1. Open the stream you want from the list on their “Listen” page.
2. In the popup window, click the link for the stream bit rate you want.
3. Right click on the popup window, and select “View Page Info” from the context menu.
4. Click on the “Media” tab and copy down the “embed” URL. In my case it is http://icy1.abacast.com/cbc-r1vancouver-96.
5. Create a plain text file called “cbc.m3u” containing only the URL from the previous step. Here is mine. Alternatively you can press command-U to play the stream directly.
6. Drag the file you created into iTunes, and you’re done!

Update: CBC has updated their stream links page, and the URLs they supply seem to work now. Continue to ignore the Flip4Mac instructions on the “Listen” page though.

Having a few days off over the holidays means I’m able to spend time playing with code a little, so I wrote what the Processing folks call a “sketch”. Here is the result (you’ll need a Java plugin):

“Tendrils” code.

Fun stuff! And I haven’t even touched the 3D portions of the API, which look very tempting.

Processing also has a lively community, including a Flickr group which has a lot of beautiful Processing-generated images. The brilliant John Resig of jQuery fame has even ported the language and large portions of the API to Javascript, using the canvas element available in modern web browsers.

One of jQuery’s best features is the ease with which it can be extended with simple plugins. This post on customizing jQuery selectors inspired me to write the following selector extension, which matches text content in the current element set with a regular expression. Remember how I said it was simple? More like effortless, you could easily squeeze this down into a half dozen lines or so if you were so inclined.  The only slightly difficult bit is figuring out what the “a”, “i” and “m” parameters mean in the jQuery selector source.  From the looks of things “a” is the element to match, “i” is the index in the list of matched elements, and “m” is the regexp match for the selector expression where “m[3]” is the value of the parameter supplied to the selector function.

[code lang="javascript"]
(function ($) {
     var match = function (a, i, m) {
         return RegExp(m[3]).test(a.textContent || a.innerText || $(a).text() || "");
     };

     var match_ignore_case = function (a, i, m) {
         return RegExp(m[3], 'i').test(a.textContent || a.innerText || $(a).text() || "");
     };

     $.extend($.expr[':'], {
                  containsmatch: match,
                  containsmatchi: match_ignore_case
              });
 })(jQuery);
[/code]

With the above code loaded, “:containsmatch(<regexp>)” and “:containsmatchi(<case insensitive regexp>)” will be added to jQuery’s already generous set of selectors. For example, [code lang="javascript"]$('p:containsmatchi(^the)')[/code] will case insensitively match any paragraph element with text content beginning with “the”.

Today I ran across a post on the excellent Language Hat blog which laments the fact that the term “manicule”, meaning a bullet-like symbol shaped like a pointing hand used to direct the readers attention, has disappeared from contemporary dictionaries. The word was a new one on me, and had immediate appeal. I’m not the only one that likes it: it has its own WikiPedia entry and even a Flickr group.

From now on I’m referring to the pointer cursor as the “manicule”, and I encourage all right-thinking CSS users to do the same.

[CC Photo by Mykl Roventine]

Qila and baby Tiqa

We made a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium this morning, and found out that the five month old beluga calf has been named Tiqa since the last time we saw her. She’s a cute little grey torpedo with a big beluga smile.

[code lang="perl"]
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Getopt::Long;

my $encode_mp3 = 1;
my $encode_wav = 1;
GetOptions('mp3!' => \$encode_mp3,
	   'wav!' => \$encode_wav);

my $WGET = '/usr/bin/wget';
my $MPLAYER = '/usr/bin/mplayer -nojoystick -nolirc';
my $LAME = '/usr/bin/lame';
my $TMP = '/tmp';

my $ramurl = shift;
my @ram = `$WGET -q -O - $ramurl`;
my ($rtspurl) = grep(/^rtsp:/, @ram);
$rtspurl =~ s/\&.*$//;
$rtspurl =~ /\/([^\/]*)\.r[ma]/ or die("Can't parse rtsp URL: \"$rtspurl\"");
my $filebase = $1;
print("Opening stream at " . localtime() . "\n");
system("$MPLAYER -dumpstream -dumpfile $TMP/$filebase.dump $rtspurl");
my $wavfile = $TMP;
$wavfile = '.' unless $encode_mp3 && !$encode_wav;
$wavfile .= "/$filebase.wav";
system("$MPLAYER -ao pcm:file=$wavfile $TMP/$filebase.dump");
unlink("$TMP/$filebase.dump");
if ($encode_mp3)
{
    system("$LAME $wavfile $filebase.mp3");# or die("Couldn't convert to mp3");
}
unlink("$wavfile") unless $encode_wav;
[/code]

Pass the script the RAM URL as a command line parameter, and if all goes well it should dump the stream to a WAV, then convert it into an MP3 file. You’ll need mplayer and lame installed.

(And if all else fails, the CD should be released in a few months…)

On our quick trip to San Francisco, we discovered they weren’t exaggerating about the fog – or the steep hills.  Coming from North Vancouver, it was pretty easy to adjust though.

[Via]

[Via]