I made a couple minor bug fixes and enhancements to DSBRTuner today, bringing the version to 1.0.1+njr3. I broke saving of the playthrough setting in the last version; it's now fixed. The space bar works as a keyboard equivalent for the power button, and the power setting is saved so the radio doesn't automatically come on if you have it added to Login Items as I do.
Also in the radio department, I've been listening to the MPEG-4 audio stream for radioio a lot this week. At around 130-150kbits/sec (VBR), it's dramatically better-sounding than the 128kbit/sec MP3 streams to which I ordinarily listen. Just heard a song that used to be my favorite for a while in high school: now, while I still know the lyrics by heart, I can't stand the singer's voice or the excessively poppy style. On the other hand, it's the first time I've heard it on the “radio” since it was popular. I always wondered what people meant when they said their tastes in music change; now I know.
radioio is going subscriber-only at the end of the month, and I'm sorely tempted to fork out for it, especially with the loss of FolkScene and KPIG broadcasts.
Spent some more time on DSBRTuner today: the playthrough CPU usage bug is fixed, it now supports clearing presets, and includes a more informative and useful dock menu.
Source is here if anyone is interested.
Today marks not only the first anniversary of Radio 8's release, but the first anniversary of this Weblog. In an ideal world I'd have something profound to write here, or at least a site redesign. Sorry about that. It's been fun, and I hope to make the following year even more productive.
Les Orchard has some DSBRTuner timed recording scripts, saving me the trouble of writing them—or modifying Pester, which was my first thought. I've discovered that DSBRTuner uses CPU when playthrough is enabled yet the tuner is powered off, so I'll fix that bug today and (since I've seen some interest) post the modified sources.
Safari continues to impress, though without reasonable stand-ins for tabbed browsing and automatic form filling it's not going to replace Chimera as my everyday browser. Today's “wow!” features are the feedback you get in the Downloads window as Safari downloads and Disk Copy subsequently extracts a UDIF image (.dmg) file, and the beautifully worded HTTP authentication sheet.
As I've commented before, it's been a few years since I've been amazed by Apple's software design. It's wonderful to see a return to quietly excellent software, or as Claris's ad slogan went, “simply powerful”. Now the Safari team needs to convince the developers of the rest of OS X (*cough*Finder*cough*) to take as much care.
The USB FM tuner I ordered arrived today. There's no Mac software, but Paul Haddad's DSBRTuner works wonderfully. I did a bit of an interface overhaul:
Changes submitted back to the author, and if they don't get incorporated into the next version I'll post them. My primary reason for buying it was to do direct-to-MP3 recording of radio programs, since I'm hardly ever around when what I like to listen to is playing on WILL or WEFT.
8:23 PM