Yeah! One more reason for loving Canada!
As some of you may know, I’m studying the English Language in Vancouver, Canada (Business English and Proficiency). Today, while working on a project for a client in Brazil, I was looking for a way to hear the CBC (I usually hear it on the way for the college on my Generic Ipod).
After accessing their website and going through the regular way, I was unable to hear the radio streaming with mplayer. Googling cbc + linux, I found this article, Adopting Ubuntu… good reading, but not what I wanted. So I googled again for listen+cbc+linux
This time, I found “my precious“: some informations about streaming + cbc + linux/*NIX. But (and there’s always a but) as they are testing the CBC streaming under Ogg Vorbis format, they only let two options to choose for: CBC Radio One, and CBC Radio Two. If you want CBC+Ogg, that’s all you can have. It just works!
On the other hand, you can access the “All url streams page” and see a lot of streaming options (tons of cities and 16 or 32 kbps options). I don’t know why, mplayer neither vlc weren’t able to open it… Totem and Gxine did the trick. Was only a matter of runing the command followed by the streaming url, or going in File, Open Streaming… (or something like this) and pasting the url there.
I would like to let here my sincerely congratulations to the CBC.ca staff for making their content available, using open formats and remembering the *NIX crew. Thank you!
PS: I am learning the English language! Feel free to correct any word or sentence you find here by putting it on the comments. Believe me: you will help a lot! Thank you!
THANK YOU! I would never have known about this otherwise. I immediately sent a comment to the CBC to encourage this. Things like BBC’s iPlayer issue upset me and give me good reason to support things like this.
Jay M.
fevereiro 14th, 2008
As an English speaking English person, I think it is great that you are so keen to improve your English. With more people like you, I can keep up the English tradition of expecting everybody else to learn my language so I don’t have to learn theirs.
I usually hear it on the way for the college on my Generic Ipod
I usually listen it on the way to the college on my Generic Ipod
they only let two options to choose for
they only allow two options to choose from
I don’t know why, mplayer neither vlc weren’t able to open it
I don’t know why, neither mplayer or vlc weren’t able to open it
I would like to let here my sincerely congratulations to the CBC.ca staff
I would like to say here my sincerely congratulations to the CBC.ca staff
I must state that I am not an English expert. Some of my corrections above may be wrong and there may be other errors that I have not identified. Your English is very good. In fact, it is better than allot of the English I hear every day here in England. Keep up the good work! BTW, I origionally spotted this post on Planet Ubuntu.
Regards,
Philip Stubbs
Philip Stubbs
fevereiro 14th, 2008
I don’t know why, neither mplayer or vlc weren’t able to open it
That is a double negative. It should be:
I don’t know why, neither mplayer or vlc were able to open it
I told you that there could be mistakes.
Philip Stubbs
fevereiro 14th, 2008
Hi, I found you on Planet Ubuntu! Hope to read more about life and language learning in Canada.
Some notes on your English as requested:
“on the way for the college” should be “on the way to the college”
“some informations” should be “some information” (‘information’ is a mass noun, and doesn’t have a plural)
“mplayer neither vlc” should be “neither mplayer nor vlc” (some English speakers will say “neither mplayer or vlc” but strictly ‘either’ and ‘or’ are a pair and ‘neither’ and ‘nor’ are a pair).
“runing” is spelled “running” (maybe just a typo)
“going in File…” should be “going to File…”
“I would like to let here my sincerely congratulations” should be “I would like to give my sincere congratulations here”
“putting it on the comments” should be “putting it in the comments”
Mary
fevereiro 14th, 2008
Hello, since you asked..
Your English seems generally very good, but there are one or two things you can polish up:
“One more reason for loving Canada”. Whilst this is not technically incorrect, it’s more idiomatic to say “One more reason to love Canada”.
