"Oh, radio! Tell me everything you know..."

If you get the reference in the title, congratulations, you're also a wrestling fan.


The training session went off without a hitch. Just had to pay the £6 fee for joining the society, and I was shown how to operate both mixing desks, the microphones, and also the software that controls the station.

UPSU Radio uses an open source program called Rivendell. I can't remember which operating system they use, but I do know it's a Linux distro, so probably Ubuntu. There's no installers for Rivendell, and the program has to be compiled from the source code, so I wouldn't be able to practice with it at home, as I am useless when it comes to that. There's no way to get it running on Windows, anyway; it's strictly Linux-only, officially. Well, there is an unofficial Windows solution around, but it's not all parts of the program, so it'd be useless for me. There is apparently a way to get the Debian version working on Mac OS X, but I haven't attempted that yet. Rivendell is thankfully easy to use, and the interface is touchscreen-friendly, which is great, as the station has a touchscreen monitor.

So, I know the station's rules now, and most importantly, I know the procedure for adding new music into the system, which I'll probably be doing a lot, as the music I listen to is pretty different to what they usually broadcast. They have good standards, too; 320kbps MP3 files preferred, no lower than 192kbps (obviously, the files have to have been legally acquired, so either ripped from a CD/vinyl, or bought from a music store, like iTunes or eMusic).

I'm not gonna rush into doing a show yet though, due to the upcoming work experience at Twofour, plus current assignments at dBs. I'll probably wait until the break in-between semesters to do a show. Or failing that, summer break.