Reese's blog
Full blown Christmas mode
I went to Medicine Show 13 last night, and I'm officially in the mood for Christmas. From now until Dec. 26 (maybe longer), I'm playing nothing but Christmas tunes on Gumbo Radio.
Here's wishing you and yours a safe and happy holiday season,
Reese
One year anniversary
It was a year ago today that I cranked up Gumbo Radio. Now there's 6,350 songs in regular rotation and over 15 days worth of music. Although the playlist revolves around Louisiana's music, it isn't limited to just songs from Louisiana. Really it's a mix of whatever I think will sound best, with Louisiana as the basis.
Last week, I set up the Gumbo Radio shop, in partnership with Amazon. I'm in the process of building it out, but right now you can search through all of Amazon's products right from the Gumbo Radio homepage. Every purchase made at Amazon through Gumbo Radio helps float a few coins my way to offset the broadcast expenses.
Within the past year, I've reconditioned my old iMac to serve as the central broadcast hub, bought a NAS drive to house the music library, and upgraded my Internet connection to LUS fiber. A few bucks have been spent along with way, in addition to the annual web hosting fees and Live365's streaming audio fees. So if you've got a paltry $5 (or even more) you're dying to part with, please consider helping defray the cost of Gumbo Radio. You can donate here or click on the donate button on the Gumbo Radio homepage.
And there's something else brewing as well. I'll let you know if it develops.
The Christmas playlist
Check out the playlist
Back at it
Vacances
We're normal!
After weeks of racking my tiny little brain, I've finally figured out the answers to a couple of problems that have been driving me insane. The details aren't important (in fact they're quite embarrassing) but here's the bottom line ...
From now on, when listening to Gumbo Radio, the volume level of all the songs should remain roughly the same. No more will you have to reach for the volume when one song segues into another. And the sole responsibility of my trusty old PowerPC G3 iMac is to broadcast Gumbo Radio's musical mix. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Here's hoping that you're enjoying the music and that you and yours are well.
Upgrading the broadband and the setup
On Friday, Lafayette Utilities System is scheduled to come out to my house and hook me into that snazzy new fiber network. (Think 10MBs download and upload speeds, versus my current speed of 3.5MBs downloads and blazing 700K uploads.) So on Friday morning, since I'm going to be losing my connection for an undetermined amount of time, I will switch the broadcast from the live mode to the 5-hour loop.
I may also let the loop run all weekend. I finally got my network area hard drive running properly, but I still need to normalize all my audio files. What's not normal about them? you ask. You know how you have to grab the volume control either to turn a song up or down every time a new tune comes around? I'm tired of that. Normalizing all the audio files will keep them at one level.
So the mix might be a bit stale at the end of the week, but it'll be worth it in the long run. I hope you're enjoying what you're hearing already.
Professor Longhair & The Meters
