Bill Cullen Homepage Update

[Matt Ottinger]

For the first time in a while, I've added a few more things to the Bill Cullen Homepage.  Not a whole lot of game show stuff, and some things are items I've mentioned here already in one way or another.  Still, I always like to invite folks to poke around.  The biggest thing I did was to fix the audio player, so if you've been hoping to finally listen to a complete episode of This Is Nora Drake, here's your big chance.

http://billcullen.net

[Adam Nedeff]

For the first time in a while, I've added a few more things to the Bill Cullen Homepage.  Not a whole lot of game show stuff, and some things are items I've mentioned here already in one way or another.  Still, I always like to invite folks to poke around.  The biggest thing I did was to fix the audio player, so if you've been hoping to finally listen to a complete episode of This Is Nora Drake, here's your big chance.

http://billcullen.net

Thanks, Uncle Matt!

[WarioBarker]

While I'm always excited for an update to the ultimate Bill site, I do have one minor "glitch" to report -- if I access any of the Radio pages which contain audio clips, all of them immediately play together. Also, the April 9, 1945 episode of The Danny O'Neil Show is still referred to as the earliest known recording of Bill's work.
----
That aside, there are a couple of things I've discovered which may be of interest:

* A search on the Paley Center website for Eye Guess turned up a show dated November 8, 1967, which I'm pretty sure is the one GSN aired.
* Looking at the online collection of Archival Television Audio for "Bill Cullen" turned up a single episode each of Eye Guess (August 6, 1968) and Winning Streak (October 15, 1974). Not sure if the latter is the same episode as those clips on TV Party, although I wouldn't be surprised.

Hope this is of some use, Matt.

[tvrandywest]

Yummy! I can't wait to light up a Winston and wander through all that's new!

Randy
tvrandywest.com

[Robair]

Yummy! I can't wait to light up a Winston and wander through all that's new!

Not a Newport? It has that hint of mint, you know...

[Matt Ottinger]

Yummy! I can't wait to light up a Winston and wander through all that's new!

Not a Newport? It has that hint of mint, you know...

Winstons for IGAS, Newports for TPIR and Camels for Walk a Mile.  The man never met a brand he didn't like!

While I'm always excited for an update to the ultimate Bill site, I do have one minor "glitch" to report -- if I access any of the Radio pages which contain audio clips, all of them immediately play together.

Man, that would make it hard to enjoy the page!  That doesn't happen for me on work or home computers, in either Explorer or Firefox, and it doesn't sound like anybody else is having that problem.  Anybody got a suggestion?
 

Also, the April 9, 1945 episode of The Danny O'Neil Show is still referred to as the earliest known recording of Bill's work.

Ha!  Didn't even think to check that.  I'll correct it tonight.

* A search on the Paley Center website for Eye Guess turned up a show dated November 8, 1967, which I'm pretty sure is the one GSN aired.

It is.

* Looking at the online collection of Archival Television Audio for "Bill Cullen" turned up a single episode each of Eye Guess (August 6, 1968) and Winning Streak (October 15, 1974). Not sure if the latter is the same episode as those clips on TV Party, although I wouldn't be surprised.

If those dates are right, then those would be things I don't have.  Interesting...

[clemon79]

Man, that would make it hard to enjoy the page!  That doesn't happen for me on work or home computers, in either Explorer or Firefox, and it doesn't sound like anybody else is having that problem.  Anybody got a suggestion?

Yeah, I bet you any money Dan's running Chrome; I was able to repro it there. It uses a separate audio plugin which is probably why it's behaving differently. Opera will allegedly have the same problem, but I wouldn't have firsthand knowledge, because who outside of a cellphone runs Opera?

Basically in order to get Chrome to honor the "autostart="false"" attribute you have to tell it the media type, as well. So if you add "type="audio/mpeg"" right after the autostart attribute, that should fix it. (I'm not sure if this is a bona fide bug in Chrome or if it's a thing about Chrome having a hard-on about being standards-compliant to a fault and this is something you've been getting away with all this time because IE and FF don't call you on it.)

