Now that the pandemic has disrupted office life and advanced the switch to hybrid working, I can cycle in a couple of times a week and forgo the car altogether. Weather permitting that is. But as beautiful as the rolling his of Warwickshire are, it’s still a good slog. So, to ease the burden slightly, and keep myself from arriving in a sweaty mess, I opted for an upgrade.
At the end of Autumn I snapped up a near brand new Cowboy 4 e-bike, just in time for winter… Maybe not the best timing I’d agree, but that’s when the bike I’d been patiently waiting for popped up on eBay. Pro tip: You can get some real bargains when the good biking weather starts to fade.
Riding through the English countryside to work has been a welcome pleasure these last few weeks. I had been riding to work on and off this past year with a good friend and colleague who lives close by, but with our differing schedules it’s rare we both get to travel together these days. It definitely takes the edge off the commute when you have the luxury of chatting along the way. Making the journey solo was a bit of a drag, and quite frankly, hard work multiple times a week ahead of a full day’s work. Those English countryside hills are a right pain in the arse… and legs, hence the e-bike upgrade.
It’s been a welcome boost, and it’s making the solo journey an enjoyable one. I love the time spent cycling through the countryside each morning, it’s good for the soul, and provides a valuable space for thought and reflection. It’s still a workout, despite the motor’s assistance, and leaves me with real satisfaction knowing I’ve done a couple of gym sessions during my commute instead of being sat behind the wheel of a car in traffic.
As a bit of a design geek, I love the Cowboy. Its minimalist construction, smart tech, and gear-less drivetrain tick all the boxes. I’ve been a bike nut since I was a boy and it was hands down my favourite possession growing up, closely followed by my beloved Sega MegaDrive. The twelve year old me would be in awe of this thing. I mean, I’m in awe of it now.
Standout Features
Removable battery
Dynamic pedal assist
Built-in location tracker
Wireless phone charging
Integrated lights
Silent coasting
Cable-free design
Apple Health integration
Superb navigation
Crash detection
I don’t buy a lot of things (like I said, minimalist), so when I do, I tend to think long and hard about my decisions. This was definitely a good decision and I’m glad I bought it. I’d recommend an e-bike if you’ve ever considered cycling to work but have been put off by the need for a shower and a lie down afterwards!
It’s been an uncharacteristically warm week for this time of year in the UK, so I’ve been out and about on the bike getting some miles in before the frost returns. I look forward to the spring months ahead.
I was interested in the idea of connecting WordPress to the ActivityPub protocol to see if there might be interesting ways to interact with Mastodon from my blog.
ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol based on Pump.io’s ActivityPump protocol. It provides a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content.
I went on the hunt for interesting WP plugins that might be fun to try out. On my travels I came across Matthias Pfefferle’s ActivityPub plugin that enables others to follow your blogposts on Mastodon. It essentially turns your WordPress blog into a node within the fediverse, using the webfinger protocol and I think this could be a game changer for engagement in writing on the web.
If you’d have said that sentence to me a few weeks ago I’d have slapped you in the face and told you to stop speaking nonsense, but thanks to Elon Musk’s antics, federated social networking is now having its mainstream moment, and the thing that interests me the most, is connecting the fediverse to the blogosphere and seeing personal web spaces thrive once more.
I set this up, and now my blog is visible as a feed on the fediverse by searching for @blog. The problem I currently have is followers go into an approval queue which I want to disable but can’t find a way to do so. Still noodling away, I think it might need some changes server side to work. I’ll keep exploring.
But why bother?
I feel like social media kneecapped the art of blogging, and I’m not the only one thinking the same. I remember being super excited by the idea of Medium, the online publishing platform founded by ex-Twitter CEO and co-founder Evan Williams, when it first arrived on the scene. The idea that one could write an article that would live within a pre-built community of potential readers, linked together by the humble hashtag, sounded really powerful. The only problem was, that, unlike your own personal blog, Medium accounts were part of a closed system, meaning that you were trading independence for the benefits of network effects. In my opinion, this was, and still is, what prevents Medium from being a truly great platform.
The closed nature of their approach has meant that people constantly try to game the system for views, which leads to the same kind of articles on the same topics again, and again, and again. Yes, there is some amazing writing on Medium, but it’s sandwiched between countless productivity posts, self improvement think pieces, and articles about writing about writing. They’re like rats in a bucket, falling over each other to be featured on the discover page, or jumping onto whatever trend is gaining the most traction on any given day.
