Jason Pearce

RadioParadise.com is the single-best radio station I’ve ever listened to. It offers a wonderful collection of creative, eclectic, and diverse music that no FM station would ever offer.

I’ve been listening to the station for about a year now. Often, as I would hear a song or artist that I liked, I’d pop on over to Amason and add the album to my Wish List. About a month ago, I decided to act on this list and decided to buy all of the albums that were priced (used) less than $5. $200 and 40 CDs later, I’ve discovered 20 new artist and rediscovered the other 20. What a fantastic collection.

I can’t wait to buy more.

I’m so hooked on RadioParadise that I’ve programmed my Xbox to automatically play the station when it boots up. And for those of you who know me, I turn on my Xbox quite a bit. Now when I come home, I just turn on my Xbox and instantly get to hear my favorite Internet-only station.

Here’s how I do it.

• First, you modify your box and install Avalaunch as it’s new operating system.
• Next, open up “avalaunch.xml” in your text editor.
• Edit the XML sound tag to match the following:
  <sound>
    <backgroundmusic enabled="4" cdda="1" cdmp3="1">
      <path>F:\shoutcast\sample.sc</path>
    </backgroundmusic>
  </sound>
• Pay attention to the “enabled” attribute/value and the folder that sample.sc must reside in (the drive may differ, but not the folder).
• Save your changes to “avalaunch.xml” and ftp it back to your Xbox.
• Next, retrieve “F:/shoutcast/sample.sc” and open it in a text editor.
• Simply throw in a list of your favorite streams, save, and ftp back to your box. My list looks something like this:
  http://64.236.34.67:80/stream/2001
  http://64.236.34.196:80/stream/1018
  http://64.236.34.4:80/stream/2002
  http://64.236.34.196:80/stream/1065
  http://64.236.34.67:80/stream/1038
  http://64.236.34.4:80/stream/1040

How did I find the URLs of the stations I like to listen to? Easy. Visit Shoutcast.com, right click on the “Tune In” button for your favorite station and select “Save Link As.” Open up that file in your text editor and you’ll find the URL. It looks something like this “File1=http://64.236.34.4:80/stream/1040″.

Next time you boot your Xbox, Avalaunch will automatically look to sample.sc and begin playing the first station if it can establish a connection. If you want to switch to the next station, press the left joystick in and Avalaunch will switch to the next station in your list.

Enjoy.

Isn’t it rare to see both ends of a rainbow? If so, I’ve been rather lucky of late, for I’ve seen two rainbows in the past two weeks. I was able to easily see the beginning and end of each.

I saw the first one while wake boarding in the rain over the Fourth of July weekend. I saw the other on my way home from work today. Yep, I actually left the office before dusk today. Strange, but true. Maybe I’d see more rainbows if I left early more often.