Saving streaming wmv files with Linux

This past week my sister-in-law was on the radio in NYC and my father-in-law wanted me to try and record it for him. Since I live in North Carolina, obviously the only way to do that would be to stream it over the web. I figured finding and listening to the stream would be the easy part. I listen to streaming radio ALL the time (thanks WUNC!).

Before getting into all of this, you are likely going to need to install some applications. Everything I used was available through the Ubuntu repositories though I do have Medibuntu enabled in addition to all the other easily enable able ones (main, universe, restricted and multiverse). This was also all done using 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. I also know I have several of the restricted packages installed which I am pretty sure is the only reason Windows Media files work. Now for the details.

The hard part would be to actually save the stream. Here is a step by step of what I did:

• Obviously the first step was to find a stream of the station. She was playing on WQXR - 96.3 FM and I found their Windows Media stream on PenguinRadio.
• I found that VideoLAN - VLC media player would be my best bet. It also works in Windows too. I didn't try this on Windows but I bet it would work the same with VLC.
• I had the hardest time trying the many command line options for vlc. I really wanted to download the file and transcode it to wav or directly to MP3 but I just couldn't get that to work. Instead I just saved it directly as WMV and decided to worry about the rest later. I had some trouble with all the many GUI options too so I went with the safer command line route. I used the command line:
  vlc -vvv "http://htc-01.media.globix.net/COMP005996MOD1/meta/wqxr_live_high.asx" --sout '#duplicate{dst=display,dst=std{access=file,mux=asf,dst=/home/forrest/download.wmv}}'
• Here is the easy to replace version: vlc -vvv "MY_STREAM" --sout '#duplicate{dst=display,dst=std{access=file,mux=asf,dst=MY_DOWNLOAD_FILE}}'

After all that I had a 34.1MB wmv file with just under 27 minutes recorded. At this point I converted it to a wav using mplayer like so: mplayer download.wmv -ao pcm:file=download.wav

Since I wanted to play it safe and be sure not too miss anything I needed recording, I started to recording early and kept it going past time. At first I wanted to use Audacity to trim the file but I had a problem getting that to work so I used a program called sox. To truncate the wav with sox you just specify the trim option, the start time and how long to run (NOT the end time). In my case it was: sox download.wav download-trim.wav trim 14:50 9:39

Next I converted the wav to MP3 so I could make it easy to get to online before burning it to a CD. I was sick of command line options at this point so I used SoundConverter instead of Lame (though it likely uses lame as a back end anyway) to save me the trouble.

Upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) from 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) on my home desktop (in pictures)

Despite Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) being out for over a month now, I just got around to upgrading today. I use my Linux box for web browsing, watching videos, general web development and other day to day tasks so I couldn't afford for it to be down long if the upgrade went badly. Fortunately, the upgrade worked like a charm. So here is the upgrade process that took a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes in pictures:











At this point something was upgraded that caused the border to not show up in the screen shots. Oh well.










After the upgrade the theme was a little funky. I went into the theme editor and changed the theme a few times and it was back to normal. I did see the new dark theme and I am going to give it a try for a little bit. I don't think it will last long but it does look pretty good at first. I also switched to the default background for a bit too.

Wine development release 1.1.9 is now available

The Wine development release 1.1.9 is now available.

What's new in this release:
- A large number of regression test fixes.
- Performance improvements in memory management.
- Improved POP3 support in inetcomm.
- Initial implementation of the XInput DLL.
- Various bug fixes.

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

One step closer to ignoring experts-exchange.com thanks to Google

The one site on the Internet that annoys me the most is experts-exchange.com. This seemingly useful site comes up in my search results frequently. The more obscure my query, the more likely an Experts Exchange page will appear in the top results. The problem with this though is they don't answer your question unless you register. This isn't just an annoying New York Times registration either. This is a full blown 7 day trial registration that leads to a $12.95 per month account. Blah!

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with them trying to make money by bringing information together. It is not for me though. I have no desire to pay a monthly fee or to take the time to sign up for a free 7 day trial account to answer some simple question that is likely answered somewhere else on page 1 of my search results. Because I will never use their service I'd like to never be bothered with search results to their pages.

Fortunately, Google is helping us get a little closer to the dream of completely blocking results on expert-exchange.com. The just released a feature called SearchWiki which lets you annotate, promote and remove search results. Granted this is only for when you are logged in and on a per search basis so it is far from the optimal "block everything from this domain" option but it is a step in the right direction. At least I can take my loathing out on the result by removing it. It is as easy as 1.. 2.. 3.. You even get a fun explosion dust cloud while the result is removed.




And while doing a little more research, it looks like there is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox users to block Expert Exchange results for us already.

Also, if you are looking for answers, try Stack Overflow instead. It is actually useful.

Free CrossOver for Linux and Mac TODAY ONLY!

CodeWeavers is offering free copies of CrossOver for Linux and Mac users for today, October 28th only! They are doing this as part of a Lame Duck Challenge Free Offer. CrossOver is based on Wine which allows you to run Windows applications on Linux and Mac platforms by implementing the Windows API on those platforms.

As of writing this, their website is in slim mode because of all the traffic but they are still accepting email address submissions and providing downloads for their Pro and Games versions of CrossOver. Go download it now if you are a Linux or Mac user. What do you have to lose?

Ubuntu 8.10 is coming soon...

Ubuntu 8.10 is set to be released on October 30th. Only 13 more days to go.

Flash 10 is out for Linux and Ubuntu users even get deb packages!

Flash 10 was released just a few days ago (October 15th) and I am excited! Whats new? On Linux, Flash has been a second rate citizen for some time. The Linux version has been buggy, causes browser crashes and leads to excessive CPU usage. The last release for Linux was also over 6 months behind the Windows and OS X releases.

Flash 10 for Linux has been released at the same time as other platforms this time around. The Linux release now also comes with easy to install packages for Debian based distributions like Ubuntu and RPM based distributions like Fedora. Adobe is really starting to pay more attention to Linux users and I really appreciate it.

I had hoped that I could get the latest Flash from the ubuntu-backports repository but it looks like they are still working on that as the version listed now is "10.0.1.218+10.0.0.525ubuntu1~hardy1+really9.0.124.0ubuntu2" which really is still version 9. To easily install version 10 though, I just went to the Adobe Flash download page, downloaded the deb file and installed it. The installation also removes the old version for you keeping your upgrade hassle free. A simple browser restart later and I was running the latest Flash 10.



I haven't been running Flash 10 long enough to know if it has fixed all my problems yet but I do know it has fixed the annoying Flash z-index bug that caused content like menus to be drawn behind Flash content. This was most annoying to me on the Verizon Wireless website.

Flash 9 on Linux


Flash 10 on Linux

I really hope Adobe keeps Flash on Linux at the same level moving forward. Flash has been one of the chicken or the egg problems for Linux for a while and I think Adobe now realizes they should do something about that. I also think competition from Sliverlight may be a factor here as Microsoft has only partially endorsed an implementation of it as Moonlight for Linux. I see the benefits of having more popular/standardized distributions coming into play also. With Ubuntu and Red Hat/Fedora as two of the major players, Adobe can confidently create tested and easy to install packages for those platforms.

As further reading, I would suggest the Ars Technica review as it covers all platforms and goes into some performance benchmarks.