This gamification of writing ruined it for me, and I think many others. The alternative however, unless you’ve been writing for years and have amassed a significant following online, is to write a blog post and publish it into the desert of the real. Every now and again a Google search hit will send someone to a post on your blog, but most of the time, its crickets… Ok, I’m being over dramatic for shits and giggles, but there’s a speck of truth in there.
When I saw the gradual shift to Mastodon, and the rumblings of a blogging renaissance, all I could think about was how these two concepts might work together to bridge the gap between the social feed and the blogroll.
We kind of had a bit of this with RSS. We could build a personally curated feed of content to consume, but it wasn’t exactly a social system with the benefits of network effects and critical mass that a social network can provide. WordPress also does something similar, but it’s not front and centre like social media. Microblogging platforms like Twitter, on the other hand, enabled you to post to a network using hashtags and reach a wider audience. The only problem is, it’s not exactly a catalyst for deep thoughts and meaningful conversations.
How do you tap into a huge network of connected individuals, without the drawbacks of a closed system, one that breeds content creators who game the system and write about whatever gets the most clicks? I think maybe you could do this using the fediverse and the ActivityPub protocol to join all these disparate blogs into a larger federated network and reap the rewards of doing so.
This post I’m writing is a bit of a stream of consciousness so don’t expect some grand vision at the end, I’m just excited to see if the network effects of social media can be harnessed to expose more people to blogs, and by doing so, perhaps we’ll see a rise in blogging as the network effect draws more readers to the posts.
And yes, of course you can post blog links to your social feeds, but that mushes everything together. Maybe I want to read your blog posts but not see updates on your social life. Maybe I’m your friend who isn’t interested in the blog posts that relate to your day job. We have the ability to follow blogs in the fediverse in much the same way as we subscribe to an RSS feed, right from within our Mastodon accounts. Other that’s all in one feed, or curated into discreet lists within the same account. I think that seems pretty great.
Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, and maybe others will say they think what we have is fine, but I look forward to seeing what might happen if the fediverse and the blog hook up.
I saw a WordPress tweet today with writing ideas as inspiration for new and returning bloggers. Today’s prompt was “What’s the first memory you have?”. Forgetting is one of my super powers, I have a terrible memory, but I do have one particular childhood memory that stands out. It was of an Early Learning Centre toy set called Big Builder, and I loved it.
Now, I’m not sure it was called that exactly, I mean, I was about four years old or something like that, but this article by Retro Squirrel details the original version that I had. Above is a picture of it in all its glory. 🥰
Despite my shocking memory, I can still remember so much details about this. The seam in the plastic moulded nuts and bolts, the thickness and weight of the boxes, even the texture of the brackets. It’s a real joy to see my favourite toy as a child in such high quality because it exists purely in my memory. I think my original set was passed on to another kid for them to enjoy.
I was always an inquisitive child, one that liked to take things apart to see how they worked, to the extent that my grandad ended up nailing my cot together to stop me from unscrewing the bolts and collapsing the sides. I have plenty of stories about my antics from my parents, which I’ll save for another time.
Ever since those early days, I’ve built things. Whether it’s the big builder above, Lego Technics as a boy, building my own toys with my grandad in his shed, building websites on the web, or carpentry and building work with my dad, it all stems from these colourful plastic pieces.
As earliest memories go, I think this is a good one.
Despite the unfortunate onslaught of COVID and flu that descended on the family over the last week, Christmas day was a resounding success. We managed to meet up with my parents, travelled together to my sister’s house and spent a couple of hours with her kids and husband while they prepared for the Christmas meal. Then it was off to Victoria’s parents for a relaxing evening of food, drink, and laughs, followed by a socially distanced visit to her grandparents who are still recovering from the flu.
We managed a FaceTime chat with those quarantining with COVID which was a blast, especially when Victoria found the Memoji heads feature and started tormenting us with her enormous cartoon face. It was a ridiculous, goofy, hilarious moment that made it feel like we were all together in the same room, despite many miles of distance between us. Nobody makes me laugh like Victoria, I’m so very lucky to have her in my life.
I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas day. Hopefully our full version will take place in a few days time.
I’m typing this on the eve of Christmas, in the last few minutes in fact. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of family are unwell with nasty colds and COVID, so I think we’re going to postpone the traditional Christmas day activities to give everyone time to get better. We’ll still see a couple of family, but will be meeting up for a full, belated Christmas dinner and get together in a few days time.
