365 Days 52 Weeks of Astronomy
With the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast becoming a reality, some aspects of daily podcasts have become apparent. Most importantly to me is that my podcatching software doesn't cope too well with the frequency of episodes. The software sometimes doesn't download 'old' episodes because a couple of newer shows appeared in the days since it last checked. Also, rather than listening every day, I find myself playing catch-up by listening to episodes in bursts. The down side of doing this is that I end up hearing myself doing the closing credits a little too often. So, for those like me that tend to listen on a weekly time-scale, I thought we should create a weekly edition that required as little ongoing effort as possible.
A couple of weeks ago I hacked together some rather clunky code, in several languages, which can automatically generate a weekly edition. My code slices and dices the daily shows and puts them back together into one episode per week. It seems to have worked well on the first six weeks with only a couple of minor bugs that I was able to iron out. With most of the hard work automated that only leaves the job of maintaining the RSS feed. Rob has very kindly volunteered to take on that responsibility.
Without further ado, the New Media Working Group of the International Year of Astronomy presents the 52 Weeks of Astronomy RSS feed. This is not a replacement of the daily podcast but simply an alternate way to digest it. Bon appetite!
Comments:
365 Days52 Weeks of AstronomyVery cool. It even appears to work in my podcatching software. Not sure which i'll listen to eventually. I'll often listen to Pamela do the sponsor, then skip George's great music, listen to the show, then sometimes even skip the trailer. I can do this without looking at the player, so i can do it while driving.
My podcatcher runs automatically daily, in the local morning. If there's any space free on my mp3 player, i dump stuff to it, oldest first. Certain big shows are restricted to one show on the player at a time, small shows, and 365 days is at the hairy edge of small, i dump them all on, and in a row. But when i'm out of room, that's it. It turns out to be easiest to delete all shows of a type by far, rather than delete them one at a time. My iPod has no user interface for this of it's own. It has to be done on the computer. But on the computer, i can say "delete all albums containing '365'" and it does it. But when i'm playing shows, short shows are easier. I can play one more on the way to the grocery store. I can do a longer show, and shoehorn in a short one while mowing the lawn, etc. So short shows are easier to listen to. Long shows are less management - because there are fewer of them.
Posted by Stephen on Tuesday 17th Feb 2009 (16:59 UTC)
Added to the Astronomy Link List
Posted by Astronomy Link List on Wednesday 18th Feb 2009 (09:30 UTC)