Please note: This article was requested to be written for the Swansea University newspaper The Waterfront, I’ve just reposted it here, as my blog hasn’t been getting much loving recently

On Tuesday the 24^th November 2009, I was lucky enough to have one of the best, even if a bit surreal, days of my life. I was nominated for Best Technical Achievement at the Student Radio Awards 2009, so I got invites for tours around BBC Radio 1 and Global Radio, as well as an invite to the Student Radio Awards in the indigO2 in the O2 Arena (Millennium Dome).

When I arrived in London, I went straight to Radio 1! So I get my guest pass, and wait outside, then I hear someone say “Excuse me” to us students, so we move out the way, and Fearne Cotton walks past, everyday stuff! Then I walked up the stairs, and look up and get passed on the stairs by Al Murray, very surreal! Anyway when we were in Radio 1 we had talks about Radio 1, how to get a job there, and stuff like that and a tour around the studios; it was awesome and we got to watch Greg James do some of his show, and were shown around by his producer, Neil Sloan! We got a tour around Chris Moyles’ studio, and basically had a lot of fun, we even got mentioned on Radio 1 by Greg James, while we were in the studio next door listening in, can’t get much cooler than that!

Then it was off to Global, for more of the same – and seeing their studios was also fantastic and met some really nice people, and saw the studios of all of their radio stations, including Galaxy and XFM.

Then it was time for the main event, the Awards, hosted by Scott Mills, Fearne Cotton and Greg James. Loads of famous faces were giving out awards, including Zoe Ball, Westwood, and Richard Park. Then my award came up… and I won Silver! Was very happy to win Silver, very chuffed!

Then was time for the mash up! Global Radio vs BBC Radio 1, this was awesome! Basically DJs representing both sides, with a bit of friendly banter thrown in! The likes of Scott Mills, Sacha Brooks, Greg James, Dave Pearce, Huw Stephens and Steve Lamacq, all had a go, and by the end of the night, we were all, slightly tired and emotional, really loving the music, and having fun with all the other radio folk.

All in all a great night, hopefully we can go again next year!
Big thanks to BBC Radio 1, Global Radio, the Student Radio Association and all the folks that I met on Tuesday!

I’ve had some interest in my icecast script over at the SRA forums, so I thought i’d post it here so that anyone who cares can read and do what they want with it!

This is my listener_join.php:

http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast/listener_join.txt

This is listener_leave.php:

http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast/listener_leave.txt

This is the SQL database structure:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `icecast` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`icecast_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`datetime_start` datetime NOT NULL,
`datetime_end` datetime default NULL,
`ip` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`mount` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`duration` int(11) default NULL,
`agent` varchar(200) default NULL,
`server` varchar(50) default NULL,
`port` int(11) default NULL,
`user` varchar(20) default NULL,
`pass` varchar(20) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3087 ;

Some of the code probably isn’t as efficient as it could be, and if you want to tidy it up yourself thats cool, but I just programmed this fast.

This is a template for the icecast.xml file in the icecast server directory:

http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast.xml

Thats the backend sorted, there needs to be a front end to display the data, this is our main frontend stuff:
http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast-admin/

I’ll just repeat that most of this was programmed quickly and wasn’t necessarily programmed with best practise in mind – the front end is very basic and there is a lot of scope for improvement if someone wanted to improve it.

Hope this helps!

P.S. Big thanks to the SRA for nominating me/xtreme for Best Technical Achievement Award

Well I’m a Computer Science student, but I don’t think I could sit in front of a computer for the rest of my life programming. I like being an engineer at Xtreme Radio because one day I could be fiddling with the mixer, one day I could be programming the website, one day I could be in the attic fiddling with cables, one day I could be on the computers fiddling with playout systems. It’s varied, it’s interesting, it’s fun.

