Tag: Coding

  • New Polished Chrome

    New Polished Chrome

    That’s fancy!

    Well, it’s finally here. The new look for UnwindMedia.com is ready to go, and you can go and take a look now! I am really happy with how it’s turned out, and it is now quite a bit easier to see information about the shows on the network.

    I’m getting married this weekend, and going on a honeymoon the week after, so if this blog goes dark for a few weeks, please don’t be surprised. Episode 67 of Future Chat is the last one until I get back in late August, but we are doing our best the next few days to prepare new episodes of Ottawhat? to come out while I’m gone. Hope you’re having a great summer!

    We spoke to fire dancer and actor Zoe Georgaras this week on the show. We learned how she got introduced to fire dancing, how fire safety and good insurance…
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    In this episode, we discuss the possible coming shortage of medical isotopes and decay rates, we learn a little about Nick’s work with gold, and we can’t…
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  • Website 2.0 is in Private Beta!

    Website 2.0 is in Private Beta!

    Unwindmedia.com 2.0 is almost upon us!

    As I mentioned yesterday on Facebook and Twitter, there’s a medium/big re-skin of UnwindMedia.com coming very soon. I’ve been researching podcast network websites and taking cues from some of my favourites, and there’s also some brand new custom code pulling strings behind the scene to make adding new shows and hosts much easier should that ever be a thing that needs to happen. These changes would also make moving websites much more straightforward, in case THAT is a thing that ever needs to happen.

    Below, you’ll find links to Future Chat and Ottawhat as always, and if you’ve been waiting patiently for Feedback: The Music (I know I have), we want to take some time to really get it right. Hopefully there will be more to share soon!

    On this episode, we sat down with Megan Honey, an up-and-coming standup comedian who will be competing this summer in a couple of comedy contests at Absol…
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    In this episode, we discussed T-Mobile’s new Uncarrier US-Canada-Mexico roaming plans, Sweden buying trash from Norway, and Mike doesn’t believe you could…
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  • #ABpoli, Orange Crush, and Archives (Unwind Media | May 20-27)

    #ABpoli, Orange Crush, and Archives (Unwind Media | May 20-27)

    It was another full week on Unwind Media, and I’m happy to let you know we finally recorded another episode of East Meets West, discussing, among other things, the recent NDP sweep of the Albertan Provincial government.

    If you still haven’t gotten your #Taylorette1989 videos out, or at the very least shared your stories, now would be the time to do so! Taylorette itself is a little under 6 weeks away!

    On a final, new note about Unwind Media, I’ve been working hard to bring you show archives, so you can now find those if you go to any of the show pages below. I have no idea if any of you will find that useful, but it was one of those fun learning experiences getting the code working properly, and it seemed worth it to me!

    Rob and Nick are joined by special guest and Future Chat co-host Mike Attrell to discuss the outcome of the recent Alberta election, and the NDP Crushing…
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    This week on Ottawhat, we sat down with Alexis Scott. She’s one of the co-founders of Vacant House Theatre, a company that is putting on a production of F…
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    This week, we talk Let’s Talk Science funding, wind turbines with no blades, and look forward to Google I/O later in the week…
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  • SoundCloud, Writing, and #Taylorette1989 heats up. (Unwind Media; May 7-13)

    SoundCloud, Writing, and #Taylorette1989 heats up. (Unwind Media; May 7-13)

    This week we made a couple of substantial changes on Unwind Media, most notably we’re making the transition to hosting audio files on SoundCloud, as opposed to Archive.org. I’m pretty excited for that, and I even wrote a little bit about some of the neat tricks I am using now to get those files to work with podcast clients and on the podcast website while keeping the setup simple.

    I also wrote a little more for MobileSyrup, rather than linking to all of them, you can find those stories by using a custom Google Search (for ‘site:mobilesyrup.com “Rob Attrell” ‘)one of the hosts on Unwind Media and my cousin, +Mike Attrell, came up with to find things I’ve written.

    In other news, #Taylorette1989 is entering its next phase, as +Taylor Swift begins her world tour and gets ready to launch her latest music video. Look for more on that in the next week! As well, there’s a new episode of Feedback coming before the end of the week, so that means a fun conversation, AND 2 more cover tunes from Damien and BL in the next week or so! Stay tuned!

    On Ottawhat this week, we met former UFC fighter and Ottawa native Mark “Boots” Holst. He spoke to us about his experiences in the ring, teaching the new…
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    In this episode, Tesla goes gangbusters, it’s zeppelins vs. dirigibles, and trucks are driving themselves in Nevada. Get excited, because we’ll be deliver…
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  • Adventures in Podcasting with SoundCloud (Volume I)

    Adventures in Podcasting with SoundCloud (Volume I)

    .code {
    text-align: left;
    font-weight: bold;
    line-height: 1;
    }

    I’ve been podcasting and building my website for a couple of years now, and I thought it would be useful to some people if I talked about some of the things I’ve gone through in getting my site up and running that I couldn’t find anywhere else on the Internet. This one is all about podcasting efficiently with SoundCloud.

    Now, I’m not a professional programmer by ANY stretch, but I like getting my feet wet with little bits of code from time to time. I also podcast a few times a week, and sometimes I’m lucky enough that these hobbies overlap! I recently moved my podcasts to SoundCloud, and they have a really nice web player (check out unwindmedia.com/feedback for a prime example). But I wanted to simplify my life and use one link for the RSS feed and for the web player embed.

    Luckily, they use a unique ID number for each upload to SoundCloud, it’s just a matter of finding it. It is a 9-digit number smack in the middle of the enclosure URL that SoundCloud uses for RSS, something like this:

    http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/204094299-channelname-episodename.mp3

    With a bit of Regex and replace magic (/.*/(d+)-.*/, “$1”) and some simple jQuery, I can extract that number, plunk it into the embed URL (see this page), and stick that into your container div.

    Once you have that embed URL, you just have to put in all the embed options you want for your widget, and you’re good to go!

    As SoundCloud opens up their platform to make it easier for podcasters, I hope this helps you simplify your life. I personally used this code on my Blogger site (unwindmedia.com) so I can have an audio player on my site that uses the enclosure link for the podcast episode, but in SoundCloud’s native player. It’s working incredibly well and I’m moving all my shows to this template in the coming weeks.

    The code I used is below, and you can see it in action online at unwindmedia.com! If you have any questions please ask and I’ll give you all the details you could ever want!

    EDIT (May 8): I made the code a lot simpler and got rid of redundant divs. Hopefully this is even simpler now.

    Pictured: Fun for Rob

    <div class=’”sound-container-” + “POST-ID”‘/>

     <script>
        $(document).ready(function() {

            var idVal = ‘POST-ID’;

            var idTrack = ‘ENCLOSURE-URL’;

            var encl = idTrack.replace(/.*/(d+)-.*/, “$1”);

            var open = “<iframe frameborder=’no’ height=’160′ scrolling=’no’ src=’https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/”;

            var close = “&color=1C4E94&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_artwork=false’ width=’100%’/>”;

            $(‘.sound-container-‘ + idVal).append(open + encl + close);

        });
    </script>