New Orleans R&B guitarist Snooks Eaglin passed away today. He was 72 years old.

I know I said I wasn't going to add any more music until I reconfigured my setup, but I just couldn't help myself. I added a few more albums and some choice cuts from Chuck Taggart's impressive boxset Doctors Professors Kings & Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans. It's certainly a staple for your music library. Also check out Chuck's Gumbo Pages, which has been online since 1994.

I've slowly been adding more music to the playlist. Since the last update, I've added about 650 more songs, for a total of 3,900 songs and 9.5 days worth of music.

I've got several stacks of CDs still sitting here by my desk that I need to go through and rip to my hard drive. But as I'm pulling them into my library, I'm not fully compressing them down to MP3s, so I'm eating up a lot of hard drive space. And that's making me nervous.

So the next update of tunes won't happen for awhile. I'm going to get another hard drive and reconfigure my setup to give more space and more music. Hopefully, it won't take me more than a couple of weeks to get it all back on track. Until then, I hope you're enjoying what you're hearing.

So you've been asking yourself lately, "How can I get Gumbo Radio on my website?" And then you see that nifty new widget from Live365 over on the right side of this page, and then ask yourself, "How can I get one of those gizmos on my website that will link to Gumbo Radio?"

Just click on the link in that box that reads "Get Widget" and copy the code out of there and into your site. If you're on Facebook, you can also add the widget to your profile; click on "Get Widget" and then click on "create your own widget."

Ain't it spiffy?

I updated the playlist this morning. There's now just over 8 days worth of music, 3,250 songs, when broadcasting in the live mode. For the most part I've been able to keep a clean connection and keep it running live. There's been a few hiccups though when I had to flip it back to the 5-hour loop on Live365's servers.

Does anyone know a sensible way to export an iTunes playlist - that only lists the song, artist and album - and then convert into a format for displaying in text on the Web? I've tried a couple of ways that just don't have the best results. I did export the playlist into a PDF file, but it was about half a meg and 55 pages long. Not the slickest solution. So if you've got an idea or two about how to export out of iTunes to post the current playlist online, I'm all ears.

A couple of folks have asked how they can listen to Gumbo Radio through iTunes. So I poked around on Live365's website and ran across this.

In a nutshell, log into your Live365 account and go to "Listen Settings." In the field "MP3 player," click on "show" next to "Additional Options." Then select the iTunes button and hit "Save Settings." That should do the trick.

At midnight tonight I officially launched Gumbo Radio, with a live intro and Clifton Chenier's "Ain't No Need of Cryin' (Every Day is the Same)." I've always loved that song, but for some reason it's just been killing me lately, cutting me all the way down to the bone. And have no fear, I'm not going to make a habit out of opening the mic to just wax poetic. There's enough of that out there already.

There are currently 3,017 songs programmed into the live playlist, making for seven and a half days worth of music. While I officially launched the live audio tonight (whatever that means) I actually began broadcasting and testing the live audio stream on Dec. 13. And if you're the kind of person who just loves a good factoid, here's a doozie for you: The first song broadcast live on Gumbo Radio, selected at random, was Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-Headed Boy." I don't know what that means. It just is.

Anyway, here's to you and yours. Hope you have a beautiful and prosperous 2009.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I think I've solved my problem and I don't think it had anything to do with the router. I think it was a network configuration issue on my end that I just overlooked. I'm praying that's what it was and the gremlin doesn't return. The old router is humming away just fine now. If the duct tape and bailing wire hold together, I should be back on track for my intended relaunch of the live audio stream at midnight tonight.

Thanks a truckload to Adrian Baudoin for offering to help pull me out of my self-induced router nightmare.

Great. My router's busted. After about three hours of screwing around with my Internet connection and talking with the fine folks at Cox Communications, it's become clear that my router is probably the culprit.

The audio for Gumbo Radio right now is the 5-hour loop served up from live365's server. If I can get a router back in place tomorrow, I hope to officially launch Gumbo Radio tomorrow night at midnight with the live stream.

I'll keep you posted.

Looking for another group to join and just don't know where to turn? Then join the Gumbo Radio group on Facebook.