Loveline and stuff

Click Here for the random stream.
Donations
So, I've decided to try something new. Due to the number of responses stating folks would love to donate to assist w/ bandwidth (e.g. raise the listener cap), and also folks wanting to donate in return for access to the archive I'm now going to experiment with taking them.

Donations will assist with the following:
That said, donations are in *no way* expected or required. If you want to grab the episodes and can't afford anything, don't feel bad! Basically donate what you feel the service is worth to you.

For the archive. Please try to play by the following rules, if there is excessive abuse I will be forced to shut it down. As long as everyone plays nice this should stay up for a long time!

Amount:

Without further ado: The Archive

News, and other stupid things

 08-25-09: I've added all the payments up, an they come to a total of $329.99 (less processing fees, so about $300 total). This is more than enough to buy both the SSD hard drive listed below, and a PCI-X SATA controller needed to use the drive in question. The total should be about $270 plus shipping, so we're pretty much on target. I will get these ordered today, and will update soon with an ETA for the upgrades taking place. Also, a special thank you to the person who made a $150.00 donation, which definitely jump-started this whole thing!

08-24-09: Hey guys, I just wanted to drop a quick note that I believe we have reached the goal for the drive upgrade noted below. I'll post a detailed accounting, and an ETA on the upgrade tomorrow. Thank you VERY much for your generosity, I was very much pleasantly surprised!

08-11-09: Performance issues. Hey folks, over the last month or three, the number of people slamming the archive to download shows has grown considerably. Donations have not kept up with this new found demand. While the bandwidth portion is fine, the machine hosting these shows is no longer capable of keeping up serving them. Basically, the hard drive is maxed out 24x7, making the machine very unusable for my other tasks which must get done. The option here is to either upgrade the machine, or shut archive access off. I would rather not do the latter, but I figured I would leave it up to the community to decide! In order to stop the machine spending all it's time reading off the hard disk, a faster drive must be provided. This will be in SSD format, and an 80GB drive fits fairly well (the archive is about 49GB currently). This Drive costs $229.99 on newegg.com. If the community does want to keep this service open, please donate! *ALL* donations made from this date forward will go towards this upgrade. I will provide weekly status reports, and let you know when or if we reach the goal. Until that time, please note that archive access may be spotty as I am forced to disable it to get work done from time to time.

02-10-09: Stream errors. I got a few e-mails about various stream errors in sound reproduction (chirps, silence, etc.). This looks like it may be due to the popularity of the file archive. Basically the hard drive serving the files is maxed out 24/7, leaving very little bandwidth for the streamer app to pull data. My theory is the buffer is underrunning, causing weirdness. Stopping all active downloads, and restarting the stream seems to have fixed stuff. Let me know if you hear anything funky going forward. If so, I may need to institute some form of limits on the archive to keep things going. Right now, this server is sending about 50Mbit/sec 24x7x365, which does get to be on the expensive side. So far donations have barely kept up with this expense, but are not enough to cover further hardware upgrades and additional bandwidth to meet the full demand. I do appreciate all the e-mails sent, and again apolize I don't have time to reply to every one. Thanks!

10-07-08: If you didn't see the replacement page, the hard drive w/ the episode library failed yesterday. The data was successfully copied off prior to it completely going bewm, drive replaced, and data copied back. Everything should be back to normal, let me know if you see anything unusual.

08-26-08: See above! Archive access for all! With my ridiculous generosity and totally awesome HTML skills it's a wonder the ladies are not lining up outside my door. In all seriousness, thanks all for the kind words you e-mail - I know I rarely respond, but I *DO* read everything! Play nice please, and have fun.

06-28-08: Sorry about the extended downtime. Migrated to new hardware last night, and simply got too tired to restart everything properly. Stuff should be working now. Also, my apologies about the dearth of updates/adding new episodes/etc. It simply hasn't been a current priority. Some folks have e-mailed me with the idea to donate to the cause via paypal, and I'm thinking that may help guilt me into actually doing some stuff once in a while :) I guess I'll think about it, as if there was a regular income source I could also increase the max user count some as well - right now it's capping out during the day most days of the week. Otherwise, this service isn't going anywhere anytime soon - enjoy!