I also get to broadcast! Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m the next Chris Moyles, Jonathan Ross, Richard Bacon or even Terry Wogan. But I enjoy it, and I put quite a bit of effort into it, and to trying to improve myself. It also comes back to my point eariler, I can do tech stuff and I can even broadcast… brilliant

Now i’ve recently become involved in Afan FM, a community radio station covering Port Talbot & Neath, and it’s great fun. The first live show I did there was very nervewracking, as it was the first time i’d broadcasted live on FM radio, a pretty big moment for me, and I was paranoid I was going to do something which I’d regret. Anyway hopefully i’m starting to loosen up a bit now, as i’m getting more used to the station, and i’m starting to “forget” about being on FM in a weird way, and just thinking about creating good radio. But on the same token, as i’m starting to become an IT Technician/Webmaster for the station, I can also fiddle with code, fiddle with websites and other stuff as well as be a DJ! What other job lets you have this much freedom?

I’m hoping to go into radio as a career when I leave university, but who knows where i’ll end up. Radio isn’t the best paid job in the world, hell i’ve not made a penny from Radio as yet, but I enjoy it, and i’d rather do something I enjoy but take a bit of a pay cut, then do something I hate but get more money, I mean whats the point in spending ~8 hours a day doing something you hate, just for more money?! Life is too short!

I’ll post exciting stuff tomorrow! Keep tuned!

Firstly, the new version of Wordpress is looking nice, they’ve completely changed the look of it, but I like it (i’m talking about the administrative backend here), Wordpress is definately the one to beat in terms of blog CMS!

Secondly, welcome to 2009! Yep we are finally in 2009, and so we say goodbye to 2008. I don’t really have any new years resolutions apart from try and do well in my course at university and the like!

Thirdly, shoutout to Sam Hastings! This guy designed the previous iteration of this site and was on Masterchef on Wednesday! He unfortunately was the first to be kicked out… oh well he can still cook way better than me, which I find scary…

Also, i’ve been out and about doing all kinds of stuff to the Xtreme website which will be unleashed when the new studio is completed…

However the thing I most want to talk about is…

Windows 7

This is the new version of Windows (obviously) and is currently out there in beta form, and I have it I’ve had it installed practically from day 1 of the beta, and I love it. I’ve only gone back to Vista once for a gig (where I had to obviously use stable  – as opposed to beta – software). It’s great! The superbar while initially unusual to see on a Windows machine becomes more and more natural to use, and when I went back to Vista the other day it seemed weird going back to the old taskbar! It feels quite natural to use once you get the hang of it. Plus Windows 7 just seems faster, and this isn’t because nothing is installed on it! I have loads of programs installed as i’m using it as my primary OS, and it just seems snappier it’s great. Even the new Windows loading screen is cool

There are one or two bugs however. I’m getting an occassional screen tearing/flickering which I suppose i’ll put down to drivers? (I’m using the drivers for my graphics card supplied by Microsoft as apparrently they are the most recent drivers for my graphics card – an intel integrated graphics job.) But that isn’t a show stopper and will probably be improved with better drivers. The notes application also is a bit weird, you’d naturally assume you can pin the notes to the desktop, which would make sense with aero peek, but no they are just a normal application, so that doesn’t work the way I would have expected. I’ve sent my feedback to Microsoft so hopefully they’ll take my comments on board, but I am one of many!

I’ll try and make more blog posts on here this year, in fact that can be more of my new years resolutions! However I only tend to want to make a blog post when I have something worth writing about! I try and update my twitter status more often (which you can see at the left of every page on this website), you’re welcome to follow me although I mostly just twitter what i’m doing and stuff I do try and twitter some interesting things sometimes, although lets face it i’m slightly more boring than @stephenfry

Cheerio
Brett

P.S. This is genius:

I’m so immature

Sorry for the lack of posts, i’ve been so busy!

Xtreme Radio is doing well, and you can check out my Show 1-3 on Monday – Will probably be the last one this year however, and will probably get a different time next semester, but listen regardless or… listen again. THERE IS NO EXCUSE!

Anyway Xtreme turned 40 a few weeks ago and Zane Lowe came down to DJ. He was great, he really does know how to mix!

I’ve been a bit snowed under with coursework lately, but it’s the last day of term on Friday, yipppppie! Can’t wait to have a break, this semester has been really really tough, the courses are very hard.

