About the radio...

[Shoeberto]

I'm assuming it's running on SHOUTcast, yes?

I was thinking that it could be improved with DJs or some sort of radio show. Like, maybe even just a weekly show with different DJs playing their own music, or show like that with a bunch of DJs just discussing stuff or taking requests from the chat room. If you've ever listened to Suprnova Radio, something like Schizo Hour would be cool (except toned down a bit, so it's more PG or PG-13).

Yeah. Just suggestions. I have a chem test to study for. I am outie-5000.

[Yamaneko]

I definitely agree with this idea.

[eestlinc]

what?

[Cid]

It's not shoutcast. It's eyesonff-run.

[crono_logical]

What's the software being used though?

I didn't even know there was a radio, actually

[Shoeberto]

I was wondering if it was or not. Is it streaming or does it just load the MP3s completely before playing?

[Cid]

It just loads the mp3 before playing.

[Shoeberto]

With concerns of bandwidth in mind, I'd recommend setting up SHOUTcast. It's open source and I don't think it's too difficult to set up. (I've only experimented with it a little.) Having people download the MP3s alienates some of the narrowband users from listening, as well as eats up site bandwidth more than what streaming it would do.

[Samuraid]

Shoutcast works...but it requires you to run the software on your server. Ultimately it uses the same bandwidth as a M3U playlist. (except that MP3s are read-ahead buffered with M3U files, as opposed to being streamed with shoutcast)

http://www.shoutcast.com/download/files.phtml
They have a linux version that theoretically would work with this server. It would probably depend on what form of control/administration it uses. Assuming it uses a GUI, I doubt a dedicated linux server has an X environment active/installed and is running in anything higher than runlevel 3.

The advantage of course is that Shoutcast operates like a true streaming radio...

EDIT: I just downloaded the tarball, and the shoutcast server looks like a simple elf binary and a configuration file...it looks like it would work.

[Shoeberto]

Shoutcast works...but it requires you to run the software on your server. Ultimately it uses the same bandwidth as a M3U playlist. (except that MP3s are read-ahead buffered with M3U files, as opposed to being streamed with shoutcast)

Really? Well, I guess you could lower the bandwidth by having a lower stream, like 64KBPS rather than having everyone download the higher bitrate MP3s. I guess the most apparant advantage then would be that by streaming, it allows the dial-up users to listen to it.

The only problem I could see arising with Shoutcast on the server is if the MP3s were to be running all the time, and if the server doesn't have an X server running, either a) a command line player that could use the Shoutcast plugin would need to be used or b) a seperate computer would need to be used as the dedicated MP3 player, which wouldn't be difficult to set up.

[Samuraid]

either a) a command line player that could use the Shoutcast plugin would need to be used or b) a seperate computer would need to be used as the dedicated MP3 player, which wouldn't be difficult to set up.

It looks like the Linux version of the shoutcast server is a command line application, so it theoretically would work. Whether or not it is the best solution for EOFF is up to the powers that be.

As for setting up a dedicated box: eyesonff.com is on a dedicated server at theplanet.com (run and whois and see ) so adding a second machine just to run shoutcast would not be an easy task. (Very costly too) It would be possible to run shoutcast from a personal computer hooked to broadband, but that would really drain the upstream bandwidth and one would only be able to handle maybe 20 listeners at a time.

[Shoeberto]

I didn't mean a dedicated server for running Shoutcast, I meant one for playing the MP3s across the Shoutcast server using the Shoutcast client. That way, the Shoutcast server could be running on EoFF's dedicated server and handling the connection, with the client-end streaming to the server and relaying to the listeners.

I think that would work...it's been a while since I've done anything involving Shoutcast.

[Samuraid]

That would work, but shoutcast doesn't require a client to be playing music, it can run standalone on a server by playing random mp3s stored in a directory on the server.

[Shoeberto]

Ah. That would work.

And after that we could return back to square one with the original suggestion. It's kind of funny how we've planned all of this stuff out without any input from the webmaster.

[Zell's Fists of Fury]

HOLY I WANT TO BE A DJ