05-07-07: Stream went down due to yet another ices segfault. I've gotten literally thousands of e-mails since the Loveline Archive has went off the air. Unfortunately, I simply have absolutely no prayer to even begin to respond to them all. As such I am still looking for an archive maintainer or three. Duties would simply be to respond to e-mails to grab shows others have to contribute, organize the shows properly, and do basic shoutcast admin tasks.

If you posess basic unix administration skills and want to help out, please send an e-mail with the subject "loveline helper" and I'll give those priority reading. I don't think I will be able to open up the archives to everyone, as the bandwidth usage would be too much to support. As-is the shoutcast server capped at 200 users hits about 11Mbit/sec. This is currently comped, however any more usage would be excessive. This brings up another rquest.

For those of you that have a dedicated server, co-lo'ed box, work at an ISP, whatever - if you want to re-broadcast the stream please let me know. You must have a solid connection to the interent as a whole, and be able to serve at least 25 listeners. This would increase the effective listener cap that many of you have written in to complain about. Sorry - as is, there is nothing I can do!

So, that's about it. If this project is to grow and become more of a resource it needs volunteers to help out who possess the skills and connections neccessary to make it happen. I'm very pleased so many people enjoy the service, and plan to continue providing it as long as I possibly can. Additionally, I will NOT be adding non-adam era shows to the archive. The listeners have spoken!

03-11-07: Yep, another outage. Sorry folks! Still are some mp3's in the playlist which cause ices to crash. I'm simply too lazy to actually either investigate a better decoder, or setup any auto-restart script should it die. Can't believe it's been about a year from when I first put the stream up! I simply wish I had more time to devote to the project..

10-11-06: I've been receiving quite a few e-mails over the past 2 months or so that I simply have not had time to properly respond to. Some of them definitely have quite a bit to offer the community as a whole. As such, I'm looking for someone who would like to maintain the archive, site, and stream. This would entail some basic Unix administration knowledge enough so you can work with files on the filesystem, starting processes, adding users, etc. Basically you would be handling the upkeep and organization of the archive, ensuring anyone who wants to contribute to the collection gains prompt access. Also, getting the archive organized would be extremely helpful as well, so folks know what we do and do not have already in the collection. Send me an e-mail if interested, I will respond to those. :)

08-31-06: Stream was down due to maintenance today. Took the machine down to add some RAM and perform some other upgrades. End result should be a more stable stream for everyone. Thanks all for your comments, they are appreciated!

06-07-06: Re-restarted the encoder (again) during mid-episode. 113 new shows added, all thanks to users like you who uploaded a couple here and there (and some, more than a couple - thanks!). Hopefully as time goes on eventually the gaps will be filled in. If you e-mailed me, sorry if you did not recieve a timely response lately - been pretty busy and simply kept putting it off. If you have not recieved a response as of now, please hit me up again as I likely completely misplaced it.

On another note - what are your folks feelings on adding non-Adam-era shows to the lineup? Anyways, happy 4th everyone and have fun listening.

05-10-06: Re-started the encoder, sorry for the mid-episode restart. Restarted to add some new user-uploaded shows, 4 total shows added. MUCH thanks to all those who have contributed - let me know if you want your names up here, and I'll gladly give you credit. Also, if you have shows to add to the playlist, please let me know! Remember, anyone who contributes even one show gains access to the entire archive for their own use

04-19-06: Sorry if you got disconnected, server restarted to increase max users from 100 to 200. The popularity is a bit nuts, looks like I'll have to toss some more RAM in the serving machine.
04-18-06: New Connected user count graphs have been added, somewhat interesting.

Basic stats can be found Here or you can view the Connected user count graphs

Current playlist can be found Here. Currently randomly playing 35GB of content. Gain high-speed access to ALL of this for providing one show I currently do not have.

Contact phil21@phil21.net to trade shows and/or access the archive.

Enjoy!