So that’s a brief update on what i’ve been up to, i’ll try and post a bit more often over the holidays

Have fun,
Brett

the last week has been ultra busy for me, so that explains the lack of posts!

I’ve been in the Xtreme Studio most days, and at Freshers Fayre/Meetings etc, so i’ve been very very busy! Incidentially if you want to listen to xtremeradio, go over to xtremeradio.org Anyways, it’s been a hectic but fun week, and today we had a load of freshers come along to join Xtreme, and it was packed! Amy has a massive job on her hands to place all those folks in the Schedule, I don’t envy her at the moment :s, I don’t yet know if we’ve had any applications to the Engineering team, so can’t comment there.

I’ll be stewarding at the Xtreme Social on Monday night, I’m pretty sure there are still tickets available, so if you want to go, then grab a ticket fast! They are selling very very fast. It’s gonna be a good night

So Google Chrome came out this week then, in fact I’m actually using it to post this! Luckily Google has changed their EULA that made all content posted via their browser usable by Google, not that Google would want to use this for anything but still. I’m quite impressed with Chrome, it’s fast, very fast, it looks VERY sexy on Vista, unlike Firefox (well by default anyway), and even better than IE7/8. I like the minimalistic style, and the lack of Adblock and a few other extensions doesn’t really bother me. Especially because I was beginning to disable it for a few sites that I visit a lot, as you know I feel bad using certain sites pretty regularly and then disabling their adverts. But anyway Chrome is great, I’ve been using it more and more recently, it is very nice.

You may have noticed a couple of new external links on the left hand side. I wondered if it was the right thing to do to put links to sites that perhaps say are not related to me, because it’s kind of a CV style site, but I decided to put them in as they are two very good sites that perhaps some people that come here may be interested in. They are twit.tv and the supersite for windows. Both of these sites are brilliant in their own way. I’ve been on and off reading the supersite for windows for years, I usually visit it when expecting a big release, such as Vista, and reading up about it before it’s publicly available, or just before I can get it. Although recently I’ve been visiting it more often, because it’s a very interesting site. I recommend anyone who’s interested in Windows and the future of Windows, and other Microsoft products I may add, to visit it.

Twit.tv is not a mild insult, but actually a very good podcast network. I first found out about twit, from Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows, where I found out that he did a Windows Weekly podcast with Leo Laporte. I started listening to the podcast quite late on, but when I did start listening I found it very interesting and informative. I didn’t know who Leo Laporte was back then, but after slowly over the past year getting into more and more of his podcasts, like Security Now (with GRC’s Steve Gibson) and This Week in Tech (where TWiT gets it’s name), it is clear that he is a legend! I’ve also recently over the summer holiday’s got into TwitLive.tv, which is basically a live video stream of Leo recording his podcasts, often with user interaction via the Chatroom, especially in-between podcasts. As someone who is interested in Technology and Radio, this sort of thing really interests me, and so anyone else out there who is also interested in this kind of thing might do well to listen in. He usually starts at 6PM British Time (11PM Pacific, where he’s based). He even did a live Interview with Robert Llewelyn recently, you know that guy who does “Scrapheap Challenge” and the excellent “How Things Work”.

I’ve now officially passed the first year of University, which is nice! Computer Science, while often interesting, is a very hard course! I await the second year with nervous anticipation!

Anyway thanks for reading, you must have the patience of a saint

Google to release new browser today

Google is going to release a new browser sometime today, which has been announced in the past day. I’ve read the 30odd page comic book style explanation of Google Chrome, and I must say I am very impressed. It seems they have seriously thought about all sorts of things, including, sandboxing. Which i’m very excited about. Currently only IE7 (and do any kind of sandboxing, and only on Vista. Mozilla Firefox is not expected to be sandboxed until Firefox 4! So this is a big big security improvement. I’m also excited by the new process based system, where each tab gets its own process. So if something in that tab makes it crash, you don’t lose the whole browser!

So I’m going to be downloading and installing this beta as soon as it comes out, as it looks very very exciting. There’s currently no Google Chrome page, but I assume that will arrive later today, in the meantime see:

Google Blog Post on Chrome