Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

I’m pretty happy with the way I’m creating pseudo-Podcasts of ABC programs that are available in RealMedia only: I use a program called realdump, which calls mplayer, to dump the audio to a .WAV file, which I convert to AAC using faac. I then get the data from the web page, and create an entry in an XML file.

This in itself isn’t that tricky, but the clever part, at least in theory, is that I chose the URL I think the ABC might use when they finally Podcast that programme, and have a hostname entry for www.abc.net.au, which I use when I’m not online.

However, every program I have done this for has chosen a different URL than the one I chose.

For instance, The Philosopher’s Zone has chosen:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/pze.xml

instead of:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/pzone.xml

which is closer to the RealMedia file names, or:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/philosopher.xml

which more accurately reflects their URL naming scheme.

Apparently it’s possible to redirect a feed, so that iTunes then looks in a new location, using something like 301 redirects. The problem is I can’t get apache to do this, for some reason. I’ve tried using .htaccess files, but they don’t seem to do anything. I think Apple should make it so that a permanent redirect can be placed in the XML file, and iTunes respects this for future checks.

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My computer decided that Daylight Savings was supposed to end last night (or rather, this morning), when in actuality it doesn’t end until next Sunday morning.

I’m not sure if this is because of the Commonwealth Games, or whether it was just programmed in wrong.

Apparently this affects Windows, too.

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I’m feeling a bit venomous today, so my comments are somewhat nasty-ish.

I’m an athiest, and I’m not afraid to say so.

We are lucky you didn’t sign up. You probably couldn’t tell the difference between Iraq and Iran. Perhaps staying in school was a better move…or would have been if you’d paid attention.

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