I don't go out to shows as often as I might like - maybe I'm not enough of a music fiend or perhaps I'm too much of a homebody and I should break myself of that. But I do enjoy most of the shows I go to, and in the last month I've gone to three shows over in San Francisco.

Here's some useful info about using my music server:

Clicking the stream link didn't add it to my iTunes.

If your iTunes doesn't automacically add the MP3 stream when you click the link above, try this:

1. Copy the web address of the stream into your clipboard: http://bearcave.qt1r.org:9000/stream.mp3
2. In iTunes, under the "Advanced" menu, choose "Open Stream..."
3. Paste the web address into the box that appears, and click OK.
4. The stream is now in your iTunes library. You can rename it, double click to start playing it, add it to playlists, etc...

I don't use iTunes, I use [some other mp3 player application].

If you use something other than iTunes, read the manual for your player to find out how to add the MP3 stream using the URL above.

I don't hear anything!

• Check your speaker volume. :-)
• Make sure the stream is playing, not paused or stopped in your player.
• Use the control page to make the server send you something. Note that you can pause and stop the stream, which is different from pausing or stopping your player.
• Make sure you're controlling your stream from the control page and not someone elses! (see below)

How do I use the control page?

The control page is where you can browse the music library, add tracks to the queue, and control playback. It lets you create a queue of music that will be streamed to you. You can add hours worth of music to the queue, and then just let it play. You can also save a queue as a server-playlist and use it later.

• Use the left side to browse and search the library by artist, album, genre, etc. Look in the popup menu at the top. There you'll also see connections to other internet streams that you can access through my server.
• When you look at items in the library, you'll see 4 red buttons to the right of each item:
  • The right-pointing trangle clears the current queue, adds the item, and starts playing it.
  • The triangle pointing at a line adds the item to the queue immdiately after the currently playing track.
  • The square with 4 quarters (actually a plus sign on a square) adds the item to the end of the queue
  • The X removes the item from the queue, if its there.
• The right side of the page shows the playback controls at the top, and the playback queue below. The controls are pretty obvious, and you can hover your mouse over them to see what they do.
• Once you have some tracks in the queue, hit the play button, and in a moment, it should start playing on your computer (as long as you have the stream playing in your mp3 player)

How do I know I'm controling my stream, not someone else's?

First off, if you do stuff with the controls, and you hear the results in your mp3 player, you're controling your own stream.

The server remembers the IP addresses of computers playing streams from it, and you can assign your own names to those addresses. The address or name is displayed above the playback controls, over the Ablum art and under the text 'squeezbox'. If more than one stream is being sent out at any moment, the name will appear in a popup menu. The queue and controls shown are for the stream shown in the menu. To change which one you're controlling, just choose from the menu.

The flipside of being able to send more than one stream is that everyone can control everyone else's streams! Be nice, and only mess with your own.

How do I know which IP address is mine?

To find out what address the server calls yours, just click here. The number that shows up on that page is your IP as viewed from the internet.

How did you do that? Can I let people listen to my music?

Slim Server is an open-source music streaming server. If you run a web server and you'd like to stream your music, check it out.