We were quite lucky the last couple of years as we dodged COVID and events went quite smoothly, although if my memory serves me correct, I think some people had to head off early to return to Wales before a midnight curfew… did that happen? I’m not sure, I may have to check tomorrow. Either way it all worked out fine.
It’s not all bad though, we all caught up for my Dad’s birthday a couple of days ago. Thankfully, the party wasn’t scuppered by the pandemic this year, unlike the last two. The house was jam packed with friends and family, like an English pub on new year’s eve, with everyone enjoying delicious food and plenty of drink. It’s a joyous occasion and yearly tradition that I always look forward to. I love my family, they are the most wonderful people to be around. It’s non-stop laughs and jokes; I couldn’t wish for better.
As I sit here, the rain has started to fall. No sign of a white Christmas this year, we’ll have to make do with some drizzle instead. But hey ho, I can’t complain, it’s a lot warmer than it was a week ago at the end of a two week cold snap. I managed to avoid the first week of ice thanks to a work trip to Malaysia, but returned to fresh snow, just in time for the second week of frost. Thankfully, between the Borneo heat, generous air conditioning, and iffy British weather, I managed to avoid getting a cold. Other work colleagues were not so lucky.
I quite like the rain, less so the cold, but would like to see the back of both to be honest so that I can get back on my bike and get some much needed exercise. I’m getting cabin fever being cooped up indoors so much.
Anyway, it’s just technically ticked over into Christmas morning so it’s probably time I got some kip before I bump into that chubby fella with the beard.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and hope you’re all safe and well.
I’ve spent a few evenings tinkering with WordPress of late, tidying up my blog and doing a bit of spring cleaning. During that time I’ve been super impressed with how good standard WordPress has become. I’ve spent the last seven-ish years noodling away in theme builders; mainly Divi, and only recently realised there was a new theme editor (beta) built into vanilla WordPress. I gotta say, it’s pretty awesome.
The usual sites I build are a lot more complex than I would ever build for personal use, so it’s been an absolute joy to strip everything back and have fun noodling away on my own little minimalist blog space. I’m not building from scratch mind you, instead I’m using a beautifully minimal theme designed by the incredibly talented Anders Norén, which I’ve been tweaking in subtle ways to suit my needs and visual preferences. Doing so using the new theme editor has been a fun challenge as it’s an entirely different beast than before, but in a really good way.
It’s a simple system, albeit it a little unintuitive at first. I think it could benefit from a few UX and UI tweaks here and there, if just for those of us that have decades long WordPress habits to unlearn. For example, muscle memory had me searching for things in all the wrong places, but once I got used to everything it made a lot of sense, and I could do some powerful things without the need for an all singing, all dancing add-on like Divi. Other than that, it’s a great system. Of course it helps when you’re starting with such an elegant theme as this by Andres. Hat’s off.
I’ve also been playing around with Apple Shortcuts to automate image edits for the blog, using a shortcut to resize, compress, convert to JPEG, and save an image to iCloud, so I can easily queue up photos and feature images. Anything to make the blogging process as frictionless as possible. It’s nerdy, and it works a treat; I love it.
This interest in the new features, plus a recent podcast episode of Decoder featuring WordPress co-founder and CEO (of parent company Automattic) Matt Mullenweg, has sent me down a Matt rabbit hole. This included watching the WordPress State of the Word 2022 keynote, which is a great watch if you’re an open web geek / WordPress fan. It’s got me even more fired up to blog often, which is a state of mind I get into whenever I find myself with some free time; usually over the festive period.
Note to self, make time!
(This is doubly important, considering I’ve read the book of the same name 🙈)
So yeah, I’m making more time for blogging, while reading less about Twitter’s ongoing implosion under the Musk dictatorship. I’m looking forward to more tinkering over the festive period.
I’ve moved to Mastodon, an open web alternative to Twitter. I’ll still be posting education related tweets, for the time being at least, but I’m making the shift to Mastodon for my regular shenanigans. Come follow me at the link below. 👇
After spending a couple of months using Mastodon again I have a few thoughts that I wanted to share. So far, the experience is much closer to Twitter than I expected it to be, although it does take a little bit of work to build up a decent list of accounts to follow in order to really feel like you’re interacting in a community of sorts. Now my feed is musher more active and I find I’m getting a lot more value from it.
I feel like mimicking of Twitter is good and all, because it provides a nice easy transition, but it doesn’t mean you can’t branch out and try new features, even if features ideas are borrowed from other platforms. For example reactions (as in emojis), or edit buttons!.. or perhaps some nifty WordPress integrations. Maybe there are things like this flowing around that I’m not aware of. If so, please ping me on Mastodon! 😁
Remove @mentions when replying to a post
We don’t need to see the @mentions at the start of every reply. It’s messy and there are ways to exclude such links from view and clean up the thread. At the very least hide it by default, just like you would metadata.
