RSS and Itunes audio feeds

[Chris Stevens]

I've not been able to download any audio podcast from Exploring the Lord of the Rings since episode 70. When I click on the RSS link it just pulls back a bunch of xml gibberish. The videos are on Youtube but I'm looking for the audio.

Does anyone know what's going on?
Regards.
Chris Stevens

 

[Chris Stevens]

Am I the only one that has this problem. I'm not getting updates from Itunes or a couple of other podcast apps I have. They worked up until "Exploring....." Episode 70.

 

[Jim Deutch]

Am I the only one that has this problem. I'm not getting updates from Itunes or a couple of other podcast apps I have. They worked up until "Exploring....." Episode 70.

The feeds have not been updated since the middle of August: latest EtLotR is, as you note, #70 and latest Malory is MSA023_20180822_A-Dolorous-Stroke-and-a-Momentous-Marriage.

It might have something to do with the new hosting. The old http://media.signumuniversity.org/mythgardacademy/feed now redirects to http://s3.amazonaws.com/media.podcast/feeds/MythgardAcademy.xml (for whatever reason: if there's been an announcement, I have missed it).

As far as the "XML gibberish" - this may be your browser. I find that Internet Explorer still displays the feed as a web page with links and descriptions, while Chrome displays the raw XML with the note at the top: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below."
Nevertheless, you can still find the latest linked file, at the BOTTOM end of the XML:

<item>
<title>Exploring Lord of the Rings: Episode 70</title>
<author>[email protected] (Corey Olsen)</author>
<itunes:author>Corey Olsen</itunes:author>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 Aug 2018 13:39:11 +0000</pubDate>
<enclosure url="http://media.podcast.s3.amazonaws.com/TolkienProf/TolkienProf439.mp3" length="85807274" type="audio/mpeg"/>
<guid isPermaLink="false">TolkienProf_439 </guid>
<itunes:duration>02:20:43</itunes:duration>
"); vertical-align: bottom; height: 10px;"><itunes:keywords>
Tolkien, Olsen, Mythgard, LOTRO, Silmarillion, Film
</itunes:keywords>
<description></description>
</item>

You can paste the red part into a browser's addressbar and it will start to play. In Chrome, there is a little down-arrow that lets you download the mp3 file.
And any podcast retrieval software should still understand the feed, no problem. The problem is that the feed is not getting any updates!

 

[Chris Stevens]

Thanks, Jim, for the information. I did try Internet Explorer and got the list of recordings. Not sure why Chrome isn't interpreting the xml. I haven't seen any "official" comment on what is going on with the new audio episodes not being posted. Youtube seems to be up to date with the video.

 

[Jim Deutch]

I haven't seen any "official" comment on what is going on with the new audio episodes not being posted. Youtube seems to be up to date with the video.

I'd been assuming that whoever edits the audio was on vacation, but it's getting harder to support that theory as weeks go by!
I'm filling in now with the Boethius class I missed a little over a year ago...

 

[Chris Stevens]

I'd been assuming that whoever edits the audio was on vacation, but it's getting harder to support that theory as weeks go by!
I'm filling in now with the Boethius class I missed a little over a year ago...

I only wish an announcement would be made to acknowledge the issue.

 

[Jim Deutch]

I only wish an announcement would be made to acknowledge the issue.

Now that the problem has been posted in Let's Talk About the Course! we may get more information.

Wouldn't surprise me if there have been announcements during class. But since we can't get the podcasts, we haven't heard them!

 

[Nicholas Palazzo]

The team that handles that sort of thing are pretty much exclusively volunteers, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.

 

[Jim Deutch]

The team that handles that sort of thing are pretty much exclusively volunteers, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.

Me too. Totally. We'd just like to make sure they know we're not getting updates.
We'd also like to know when we will finally get them, if any information is available, and are curious to know whether it's related to the new amazon hosting or not, not that that actually matters.

I do the audio editing of my wife's live radio show for the upload to soundcloud, so I do know from personal experience about amateur volunteers getting behind!

 

[Chris Stevens]

The team that handles that sort of thing are pretty much exclusively volunteers, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.

Truly no criticism intended. I know volunteers do alot of this kind of support. I just wanted to make sure that someone was aware of the problem. I really only would like to see an acknowledgement that the right people know and if possible, a realistic estimate whe it might be fixed. I can be very patient.

 

[Nicholas Palazzo]

I think that if you were to direct your questions to Signum's social media platforms, either on Facebook or Twitter, you would likely get an answer rather quickly.

 

[Jim Deutch]

I think that if you were to direct your questions to Signum's social media platforms, either on Facebook or Twitter, you would likely get an answer rather quickly.

I'm a social network dinosaur: I don't use either one! If anyone gets any information, could they please post it to the forum?