“The Zucchini Brothers, Live! at the Clubhouse”

 

Zucchini Brothers

Zucchini Brothers

The Zucchini Brothers have their own internationally syndicated weekly radio show. Made especially for kids and families (but cool enough for everyone,) this program invites you to spend a half-hour in ZucchiniLand, with the three zany Zucchinis, as they serve up a stir-fry of jokes, anecdotes, daily chores, and, of course – MUSIC!

Modeled on oldtime radio, back before there was TV, “Live! at the Clubhouse” is a great place for young listeners. It’s educational. It’s got facts about science and nature. And, it’s always 100% healthy and 100% fun!

While the rest of  Waiheke’s media is wimping out it has been left to Waiheke Radio and Chris Walker to ask the tough questions. On the 7th of March 2009 Chris interviewed the infamous Nobelangelo Ceramalus.

 

 

Chris Walker interview with Nobelangelo Ceramalus

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Opinionated Islanders Alan Knight and Mark James

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Chris Walker interview with Denise Roche

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Waiheke  turned on a stunner of a day for the Onetangi Beach Races with huge numbers turning out to the beach. Splash FM provided the technicals to allow Waiheke Radio to broadcast live from the event.   

 

On Air

On Air

 The Waiheke RadioStation Playlist program and logs were copied from the studio to a laptop, mixed with live mics and a PA feed from the MC with a Fostex 4 channel mixer to bring all the action live from the beach. Linking was achieved with a second laptop running Winamp and SHOUTcast Source to a Shoutcast server in the studio. A local LPFM transmitter on 107.0 was employed for monitoring. Splash FM then took the stream from Waiheke Radio.

Mr Fox

Mr Fox

 

Technically it was a trial for Waiheke Radio and we look forward to many more collaborative events. Being able to get out and about with a Radio Mic to interview people all over the beach provided some marvellous moments which I am sure will be the subject of podcasts to come.

 

For me the highlight of the day was the Sealegs race. Although not an official entry in the Beach Races tote, seeing 9 of these ingenious craft racing on and off the water was a thrill. There was the usual mix of horese races, tractor races and Tug of War.

 

Sealegs

Sealegs Race

Countr Mike

Waihekepedia T'Shirt

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 For more pictures visit Waiheke Radio

I had a Linksys WRT54GL sitting on the shelf that I was planning on using as an experiment in setting up a mesh network. I decided to put it to work as a Tomizone. A Tomizone is a clever invention that allows you to share your internet connection for money. Simply create a Tomizone account, upload the Tomizone firmware to your router, give it a name, connect it to the internet and you might just start earning some money. The clever people at Tomizone have sorted all the billing and money is added to your account. So my Tomizone is running, just waiting for someone to connect. Find out more about Tomizone at www.tomizone.co.nz.

After getting the streaming audio server running for Waiheke Radio I got to thinking about embedded audio players, I figured I must not be the only one that wanted it.

 

I stumbled upon ShoutStream , downloaded, installed and hey presto, even autostarts

 

Brilliant

I always enjoy it when I get home and there is a little parcel containing something that I have purchased on Trademe or eBay waiting for me. Today it was my Sound Blaster Audigy 2, in one of those impossible to open Post Office plastic bags. I plan to test the Breakaway Audio Processor with it over the next couple of weeks. I am concerned that I do not have a PC with the horsepower to run it, but we should be bale to overcome that reasonably quickly.

 

Next Tuesday I have enrolled in the TSOLPFMBI (The Society Of Low Power FM Broadcasters Inc) J Pole building class. It should be a hoot.

 

Chris Knox

Chris Knox

 A friend came to visit in the weekend, mainly to to catch Chris Knox play at the Waiheke Radio fundraiser, but we got to talk about synchronous FM. I initially argued that you could run two transmitters on the same pole synchronously under the 25km rule, effectively doubling  your e.i.r.p. He quickly refuted my claim by reminding me of the field strength measurement rule. Oh Darn. Back to synchronous though, I did a search and came up with a paperby my good friend Chuck Kelly. My friend, who has designed for Rakon and has a brain the size of a planet, hypothesized that modern crystal oscillators are accurate to 1ppm. This coupled with his transmitter design that uses a single oscillator to derive both TX frequency and pilot / 38kHz that synchronous transmission should be feasible. This will need some testing.

 

Oh dear, I have just won a broken Francis Francis coffee machine on trademe for spares to rebuild ours, which will win out, caffeine or wireless.

 

While I was whiling away the hours trying to get Oddast to talk to Windows Media services I got to thinking about audio streaming and a little project I promised to do for Waiheke Radio. The difference between what Waiheke Radio does and what Splash FM does is quite simple. Waiheke Radio has real people. So where everything that comes out of Splash FM comes out of a computer it is not so easy for Waiheke Radio.

My thoughts were to take one of the many mini-itx pc’s I have here, load a copy of windows on it and run up winamp with oddcast and feed to a shoutcast server or similar.

I was chatting (msn) with an old friend Chuck Kelly who works for Nautel in Halifax. He introduced me to Barix. n particularly the Barix Instreamer. This box has a retail price of $US395.00 which may seem a lot, but hold the phone. $US395.00 gets you a whole lot of smart in a small box that draws 4watts. It also has no moving parts. Now the geek in me says build a PC, but them I got to thinking. A PC will draw approx 100 watts and the Barix a mere 4watts. Now that is approx $140 per year in power.

Its not easy being green.

I have managed to back out my ill fated dll updates and have Oddcast running again on Station Playlist. I have both Windows Media and Winamp streams resurrected. I will be putting instructions on doing this on the how to page.