RUSC-On-Demand Update
I thought it might be time to give you a quick update on the progress of RUSC-On-Demand as a know there are quite a few members who are missing it.
Everything was going well and then I had a bit of a hiccup. Maybe hiccup is too mild a word for it. Better words might be disaster, nightmare, calamity, or catastrophe.
To provide reliable streaming I had to convert all the MP3 files into WMA files which are far better for streaming audio. This was a time consuming job and took over three weeks. All the files will be remaining as MP3 files for downloading so it means I needed twice the capacity to store both formats. I'd stored the new WMA files on two brand new high-capacity drives at the hosting company. The drives were striped so they acted as one single virtual drive. A couple of weeks ago one of the drives decided to go to an early grave and took ALL the converted files with it. The problem with striping the drives is that if you lose one you nearly always lose the data from both. I hope I'm not getting too technical here.
The good news is I now have four replacement drives; two for the converted files and two (yes you've guessed it) to use as backup drives to prevent anything like that happening again. I'm busy converting all the files again and hope to have something up within the next week, or two at the most.
Whilst all of this has been going on I've been busy working on incorporating RealAudio. At first I thought this was going to be a pretty simple task, but I've run into a few problems and it is stretching my grey cells to the limit. I'm not one to give in without a fight so if you are a RealAudio fan I really will do my best to make the new version compatible with your favorite player.
In the meantime I hope you are all happily downloading lots of shows for your summer vacations. If you are anything like me you'll get great pleasure from lying on the beach, the sun baking down, a cold drink by your side and a classic comedy playing on your MP3 player. Absolute bliss!
Happy listening my friends
