So, the project is wrapping up and we’re in shipping frenzy, which means lots of staying up late un-limbered by tha boose. At times like these a man craves his classical music. Sadly, iTunes’ default selection is much less meaty in the online classical radio section than it is in other areas of the nation’s radio dial.

After a wee bit of poking here and there, it struck me that WNYC probably has a killer overnight classical show. Lo! indeed they do, but: it streams in a format that iTunes cain’t make hide nor hair of, the dreaded .asf, Windows-standard files.

Fortunately, though, I bothered to grab MPlayer OS X only a few days ago, in a fit of technical curiosity about video-encoding standards (associated with that video project that is back-burnered ’til this ship date is met).

Much to my surprise and joy, MPlayer had already arranged to handle .asf with Safari, and when I clicked WNYC’s streaming link, it fired up MPlayer and I was able to get back to the business of staring very hard at complex things that I was having a hard time thinking clearly about due to lack of sleep. Hooray!

(I have a dumb multimedia application lurking in my head – a UI that looks like the very oldest consumer radios, which came with labeled pushbuttons, preset to the local selection of radio stations. It’s the ancestor of the push-button presets on old or current car radios. You had to take the radio in to get it serviced to change the tuning, and, I assume, get the buttons relabeled)