Busy May

May is almost over and I’m not sure where it went. Work has been going ok, the UT Libraries version of the new UT web templates should be ready in the next couple of weeks. Then the long and probably painful process of converting the libraries over to the new templates can begin.

On a personal note, I spent most of May getting the family finances in order. Cashed in some stock and paid off all our credit card debt, which was a sizable sum. Next on the agenda is looking at buying or building a house. Building on the land we have now is one option, or we may sell our current place and move a bit closer to work.

Anybody want to buy a Mac mini or a couple of Pentium 4 Windows XP machines? The only computer we ever turn on at home anymore is the laptop, so I’m on a mission to get rid of our desktop machines and reclaim some cash.

But for now we’ll be taking a break and headed to Arkansas for Memorial Day. Should be a nice change of pace.

Library Podcast… file extension issues

I’ve been working on putting a podcast up for The Commons at work. Which is a little harder than it sounds. First I had to figure out podcast RSS feeds. The University of Washington has a good site for that.

Then there was an issue with the .m4a file that GarageBand saves podcasts as. .m4a is not an official MIME media type, which means it’s probably not going to be in the Apache mime types. At least it wasn’t for the library web server. And it might not hurt to add .m4v as well.

AddType video/mp4 .m4v
AddType audio/mp4 .m4a

MPEG 4 has various (and mostly interchangeable) file extensions, although .mp4 is the only official extension. But Apple has popularized .m4a and .m4v into what appear to be defacto standards.