Transmission Zero

The latest version of freeglut is now available for download.

As with the previous release, there are x86 and x64 versions for both MSVC and MinGW. This time the MSVC version has been built using Visual Studio 2013. They have been tested on various 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows from Windows 98 SE to Windows 8.

Please download them and let me know how you get on.

The latest version of freeglut is now available for download.

As always, there is a version for use with MSVC, and a version for use with MinGW. Apart from having the latest features and bug fixes that the freeglut community have been working on, this release includes a 64 bit build for MinGW. This means you can now build 64 bit freeglut applications with MinGW. As before, the MSVC build includes 32 bit and 64 bit libraries, but in this release they have been built using Visual Studio 2012.

Please download them and let me know how you get on.

Updates have been made to the London pirate radio list. A number of new and returning stations have been added, and a number of stations which have been inactive for a long time have been moved to the former pirates list.

Please take a look and send in any updates you have.

A new article entitled London’s DAB Radio Stations has been added to the site. It’s the same kind of thing as the London FM radio list, except that it contains DAB radio stations rather than FM radio, and only covers London stations. Please send any feedback with your thoughts on this new list.

The London FM radio list has been suplemented with a second list which contains some of the home counties radio stations. These are stations based outside of London and which do not include London in their target service area, but are nonetheless receivable in parts of London. Please take a look at the list and send in any details of any additional stations which you think should be listed. Additionally, RDS and program format details would be much appreciated.

The pirate radio list has received some updates too. Most of the changes involved the removal of RDS information for stations which currently don’t appear to be transmitting RDS information. If you have any updates then please do send them in.

Windows builds of freeglut 2.8.0 are now available for download. The MSVC version is built with Visual Studio 2010, and supports building both 32 bit and 64 bit GLUT applications. The MinGW version was built with GCC 4.6.2, and supports both static and dynamic linking. The packages have been tested on all desktop version of Windows from Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 to Windows 7, but I’d appreciate some feedback to let me know that all is working as expected.

I’ve made a number of updates to the pirate radio list too. Mostly these are changes of frequency, but I have moved some stations which haven’t been logged for a while to the inactive list. Please take a look at that and get in contact if you notice any errors.

The freeglut MSVC package has been rebuilt and published. There are no changes since the last build, except that it now includes the 64 bit version of the import library and DLL. Given that the next freeglut release is on the horizon, and given that the 64 bit 2.6.0 build has received considerable testing, it seemed like a good idea to get this released before focus is switched to the next release.

The next release will be version 2.8.0, and I will of course provide you with a news update once MSVC and MinGW builds have been tested, packaged, and published.

I’ve spent some time this weekend redesigning the look and feel of Transmission Zero. Everything is still in the same place, but I hope you’ll agree that it looks a lot better than it did before. Please take a look and get in contact if you have any feedback on it.

The new design works best in any modern web browser such as Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. It should work fine in older browsers too, but you’ll lose some of the visual effects such as the rounded corners and drop shadows. If you notice something which doesn’t look right, please do a forced refresh in your web browser (usually done by holding “Ctrl” or the shift key whilst reloading the page), and let me know if it still doesn’t work correctly.

I’ve performed some significant updates to the pirate radio list today—updating RDS information and removing some dead links to the web sites of some of the stations. I’ve moved a number of stations down to the “inactive” list, as I have not logged them for some weeks now, neither have I received any reports of them being logged. If you believe any of those stations to be still active, please get in contact with the details.

I’d appreciate some reports on whether any of the following stations are still active: Charm FM, Street FM, Rise Nation, UK Pleasure Live, and Audio Nusience. I’m not able to check these for myself, and I have not received any reports of them being received, so if I don’t hear anything then they’ll be moved to the “inactive” list too. Please do have a look at the inactive list and let me know if you have any information—maybe some of them have closed down, or perhaps they have switched to internet broadcasting only.

The Super Mario Bros. articles have been moved to a new gaming section of the site, and are accompanied by a few new articles about tips, tricks, and glitches on Super Mario Bros. games. I created a YouTube channel, which features the videos used in the new gaming articles. Any links to Super Mario Bros. 2k3, the Mario Minus World, and the Lost Levels of Super Mario Bros. 3 will be redirected to the new pages automatically, but please check your links and update them if necessary.

I wrote a new article about Win16 programming in C. I know, Win16 is long obsolete and probably of interest to a very small minority of people, but there is a lack of decent articles on the internet, and it is something which is of great interest to me.

Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of changes of frequencies in the pirate radio list. Fusion FM has been logged on 101.7, Fresh FM has been logged on 101.3, and a station identifying itself as “Galaxy” has been logged on 87.6—it’s not clear whether this is a change of frequency for Galaxy, or a test transmission, or something else. Answers on a postcard please.

A new article has been added to the radio section of the site, entitled London’s Local FM Radio Stations. This contains a list of licensed radio stations operating in London (excluding RSLs and national stations). With former pirate radio stations such as Rinse FM being awarded a community FM radio license, and new stations such as Reprezent FM appearing on the dial, it has become apparent that there is a bit of a gap in terms of documenting London radio—the new article fixes that, by documenting BBC local radio, Independent Local Radio, and community radio stations operating in London.

The pirate radio list has been updated with a few new loggings, and any stations not logged in the last month have been moved to the “inactive” list. Please get in touch if you know any of these to still be active. Similarly, a number of stations have been moved from the inactive list to the former London pirates article, as they are assumed to have closed down.

If you have a web site or a blog where you are entering HTML code directly, you may have experienced problems when the text contains characters such as ‘<’, ‘>’, and ‘&’. A typical example is when you want to put HTML example code on your page, i.e. “<q>this is some quoted text</q>”. In order to get the text to display properly, you must replace all instances of ‘<’, ‘>’, and ‘&’ with “&lt;”, “&gt;”, and “&amp;” respectively. I have written an HTML encoder to remove all of the manual work—all you have to do is copy your text, paste it into the text box, click a button, and then you can copy and paste it into your web page or blog. There are some additional options available to help you display the text in the way that you want it, so why not give it a go?

I have also recently completed an upgrade of the site to XHTML 5. If you follow any technology blogs, magazines, or TV programs, you’ll probably know that (X)HTML 5 is a sort of umbrella term which represents many of the up and coming features of modern web browsers. You probably won’t notice any real difference on the site other than on the contact form, but if you do experience any problems, please get in touch so that I can investigate.

The list of London FM pirate radio stations was split into currently active radio stations, inactive radio stations, and stations which have closed down. As many of the radio stations in the “closed” list have been closed for more than five years, and because the list was becoming a bit large to easily manage, I’ve split the former pirate radio stations off into their own London Pirate Radio Stations Of The Past article. Since the list covers a very wide range of dates, from the mid 90s to the current date, I’d like to include information about the years these stations were active. This isn’t an easy task, as stations can appear and disappear without any notice. If you have date information for any of the stations (i.e. “ABC FM was active between 1998 and 2004.”), please send it in—if I have enough information I’ll add a new column to the list.

I’ve also had a bandscan today, and updated the current pirate radio stations list. At the same time, I’ve added web site links for most of the currently active stations—there’s still a few stations without links, so if you have the details please send them in.

I’ve added a “site updates” section to the home page, where you can find details of what’s recently been updated on the site. This will include details of new articles on the site, and major updates to existing articles.

As an alternative to checking the home page for updates, you can also add the news feed to your RSS / feed reader, or visit the Facebook page and like it.