and I’m good to go.
I’m not really sure how legal it would be to make these recordings public, so I won’t do it, but if you’re interested leave me a comment and I’m sure we can work it out.