So, for example:

<embed src="sounds/pulseeagle.mp3" autostart="false" loop="false" controller="true"
bgcolor="#80c9ff" width="300" height="42">

would become

<embed src="sounds/pulseeagle.mp3" autostart="false" type="audio/mpeg" loop="false"
controller="true" bgcolor="#80c9ff" width="300" height="42">

In your case, I would bet that a global search and replace on

autostart="false" loop="false"

for

autostart="false" type="audio/mpeg" loop="false"

would do the trick with minimal bloodshed, if whatever you're using to manage the site will allow for such a thing.

(Normally, I'd tell Dan to get a real browser, but honestly Chrome has enough market saturation at this point to be taken seriously. It's not an unreasonable gripe. Also, it seems like your audio clip code is way overbloated...I'm not sure you need both the object declaration and the embed, so maybe I'd try pulling out the embed altogether and seeing what happens. Embed has pretty much been deprecated and replaced by Object.)

[Matt Ottinger]

In your case, I would bet that a global search and replace on

autostart="false" loop="false"

for

autostart="false" type="audio/mpeg" loop="false"

would do the trick with minimal bloodshed, if whatever you're using to manage the site will allow for such a thing.

I think I can do that, or even go in individually without too much difficulty.

All my audio files have .mp3 extensions.  Do I say "audio/mpeg" or do I say "audio/mp3", or does that not make a difference?

[clemon79]

All my audio files have .mp3 extensions.  Do I say "audio/mpeg" or do I say "audio/mp3", or does that not make a difference?

Nope, use "audio/mpeg" just as I directed. I believe I read that it won't work the other way. (An mp3 *is* an mpeg.)

[clemon79]

And you might try it on one page first and then test it, because I'm not sure that will even fix the problem. Your site REALLY doesn't like Chrome with embedded clips.

[Fedya]

Man, that would make it hard to enjoy the page!  That doesn't happen for me on work or home computers, in either Explorer or Firefox, and it doesn't sound like anybody else is having that problem.  Anybody got a suggestion?

Yeah, I bet you any money Dan's running Chrome; I was able to repro it there. It uses a separate audio plugin which is probably why it's behaving differently. Opera will allegedly have the same problem, but I wouldn't have firsthand knowledge, because who outside of a cellphone runs Opera?

{Dumps Double Whammy on Chris for unnecessary Opera-bashing}

I didn't notice any problem in Opera; none of the files started playing until I hit one of the "play" triangles.

And what do you have against standards-compliant browsers, anyhow?  ;-)

[clemon79]

{Dumps Double Whammy on Chris for unnecessary Opera-bashing}

Well, congratulations on being part of the 2.5%, I guess.

I didn't notice any problem in Opera; none of the files started playing until I hit one of the "play" triangles.

Like I said, I couldn't say for sure, that's merely what I read when I was looking into this. So, thanks for the data point.

And what do you have against standards-compliant browsers, anyhow?  ;-)

Not one single thing, honestly, except when your code works on 70% of the install base out there, and breaks on the 20% that claim to be "standards-compliant," well, guess what, the 70% is the de-facto standard now, whether you like it or not. The LONE saving grace for the "standards-compliancy" movement is that Chrome seems to have had an ounce or two of traction.

(There are things it does *really well*. There are other things it does not. C'est la Google. In this particular case it doesn't help that the problem is stemming from a long-deprecated tag.)

Like it, don't like it, I don't care, but that's the reality of the situation.

[Matt Ottinger]

Also, it seems like your audio clip code is way overbloated...I'm not sure you need both the object declaration and the embed, so maybe I'd try pulling out the embed altogether and seeing what happens. Embed has pretty much been deprecated and replaced by Object.)

Oh golly, I'm sure every "real" programmer would run screaming after a serious look at my code.  I do as much as I can with a WYSIWYG program, then slip in what I need and poke at it until it works.  I'm sure all my pages have tons of redundant, duplicative or wasted code on them.

I made the changes you suggested to the 'CBS Announcer' page.  Can you (or Dan) tell me if that took care of things?

[WarioBarker]

Oh, yes, MUCH better!

[clemon79]

I made the changes you suggested to the 'CBS Announcer' page.  Can you (or Dan) tell me if that took care of things?

Seems to have. When I loaded it in Chrome, it first asked me for permissions for the Quicktime plugin, and when I granted them, after some loading time, everything worked same as it does in IE or Firefox.