Category Archives: What I Want

What I want

I want to be able to set up “subscriptions” that will automatically download new audio content and que it on my iPod. I want my iPod to have playlists that will mirror these subscriptions, automatically noting the items I’ve listened to so I don’t hear them again and purging and/or archiving the files i have listened to.

Most of the pieces are in place.

1. The playcount attribute in a smartplaylist will allow me to set things up to only listen to a piece once. I’m not sure though if I have to resync for things to drop off the playlist.

2. iTunes automation should make it possible to script addition of files and creation of new smart playlists.

3. MP3 blog aggregators should simplify content capture. Unfortunately most of the stuff I want probably isn’t in MP3 format ( ie NPR ), nor is it presented in an RSS feed (though strangely searching for RSS on NPRs site brings up terms and conditions pages that mention their RSS feeds).

Solving these problems could be a fun “learn python” project for me, but the audio conversion piece is going to be kludgy, which turns me off. I’ll have to try to script Streambox VCR (which hopefully has command line options) to pull down the streaming feed and then automate (if possible) Streambox ripper to convert it. Since both of these are unsupported and hard to find software, its not exactly something I could hope to find wide adoption.

Maybe someone else has solved these problems for me. Time to start looking.

Update: It’s 2006, doesn’t this post seem quaint now?

I Want To Script iTunes and Transcode RealAudio

I’d like to get things set up so I can run daily jobs to pull down periodical audio content from the web and pump it into iTunes for use on my iPod.

Unfortunately, iTunes on windows isn’t very scriptable, and far too much content is delivered in RealAudio format, which isn’t the most amenable for transfer.

I need to look into scriptable utilities for capturing and perhaps transcoding real-audio streams.

Things that I want

1. Compact, Fast (7,200 RPM) biggish (80GB) HDD in an enclosure with firewire & USB 2.0 that holds my complete desktop environment that I can use to boot any reasonably modern PC system. Also with an install of virtualization software, so I can plug it into a running system and boot my environment inside.

2. PC & Mac software that will fit on a reasonably sized (128 – 256 MB) USB drive that I can use to open a secure authenticated connection to my home PC or network and gain access to my files and remote control my desktop. Ideally initiating the connection would wake or boot my system if it was asleep or shut down. It should be able to work through most firewalls.

Both of these are possible. I may actually build them.