Making an Audio version of the Ubuntu Podcast

I listen to a number of podcasts on a regular basis, mainly programming related, during my 45 minute commute to and from work every day. Now almost all of them are downloaded in audio format but recently the Ubuntu Podcast as stopped posting these formats. In a recent episode (#32) Joel and Nick explained they reasoning behind this and I fully support them in their decision – I mean, it’s an overhead for them in terms of time and storage/bandwidth. Add to that the fact that I can still subscribe via iTunes and some would wonder why I’m making a fuss (which I’m not btw!)

Well the fact of the matter is that it both illegal and dangerous to watch a video podcast on an iPod Nano while driving at 70mph down the motorway. Add to that the fact that each of the main episodes is 500MB and my Nano has ‘only’ 8GB to play with and i have a few reasons for wanting an less-heavyweight version. Read the rest of this entry »

Recording Internet Radio Stream with Ubuntu

A friend of mine recently started co-presenting a show on a local radio station but due to the timings I was unable to listen to it live. I thought about trying to record it off the radio but this was not going to be straightforward as I would not be in when the show started or finished – and this is the 21st century for heavens sake, why was I thinking about going back to cassettes and ‘pressing play and record as the same time’? Surely there had to be another way, preferably one that meant I could get the show in MP3 format so that I could listen in the car, at the gym or at work.

A podcast was what I needed but unfortunately the radio station in question did not produce one. However, they did provide an live stream – great, now what is the equivalent to pressing play and record at the same time on a computer?

There are probably ways of doing it in Windows using Media Player or iTunes (I don’t know because I haven’t checked) but where was the fun in that? I wanted to see if Ubuntu could do it – for free and maybe learn something in the process!
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