TAM Jukebox / News: Recent posts

The web gui is being ported to Dojo. The code is in mercurial. See http://tamjb.sourceforge.net/hg/tamjb for source. Updates as time permits. :)

I have linked the home page to a forum at byteheaven.com. This should allow me to post updates and stuff on the forum there, which I maintain anyway. This keeps it simple for me. Maybe not for you. Can't have everything!

Wow, it was easy! I set up an ogg/vorbis stream using icecast and ices, and now can listen to the jukebox from anywhere. So I fixed a couple of bugs in the UI, and updated the screen shots on the web page. If there were a way for multiple listeners to log in and somehow combine their opinions, I would like that. Of course, this sort of model requires that they all have licenses to listen to all of the songs, so it's mostly useful for the "owners" of the radio station, and not the mass public. Unless something changes drastically in the state of streaming radio in the USA. :( But it's great for a single listener as is...

Well, the snapshot is now almost three years old. So don't use it. This project no longer really uses Gtk, instead I've made it web-based. The source is all checked in, and I really should make a release or something.

Since it doesn't use Gtk, it's that much closer to running cross platform. Hello, GStreamer team! Pick something and call it a release, already!

I recieved an email from the author of esd-sharp, who noticed that we are still using it, and says "I didnt know you were still using it.. :)
since you've got the sources, please feel free to distribute them somewhere
I really don't mind." Well, there you go, that sounds like permission to me! So I'll be uploading the esd-sharp sources shortly.

On the other side of things, GStreamer seems to be pretty much dead, so it'll probably be a year or two before it's officially part of anything. (My opinion: they were over-ambitious, without any intermediate "keep it simple" milestones. But what do I know? Maybe they just got bored.) ... read more

The esd-sharp library, on which Tam Jukebox depends, seems to have disappeared from the net. Perhaps it will resurface eventually. If it does not, well, I have the source code, and can upload it if necessary. Also, it looks like GStreamer is progressing nicely, and
it's only a matter of time before it stabilizes enough to switch.

If you need the source, please email me. :)

With the latest code (still in CVS) and mono 1.1.6, the memory leakage is gone. Plus, the strange intermittent lockups have stopped. I guess mono wan't quite ready to be used in a long-running jukebox application. Well, now it is.

I am optimistic that someday in the future I will find time to add some other features. In the meantime, it will be tiny enhancements to the audio engine. :)

Surpise, surpise, a new snapshot!

There are two major reasons to release another snapshot at this point:
- The mp3 decoder now uses a WHOLE lot less cpu power
- The server leaks memory a whole lot slower
- Tweakable compression with soft clipping, and the settings are saved properly now

I'm planning to build a standalone version here pretty soon, so casual users who don't feel like setting up a custom daemon will be able to use it. With that and a few bug fixes, it may be time to start thinking about packaging. And then Beta releases, and REAL releases, and world domination!!!! Ahaha! ... read more

My cat and I are quite self-satisfied to announce another snapshot of the Tam Jukebox.

Much has changed. The user interface is much nicer, you can now characterize songs as appropriate to your current mood, and so on. In addition, there are some hidden technical improvements, most of the memory leakage has been eliminated, and the compression is really quite decent sounding.

Unfortunately, it still requires esound, and is therefore sort of unix-specific. Would somebody please tell the GStreamer team that a perfect interface next spring is infinitely inferior to a decent interface next week? ... read more

The Track Attribute Manager Jukebox team (my cat and I) are somewhat surprised to release a new snapshot. Features include:

- An all-new ID3v2 tag reader, written entirely in C#. It was quite easy to write, I wonder why people mess around with native call wrappers?

- A Stop button. It's nice to be able to stop the jukebox once in a while!

- Compiles with mono 1.0. Looks great with gnome-2!

- And as usual, there's that huge memory leak in the server!... read more

The changes now in cvs reflect a new GUI in Glade, which looks remarkably like the old interface (ugly), but is much easier to modify using glade-2 (Who wants to make it look nicer?). The down side of this is that you need yet another tool to modify the project.

The CVS code now builds with mono beta1, including a workaround for some interesting bugs with Remoting and Http.

The core c-sharp code for tamjb's jukebox engine and Gtk frontend have been uploaded. Don't get too excited just yet--you need mono, gtk-sharp, sqlite, and patched versions of three (or four?) other assemblies for this to work.

I'm still working out the licensing for the other assemblies. I'm using the mp3id3tagkonverter assembly from planet sourcecode, which does not have any license info included. Anyway, it doesn't do V2 tags. Anybody want to write a managed-code ID3V2 mp3 tag reading assembly?... read more