“I was looking for a way to hear the CBC”. Again, not technically incorrect, but you probably wanted to use the “listen to” there rather than “hear”. If you need a way to hear the CBC, it suggests that you might have a problem with your ears
“I usually hear it on the way for the college on my Generic Ipod)”. Say “to college”, not “for the college”.
“some informations”. This is something that non-native speakers of English often get wrong. It’s NEVER informations, ALWAYS information (without the s). I suppose it’s confusing because you think of it as a plural concept, but it isn’t, really – it’s one mass of data.
“they only let two options to choose for”. This is not correct and would never be said. You could say “They only let you choose two options” or “They only give two options from which to choose”.
“I don’t know why, mplayer neither vlc weren’t able to open it”. The word ‘neither’ is not used on its own like that, in between two options – you’d pair it with ‘nor’; and you wouldn’t use the comma; and you wouldn’t use the double negative (neither … weren’t). You’d say something like this – “I don’t know why neither mplayer NOR vlc WERE able to open it”.
“Was only a matter of running the command”. You should say “IT was only a matter..”
“I would like to let here my sincerely congratulations to the CBC.ca staff for making their content available”. You use ‘let’ in a way that English doesn’t allow. Basically, don’t use the word ‘let’ unless you’re sure it’s part of an idiomatic phrase you’ve heard before. If you haven’t seen it before in that structure, it’s likely that some other verb should be used in translation. Also, ’sincerely’ is an adverb, but ‘congratulations’ is a noun, so you need to use the adjective ’sincere’. So you would say “I would like to GIVE here my SINCERE congratulations to the CBC.ca staff…”
Anyway, your English is far better than my Portuguese or Spanish, so congratulations
Nick Mailer
fevereiro 14th, 2008
You are right the CBC.ca and Radio-Canada.ca(in french) do make an effort.
You could also add these in Rhythmbox under radio.
In english
CBC Radio One
http://vorbis.nm.cbc.ca:80/cbcr1-toronto.ogg
CBC Radio Two
http://vorbis.nm.cbc.ca:80/cbcr2-toronto.ogg
In french
La Premiere Chaine de Radio-Canada
http://ms2.radio-canada.ca:80/PremiereChaine.ogg
Espace Musique
http://ms2.radio-canada.ca:80/EspaceMusique.ogg
You should also look at their choice of podcasts
In english
http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/
In french
http://www.radio-canada.ca/baladodiffusion/
P.S.: Looks like your english is getting better from post to post.
André M.
fevereiro 14th, 2008
In the proper “Canadian” English, you’re supposed to include “eh” randomly. Just a tip!
(I’m faaar away in Toronto)
Vadim P.
fevereiro 14th, 2008
visit and went managed I’d hoped about just their that the else neighborhood
globalsteven
fevereiro 14th, 2008
just want to let you know you can listen to CBC’s (and many others) default windows audio streams by simply doing:
sudo apt-get install w32codecs totem-xine totem-mozilla alsa-oss
then restart firefox and fire up cbc radio and all should be working
Eugene
ecormier
fevereiro 14th, 2008
It’s very funny that the corrections you got are themselves “incorrect use” because it highlights the funny nature of the English language: it’s so huge and there are so many dialects that it is very hard to arrive at a truly “correct” usage!
Naturally, there will always be grammar Nazis, but even then there is the Great American Pastime of carefully crafting sentences in order to effect a response from an unwary grammar Nazi, hoping for one to jump out with a corrective, only with a quip waiting to explain to them why they are in fact wrong. =P
Good luck with your studies! Read a lot of books and blogs and you’ll be speaking excellent English in no time!
Ryan Prior
fevereiro 14th, 2008
Let’s not forget the extremely popular cbc radio3 (something like 100,000 downloads of the main podcast per week plus all the other podcasts). They spit out several hours each week of the latest in Canadian independent artists (the open source of the music world).
http://www.cbcradio3.com/podcast/radio3/ogg/
Ryan
fevereiro 14th, 2008