nothing clever to say

I’ve moved my radio station blog over to wordpress and added a now playing / recently played songs section. I love it when a plan comes together.

“the “subscribe to packet data first” error message that you received on your Nokia 6133 phone indicates one or both of the following:

- That your phone lacks the proper network settings for media streaming
- The network connection is not substantial enough to allow proper streaming

With those two factors in mind, we recommend contacting T-Mobile for additional information concerning the network information and settings necessary for media streaming via their network.”

Ah yes. The runaround. Not that I can blame Nokia… Carriers should be trained enough to know what their phones can and cannot do, and they are ultimately the ones who create the settings needed for access onto the networks. I guess I will try tmobile again on my lunch break to see if they can help get me the settings. Why do I do this? Because I want to be able to say I can.

Its been a few hours. I have gotten Darwin Streaming Server installed on my server machine, and I actually have been able to stream rtsp thru Real Player and Quicktime on my other machine, but alas, the solution eludes me with the Nokia. Their tech support says it should work, and the media player offers a rtsp address entry, and SHOULD work, but when I connect, I get “operation failed.” Then I added streaming settings in the media player, but not it says “subscribe to packet data first” which I can get on the internet with the phone, so I wonder if its an issue on T-Mobile’s side. Its getting late, I can’t stay up all night figuring this out.

So, my new nokia 6133 claims audio streaming capability. I contacted nokia tech support and they let me know that the only streaming it supports is 3gpp — which now give me my new project: make a version of Big C Radio that streams in 3gpp so I can listen to it on my phone. Silent Ron has been doing research for me, and so far, it looks like Linux is going to be an easier route to stream, but I’m still hoping for a Windows-based solution.

As for the phone itself, I can say, its probably the best phone I’ve ever owned, and that’s the way it should be… The 1 megapixel camera leaves a little to be desired sometimes, but it works well in low light, and its much better than any vga one I’ve used. The screen is stunningly sharp, and after being used to the 6101 interface, transitioning to this was a piece of pie. Some people have complained about the location of the micro SD card, but I’m not too concerned, as I use a bluetooth dongle (heh heh heh) to transfer files between my computer and the phone. The music player sounds pretty decent on the loudspeaker, about what I expect from a phone and a speaker that small. Its hard to tell, though, on the headset, because I hate the stock stereo ear buds. I have ordered a pair of ‘clip over the ear’ style buds that might be smaller and fit better, and hopefully improve sound. I use the headset a lot on my motorcycle, as its legal here in the great state of Texas, with the mic tucked into the helmet so I can take calls while riding, if need be, so the sound quality doesn’t need to be perfect, just loud enough to hear.

On the nerd factor, I have programmed the phone to make a Star Trek communicator sound when you press the flip-open switch, and though it annoys Mel, its charmingly dorky.

Blogger will not publish correctly on my new host, and I bought a 2 year plan with them. If that’s good or bad, I cannot tell, but I probably needed to wean off the baby stuff and get a blog going the right way. Since my host supports WordPress, AND one of my favorite blogs on earth uses it (yeah beeb, that’s right, I love 2SB, even when its totally gay.)

As you might notice if you care, I’m starting off with a basic template and also, you might notice that some of my links don’t work, most noticably, the archives and comments. I haven’t finished setting this up, and I’m a little rusty on my php, so it may be a while before it looks pretty and works right.

Note to self, email beeb and bug him about this.