It’s way too difficult to find official accounts.
A good example is the BBC… wtf?! Which is legit? Are any of them legit? Do I really need to check each and every one individually to see if it is linked to the official BBC site using rel=”me”? This really needs an elegant solution or people will simply give up on the platform due to the friction of building and curating a half decent list if accounts to follow.
A slight background colour change, or a checkmark would go a long way. And maybe even suggesting other Mastodon accounts that are verified on the same domain too, for example BBC Sport, BBC World News, BBC Breaking News, etc. Maybe this would work, ir maybe not. Just a thought.
Previously used / favourite hashtags
Similar to recent how previously / regularly used emoji are presented in the keyboard app, having a box of previously used and favourited hashtags would be a godsend. I find myself using specific tags very often and any feature where I can quickly tap the tags I need would be super productive and intuitive.
Feature images for links (Twitter cards)
Maybe this already exists, but I’m having real trouble getting feature images to display when sharing URLs.
Lists
In my opinion, Twitter’s list feature is one of its best and least known features, and Mastodon has implemented it almost identically, which is awesome. Lists allow you to create distinct groups of accounts that you can treat as curated feeds within the app. This works especially well on Twitter as you can arrange lists as tabs within the desktop and mobile apps, allowing you to swipe between feeds horizontally and scrolling through the content vertically.
I would really like to see the Mastodon apps support this in the same way as Twitter, instead of simply switching out the main feed will the list content when clicking a list from the right hand menu. Unless I’m missing something, there just doesn’t seem to be a way of viewing lists in the mobile app. If they could mimic the search page’s tab structure and apply it to tabs on the main feed pave then all would be right with the world. 🙂
I’m not saying Mastodon needs to go down the blue checkmark route or anything, but there needs to be a simpler way to find the official accounts of users. I mean, we already have rel=”me” verification for confirming you are the owner of a website, which in turn can act as verification that you are who you say you are, so why not highlight these verified accounts with some kind of badge, even if the badge only appears in search results. That way it would be easier to differentiate the real individuals or organisations from the fake/parody accounts.
Spaces-like audio chatrooms
I LOVE Twitter Spaces. It’s one of the best features invented for social media in a decade. I wish this were something that Mastodon could find a way to support. I’m sure it’s quite complex to build a feature like that, but it would be an amazing addition to the platform. Sort of like Discord channels. Yes, yes, it’s just not gonna happen, I get it, but a guy can dream right?!
No adverts = heaven
Need I say more?
I’m sure there’s a bunch of other things but so far these stick out the most. I’ll add more when I think of them.
Over the past couple of years I really started to get into Twitter in a big way. I switched from Apple News as my daily source of articles to read and set up a bunch of lists; one of twitter’s most under appreciated features. I curated lists that essentially turn my Twitter app into something more akin to Tweetdeck where I can quickly swipe between columns and explore curated feeds for news, tech, EVs, and Formula 1, for example.
Twitter lists as tabs above the feed.
It’s little features like this that really drew me into Twitter. I spent some time refining my lists to make the overall experience more useful and enjoyable. It worked, and I found myself using it almost exclusively, aside from the NY Times app. But then… shit got weird on Twitter.
I mean, shit’s always been weird, but the site’s new owner has taken things to a disturbing new level. It’s only right to explore different social spaces that are more welcoming, that can be tailored to suit my needs, a little less ad-centric, and not being torn apart by a troubled individual that is clearly losing his mind. It’s time to try something new, or at least kinda new. It’s time to give Mastodon another try.
What is Mastodon you ask?
Mastodon is an open source, decentralized social media platform similar to Twitter. It is powered by user-run servers called “instances” which are connected to each other. On Mastodon, users can post messages, images, videos, and other content to their followers. Users can also follow other users and comment on their posts. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon has no advertising and is completely free to use. It is also designed to be more privacy-focused than other social media platforms, as users can limit who can view their posts.
I asked OpenAI to write this description for me. I didn’t edit a single character, insane.
I’m an old user of Mastodon. I set up my account back in 2016, but it just wasn’t gaining enough users to hit that critical mass that could lure people away from the bird app. Now that the troll king of Twitter has essentially set fire to the platform, there are swathes of disgruntled Twitter users flocking to Mastodon (no pun intended) and we are getting a lot closer to the critical mass needed for Mastodon to mature into a mainstream social platform. Some would argue that it already has, but I still think it is yet to break out fully.
