MUSIC
TICKER
MADNESS
PERL
CODE
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What is it with netfolks and the need to tell everybody in the free world
what they're doing, have done, and will (soon) be doing? LiveJournals,
WebCams, and, of course, MusicTickers.
Well, I added a MusicTicker to YARK a while back. Here's how. Now you
can do the same, you narcissistic bastard.
MusicTicker installation walkthrough
or
How to regularly post even more
useless info nobody cares about
Woo. I've been gunning to use a few header tags on this site for
ages now.
The beast itself might be right here:
iTunes is offline, comrade.
( The above is powered by YarkiTunes. )
If that little thingie up there says that it's powered by
MusicTicker, then you're in luck, and you're seeing the real thing.
If it says it's powered by YARKbox, well, then, you're seeing a reasonable
facsimile. Such is life.
It keeps tabs on the five most recent songs which have played on
my PC at work, and uploads a munged version of that list to YARK each
time WinAmp's status changes. The setup process can be broken down
as follows:
1) Get WinAmp
Don't give me any crap about how your MP3 player is better than WinAmp.
Maybe it is. If you're such a goddamn MP3 player authority, go set up your
goddamn ticker yourself, goddamn it. Just get
WinAmp. You'll be glad you did. Or at least I
will, anyway.
2) Get the MusicTicker plug-in.
Right here, baby:
MusicTicker.
Unzip the package, and copy the .dll to your WinAmp plugins directory --
probably somewhere along the lines of C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins.
UPDATE! It appears that the gen_MTicker .dll is no longer available
via the above site. I'll host a copy here until I'm told not to.
(Mticker.zip) You'll need to unzip the .dll
into your WinAmp plugins directory. Please note that this is not my
code, and I claim neither responsibility nor credit for its performance
or lack thereof. I don't recommend going around and downloading random .dlls
off of random folks' random websites either, but, hey, it's your machine.
3) Set up your working directory.
I made a directory in C:\ named Ticker. Your
mileage may vary.
4) Install perl.
You, of course, already have perl installed, since it's so darn
useful, right? Right? Well, if not, look
here for a Win32 version.
5) Check for VBScript support.
The easiest way to do this is to get an MS-DOS window (you can always
Run (as in the item in your start menu (I love nested parenthesis))
command to get one). Type wscript and hit enter. You
should get a window titled Windows Script Host Settings, or something
along those lines. If you don't... er... well, you don't really need
VBScript support, but the ticker is going to really annoy you when it
runs, and you're not going to want to use it. You'll have to find
another way to suppress the DOS window which pops up every single time the
song changes. Good luck.
6) Put the perl script in place.
Slap something along the lines of this
in your Ticker directory, and call it songdata.pl.
You'll have to edit various things -- I think they're pretty
clear, and they're all right up there at the top of the script,
so have at it.
7) Put the VBScript in place.
Slap something along the lines of this
in your Ticker directory, and call it songdata.vbs.
You'll have to edit C:\Ticker\ to match your local Ticker
directory.
8) Put the .bat file in place.
Slap something along the lines of this
in your Ticker directory, and call it songdata.bat.
You'll have to edit C:\Ticker\ to match your local Ticker
directory.
9) Configure the MusicTicker plug-in.
Run WinAmp, and go to Options -> Preferneces -> Plug-ins -> General
Purpose, select MusicTicker, and click Configure. Check
the Enable MusicTicker box. Set the Output filename to
C:\Ticker\songdata.htm, changing C:\Ticker\ as necessary.
Set the HTML Post-Process Command to wscript.exe
C:\Ticker\songdata.vbs, again changing C:\Ticker\ as
necessary. Check Export only track listing to HTML. Set
Title History list length to 4. Click OK.
Click Close.
10) #include the resulting file.
Stick something like the following text into your web page:
I'm listening to...
<UL>
<!--#include virtual="songdata.txt" -->
</UL>
( The above is powered by
<A HREF="http://www2.kenyon.edu/People/varmaa/mticker/">MusicTicker</A>. )
The exact syntax of the #include may vary, depending upon your web server.
What's more, you may have to change songdata.txt to the relative
location of the songdata output file if you're not in that exact
directory, but I'm going to assume you know how to do that. It lets me
sleep at night.
11) Try it out.
You might want to stop and restart WinAmp. Who knows. This is Windows.
You may also have to do an explicit reload of the web page, if you've
already got a browser which has cached said page.
12) Let me know how it goes.
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