January 23, 2003
python rocks
Joerg Lehman's pytone is a terrific bit of code. It's a text mode playlist/jukebox program for linux. I keep it installed on a spare linux box and use it to control playing MP3 tracks. I run it inside a screen session so I can telnet to it from other boxes to control it. Otherwise it's on the text console that lives inside my audio/video wall cabinet. Text mode is nice, it's quick, stable and doesn't confuse others when they try using it.
What's even better is I have my mp3 tracks on 6 different machines and they're all smb mounted within /mnt/media/mp3 on the linux box. This let's it pick from over 7000 tracks at any given time. And now that I've added a new pair of P2/333's to this box the processor load for playback never gets above about 8% of CPU (one other the other).
It's got the usual foolishness that all unix programs seem to suffer. Getting all the dependencies installed was a little bit of a trick. But otherwise it's quite handy.
It's underlying use of Python holds great potential for some outside hacks I have planned for it...