So now that there’s a bunch more people on the platform, I’ve been able to build a small but valuable list of accounts to follow. This has allowed me to compare Mastodon to Twitter, and so far I’m really enjoying the federated approach to social networking.
Federated social media is a decentralized network of social media services that communicate and synchronize with each other. It allows users to post, comment, and interact with content while still maintaining control of their data.
Another amazing description, courtesy of OpenAI.
I’m enjoying Mastodon a lot, and I am definitely going to continue building out a network on the platform. At the moment it’s about 30% Mastodon, 70% Twitter, but that percentage is changing by the day, as I see more and more of my favourite Twitter users switching over. If this is going to work, it means engaging with those new converts on the regular so that they can see the federated approach is working. This is the best chance we have at reclaiming social media and dragging it kicking and screaming into the open web, away from the ad-supported, data scraping model it has become so dependent upon. I’m excited to see the federated approach finally hit the mainstream. There is hope for a healthy and sustainable social network yet.
On a related note, I have a bunch of thoughts about the pros and cons of both Mastodon and Twitter, which I’m going to blog about separately, as an incentive to write more blog posts! 😁
I’ve been broadcasting on DS106radio for a few months now with my good friend Lauren Heywood. We grace the airways on Fridays with a regular slot, but I thought it was about time I tried a setup of my own for the odd impromptu radio session.
Shout out to Tim C for his DS106 streaming tutorial, which inspired my take on a streaming setup. Originally, I was tinkering with a whole host of hardware bits and bobs that I have for music production, but I ended up with a much simpler setup that uses an iPhone, MacBook, and USB microphone. The rest is software magic. I’m sure there are ways to do the same kind of setup on Windows if that’s your bag, but for this tutorial you’re going to need a Mac.
Ok, let’s get started with the list of tools. I use the following gear:
Software: Mixxx, Soundflower, Discord, Your music app of choice
Hardware: USB Condensor Mic, MacBook Pro, iPhone, Headphones
The main bulk of the setup uses Mixxx; a free and open source DJ app that handles mixing, broadcasting, and recording duties for the radio session. I use Soundflower (also free) to pipe music and vocals from Mixxx into Discord so I can include guest speakers through voice chat. I then pipe the audio from Discord back into Mixxx in order to capture the conversation. Mixxx’s master output is then streamed to the web using the built-in broadcast feature, whilst recording a hard copy to my Mac.
First things first, get your software installed
Install the latest version of Mixxx for your Mac. If you’re running Big Sur you’ll need to use their beta software, but I would recommend this anyway as it has a much better user interface.
Install the most up-to-date Soundflower version available. Soundflower is a little Mac OS utility that enables you to pipe audio around the various apps on your mac through custom audio channels. You can download Soundflower here.
Install Discord and join the amazing DS106radio server (generously set up by Lauren Heywood). You don’t have to use Discord, any other voice chat app will work, but we recommend it for its super smooth voice and text channel features. We’ve set it up like a virtual radio station, with different ‘lobbies’ and ‘studios’, allowing listeners to message along with a show, and drop in and out of the voice channels. It also allows us to have private text chats for the hosts for sharing links, communicating off air, and stuff like that. I’ll write a blog post about the DS106 Discord server in more detail, unless Lauren is planning to, in which case I’ll paste a link here once it’s up.
I use Spotify for my audio, which means I need a way to input this into Mixxx. To to this I connect my iPhone to my Mac via a lightning cable and enable the iPhone as an input source using the Mac’s built-in Audio MIDI setup utility. This gives me a direct audio feed from my iPhone, meaning I can broadcast any audio source I want from my phone. I prefer this setup for queuing up music as it gives me a dedicated device to manage the music, rather than juggling Twitter, Mixx, and Spotify all on the desktop. I dunno why, I just like the physicality of it. This will work for iPads too, as they’re basically the same device, just in different sizes.
Connecting Discord using Soundflower
So, what is Soundflower exactly? Think of it a bit like a telephone switchboard that routes audio between various apps that can’t otherwise talk to each other. This will allow you to have guests on your show via voice chat apps. In order to include audio from apps like Skype, Discord, Whereby, etc, you need to be able to pipe the audio from Mixxx into your chat app of choice and then back into Mixx again, in order to be broadcast. For my setup, Soundflower is all you’ll need, and it’s free! If you want to get more complex for whatever reason, then you can use paid apps like Audio Hijack and Loopback. These are the successors to Soundflower, but the OG is all I need for my setup.
Once installed, Soundflower creates two channels on your Mac for routing sound through the OS. There’s a 2 channel option and a 64 channel option. I use both of these to pipe sound in and out of Discord. In Mixxx I set the booth output to ‘Soundflower (2ch)’, this will feed the vocals and music to Discord. This allows me to send audio into Discord so that guests can hear my voice and any other audio that’s playing through Mixxx. To do this I simply set Discord’s audio input to ‘Soundflower (2ch)’.
Next, I set Discord’s audio output to ‘Soundflower (64ch)’ in order to send the guest vocals out of Discord and into Mixxx. In the Mixxx app, I set the Microphone 2 input channel to ‘Soundflower (64ch)’, this completes the loop.
Setting up your music and vocals in Mixxx
Mixxx handles all the broadcasting, recording, and mixing for the radio show. In order to capture my voice, I use my Audio Technica AT2020 USB microphone. Once the mic is plugged in and ready to go, I open Mixxx’s audio preferences, go to the input tab, and set the ‘Microphone 1’ input to my AT-2020 from the dropdown list. I then set the ‘Microphone 2’ input to Soundflower (64ch), this feeds the Discord conversation into Mixxx. (If you’re not including guest speakers through Discord or another app then there’s no need to do this). Finally, under in the same menu, I set the ‘Auxiliary 1’ input to my iPhone. job done, now on to mixing.
Mixing the sound sources
The next sections are going to reference the numbers in the screenshot below.
Once all the different sound sources are running in Mixxx, you’ll see them in the main user interface; mics on the left, music on the right (items 1, 2, and 3 in blue). In order for me to hear the music feed, my voice level, and the Discord audio feed, I select toggle the headphone icons to grey for each input. This allows me to monitor the audio in my headphones. I adjust the gain levels in order to get a happy balance of each source. I do this by ear, whilst making sure the master output (4) isn’t clipping (hitting the loudness threshold at which point the audio distorts).
Once you have a nice loud and clean signal you’re good to go. You can choose to monitor you own audio or not, it’s personal preference. This may depend on the latency of your audio, which will differ depending on the speed of your computer. Under the sound hardware settings menu, I crank up the audio buffer to 2.9 milliseconds to limit any audio latency if and when I need to monitor my own vocals.
Bonus Feature: There is also an option to add sample into a sound board that runs above the inputs. In the example below I’ve added in a sample (5) that I can play on demand. This could be a bumper, sound effect, whatever you want really.
Alright, we’re all set. Lovely jubbly!
Configuring the Broadcast settings
To get the show on the radio requires just a few entries into Mixxx’s live broadcasting preferences.
Type: IceCast 2
Host: ds106rad.io
Mount: Live
Port: 8010
Login: Source
Password: ********* (Get in touch with the DS106 crew on Twitter via #DS106radio)
This is the core stuff you need for broadcasting, but you can add more detail, such as Stream Name, Website, Description, etc. I recommend you do this so that your show has a name that’s displayed to DS106radio listeners. I’d also recommend setting automatic reconnect with 2 or more retries, in case you lose your broadcast connection.
Recording a copy of your show
Mixxx has a recording feature built in which allows you to output an audio recording of your show to your Mac. Simply head over to the recording preferences and select the location you wish to store the recording, and what quality you wish to save at. I recommend 320Kbit MP3 for good quality at a small file size. Also, split the recordings at the maximum file size of 4GB to keep you recordings as a single file, unless you have some marathon sessions. 😅
Go Live!
Ok, so that’s about it folks. Once all your ducks are in a row, check to make sure nobody is broadcasting to DS106rad.io. If the coast is clear, click ‘REC’ (7) and it will light up turn red and begin recording your session. Next, then click ‘On Air’ (6) and it will light up green and begin broadcasting.
Once you’ve finished your show, wait a few seconds after your last song or final words so the stream doesn’t cut off before the end, then click to go ‘Off Air’ (6). Now you can click ‘REC’ again (7) to stop the recording. Thanks for the pro tip on the cut-off Lauren. 🤙
And that’s it! I think I’ve covered all the important bits, but if you try it out and I’ve missed anything useful, let me know in the comments below and I’ll add it to the tutorial. Happy broadcasting!
Here’s a goofy little clip from my first test of the setup with Lauren Heywood, live from Jim Groom’s basement. Caution: strong language at the end. 😂
